Innovation: The Who's Where's and How's

The question of Face Book's new "frictionless sharing" was asked in a recent Trends forum in LinkedIN. My contribution to it is written below.  Yes, I consider myself a techno-utopian and believe that technology can help us immensely. Witness the emerging field of neuro-science and how it may be able to help us understand ourselves better and aid our poor decision making skills.  On the other side of the coin, I have witnessed how technology has atrophied our social abilities: call it our "social curation" abilities. Regrettably, I think Facebook frictionless sharing will exacerbate this trend. Like the author says: there is value on what our friends write or say and we base a lot of our decision on this curation from our circles of influence. Overall, I have mixed emotions about Facebook. It can be a great tool for communication but it can also blunt our humanness in ways we are only now experiencing. How many of us just "park" our friends in Face...

I came across Nova Now on PBS yesterday and the episode had to do with the growing field of Neuro-Science and the different fields of research. An absolutely fascinating piece of content that everyone should watch and that profiles various scientist and their areas of focus. You have always wondered how magic happens? Well, now you will know: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/change-blindness.html My particular interest is in merging this field with business management and thus explore better ways to run ourselves and our institutions and also to pursue innovative ways of being. Who would not want more Steve Jobs, right?  There is so much to delve into, but one area that is interesting and applicable to my World has to with the perception of change.  There is a phenomenon called: Change  blindness  and it occurs in situations where we are so focused on one thing that we miss a larger event happening right in front us.  For more intriguing demonstrations, s...

Two separate and distinct events occurred to my wife and I as we were trying to help people with their specific causes. Please remember that I wrote help - as in going out of our daily routines and struggles to assist another human being with their specific idea and cause. In both instances the people that we were aiming to help (after getting their approval for us to do so) reacted in ways that were anathema to the situation. Both felt challenged and the basis for these feelings appeared to be caused by a sense of loss of control. In addition, both seemed to have reacted impulsively without giving the circumstances its due deliberation and thought. This got me thinking, and while I am not a psychologist, it occurred to me that as we live on the edge driven by economic  and social insecurities, we are reacting instinctively and protecting our "space" even when people are trying to help us. Or, is it a more profound issue, where people have lost their ability to distinguish...