MIND MAP OF A "CREATIVITY & INNOVATION WEEK" EVENT

COORDINATING INSTRUCTIONS on an A6-sized MIND MAP.

As always, an enormous event such as the above C & I Week comes with many programmes. With the large number of facilitators and students involved, the organisers have to provide detailed coordinating instructions necessary to  ensure success. 

As I sat in the lecture theatre listening attentively as the programme and instructions unfolded in front of us, I quickly "captured" (mindmapped) the essence of what I need to know (e.g. 9INNOVA, Challenging Projects and Workshops involved, Duties of the Facilitators, etc...) so as hopefully, able to successfully dovetail the C&I week's programme smoothly into the 9INNOVA module. 

I felt a certain sense of calmness (unlike during the first briefing) and had a very happy feeling at this second briefing for all the facilitators, as I looked down on the A6-sized mind map that I have completed in real-time.

In my humble opinion, it generally showed that the organisers have covered practically all angles in organising this event. Well done!

Hopefully this C&I Week programme will supplement 9INNOVA and help students gain a different mindset in terms of Creativity and Innovation. 

AFTERNOTE:
After attending a third meeting, I made some minor changes (Emergency telephone no. 64606999) to the mind map above and update it my blog. I also realised that students have to achieve their goal of completing the following 3 parts:
a) Designing and Writing their ePoster for their challenging project
b) Designing and Constructing a cardboard model of their challenging project, and,
c) Designing and Editing a video on their challenging project in which they make use of a Line Hugging Robot (LHR) to illustrate/simulate how they would go about solving the problem of their project.

Students have to achieve the above tasks, so that they would be able to make further presentations to anyone else using the ePoster and the recorded video. Thus, this means that the group would have to delegate jobs/tasks to all three tasks to members of the team.

The mind map helps one in having an overview of the entire project.

Please enjoy and have fun analysing the mind map!

Mind Map Blog by Choon Boo LIM is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

My MIND MAP on PROF. DOUGLAS MONTGOMERY's Lecture on "INNOVATION, QUALITY TECHNOLOGY & STATISTICS" at ISE Dept, Faculty of Engrg, NUS on Friday, 21 Feb 2014

MIND MAP SUMMARY of LECTURE BY PROF. DOUGLAS MONTGOMERY on 21 Feb 2014

NETWORKING EVENT Organised by ISE Department, Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore

I was glad to attend the excellent presentation by Professor Douglas Montgomery on "Innovation, Quality Technology & Statistics".
It was an evening where the Professor shared his thoughts that Industrial Engineers (IE) should be renamed/called as Innovation Engineers instead. Lots of questions/ anecdotes were shared......among them were:

1) Prof. Douglas Montgomery's "Ask my driver" anecdote. He also mentioned that executives and managers nowadays, are not EXCITED about quality but are more EXCITED about new products instead.
2) The difference between an Engineer and a Doctor..... wrt the goals of "Landing a man on the Moon" and "Finding a cure for cancer" by Prof. LC Tang
3) Sharing of how to deploy 6sigma methodology in education? 
4) Comparing ISO companies to those who really cared about Quality .....--> being ISO does not mean or lead to Quality products.....it just means following a set of procedures! to........
5) Using DOX in determining teacher effectiveness.....!
6) Executives not quite interested in QUALITY. They get extremely EXCITED only in NEW PRODUCTS.
7) Quote: "All experiments are DESIGNED EXPERIMENTS"
8) Difference between an Aerodynamics expert (Theorist: Dr Samuel P Langley) versus two Bicycle Mechanics (Experimenters: Wilber and Orville Wright) is the former built 2 planes that failed to take off, while the later built planes that eventually flew!
9) Research is to create SURPRISES and take RISKS... while, Development must not have SURPRISES and ZERO RISKS! Hahaha.

It was an enjoyable evening and am looking forward for the next talk. 

Thank you for viewing.

Mind Map Blog by Choon Boo LIM is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

My Mind Map on a Crucial Conversation Workshop on 8 and 9 March 2010

I attended the 2-day "Crucial Conversation" workshop to find out more about how can it help the organisation improve by making the working environment more conducive for teamwork and innovation in the face of continuous changes.

It was certainly not a waste of my time. The course really emphasized the importance of trust and how to get these issues out in the open (through cleverly crafted 'crucial conversations') so that employees can "safely" add what they are thinking to those issues instead of quietly (or "deadly" )grumbling about openness, lack of communication and that management is not listening to them etc..

I mind mapped the basic principles of "Crucial Conversation" during the workshop and what it takes to encourage employees to open up. On hindsight, it takes a great organisation to be able to listen to opinions, thoughts, ideas and adopt them where appropriate into its ideabank.

