The Mind of the Innovator
Saturday 6AM 93.9FM and NJPR and 2PM on AM820. Sunday 8pm on AM820.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
We’re told almost daily that we need innovation; that it drives prosperity and economic growth and is the engine of job creation. We hear about these innovations all the time. But do we ever stop and wonder where the innovation comes from? What fosters it? How we keep it flowing? In this program we tell the stories of some of real-world change-makers, examine just where their big ideas come from and demonstrate exactly how innovators cultivate an environment of curiosity and experimentation.
- PRX.org LIsten to audio of the program here
Comments [3]
Glad to hear the program interested you.
Unfortunately, this audio is not available for download but you can listen to the program on demand at the PRX web site linked above.
I heard this documentary this morning and was pleasantly surprised and provoked by the information. Can I download it?
The even more provocative creativity exercise for "the mind of the innovator" is to study why, exactly, every run of every experiment somewhat misbehaves. In a way nature manages to disprove every hypothesis on every run of every experiment.
It's because people are unable to specify hypotheses as complex as the normal behavior of the physical systems used in experiments, and *that's* an very important discovery. In many circumstances it turns out to be due to what amounts to nature herself being 'playful' in exploring the options for new strategies, a genuine creative path finding process for nature's vast "dot connecting" routines.
That's much like we teach engineers to do, when facing unexpected problems... Engineers are not yet taught to study how nature does the very same thing they are being taught to invent for themselves, though, providing what can seem like prolific varieties of examples.
So then you have to ask... if nature is often 'playful' in inventing her path finding strategies, like we try to be, what does that mean for the relation between the design and the designer, between the engineer and the engineered? Could the relation be a partnership perhaps, rather than a control problem, sometimes? Whose design is it then?
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