Isivivane Game - conversations that build trust and meaning for positive change

In Open Source Economic Development, civic leaders need to learn new practices and tools to extend and enhance their ability to engage with each other and with information to create new knowledge. New knowledge is what is generated from experience and applied to the industry of solving problems.

The Isivivane Game - Place Your Stone Upon the Pile - is one such practice. It creates immediate opportunities for leaders in government, business, and academia to build richer realities to engage in transformative action.

The game architects self constructed pathways that build new capacities for people to work together to be more creative, strengthen communications, and accelerate collaboration.

Practices introduce skills and tools people can rely on as they begin to interact in multidimensional ways. Growing comfortable in environments representing more than one reality is an aid to problem solving in the complex social, economic, and environmental situations affecting industry today. This is modern skills training.

By creating regular opportunities for experimental experiences in complexity - outside of daily work - organizations cultivate higher levels of performance and personal satisfaction, and stronger capabilties in individual decision making for wiser organizations.

From co-creator Steve Banhegyi:

"These are the cards with which the game is played - the questions on the cards are used to create knowledge by the participants - all centering around the central theme or 'organising principle' or 'strange attractor' the answer to the question : "what do we want?"

You can find Steve at I-Open on Strategy-Nets, Facebook, and @SteveBanhegyi on Twitter. Or, contact him directly at:

Steve Banhegyi & Associates
Art and Science of Change
steve@storytelling.co.za
Cell (South Africa) +27 (0)83 232-6047 / Fax +27 (0)86 635-4457
www.storytelling.co.za | www.trans4mation.co.za | isivivane.com

Investing in Swarm Creativity

The COINs 2010 conference, Oct 7-9, 2010 hosted at the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) in Savannah, GA, shares the insights and innovations of research and industry leaders in the Science of Collaboration.

Join us! Here are your next steps:

  • Register for the conference - we'd love to connect with you!
  • Submit a Research or Industry Thought Paper by Aug 12 less than 300 words- this is a neat opportunity to hone your idea and improve!
  • Sign up for the Coolhunting Academy free for conference registrants and includes a complimentary 3-month trial of Cool Trends 2.0 - (!)
  • Check it all out at: http://www.coins2010.com

More about Swarm Creativity and the Science of Collaboration:

Swarm Creativity powers the COINs 2010 community and with it the Science of Collaboration. Conference participants present reports focused on creativity, communication, and collaboration from many different disciplines and industries.

The swarm creativity map, above, is an ecosystem for entrepreneurs, businesses, organizations, and governments to cultivate a culture that is creative, cool, and fun!

Today, civic leaders need to work on many different projects simultaneously and at many different levels to optimize initiatives in open, connected global markets. The swarm creativity map offers a heuristic model for thinking across categories of investment in balanced systems. And, it's transferable and extensible.

Maps act as filters, provide a sense of logistics, and encourage more than one area of attention to be held at once. With that we can begin to think in terms of the value of network connectivity and systemic relationships.

The map identifies how swarm creativity as a discipline can be strengthened by investments in new practices and tools.

One tool, Cool Trends 2.0, is trend finding software developed by http://www.GalaxyAdvisors.com. It is designed to provide investment metrics for web 3.0, the semantic web. By integrating network mapping tools in enterprise initiatives, we can begin to get a clearer picture of innovation in networks, strengthen social behaviors that cultivate collaboration, and drive competitive network productivity.

Attention to new practices, such as meritocracy - an element of swarm creativity - establish good habits of sharing that nurture trusted relationships and cultivate collaborative environments.

Frameworks like this one work well in complexity. They offer a starting point for entrepreneurs to make important cognitive shifts required to think in terms of networks and areas of investment. With this, work becomes efficient and effective.

You can learn more in the book, "Swarm Creativity" by Professor Peter Gloor, Research Scientist, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. Be sure to follow the http://swarmcreativity.blogspot.com/ ">Swarm Creativity blog too.

The Swarm Creativity map was created by Betsey Merkel, I-Open.

Introduction to Open Source Economic Development, Ed Morrison, Co-Founder I-Open and Policy Analyst, Purdue University

Ed Morrison prepared this presentation for the April 2008 I-Open Leadership Retreat hosted at the beautiful Punderson State Park in Newberry, Ohio.

The presentation offers a succinct outline of the concepts and knowledge areas important to civic leaders building networks and collaborations in communities and regions.

The material draws deeply from Ed's life work as a brilliant economic development strategist. 

From our time working together at Case Western Reserve University's Center for Regional Economic Development (REI) from 2003 to 2005, we added process extensions and additional refinements.

