alchemists of co-creation

Press Release, Carlijn Simons (in Dutch)

2010-11-11T01:51:00.000-08:00

I am pleased to share with you that in regard to my Imagineering company/city Naarden-Vesting a press release has been published. Furthermore, the municipality is printing 100 copies of my thesis to further inform their collegues and the inhabitants about the plans for the future of their city.

Regards,

Carlijn Simons

Almere, 11 november 2010

Bedrijfsleven Naarden-Vesting neemt heft in eigen hand en start ondernemersvereniging

Almere, 11 november 2010 – Ondernemers in Naarden-Vesting hebben zelf het initiatief genomen een ondernemersvereniging op te richten. In samenwerking met de gemeente Naarden en de Kamer van Koophandel Gooi-, Eem- en Flevoland zijn de ondernemers gekomen tot een gezamenlijk belang en een gedeelde visie binnen Naarden-Vesting. Met deze gezamenlijke en gedeelde visie is het mogelijk om aan de toekomst van een ondernemende vestingstad te werken en de belangen van ondernemers goed te behartigen. Dit is de uitkomst van een rapport dat gisteren officieel werd overhandigd aan Frans van Vugt, wethouder Economische Zaken van de gemeente Naarden en Mariëlle Baars-Wielandt, adviseur regionale economie van de Kamer van Koophandel Gooi-, Eem- en Flevoland.

Carlijn Simons heeft in het kader van haar studie Imagineering aan de NHTV in Breda deze rapportage opgesteld, welke mede mogelijk is gemaakt door de gemeente Naarden en de Kamer van Koophandel Gooi-, Eem- en Flevoland. Doel van de opdracht was om ondernemers in Naarden-Vesting en inwoners van de vestingstad op basis van co-creatie te laten werken aan een gezamenlijke visie en voor de ondernemers een vaste gesprekspartner voor de gemeente te vormen. Uiteindelijk hebben in diverse sessies ondernemers aangegeven hoe zij de situatie in de Vesting zien en waar zij in de toekomst heen willen. Hieruit is al meteen het initiatief voor een ondernemersvereniging gekomen waarin de belangen van ondernemers geborgd kunnen worden. Marije van Proosdij-Verfürden van Coffee Culture is groot voorstander van een ondernemersvereniging en heeft het voortouw genomen in de totstandkoming.

Georganiseerd platform
“Het is echt tijd voor een collectieve aanpak in Naarden-Vesting. Dat blijkt ook uit de vele enthousiaste reacties die we hebben ontvangen. Het belang van een georganiseerd platform voor ondernemers op het gebied van bijvoorbeeld Public Relations, of parkeerbeleid blijkt hiermee onderscheven te worden. Samenwerking tussen en afstemming met ondernemers zorgt ervoor dat de ondernemersvereniging in oprichting een goede gesprekspartner is voor onder andere de gemeente”, aldus Van Proosdij-Verfürden. Maandag 22 november worden de korte termijndoelstellingen, de begroting en het bestuur van de ondernemersvereniging in de Grote Kerk in Naarden gepresenteerd.

Over de Kamer van Koophandel Gooi-, Eem- en Flevoland
Doel van de Kamer van Koophandel Gooi-, Eem- en Flevoland is alle ondernemers verder laten komen met ondernemen. Dit doet de KvK onder andere door het aanbieden van diverse seminars, landelijke themadagen, maar ook door advies te geven over de regionale economie en ondernemers te stimuleren zich te verenigingen. Het faciliteren van een onderzoek als dit en de bijeenkomsten om te komen tot een gezamenlijke visie in Naarden Vesting is hier een voorbeeld van.
Over de gemeente NaardenDe gemeente Naarden waardeert het initiatief van de ondernemers om tot een gezamenlijke visie te komen; een visie op het (nog) beter benutten van de potentie van de Vesting. De gemeente is blij met de oprichting van een ondernemersvereniging. De gemeente verwacht dat een vaste gesprekspartner namens de ondernemers een goede basis vormt voor constructieve samenwerking en ondersteuning.

Greenpeace - Nestle, Orang-Utan and Palm Oil

2010-07-12T01:22:00.000-07:00

Movie of Kishore's Book review

NECESSARY REVOLUTION

2010-07-12T01:21:00.000-07:00

Book Reviewer: Kishore Menon

BOOK : NECESSARY ROVOLUTION

SUB TITLE : How individuals and organisations are working together to create a sustainable world

AUTHORS : Peter Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur, Sara Schley

REMARK : Must read, If you want to see the big picture and interests in “Systems Thinking”

Peter Senge, Senior lecture at MIT Sloan School of management and founder of Society for Organisational Learning (SoL ), author of The Fifth Discipline, honoured as one of the seminal management books of the past 75 years by Harvard Business Review.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV1t-MvnCrA

and this is the outcome.

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/forests/success-you-made-nestlé-drop-dodgy-palm-oil-now-lets-bank-it-hsbc-20100517

Nike has reduced its “carbon foot print“ by more than 75 percent. This was not enforced upon them by any regulatory authorities. Looking for the truly innovative opportunities for the future, company declared to achieve zero waste, zero toxicity, and 100 percent recyclability across its entire product range by 2020.

Why ?

Industrial age bubble – “ Take – Make – Waste “, way of thinking which dominated the world for the last 200 years is coming to an end.

Climate change, natural resource crunch, rampant consumerism, widening economic divide are some of the social and environmental challenge which lies ahead of us, which also gives us the opportunity to change, for good. Transformative collaboration happening between businesses, governments, non- profit organisations are starting to bring about real, sustainable change.

We need to stop pretending that the problem belongs to someone else. In the interconnected world there is no good or bad guys, we are all responsible for our core sustainable issues food, water, energy, waste etc and we all have be part of the solution.

This is the necessary revolution, which needs a shift in thinking.

Industrial age has been an era earmarked by harvesting of natural and social capital to produce physical and financial capital and the time has come when we have to reverse that process. If you look at the complete value chain, it takes 200 litres of water resources to produce 1 litre of Coke, which is way beyond the reduction they were looking to bring down from 3 litres to 2.5 litres, utilised within the factory. Enterprises no more can limit itself to think outside the box, but need to look outside and beyond the building.

Within the industrial bubble we had to choose between better standard of living or healthy ecosystem and cannot have both. In a life beyond the bubble, it’s illogical to assume that our answers from the past are automatically the answers for the future. Innovation Leaders recognising this fact are implementing revolutionary and not just incremental changes in the way we live and work.

To create a sustainable world, inspiration should be drawn not from the machines but from nature and the creation of a different future is only possible by learning to see the larger systems of which they we are part of and fostering collaboration across every imaginable boundary. Market based forces are much more powerful than legal or governmental action in spurring innovation and genuine commitment. So it’s about how one help people simultaneously to be effective in dealing with the reality they face and yet have an orientation towards where they want to go. In a regenerative economy we need to learn to see the larger systems in which we live and work, hence systems thinking.