Thus, it takes a great organisation to understand these principles, the ability to recognise the capabilities of its employees and nurture this intellectual talent through cleverly crafted "Crucial Conversation". It would probably help organisations overcome the lack of teamwork and lack of "Innovation" within itself.   

Enjoy the map!

Fast forward to 17 March 2013:
An article of a Washington Post interview with PM Lee Hsien Loong was reported by The Straits Times. It was headlined as "Govt will need to be more open". It is a good article to read, as it gives people some ideas about what PM thinks about key issues for Singapore itself.

Somewhere in that long interview, in response to a question that his party has lost some seats in the recent 2011 election, PM responded that it is a different generation, a different society, and the politics will be different... They have to work in a more open way and that they have to accept more of the untidiness and the to-ing and fro-ing which is part of normal politics.

My thoughts
Something struck me is that, could the lost of seats be avoided if "crucial conversation" had taken place years earlier? Is the govt. taking corrective action now in order to avoid further losses in 2016? I believe it is. I don't think they want to lose more. But the guess whether the govt is doing enough or not is on everyone's lips. It is really difficult to satisfy people's wants. Any solutions? Better start to understand the aspirations of the people as early as possible.

Fast forward to 24 March 2013
An article in ST "Singapore dialogues 'have influenced policy making'" catch my interest again with regards to the topic of "crucial conversation".

It was reported that Mr Heng Swee Keat, the Education Minister admitted that [quote] it would have been useful if the consultation process for the recent Population White Paper published in January to a firestorm, had dovetailed with the Our Singapore Conversation (OSC). 

He was responding to the view, most recently expressed by PAP MP Denise Phua after the Budget debate, that the White Paper debacle lost the Government goodwill that the national conversation was generating [unquote]

My thoughts
Something struck me is that, wouldn't it be useful to discuss the long term plans of having a population projection of 6.9million during the OSC? More views, ideas, suggestions, could come up!

There is no shortage of all kinds of creative ideas during this Internet Age. Prof Gerard Puccio, the Chair and Professor of the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Bufflao State University, recently in a televised presentation on "Creativity as a Life Skill" said that studies have shown that it is important to have lots of creative ideas instead of having a small number, in order to have the best idea. Please view this excellent presentation if you have the time.

Could the govt have missed this  "Crucial Conversation" again by not introducing it during the OSC? It is important that as we mature, it may be good really to listen, search for the truth and invite comments and views no matter how bitter it is, rather than appearing like "it was bulldozing" as one ST reader pointed out. Could there be many more as the authors of "Crucial Conversation" suggest in their book of the same title? Would the opposition parties' views be taken into consideration in the Population Debate? Also, would the opposition parties be willing to participate in a series of nationally televised debate along with govt representatives, like what we had in the 1970's on having an all BUS SYSTEM vs an MRT SYSTEM before selecting. I think, a national debate of this kind would benefit all Singaporeans as eventually, it is a question of winning the hearts and minds of Singaporean. It takes time for people's mind to tune to what is best for Singapore. It may be good not to brush aside this "Crucial Conversation" on 6.9million Population Debate as Singaporeans could end up as losers. Participants for this propose debate could include representatives from the govt., opposition representatives as well as population experts / economists / futurists taking part in this nationally televised programme over, perhaps, 2months? BEFORE parliament sits and come to a consensus as to what is BEST for Singapore. What do you think? Thank you for reading.

Mind Map Blog by Choon Boo LIM is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

My Mind Map on the 26th SIM Annual Management Lecture by Dr John Naisbitt on 23rd Aug 2007

Mind Map on Dr John Naisbitt's talk drawn in real-time.

1. I was delighted to be invited to the 26th AML organised by the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) on Thursday, 23 Aug 2007 at Raffles City Convention Centre. The speaker was Dr John Naisbitt (International Best-selling author of Megatrends and Megatrends 2000) and he spoke on the topic of "Mindsets to See the Future - The Next Big Thing".
2. Excited, I started to make my own preparations like drawing his portrait as part of the central image for the A3-sized mind map that I was determined to do in real-time as I had done for many past prominent speakers and lectures.
3. Subsequently, I was lucky that the real-time mind map summary of the talk including the discussion that followed at the end of the lecture turned out to be quite presentable. The attached picture above shows the autographed mind map by Dr John Naisbitt.
4. After the lecture, I found that the lecture that he gave was actually a summary of his book on "MindSet". I was elated and did a short review of his book.

Mind Map Blog by Choon Boo LIM is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License