research ongoing

looked at some useful documentation today...findings made through MeCCSA event at Bournmouth 4th, 5th July 2011

THINK TANK; Where to Get a Good Idea: Steal It Outside Your Group

By Michael ErardPublished: May 22, 2004

Got a good idea? Now think for a moment where you got it. A sudden spark of inspiration? A memory? A dream?

Most likely, says Ronald S. Burt, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, it came from someone else who hadn't realized how to use it.

''The usual image of creativity is that it's some sort of genetic gift, some heroic act,'' Mr. Burt said. ''But creativity is an import-export game. It's not a creation game.''

Mr. Burt has spent most of his career studying how creative, competitive people relate to the rest of the world, and how ideas move from place to place. Often the value of a good idea, he has found, is not in its origin but in its delivery. His observation will undoubtedly resonate with overlooked novelists, garage inventors and forgotten geniuses who pride themselves on their new ideas but aren't successful in getting them noticed. ''Tracing the origin of an idea is an interesting academic exercise, but it's largely irrelevant,'' Mr. Burt said. ''The trick is, can you get an idea which is mundane and well known in one place to another place where people would get value out of it.''

Mr. Burt, whose latest findings will appear in the American Journal of Sociology this fall, studied managers in the supply chain of Raytheon, the large electronics company and military contractor based in Waltham, Mass., where he worked until last year. Mr. Burt asked managers to write down their best ideas about how to improve business operations and then had two executives at the company rate their quality. It turned out that the highest-ranked ideas came from managers who had contacts outside their immediate work group. The reason, Mr. Burt said, is that their contacts span what he calls ''structural holes,'' the gaps between discrete groups of people.

''People who live in the intersection of social worlds,'' Mr. Burt writes, ''are at higher risk of having good ideas.''

People with cohesive social networks, whether offices, cliques or industries, tend to think and act the same, he explains. In the long run, this homogeneity deadens creativity. As Mr. Burt's research has repeatedly shown, people who reach outside their social network not only are often the first to learn about new and useful information, but they are also able to see how different kinds of groups solve similar problems. 

thank you to Peter Fraser for sending me these finds...
http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/  really good..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4sOOSy2gIU&feature=player_embedded  good video on collaboration

I also spent much of yesterday evening looking back over 'Showstudio.com' at Somerset House  and 'telling tales' exhibition held at the V&A . I felt i needed to go over some old ground...why I was particularly influenced by research subject in the first place 

links:

The Telling Tales exhibition at the V&A 14 July-18 October 2009 showcases 

Alexander mcqueen 2002 Bridegroom stripped bare.

Online with Stuart and Fiona at 1pm today (hr) discussed Bournmouth and my research in terms of focus, I am going through what I call a 'fuzzy' stage currently, meaning Im not sure where to position myself...I need to make clear what it is I want to write about, problem is Im not sure where to start..?? and time is running out...considering this question I came across this...The ebb and flow of concentrated focus and total disengagement has been a subject of particular interest to the composer, musician, and producer Brian Eno (U2, Talking Heads, Roxy Music). Drawing on interviews from throughout Eno’s career, Eric Tamm’s book, Brian Eno: His Music and The Vertical Sound of Color, delves deeply into Eno’s “creative process.” Eno himself calls it:
...a practice of some kind ... It quite frequently happens that you’re just treading water for quite a long time. Nothing really dramatic seems to be happening. … And then suddenly everything seems to lock together in a different way. It’s like a crystallization point where you can’t detect any single element having changed. There’s a proverb that says that the fruit takes a long time to ripen, but it falls suddenly ... And that seems to be the process.

Stuart suggested I work on my IPA so that I have something to work on in out next meeting arranged for wednesday 13th September 2011.  I have also been sent a 'Doctoral supervision minutes' form to complete and return to Stuart..

Lastly...I found the term 'Flaneur'..this is a great metaphor for the participant/observer as part of the 2-way communication process
The term flâneur (English pronunciation: /flä-ˈnər/) comes from the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer"—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of "a person who walks the city in order to experience it". Because of the term's usage and theorization by Baudelaire and numerous thinkers in economic, cultural, literary and historical fields, the idea of the flâneur has accumulated significant meaning as a referent for understanding urban phenomena and modernity..."gentleman stroller of city streets",^[2] he saw the flâneur as having a key role in understanding, participating in and portraying the city