With living examples cited from major corporations like GE, Toyota, Alcoa, DuPont, Coca-Cola, Costco, Nike, BP and many more, the book stresses upon the power of understanding the mental models and generative conversation.

This book carries simple and logical pictorial depiction of an alternative industrial system. Here they talk about a regenerative circular economy wherein separate circular flow of technical and biological nutrients mimics the living-systems principle of “waste = food“, which has two critical benefits : reduction in waste flows and their damage to natural systems and reduction in the amount of natural resources that must be extracted.

Tomorrow is not far, when we will have buildings that produce more energy and clean water than they can use and function more like trees and forests. The book has specific tools and a way of thinking to help us build competence to respond to the greater challenges of our times. If one gets to see though the content with regard to management models of those successful collaborations, one can see that the predominant pattern that would emerge is that of relational in nature rather than command and control model.

Since my BTR deals with subjects like “ Systems Thinking ” and sustainability this book gave me the big picture framework with regard both the subjects of interest and how some major corporations are transforming themselves to meet these challenges.

The book also helped me with lot of insights, which was thought provoking enough to enable me to find new dimensions in my search for concepts and widening the possibilities within the scope of the project and BTR.

Innovation can never be predicted in advance and can seem impossibly daunting, they are often catalyzed by small number of people who can both see large patterns and focus on small steps that build momentum. Along with organisational intelligence, if you can tap into emotional and intellectual intelligence of individuals in an organisation, unleashing their latent collective imagination and energy within and among them, one can consider the battle as, won.

Do you have it in you ?

Kishore

Book Review on 'Leadership That Matters '

2010-06-29T01:30:00.000-07:00

Book Review on 'Leadership That Matters '

The book I am presenting is called ‘Leadership That Matters’ and was written in 2003 by Marshall Sashkin & Molly G. Sashkin. As the title already suggests, it brings leadership closer to the reader, bringing one special kind of leadership to the fore: Transformational Leadership. As the authors emphasize, in the 21st century there is more to being a leader than just improving productivity and performance – leaders who matter have the ability to transform their organizational members from dutiful followers into self-directed leaders – they facilitate change rather than exercising it themselves. Same as we Imagineers do…

Sashkin & Sashkin conducted a lot of research on leadership approaches. In total they took out seven approaches that had common elements and synthesized those into their own approach: Leadership That Matters. The three most important parts of this approach are:
1. the leader’s personality (characteristics),
2. his/her behavior and
3. the situational context of leadership (organizational context or culture).
The book is divided into thirteen chapters which logically build upon each other. Though, it is not always as easy to read because of constant repetitions which cause confusion from time to time. Anyway, the following lines will hopefully give you an insight into the book’s main thoughts.

What is it, leadership?
The first two chapters build the introduction which depicts the ‘puzzle’ of leadership which is put together by several approaches. According to the Sashkins, many of those definitions contain essential elements, but after all they miss the combination of the most important ones in order to describe leadership correctly. That’s what the Sashkins thus did and called it Leadership That Matters.
Already in the beginning they make an important differentiation between ‘leaders’ and ‘managers’: leadership (in contrast to management) does not only imply the usual job definition, it also explains WHY the job is being done – it goes beyond the obvious. Transformational leaders (in addition to managers) ‘develop a compact between themselves and their followers’ (p.37). They create meaning for both parties, their leadership thus matters. Translating this idea into Imagineering terms, transformational leadership facilitates symbolic value co-creation which results in individual transformation.
A term that is introduced here is also already known from Imagineering: the ‘paradigm’ of Thomas Kuhn. Though, in the area of leadership, James McGregor Burns was the introducing person of the new leadership paradigm. In order to understand the new things, the old have to be set into perspective. Sashkin and Sashkin hereby make the difference between transactional (trading) and transformational (bonding) leadership. The authors also refer to examples out of history, like Gandhi as best example of transformational leader.

Leadership Skills and Behaviors
After having conducted some research about the behaviors and skills used by transformational leaders, Sashkin and Sashkin came up with their own definition of the most important behaviors:
• skilled communication
• trust-building
• expression of care and respect for others and
• creating empowerment opportunities.
These behaviors are merely the result of transformational leadership, not its cause or source. Additionally, they can only be applied effectively when a leaders possesses the personal characteristics summarized as ABC (affect/emotions, behavioral intent/confidence to act and cognitive capability/basis for shared vision) that are discussed in the following chapters.

What else does it take to call someone a leader?
The authors argue that just focusing on behaviors does not lead to effective conclusions about leadership, there has to be more. So they go over to their second element, characteristics.
In this context they mention the research from Robert House, who brought in a new important aspect of transformational leadership when stating that leadership had something to do with the character of the leader (‘charismatic leadership’). However, the authors argument that charisma and behavioral skills alone do not define effective leadership. They even argue that charismatic leadership has to be separated from transformational leadership because it can be dangerous when being used in a manipulative way. What is important here is that both forms have the same basic source: the leader’s need for power and control. So the need for power is an essential part of the leader’s character, but is also important for the follower as a guideline.
Another important aspect for influencing followers is the leader’s self-confidence. The authors use an example of actor Will Smith, who was building a wall in order to extend the father’s shop space. Will thought he and his brother would not make it, it took them ages to finish. When it was done, their father told them “Never believe that there’s anything you can’t do!” (p.85). Here they also mention the principle of self-fulfilling principle, referring to the belief that you can do something is often enough to encourage you to try. Transformational leaders encourage their followers, as will be stated later. Empowering people is set into perspective with taking risks and control from the leader’s side, and relates to the degree of self-confidence. The more control the leader wants to keep, the less self-confidence he has and the higher the risk he runs to be a bad leader because the resources and the trust that are necessary for the follower are not provided. Control and self-confidence are thus two of the three important characteristics a transformational leader should have. In addition, the way of empowering people is summarized in the ‘vision’ which is the cognitive capability of leadership approaches. Sashkin and Sashkin do not agree with usual definitions of vision, such as ‘an image of an ideal future condition’ – they state that the future is a place that is created. The activity of making the paths to it changes both the maker and the destination.
Here we find back the co-creational part of making meaning, as it is done in Imagineering.
The personal characteristics are not necessarily inborn traits but can be developed. “If you do not have the skills, learn and practice them.” (p.108)

Culture is the key
The third and last element they discuss is the situational context, or as they call it as well, the culture. Culture is the key to organizational functioning. As the authors state, there are four key functions that create organizational context:
• Change (dealing with things outside the organization to attain goals)
• Goals (produce outcomes/achieve goals)
• Culture (define and support values and beliefs)
• Teamwork (coordinating the ongoing work of individuals and groups).