These contiguous developments included the Tuesdays@REI Civic Forum process for civic entrepreneurs (designed by Betsey Merkel) and the Strategic Doing process (Ed Morrison). Both were refined out of the REI work building civic networks and strengthening entrepreneurial initiatives in Northeast Ohio.

Regional practitioner thought leaders - and there were many - offered strong influences in the areas of network mapping, Open Space Technologies, Appreciative Inquiry, social technologies, design, knowledge management, and visualization during our tenure.

These are typical of the practices and tools entrepreneurs and leaders of organizations, business, academia, and government need to be proficient in today to build competitive networks and collaborations for global economies.

It is this re-tooling of capacities that will strengthen entrepreneurial innovation in such important industries as alternate energies, manufacturing, health care, land use, creative digital media, technology, and water efficiency in Open Source Economic Development.

Designers Accord 2009: An Important Conversation Exploring the Future of Design in Open Systems

Note to readers:  I-Open mistakenly posted the Designers Accord 2009 document as a shareable piece of information. Apologies to our Design colleagues! The document has been removed.

We've asked the authors to supply us with a shareable version we can post here. The Accord unquestionably offers valuable insights for entrepreneurs working in Open Source Economic Development.
You're encouraged to continue to follow along and learn about the related efforts in the design industry at the October Design Ethos conference hosted at SCAD. Thanks for your patience. - Betsey Merkel, I-Open.

Back to the original post:

I-Open is co-sponsor of the COINs2010 conference Oct 7-9 hosted at SCAD in Savannah, GA. The conference will collaborate with the concurrent Design Ethos Conference also hosted at SCAD during the same time frame. SCAD Professors Scott Bolyston, Graphic Design, and Christine Miller, Design Management - hosts of each conference - are developing ways for the two gatherings to intersect, learn, and explore collaboration opportunities.

The Designers Accord document posted here offers an important snapshot of the global educational design community's desire to pursue discovery of the role of design at the intersections of social, economic, environment, and cultural issues today.

Links to learn more:

More about this important 2009 conversation and this resulting report:

The Designers Accord Final Comments document was submitted as a report to the editorial committee of the 2009 Designers Accord Global Summit 2009.

On October 23 and 24, 2009, the Designers Accord convened 100 individuals from some of the world’s most distinguished academic and professional institutions, for two days of highly participatory discussion, planning, and action around the topic of design education and sustainability.

This group of thought-leaders, design educators, and experts discussed, challenged, and conceived of a new path for undergraduate and graduate design programs to integrate sustainability. We tackled topics ranging from creating curricula and writing grants, to communicating to trustees and motivating students. These topics were culled from pre-Summit meetings and brainstorm sessions.

The format of the Summit was structured to enable this group to create a collective point of view about best practices and methods for integrating sustainability into design programs all over the world. We are currently synthesizing the outputs from the Summit. We plan to publish the output online and in printed form. The medium and format will be determined by the content.

You can learn more at this link:
http://www.designersaccord.org/initiatives/summit/

I-Open on Strategy-Nets: industry collaboration with an enterprise footprint

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 I-Open first announced its partnership with Near-Time.com May 14, 2007. Over the following three years, I-Open focused on applying the Near-Time tool set to early applications of face-to-face and online network and community development in Open Source Economic Development initiatives in many states.

Ed Morrison, Co-Founder and past Director of I-Open, led initiatives across the country while Northeast Ohio Co- Founders and Directors Betsey Merkel, Dennis Coughlin, and Susan Altshuler - along with the expertise of regional leaders - co-led initiatives in Northeast Ohio.

Article: "I-Open Selects Near-Time to Help Drive Community through Web Integration" 

I-Open's value as an industry partner with technology companies works in a couple of ways:

First, I-Open collaborates with technology and creative companies to build the place based open, neutral spaces for new conversations to take place, engaging business leaders focused on shared interests. Over time, conversations increase opportunities for innovative, collaborative local partnerships.

That's where a second stage of partnership comes in: in this case, the application of a Web 2.0 platform to sustain conversations and amplify community building, complete with a tool set to advance project work.

Online destinations offer a landing place for people to continue their conversations once they've gone back to the office. If a project is started, Web 2.0 tools enable work to continue from any place, independent of traditional meetings.

Midtown Brews and the Women's Enterprise Network are two Northeast Ohio based I-Open business collaborations that advance regional-to-global industry networks. Both are tested, successful models of integrating technology at the intersections of face-to-face and online network building. I-Open Civic Forums turbo charge activity and with the help of social media, local transparency is improved and global issues generally not addressed openly, are.

Collaborations between technology companies and network organizations like I-Open are invaluable because they advance cycles of industry improvement in social process and tool building. I-Open applications are unique because they focus on building enterprise under the mantra of open source ideology across social, economic, and environmental sectors.

