[The Prometheus Shot – E004 :: Who Invents – Watt: Innovation, Steam Engines, and Industrial Revolutions ]
This post is part of the Prometheus Shot series.
Category: Innovation
[The Prometheus Shot – E003 :: Apple Crushed : Advertising, Brands, and Greatness ]
This post is part of the Prometheus Shot series.
Or… Is your current work Great? (Check the questionnaire)
Are you doing what you should be doing? Does it make sense that all of us should be working on Great things? How can we find out?
The Atlas of Worldly Wisdom is – in a sense – a guide that aims to help the learner find and pursue their own “Great Work”.
In management, as should be the case in life, we frequently think about the most that can be achieved given the limited resources available to us (Optimization).
So the question is : What is our great work? How can we find it?
Extreme Imagination and Creativity (as in Sci-Fi and Fantasy) can be practical. They are useful as inspiration, for education, and even as inputs into scientific and engineering processes.
Here are a few thoughts on that.
Do schools and universities really kill creativity?
Misaligned incentives, approximate thinking, and conflicting goals, can explain why the education system is perceived to be a creativity killer.
Ayn Rand and Approximate Thinking?
Many people complain about the simplistic (and sometimes infantile) nature of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”… Still, the book is only less successful (in terms of distribution) than the bible. What explains this? I argue that it is the conflation of identities and political ideologies with ideas and thought.
Ultimately, laziness and approximate thinking are what made John Galt great! This is really the secret behind Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”.
The ‘broadest pattern in history’ is a pattern of diffusion of innovation (cultural and technological innovation). The outcomes of the flow of innovation in culture, political and economic organization, and technology, are what caused – eventually – a giant rift between the ‘old world’ and the new one, and between different political entities.
A discussion based on the book by J. Diamond (Link below).
This rant is not a scientific accurate discussion. It is a peek into the nature of creativity and the meaning of infinity. Is human creativity infinite ??
Ranking universities and higher education institutions is (??) helpful in some respects. It might make it easier for (the perplexed) youth entering into higher education to choose… Moreover, A competitive environment, promoted by university rankings, encourages creativity, innovation, and effort.
Nothing simplified, however, comes for free… “University Rankings” are an extreme Approximation (reduction), and those are dangerous.
Why is it that discussions on equal opportunities can easily get derailed into name-calling? What are the causes of success, and why are people so sensitive about them? Fuzzy thinking about work and politics, and an incomplete understanding can cause an unnecessary confusion.