The Leadership Profile (TLP) as Measuring Instrument
The entire book is set up in a way that one can understand this kind of leadership better, but also practice it for own use by means of self-assessment materials spread over the chapters. The very key element of this book is the TLP which is an instrument that measures transactional and transformational leadership. It is a complete leadership model including 10 dimensions that are differentiated again in 50 specific behaviors. Taking the survey takes approximately 15 minutes – not only leaders assess themselves, but some of the ‘observers’ (usually 5) do the same test in order to compare results. The TLP is a 360-degree-measuring instrument and contains the 5-point Likert-type scale, answers are given in a range from 1-5.
The ten dimensions are listed below:

TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP

1. Capable Management: This person makes sure people can have the resources they need to do a good job.

2. Reward Equity: This person recognizes good performance with rewards people value.

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP BEHAVIORS

3. Communication Leadership: This person grabs people’s attention, focusing on the important issue in a discussion.

4. Credible Leadership: This person acts in ways consistent with his/her work.

5. Caring Leadership: This person respects people’s differences.

6. Creative Leadership: This person designs situations that permit people to achieve their goals.

TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP CHARACTERISTICS

7. Confident Leadership: This person makes a difference.

8. Follower-centered Leadership: This person seeks power and influence to attain goals people agree on.

9. Visionary Leadership: This person has plans that extend over a period of several years or longer.

10. Principled Leadership: This person encourages others to act according to the values ad beliefs we share.

Conclusion
As Sashkin and Sashkin already said at the end of their book, leadership is a management game. It is about communicating the right things to the right people and make the game work together. Several factors have influence and I think that the authors did a great job in synthesizng all academic information and made it their own. Though, sometimes it is hard to stay on track because they repeat a lot, which is exhausting when they summarize it differently all the time. Loss of information or lack of understanding follow easily.

Transformational Leadership vs Imagineering?
There is definitely no ‘vs’, for me both go hand in hand. I came across some elements that are related to Imagineering, or rather say that match the mindset of an Imagineer. I thought about Hostmanship as a connected approach to leadership that matters because it also rather invites people to co-create instead of delegating. A certain set of characteristics and behaviors are important here, as we also learned with identity marketing. Another statement that reminded me of our last block of Imagineering is ‘Leadership is about knowing how to follow.’ Shari Duron told a lot about leaders and followers, and that the best thing to do was being a follower once yourself in order to understand the expectations that are connected to the role of a follower. Appreciative thinking plays a big part here as well.
In general I liked the book and I think I can use it for my BTR because it comes along with new and refreshing insights about managing, leading and being inspirational in a way that matters.

Enjoy reading. Cheers,

Jenny

Linchpin: Are you Indispensable?

2010-06-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

Linchpin: Are you Indispensable?

Seth Godin (Author)

“Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must.” Seth Godin

Linchpins? That’s a term Seth Godin uses for anyone within an organization that makes himself indispensable, people that invent, lead, connect, figure out chaos and make things happen, no matter what their title or level in an organization is.

Introduction

Seth Godin is a well known Marketing guru, that I personally enjoy reading, famous for books such as the Purple Cow and All Marketers are Liars. In his books he talks about making remarkable products, products worth talking about and taking advantage of the connected world to engage with consumers. His approach on Marketing is in my opinion as close to Imagineering as it gets.

In his previous book, Tribes, he already takes a different direction from his pure Marketing books and writes about something different, it’s about the great opportunity that the connected world brings for anyone with the courage to lead, given the fact that a tribe is a group of people connected to each other by an idea, interest, belief or leader, it’s not that tribes are new in this world it’s just that today’s world brings the opportunity to connect to more people, faster, cheaper and easier than ever before. So this book is encouraging people to take on this opportunity to lead and challenge the idea that leading is just for CEO’s or celebrities or politicians. Not anymore.

I mention his previous book, because I think that whereas in Tribes his approach is on encouraging people to be brave enough to start their own enterprise in something they believe in, for Linchpin he focuses on employees, just remarkable people within organizations that can make a difference where they are.

The book?

For starters, I really appreciated the first chapters of the book in which he describes the New World, where we were, how we got here, changes in the economy and specially the implications for the world of Work.

The entire system we built our lives around tried to get the genius, the artistic nature, the creativity out of us. The Economy, the schools, all the great MBA´s wanted us to fit in, to think in a certain way or even to not think at all, if we could fit in, the system would take care of us.

We lived in a world built around factories (Old logic), factories that needed workers, the key to win in the old world was productivity, make the most you can with as little costs as you can, this meant that for it to work it needed low-paid, replaceable workers doing short-easy tasks, making automated decisions, people willing to trade their dreams and art and creativity for a weekly salary and stability. And it worked for a long time.

The problem is that this factory “system” is upside down, the economic crisis has hit hard and the deal is not working anymore, stability can’t be provided today. The old ways of fitting in with hard-work, with being on time, being discreet and quiet and not challenging managers with your own “crazy” ideas is no guarantee of stability, not anymore. The situation demands a new type of workers, people that can lead, communicate, make connections, create value, defy the status quo, artists. Today’s organizations require a different style of working (New Logic).

And this is where the Linchpins come in, the new deal requires employees that become irreplaceable, that put their personality, passion, art and soul into their work. Not only because it’s important for them but because companies need it, even if they don’t realize it.

The next “Big Idea” within a market will most likely come from outside the industry, by a small or even unknown company, with fresh and different ideas. And if within a company you limit your employees just to work and think in the way the CEO or the Directors think they are limiting their chances even more.

“Old Logic” Companies are struggling and strangely companies that embrace a new style of working are doing great, Apple, Google, Red Bull, Nintendo…

This book encourages people to take a stand, lose the fear, be willing to give up on the fake idea of stability, and start working with their own, personal roadmap.

Today’s world is a connected world, and a Linchpin has to be a “connected” individual, within their work unit or company but also outside, connections are key to make things happen, that’s why social skills are very important. In today’s world personality and attitude are sometimes even more important than the work itself.

Linchpins and Imagineering

It was very easy to see the connection, although the book is directed towards employees, giving them a push to work with more creativity, art, passion and joy, to become indispensable for a company by generating value, and in return getting the best jobs and more freedom to do it. As Imagineers we can use the elements in the book not necessarily to become Linchpins but to help design the new organizations in which Linchpins should be the essential building blocks.

We can refer to the theories we have studied about the “new” Leadership and Followership, and this one is a bit about both, it’s about creating value for yourself as well as the organization by being brave, smart and unique.

Linchpins are not Imagineers but I’d say that they are employees that embrace Imagineering within a company and that are not only unafraid but excited about change and new ways of working.

Loved the book, easy-reading, relevant and it really challenges people to become a part of change rather than fearing it. Insightful! A must-read for Imagineers!

