Last spring, New York University art student Kacie Kinzer conducted an experiment: Out of cardboard, she built a little robot with a smiley face. This robot, called the Tweenbot, had one ability: It moved forward – nothing more, nothing less. Kinzer took this little fellow to Central ParkWashington Square Park, attached a little flag with its indended destination (the other end of the park), and released it.

What happened? Well, the robot did what it could do: move forward; and since it could move only forward, it got stuck a lot – in pavement cracks, on grass, or driving into trees. But whenever that happened, a friendly person came by, and put the Tweenbot back on its path. Some of the helpers corrected its course by just nudging it with their foot, while others went to great lengths to free the robot when it got stuck under a park bench.

Finally the little robot arrived safely at the other end of the park. Remember: This was in New York, whose residents are not known for their helpfulness. And the outcome wasn’t an outlier either: Kinzer repeated the experiment several times, and all of those re-runs were successful. Read the rest of this entry »

I consider myself to be a social media enthusiast: I wrote my first programs at the age of 7, had my first web site in 1996, started a web business in 1998, and have been active in social media since the first chatrooms. And I have to constantly remind myself that there are a lot of people out there who no idea what social media are.

1. People are willing to share, collaborate and connect (culture)
2. People have the tools to interact (technology)

Just stumbled across this brilliant blog post via a Tweet from @pierrefar (he’s the brains behind the cli.gs URL shortener by the way). It’s called “The importance of stupidity in scientific research” and explains that the feeling of stupidity or ignorance is an indicator for one’s treading on new ground:

“[...] we don’t do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid – that is, if we don’t feel stupid it means we’re not really trying. I’m not talking about “relative stupidity”, in which the other students in the class actually read the material, think about it and ace the exam, whereas you don’t. I’m also not talking about bright people who might be working in areas that don’t match their talents. Science involves confronting our “absolute stupidity”. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown.”

In the context of organizations, this philosophy can be related to cultural predispositions or hindrances to creative thinking and innovation. If we allow ourselves to feel stupid in an “absolute” way, we can embrace the task of solving a problem better than if we were thinking that there is surely someone who has got the answer.

[Post: The importance of stupidity in scientific research]