Today, the Near-Time tool set has assumed a new application and brand: Strategy-Nets, an enterprise company founded by Ed Morrison that combines what was learned in those early applications to advancing strategic network building for economic development across regions.

By continuing to launch industry collaborations between technology companies and I-Open process, innovations capable of sparking technology and social process advances emerge. The added bonus is a footprint of trusted networks, evolving mindsets, collaborative behaviors, and plenty of competitive enterprise opportunities for any technology innovator prepared to grasp them.

Copyright 2011 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) 2563 Kingston Road Cleveland OH 44118 Phone: 216-220-0172 Web: http://i-open.posterous.com/

 

Elsevier: Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences - 2009 COINs Proceedings

 The COINs2009 Proceedings are available online at:

Volume 2, Issue 4, Pages 6387-6626 (2010)


The 1st Collaborative Innovation Networks Conference - COINs2009
Edited by Kenneth Riopelle, Peter Gloor, Christine Miller and Julia Gluesing

 The Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-OPEN) publication is # 15 entitled:

COINS: An economic development tool for education, economic and workforce development in Open Source Economic Development

Coolhunting Academy 2010 Invitation

Invitation to Half-Day Coolhunting Training Course -– Afternoon of Thursday, October 7, 2010

What is it that distinguishes Apple, LEGO, and P&G from their competitors? Why are they launching one killer product after the other? This is because they are taking a huge page from the playbook of creativity. They organize their business as a swarm business, applying the principles of swarm creativity by listening to and becoming a member of their swarm of loyal users, immersing themselves into their swarm. This swarm tells them what’s going to be cool, and how to make it even cooler.   Knowing where in the swarm the collaborative innovators are allows them to determine what’s going to be cool, too – before everyone else. The art of coolhunting involves zeroing in on the fresh idea that will be the genesis of a hot new trend. It also involves finding the people responsible for the idea – the trendsetters who will cause others to jump on board.

Practical applications of Swarm Creativity and Collaborative Innovation Networks are

  • Discovering cool trends for your field by tapping into the collective intelligence of your audience and potential customers (coolhunting)
  • Finding the trendsetters who convert an innovation into a trend
  • Run with the new trends you find and tap their business value through coolfarming
 The Coolhunting and Coolfarming framework developed at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence and field tested at dozens of fortune 1000 companies, offers a novel way to find the latest trends by discovering the online communication patterns of the trendsetters.

Plan to participate with us October 7-9 in Savannah to share and connect to new opportunities.

For more information, stop by for a visit and sign in to the COINs2010 community at http://www.coins2010.com

Connect to COINs2010:
Facebook: Collaborative-Innovation-Networks-COINS2010-Conference
Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/SwarmCreativity
Twitter: http://twitter.com/coins_2010
Website: http://www.coins2010.com

COINs University Partners:
http://cci.mit.edu/index.html
http://www.scad.edu/
http://wayne.edu/

COINs2010 Sponsors:
COINs University Partners
Galaxy Advisors http://www.galaxyadvisors.com/
I-OPEN http://i-open-2.strategy-nets.net

Background Information:
http://www.swarmcreativity.net/
http://www.ickn.org/
http://wiki.soberit.hut.fi/virtualbrownbag/tiki-index.php?page=homepage
http://www.galaxyadvisors.com/

 

COINs2010 Call for Papers

I-OPEN is a sponsor of the Collaborative Innovation Networks COINs2010 Conference, October 7-9, 2010 in Savannah, Georgia. The conference is presented in collaboration by the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), Wayne State University School of Engineering, and MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence.

The COINs community is a network of research and industry leaders seeking the best practices and tools they can find to understand innovation in the emerging Science of Collaboration.

If you are a research or industry leader, consider submitting a paper or thought paper about your insights and perspectives to elevate everyone's understanding of how to collaborate for competitive innovation advantage.

Plan to participate with us October 7-9 in Savannah to share and connect to new opportunities.

For more information, stop by for a visit and sign in to the COINs2010 community at http://www.coins2010.com

Connect to COINs2010:
Facebook: Collaborative-Innovation-Networks-COINS2010-Conference
Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/SwarmCreativity
Twitter: http://twitter.com/coins_2010
Website: http://www.coins2010.com

COINs University Partners:
http://cci.mit.edu/index.html
http://www.scad.edu/
http://wayne.edu/

COINs2010 Sponsors:
COINs University Partners
Galaxy Advisors http://www.galaxyadvisors.com/
I-OPEN http://i-open-2.strategy-nets.net

Background Information:
http://www.swarmcreativity.net/
http://www.ickn.org/
http://wiki.soberit.hut.fi/virtualbrownbag/tiki-index.php?page=homepage
http://www.galaxyadvisors.com/