Xavier Cortina

Implementation - the playground in practice

2010-06-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

Dutch title: Implementeren: het speelveld in praktijk Authors: L. Pater, S. Roest, S. Dubbeldam & M. Verweijen Year: 2003 Publisher: Lemma BV, Utrecht

Change management traditionally refers to managing the roll-out of a changed strategy inside an organization and is a process which only starts after a senior management team have walked out of the boardroom with a clear-cut plan. At that point the new strategy is already determined and managers only have to figure out a way to roll it out and get people to join. Pater et al. (2003) speak of a 3x3 grid, that senior managers like to follow. First, they spend 3 weeks with the executive and leadership team, developing, building and shaping their strategy and plans. Then, they spend 3 days with middle management, discussing the new strategy and their ideas on how to align line management and push it out through the organization. Finally, they spend 3 hours with frontline staff, informing them on the new situation...

I found this video to illustrate what responses will follow this style of top-down strategy roll-out.

(Da Ali G Show, Channel 4)

Even though the presenter shows the audience how his invention works, lets them experience the benefits personally, and presents a revenue prediction, it is hard to imagine he will get any commitment at all. Now, however ridiculous the product and the marketing strategy might seem, the responses by his audience are typical for presentations like this.
Let me take you through the video again. The first person we see responding has a different notion of what is relevant (music instead of ice cream). Trying to understand the issue, he comes up with a solution he thinks is best. After the presenter tells him about his own idea, he says it “sounds like a good idea”, but walks off thinking the presenter has totally lost it. The woman we see a bit later responds to every phrase with “sure” and “alright”, but one can tell she is in fact not at all with him, and is not likely to buy in either. On top of this, the revenue calculation looks impressive, but is incomprehensible and does not convince any of the investors at the table.

Now, back to the book. Implementation, according to Pater et al. (2003), is the process of making a proposed change bring the intended result. It embodies the entire change process, starting from the first notion that something needs to change. This is where the book deviates from traditional discourse, since the desired change is not necessarily determined in advance. The essence of implementation is that changes are not only triggered, and not only represent the difference between the old and the new, but that the intended result is actually achieved. The proposed change in the organizational process has to really be used. It needs not only function, it needs to work. Implementing is about making it work.

The book offers four universal strategies for the implementation of organizational changes, and explains the approach and implications of the ‘seven aspects of implementation’: • Results (what do we want to achieve?)
• Planning and control (how will we get it done?)
• Design and order (how do we arrange it?)
• Communication (how do we involve everyone?)
• Training (how do we learn to deal with it?)
• Anchoring and improvement (how will we keep it working?)
• Wrap-up and evaluation (what has it brought?)

I will not go in-depth on these aspects, but will leave you with the knowledge that for each implementation strategy the balance and interaction between these aspects is slightly different, and matches a certain type of change. Below, I will present a brief explanation of the four strategies.

Executive strategy
Focus on: Doing.
When: The goals are clear and acceptable for everyone involved, and the change process is obvious.
Points of attention: Clear and tight planning, alignment between project group and departments, clear communication on successes as well as setbacks. Example: The introduction of a new product in an experienced organization.

Participation strategy
Focus on: Competences and attitude.
When: Goals are not challenging, but not supported by everyone.
Points of attention: Create commitment, don’t rush it, start a training programme, convince people of what’s in it for them, create quick wins.
Example: Introduction of a quality control system.

Design strategy
Focus on: Co-creating the content.
When: Goals are vague, everyone knows something has to be done, although nobody knows exactly what.
Points of attention: Working together, frequent measurements and redirection where needed, active participation of line management, a clear ending to the change process to prevent the discussion from going on forever.
Example: Expansion of a physical business to include online activities.

Growth strategy
Focus on: Gradual change and inspiring.
When: Complex changes, goals are not clear at the start, and the change is hard to realise due to the necessary technology or design.
Points of attention: Divide the process into small parts that are developed consecutively, see what it brings and if it works, before continuing to the next part. Lots of dialogue, careful communication and inspiring leadership are needed. All stakeholders should be involved in determining shared goals.
Example: Mergers.

Discussion
Pater et al. have developed a nice guide for change implementation in all sorts of organizations. They have made some progress in the development of change management theory, and the book can prove quite valuable for managers in more traditional organizations. However, imagineering is already far ahead of this. The first two strategies can still be considered top-down change management as discussed in my introduction, only with a bit more attention for the social side of business. The last two strategies are closer to Imagineering theory, but there are still some significant differences. The ‘design’ strategy is about designing a strategy and organizing the organization together with line management, and in the growth strategy even more stakeholders are involved. This is a little bit like Appreciative Inquiry theory, used in Imagineering. However, perhaps the most important stakeholder in Imagineering theory is the customer, who has no say at all in any of the strategies by Pater et al. All strategic innovation is based on the input of stakeholders inside the organization, while co-creation in Imagineering especially refers to the active participation of the customer. In the traditional understanding of implementation, the way strategy was designed was not relevant, since implementation started afterwards. By stressing the definition of implementation to include the design of strategy, however, Pater et al. commit themselves to include it in their book. By stating that “It is necessary to ensure that the project does not yield something that does not meet the expectations of the line organization”, Pater et al. show that their vision is still too much like the traditional meaning of implementation.
Another aspect in which Imagineering is ahead of the theory presented in this book, is the duration of the process. Imagineering is about making an organization more creative, transparent and communicative as a whole. Creative processes and dialogue should continue and organizational strategy itself should be innovative. Pater et al., however, state that the change process should have a distinct and absolute end, to prevent endless discussions. And exactly this continuing dialogue with staff and consumers is what is so important today.

Niels van der Haven

LOVEMARKS – Kevin Roberts

2010-06-28T06:17:00.000-07:00

What do Amazon, Apple, The Body Shop, Coca-Cola, Disney, Google, Harley-Davidson, Levi’s, Nelson Mandela, Nike, Pampers, Red Cross, Toyota and Virgin have in common?

Yes they are popular brands, but they are so much more than that. According to Kevin Roberts (2006) from Saatchi & Saatchi, these brands are Lovemarks. He writes: “Businesses have always assumed that people see the brands the same way they do. This is why they can get it SO-O-O-O wrong. But some special brands don’t seem to make that mistake. They are so far out in front that they seem to have evolved into something else. They are what inspired Saatchi & Saatchi to develop Lovemarks as the future beyond brands.”

To test whether a brand belongs amongst the Lovemarks, the ‘Love/Respect Axis’ has been created. Products such as sand and iron, that are not desired by people are commodities and are low on love and respect.

Products that are low on respect but high on love are ‘fads’, also known as ‘cool right now’, but can be replaced at any time. Roberts mentions Hula Hoops and ‘Survivor’ as fad examples.

When products have earned high respect but little emotion or love is involved, they are ranked as ‘brands’. Competition is tough.

Lovemarks, on the other hand, are high on respect and on love. This table demonstrates the difference between ordinary brands and Lovemarks.

“Lovemarks are not owned by the manufacturers, the producers, the businesses. They are owned by the people who love them.”

“Lovemarks are personal. And they can be anything – a person, a country, a car, an organization. Lovemarks are the charismatic brands that people love and fiercely protect. You know them instantly.”

