Jared Diamond on creativity, innovation and wealth

by | Saturday, November 08, 2008

Jared Diamond has an article on edge.org, somewhat provocatively titled: How to get rich? The question his after is simply, “what is the best way to organize human groups and human organizations and businesses so as to maximize productivity, creativity, innovation, and wealth?”

His final conclusion, based on his story of human history, are a couple of principles.

First, the principle that really isolated groups are at a disadvantage, because most groups get most of their ideas and innovations from the outside. Second, I also derive the principle of intermediate fragmentation: you don’t want excessive unity and you don’t want excessive fragmentation; instead, you want your human society or business to be broken up into a number of groups which compete with each other but which also maintain relatively free communication with each other.

I am not sure whether this knowledge will help make me rich, but it does indicate to me that the system I utilize in my teaching style (students working together in smaller groups, with open communication mechanisms between the groups) is reasonably sound. Also significant would be increasing diversity in the classroom – though that is not something I typically have any control over.

A few randomly selected blog posts…

France Sings for USA

In a previous post I talked about Pangea Day and the Imagine anthem series, where people from one country sing the national anthem of another. Here's another one, France sings for the USA. Enjoy. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T60NaNPiMg[/youtube]

Multitasking & the learner

Multitasking & the learner

One of the myths of the new digital generation is that they are natural multi-taskers. The evidence, however, indicates that multi-tasking is detrimental to performance and success, and  though we may try delude ourselves, the fact of the matter is that, we do...

Arthur C. Clarke, RIP

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Brilliant advertisement

I don't want to give anything away... watch it once and then once more... [Youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQbl1c63Ofo]

Day 3: Meetings & Workshop

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I picked up Jacob Weisberg's The Bush Tragedy from the library and finished reading it over the past day and a half. I have never been a fan of Bush, mainly because I was troubled, from the very beginning, by his lack of curiosity, and his unwillingness to learn....

Happy Thanksgiving, 2 new ambigrams

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I wake up every day just feeling incredibly lucky for what I have - and to have a special day devoted to celebrating that idea... how very cool. So here are two new and unique ambigram designs to celebrate this wonderful day. The...

LanguageART: Meaning making through type & image

LanguageART: Meaning making through type & image

I love collecting quotations—usually related to learning, design, and creativity. Over the past couple of years I started trying to visualize these quotations, playing with type and image, to tease apart their meanings, sometimes to undermine, sometimes to enhance. I...

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