Mathemagenic

One more post by Riva Gianluca

...the most current concept of innovation see it as "interactive", that is interaction between the passions and interests of people, organizational flexibility and a series of weak and strong connections between the organization at hand external institutions.

People are more creative and innovative when they can look into something they like and they care for, therefore a firm should try to couple personal freedom and organizational flexibility.

...people learn informally when they can look into something they like and they care for... I definetely want to take time to look how informal learning and innovation are connected.

For istance Oticon managed to rescue a serious crisis and to become truly innovative by seizing functional boundaries and building a project-based structure, in which:

1. People can choose the project they work with
2. People can work for more than a project at a time
3. People can give up a project when they like
4. People are assessed by a mentor outside the group, they can choose such a mentor and even change their if they're not satisfied at the assessment...

Post by Riva Gianluca:

...there are five problematic aspects which have been overlooked by first generation KM:

1)The concept of Best Practice. The usual idea of KM was that of Best Practice shared through databases. As a matter of fact, a Best Practice cannot be learned just because it's stored in a Database. Learning is a gradual phenomenon, it requires human efforts and time, and a similar language and background between the teacher and the learner. A best practice is a social practice implemented by certain people in a certain organization in a certain environment. That is, a Best Practice is interaction between human/organizational/environmental elements, and this interaction is situated and idiosincratic, it cannot be transferred by Databases.

Can we find the way to get those who created a Best Practice as teachers? And then think how technology can help?

4) The concept of knowledge worker is ambiguous. As a matter of fact is often a matter of organizational strategy (for istance empowerment) rather than intrinsic qualities of people. People are knowledge workers if a firm allows them to think, rather than building techno-elites that can generate resistance and exclusionary mechanisms

As my mother says - "the sun is hidden in everybody" :) So, then we should think about the ways of releasing this sun... Comparing to a classroom - all students can score high if you believe in their capabilities and support their growth.

Allowing people to think at first is a question of trust and believes, and only then right strategy and interventions.