On my personal Lovemark list you can find Louis Vuitton; the always fashionable and everlasting bag with its unmistakable monogram pattern; the Middle East with its mysterious but colourful culture; and my family (of course) for being the greatest support and source of inspiration.

Try making your own list of Lovemarks. They should match up to the following statements:

- Lovemarks connect companies, their people and their brands
- Lovemarks inspire. Loyalty beyond reason
- Lovemarks are owned by the people who love them

The book is not only beautiful and fun to read/ scan/ flip through: the message Roberts conveys is very relevant to Imagineering. He says: “As the mass market geared up, businesses lost their way. They became detached from personal relationships,” meaning that businesses should practice customer intimacy at a far deeper level. This not only means that they get to know their customer better, but rather show a genuine interest in their desires, and then cater to those needs and wants.

“The deciding factor is about what the consumer needs in his or her life.”

Saatchi & Saatchi are a world renowned advertising agency, so one could argue that they are masters in selling products. They are. What makes them so good at it is their hunger for understanding the customer, or rather ‘guest’. Just like Imagineers, they value stories a tremendous deal, and the employees of Saatchi & Saatchi have become skilled listeners.

“Stories have a huge value in business because they look in the right direction. At people. You cannot tell a story without characters and emotion and sensory detail. Even the dumbest road-crossing-chicken jokes have it. And they capture us faster than the most elaborately produced annual report. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but terrific stories are right up there with them.”

Lovemarks is a valuable display of how a design approach can be optimalised for co-creation. Nothing Saatchi & Saatchi does is without the co-operation and consent of the customer and should bring mutual benefits. Their research goes further than questionnaires and even interviews. Saatchi & Saatchi employees are encouraged to go out and spend time or even live with the ‘customers’ to gain a deeper understanding and therefore build a more effective advertising campaign and eventually a Lovemark. This even goes beyond Imagineering research methods and resembles anthropological research.

“If you want to catch a fish, first learn to think like a fish.”

For everyone who enjoys looking at stunning graphics, likes diversity, and is looking for a great example of a truly customer oriented company, I would recommend Lovemarks in a heartbeat. The book can be read in one breath, but can also be left on the coffee table for the occasional impressive flip-through. The book is easy to read, but often requires you to flip the book 180 degrees, lift inserts or even play the CD-ROM that is included. Roberts even gives the reader advice on ‘things to do’ at the end of each chapter. Though mainly directed towards managers, the book is easily comprehendible, and captures the essence of Imagineering. Even though Lovemarks is hardly related to my thesis topic concerning Veteran care, it does show how even organisations as the Red Cross can obtain iconic status through the people that spread the word on the organisation’s good deeds. On the Lovemarks website: http://www.lovemarks.com/ you can find testimonials on the Red Cross by people from all over the world, alongside a list of all Lovemarks, video’s, links, communities to join and learn from, user polls and much more.

List of references:

Roberts, K. 2006. Lovemarks. The Future Beyond Brands. Saatchi & Saatchi Designer Edition, Brooklyn, NY, Powerhouse Books

www.lovemarks.com
http://socialmediasoapbox.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/lovemarks-standard.jpg

http://www.saatchikevin.com/Downloads/ book review Lovemarks in PDF

A take on “The Future of Competition", written by C.K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy (Joep Peeters)

2010-06-28T05:46:00.000-07:00

C2B2C. A term that might bring up a few flashes from one of the star war movies. It also catches the essence of the change in reasoning society has made, and is often still going through. Prahalad and Ramaswamy describe a-what we imagineers like to call- a paradigmatic shift in society. C2B2C: Consumers to Business to Consumers

According to Ramaswamy and Prahalad the role of the consumer is changing. C2B2C challenges the traditional role of value creation. Namely that value is created through the product offered by the supplying company. Examplified in the book, a camera used to be the vessel of value according to the logic many companies used to and still operate on. The book refers to these companies as so called A-type companies. Ramaswamy and Prahalad argue that the creation of B-type firms, new energetic “dot.com” firms, will not necesarily be the answer either. However this does not mean that although both the traditonal A type firm nor the enhanced “dot.com” B-type firm will dissapear. It will be the creation of the entirely new C-type firms, base on the logic that value is co-created through interaction between company and consumer , that will modify and change the A and B-type firms to what is required by society today.

Perhaps one could compare this change in business logic, with a more tangible and illustrative example on product level. Fundamental innovations are often created by other industries than the one creating the traditional format. An example: Take the music industry. One can see the tapedecks as a methapor for an A-type company, the cd-players as a B-type company, where the Ipod is somthing completely different and can be seen as a C-type company. As a result the I pod has forced the A and B-type companies to change and modify.

Therefore I found that this books goes one step further than “Blue Ocean Strategy”. The previous book I presented. The blue ocean is an A-type company, the Red ocean the B-type. But we need a C-type company to take us a step further. In my eyes this is the “new way of Swimming” . Not moving from one product to another, but changing logic.

This C-type in busines logic is based on the changing role of the consumer. Consumer to Business to Consumer. According to Ramaswamy and Prahalad the new role of the consumer manifests itself in the following ways.

· Information Access: With access to unprecedented amounts of information, knowledgeable consumers can make more informed decisions.

· Global View: Consumers can also access information on firms, products, technologies, performance, prices and consumer actions and reactions from around the world.

· Networking: “Thematic consumer communities,” in which individuals share ideas and feelings without regard for geographic or social barriers, are revolutionary

· Experimentation: Consumers can also use the Internet to experiment with and develop products, especially digital ones.

· Activism: As people learn, they can better discriminate when making choices; as they network, they embolden each other to act and speak out.

Perhaps another example to illustrate is the example of health care addressed in the book. Where we were used to just going to the doctors, blindly trusting whatever he described, the world has become immensely more complex. We now have so much choice between different treatments, and the possibility of researching ourselves what we prefer, that healthcare has become a deliberate choice in many cases. There are many paths to Rome, perhaps too many.

A similar development can be seen in business in general. That is, the enormous increase in the complexity of things. To relate to an example where we as Imagineers are more familiar with: If 20 years ago you would touch the first marble in a row of marbles, it would have a predictable effect on the next in line. Today that marble finds itself in a group of marbles, interconnected in so many ways that it has become nearly impossible to predict the following effects.

The complexity has caused an explosion of choices for consumers, yet yield less satisfaction. Managers have more strategic options, yet they yield less value.

One could therefore say it is not the offering of new choices(A-type), not the offering of co-creation by companies(B-type), but managing the experience of co-creation(C-type) that creates unique value to consumer and company. C2B2C.

Ramaswamy and Prahalad provide the DART-model in their book. This model consists out of four building blocks preparing companies for co-creation.

· Dialogue encourages not just knowledge sharing but even more important, qualitatively new levels of under- standing between companies and consumers. It also allows consumers to interject their views of value into the value creation process.

· Access challenges the notion that consumers can experience value only through ownership. By focusing on access to experiences at multiple points of interaction, as opposed to simply ownership of products, companies can broaden their business opportunities.

· Risk assessment assumes that if consumers become co-creators of value with companies, then they will demand more information about potential risks of goods and services — but they may also bear more responsibility for dealing with those risks.

· Transparency of information is necessary to create trust between institutions and individuals. Companies have traditionally benefited from an information advantage in the marketplace, but that asymmetry between the firm and the consumer is rapidly disappearing.

Based on the building blocks of the DART-model Ramaswamy and Prahalad have formed four dimensions of consumer wants and needs towards co-creation

· Consumers want the freedom of choice to interact with the firm through a range of experience gateways. Therefore, the firm must focus on the co-creation experience across multiple channels.

· Consumers want to define choices in a manner that reflects their view of value. Therefore, the firm must provide experience-centric options that reflect consumer desires.

· Consumers want to interact and transact in their preferred language and style. They want quick, easy, convenient and safe access to experiences. Therefore, in consummating individual choices, the firm must focus on the co-creation experience through transactions.

· Consumers want to associate choice with the experiences they are willing to pay for. They want the price of these experiences to be fair. Therefore, the firm must focus on the totality of the price-experience relationship in the co-creation.

To me personally this books deals with many of the fundamentals of Imagineering and co-creation as such. However, I would like to add one dimension. Ashraf Ramzy, guest lecturer at the Imagineering academy, summarizes the entire stream of thought to a great extend in my opinion. We want, we need, we long for a story. A story is what brings meaning to our lives, a story is what binds us to our roots, to our soccer team, to our country, to what we are. As a company and as a consumer we play our roles in many different stories. In order to participate, in order to co-create, in order to create meaning, we need to have something relevant to tell.

In a continuously increasing complex world it are the stories that create meaning. I specifically like the concept of storytelling so much because it humanizes business. I strongly belief that a business should be run like you position yourself as a human in the world. Or from a different perspective as a consumer. How do you create value to other in the social networks you live your life in. Change the scope. C2B2, a company is a consumer and a consumer is a company. Together we write the story.

A relevant read. New to Imagineering? Absolutely. It inspires and introduces you to many fundamental thoughts.

To Imagineers? Absolutely, not because it brings so many new thoughts to the table, but because it is a tool for dialogue.

Regards,

Joep Peeters

References:

-C.K. Prahalad,Venkat Ramaswamy(2004)The Future of Competition

-http://www.narrativity-group.com/

Complexity, Management and the Dynamics of Change

2010-06-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

Our planet was not designed using command and control principles, yet they still underpin much of today's management practice. This approach is now 300 years behind the times! – Elizabeth McMillan

When I was searching for books in the theme of complexity science I stumbled upon this amazing book! As soon as I started reading it I could not stop… which is kind of rare when reading a book that is no novel or thriller. This book is a definite recommendation. It offers a great foundation for Imagineering and other perspectives on the paradigm shift, which we have been discussing multiple times last year.

I present you:

Complexity, Management and Dynamics of Change

Challenges for practice

Author: Elizabeth McMillan

McMillan starts with a very clear introduction in which she explains the reason for writing the book and her view on the world and its organizations nowadays.

This book seeks to build a practical bridge between the world of science and the world of management. In McMillan’s opinion far too many books are based on a way of thinking that does not reflect the way the world actually works. This mindset (way of thinking) is especially unhelpful in the fast-paced globalized world of the twenty-first century. Books with those mindsets draw their materials on current best practice- and so they are only able to reflect what is already out there and happening. McMillan also states that these books have their roots in a worldview that developed over 300 years ago.

The historic timeline of organizations also provides the connecting thread throughout the book in which she explains why science became such a big deal and why control and command used to be the focus of organizations.

McMillan states ‘ So if there are few organizations out there that are truly successful when it comes to managing change, authors and managers are not left with many role models to consider and possibly emulate. Is there a danger that we may be endlessly repeating ourselves?’ You could say McMillan here states the emerging themes of Kim and Mauborgne. Blue ocean strategy for seeking new markets instead of existing, repeating markets. However, even in change, it is hard not repeating other successful companies in change.

What is in the book?

Complexity science is a new science that only emerged during the last half of the twentieth century and although it is now well accepted in the scientific community it had taken longer for it to make into the thinking and practice of other non-scientific communities, including business and management. Complexity science-derived ideas can impact upon the way you work on a daily basis and the way that organizations function and survive, and expect to function and survive.

What theme’s are in the book?

· The outline of the historical relationship between science and organizations

· Reviewing current perspectives on organizational change and best practice

· Citing real-life examples of the use of complexity science ideas

· Discussing issues, which may arise when using ideas from complexity

Keywords: Chaos theory, fractals, the butterfly effect, non-scientific, strange attractors, the edge of chaos, change models, single loop- double loop, self-organizing

Chapters:

· The Clockwork manager

· Complexity science

· Change and the dynamics of change

· Complexity in practice

· Complexity in action: a case study of the open university

· Self-organizing change dynamics

· Essential principles

· New perspectives, opportunities for innovation

The content:

McMillan is taking us to the historic Newtonian-Cartesian view of the world in which some organizations are still stuck, although they sometimes believe they are not. Too many managers and writers on management are still influenced by old ways of thinking. These ways of thinking are essentially laboratory based and while very useful for the hard sciences and the creation of new technologies, they are extremely unhelpful for dealing with the real, very volatile world of people and organizations that exists ‘outside the lab’.

Change is the underlying essence of life…

Sometimes we may thing that the world is a stable place but that is because we are not observing the implicate order, only the explicate order. The planet is, in fact, in a state of permanent change. If we would think like Chinese and Greek philosophers then we would appreciate that nothing is fixed, nothing exist forever in a permanent state of being. Paradoxically, the only permanent thing in the universe is change.

We are human ‘becomings’ rather than human ‘beings’…

Doing things differently and introducing change, using complexity based principles. McMillan also provides the reader with a lot of extra interesting articles and books to read. (See extra information).

Companies like Oticon, SEMCO, Sears, 3M, St. Luke’s and many other organizations are presented in the book.

How to change?

A manager considering change from a complexity standpoint will realize that it is pointless to attempt to control all the key variables in a given situation and will instead focus on what it is possible to know and understand. You will need to reflect ultimately on how they may best engage with the human dynamics of the organization and all their many complexities and nuances.

The practical side of complexity theory is also discussed in the last part of the book. Models that were used, workshops, frustrations of involved people and much more very insightful information are explained. It provides you with ideas, models and very use full information to analyze you own organization. It helps u to get to the ‘structured spontaneity’.

McMillan ends the book with very useful insights on leadership, Human Resource Management, innovation and the future of organizations.

Review: this book is very closely related to the Imagineering perspective. It covers the paradigm shift, chaos theory, leadership and self-organizing systems.

Pro: the book is an easy reader and is especially great if you need a basis for your organization to understand the dynamics of change.

Book reviewer Clint Witchalls wrote the following about this book; the problem with complexity science is that it spans a number of fields, including chaos theory, fractals, strange attractors and emergence. The mathematics is often abstruse, although, to McMillan’s credit, she gets these difficult ideas across without resorting to a single equation. But her advice to ‘practitioners’ is complexity-lite and often vague.

Con: I agree with this review of Clint and I think you should read this book to have your story complete and clear. For methods and theories that will help you further with the actual transformation within an organization or city you need to read extra books that match your situation and organization. Of course there is no holy grail on organizations and the world. Many other writers have other views and theories, which also need to be taken into account.

Remark: I was able to explain the book to my grandmother on the contrary had difficulties putting it into 1000 words. I am convinced this is partly because I am excited about the book, but mainly because Elizabeth writes to us in non-scientific words which makes it a lot easier to understand the complexity of the world and her organizations. Service-dominant logic has Vargo and Lusch, complexity theory has Elizabeth McMillan!

Speaking of the butterfly effect and self-organizing systems. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41QKeKQ2O3E&feature=related

Enjoy,

 Carlijn

References:

McMillan, E. 2008. Complexity, Management and the Dynamics of Change.
Book review: Can science save the day? By Clint Witchalls: http://www.spectator.co.uk/books.
Extra
http://www.elizabethmcmillan.co.uk/
Article: Allen, P.M. (2001) ‘ a complex systems approach to learning in adaptive networks’.
Knowles, R.N. (2002) The leadership dance: Pathways to Extraordinary organizational effectiveness.
McMillan, E. (2004) Complexity, Organizations and Change.

Bookreview: Leadershift

2010-06-27T12:33:00.000-07:00

Details

Book title: Leadershift
Tagline:Reinventing leadership for the age of mass collaboration
Author: Emanuelle Gobillot

Previous book: connected leader

Leadershift is the follow up of the book "The connected leader". I found a great video of about 45 minutes of Emmanuelle Gobillot speaking to Google about leadership about the content of his previous book:

Content

In the book Leadershift Emanuelle Gobillot asks the question: “If mass collaboration changes everything, how does it change the way we lead?”. He argues leaders have to led go the concept of them having the experience, expertise and control to bring a group to great end results. Compared to hierarchical leading, leadership in communities is intrinsically linked to narrative, task and contribution rather than power, role and accountability. No longer in charge of direction, the role of the leader is to help the community find its voice. From there their communities will find their own direction and narrrative as they set out to succeed.

The book is written in spoken language and is easy to understand with its rich and entertaining examples towards the concepts it presents. An example is the beginning of a chapter: “This supposed to be the future, so where is my jetpack?”.
Emmanuelle describes four mayor societal trends that bring down the walls of hierarchic leadership:

the demographic trend: we have multiple generations working alongside eachother where everybody has preference of their own methods of getting work done

the expertise trend: expertise is now to be found as much outside as inside the organisation

the attention trend: organisations have to fight harder than ever to capture the attention of employees and customers as information and interaction sources are now abundant and lay claim to the time available.

the democratic trend: It is not likely leaders still have direct control over their resources like they used to as people work more and more in all kind of different teams with different leaders claiming the same resources.

These four societal trends make room for new ways of practicing leadership. Emmanuelle describes four shifts in leadership style that are needed to lead in these new times:

from clarity to simplicity: clarity within a project is giving you clear tasks, but does not ensure you understand why you need to do the task. Simplicity makes your tasks clear, but lets you understand why you need to these tasks and generates meaning. Simplicity ignites your participation but also actively lets you think about the intentions of a project and how your tasks fit into that wished for end result.

from plans to narratives: plans are constantly changing and are not likely to be followed while a narrative will inspire people and is more flexible to changes. Projects nowadays are more influenced by new insights the networked society provides, providing the need to change plans but keep the narrative alive.

from roles to tasks: roles define formally where you stand in an organization, but do not define what tasks your will and can perform

from money to love: money does buy you time to allow another to keep motivated, but does not ensures mental involvement. Money is therefore a hiegene factor, but does not ensures full commitment.

Imagineering relevance

Emmanuelle explains implicitly why Imagineering is important in the new economy. Some parts of an alinea that connects strongly with the convictions of Imagineering:

We must “reestablish a sense of meaning in the economic activity”

“By forcing our organizations to rethink their very essence they will become stronger”

“It is easier for meaning to be shared when it is co-created”

Imagineering is focussing on collaboration and organisation by dialog and is learning a Master in Imagineering student how to lead this process. This book is focussing on how we need to lead in an age of mass participation. These concepts are strongly correlated I believe.

How to use this book?

Leadershift is a refreshing book that confirms parts of what we’ve been learning at the Imagineering Academy, referring to the networked economy, motivation, societial trends and others. However Emmanuelle presents the material in a very understandable argumentation that makes sense to current leaders in the field and is therefore an excellent tool to convince CEO’s and other deciders upon the relevance of Imagineering. I think this book is explaining in a very accessible way what leadership could look like in a changing society.

Conclusion

I did like to read this book because of the accesible style it is written in, together with the humor the writer uses, the book is entertaining while giving a clear view on how essential leadership qualities are changing. Let’s categorize this book edutainment :-). A must-read for CEO's that want to work with Imagineering and understand why they need to work with Imagineers

Book review Sanne Knitel: ''Who moved my cheese?''

2010-06-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

Book review

Title: Who moved my cheese
Author: Spencer Johnson, M.D
Student: Sanne Knitel (093415)

Overview main argument
The book tells the story of two mice (Sniff and Scurry) and two little people (Hem and Haw) captive in a labyrinth. In the book ‘’Who moved my cheese” is cheese a metaphor for everything you want in life. In real life everything what mice want is really cheese but for the two little people cheese is a metaphor for security, success, happiness and financial safety. If we find ‘’our cheese’’ we prefer to cling to the cheese. The cheese-stock is exhaustible, a company reorganises, a partner can leave us, in short uncertainties robbery us. The labyrinth in the story represents where we spend time to look for what we want in life. It can be in your relationship, the organization you work and more.

What's very important in the story that the mice and the little people find at one day cheese in the Cheese Station C. They are all very happy with the finding and day after day they come back to the Cheese Station C to get the cheese. There are differ between the mice and the little people: the mice always explore their surrounding when they are in the neighbourhood of Cheese Station C. The little people where very comfortable with the whole situation and this feels like security, success, happiness and financial safety.

Then the story turns: the cheese disappeared from Cheese Station C. The mice and the people react very differently.

Mice: Sniff and Scurry
The mice are surprised but they choose a new direction to find new cheese. They didn’t analyse the situation because change happens. When change happens they know how to deal with it and they immediately start a search for a new Cheese Station. And after a few days they find the new Cheese Station with cheese that was even better than the old cheese.

The little people: Hem and Haw
The little people react very emotional, because Cheese Station C felt like their home. They were shocked, outraged, scared and don’t know what to do. In their comfort they didn’t notice that the cheese was reducing. They felt that the situation was unfair, they stayed in Cheese Station C and hoped that the cheese come back. But the cheese was gone.. After a period Haw felt weak and decides to look for other cheese. He was very afraid of what might happen to him, he was afraid of the unknown. During his seek he was writing life lessons on the walls of the labyrinth like ‘’ Çhange happens, Anticipate Change, Enjoy Change’’. Him stayed in Cheese Station C, it is not clear if he ever reach the new Cheese Station.

The first part of the book former classmates talk about a class reunion about change and how to deal with them in their lives. The second part is the story about the mice and the little people and how they react on the changes in their lives. The third part of the book brings you back to reality in a playful way. It gives you insights in how change processes work at people

Reflection
I like the book because of it’s simple language, it’s metaphors. The book is easy to read and makes you think about yourself and the way you behave and react in change situations. The book deals with fear and show you how to deal with it to overcome yourself. The changes can give you also new opportunities, both businesslike as private. For me sometimes change is scary but the book shows you that change can also be fun. The book gives seems very simple but there are a lot of things in life we do not see anymore. We take it for granted. A few things were very important insights for me after reading this book:
1. If you don’t change you ‘’die’’.
2. If you keep an eye on the little changes you are able to accept the bigger changes more easy.
3. Old beliefs doesn’t lead you to the new ‘stuff’’.
4. If you let go of the fear you will be free
5. In a change situation you have to find new paths for everything you want in life.

For me reading the story was perfectly timed because I just lost my job and I was in a change process myself. The book helped me to view the situation with a helicopter view and I could see the change process in perspective. The book made me smile because of the metaphors and the simple way the author wrote about these difficult and complex change processes.

Value of the book for Imagineering
Imagineering is ‘’a design approach to value co-creation making use of imagination. It’s a way to create a new appealing ‘’lens’’ to find ‘’a blue ocean of uncontested market space’’ that inspires all stakeholders to co-create’’ (Nijs, 2009). Imagineering is a way to approach organisation transformation. As Imagineers we use the Roadmap (Inspiration phase, Creation phase, Exploration phase and Organisation phase) to realise transformation in organisations. Changes are in every part of the Roadmap during the transformation. Alexander de Vries mentioned in one of his lectures: ‘’You have to be in a nothing to loose modus, then you are free’’.This is exactly the lesson I learned from this book. You don’t need control, you need trust for transformations. When you are still in control, you are not driving fast enough. Trust make people grow, but trust is scary for a lot of people. So you need guts to create trust. Trust starts with purpose. Why are we here? Imagineering is a construct which also is able to construct trust.

As an Imagineer / change leader you first have to know yourself to reach something. The book helps you to understand how you react on changes, you are able to compare yourself with the mice and the little people. From a Imagineering point of view it is important to start from a positive thing in change. If we look to the story ‘’Who moved my cheese” the mice are positive to the change and the little people are scared. So in this story we can learn a lot from the mice.

Disney - A wonderful world

2010-06-27T07:15:00.000-07:00

The wonderful world of Disney has inspired many people from all over the world and can be seen as best practice when it comes to exceeding guests expectations. In this review I will note down the key elements in how they create this magical world through the interpretation of the following books;

Disney obviously is a huge brand, therefore the focus of this review lies in Disney as a location brand with its themeparks and resorts. This means that I will not talk about the dozens of co-creation platforms Disney is involved in and the way they inspire communities to do good and make benefits for society at large.

Disney’s DNA
To frame the focus of Disney as a location brand I would like to start with the DNA of Disney as it is translated into a vision statement, essence statement and mission statement of Walt Disney World, which can be seen as their most important location;

Vision statement
Walt Disney World will always be dedicated to making dreams come true. In this magical world, fantasy is real and reality is fantastic. A wonderful sense of community awaits where all are greeted as welcome guests who become cherished friends. For all who work and play here, Walt Disney World will be a source of joy and inspiration

Essence statement
Walt Disney World is a magical passage into a world of fantasy and adventure. Here we can wish upon a star, experience the impossible and bring our dreams to life. Together, treasured friends discover a wonderland that dazzles, delights, and renews through all the seasons of a lifetime.

Mission statement
Our mission is to honor our heritage and continually reinvent Walt Disney World.

Growing a service culture
With these statements you can already see that there is a big emphasis on cultural aspects. Walt Disney has put this in a beautiful quote; "You can dream, create, design, and build the most wonderful place in the world... but it requires people to make the dream a reality."

The thing that creates the magic at all of the Disney parks around the world are the people working there. This means that Disney needs to create a service culture in which people understand they can make a difference. They do this by taking their corporate storytelling as the basics for all of the actions they perform.

The first step they take is to translate their corporate story into smaller themes, which can be seen as location specific artefacts. This means that these themes are living themes which provide meaning and direction. The next step is to translate the chosen themes into three delivery systems; their people, its setting and the processes of interaction. These are the touchpoints Disney uses to communicate an image to its guests.

The key elements within the delivery system people are the language and rituals they use. This way Disney is able to transform daily routines into daily rituals. For example with language they use theatre jargon, which means that employees are called cast members, that jobs are roles, that attractions are rides and shows, that interviews are auditions and that there is an onstage and backstage area. Remember; Words create worlds!

Also with showing directions cast members learn to use the Disney point. In this ritual you use two fingers to show where people need to go to instead of one. As you can imagine this is something which unites people internally as well as it does show integrity towards its guests.

In line with this thought Disney uses their casting as an opportunity to immediately show the total identity of the corporation, which contributes to its natural selection of new cast members. After a successful audition, the first thing new cast members do is begin learning how to deliver Walt Disney World’s brand of quality service.

This is done in a two tiered approach, the first tier is conducted at Disney university with Traditions (guess why it is called like that). In this training the goal is not to put someone into Disney but to put Disney into their hearts. Being a Traditions facilitator therefore is seen as a huge honor. The second tier occurs on the job and encompasses the location specific information that is needed to perform in the different themes within the resort. Again you see that everything falls under the umbrella concept of creating happiness.

With the setting there is a distinction between high touch areas, where plenty or interaction is possible, high show areas, where vivid presentations are build and high tech areas, where efficiency and safety are the primary focus. The key element in this delivery system is to only tell one story at a time.

The processes have to do with the way work is done. One of the processes is plussing, which is a process of continuous improvement. With plussing every employee can give feedback on what they experience. For example a cast member rode Pirates of the Caribbean once and felt that something was missing, but couldn’t find out what. Walt Disney encouraged him to ride it over and over again until he knew. After a couple of rides the cast member came back and found out what was missing; there were no fireflies. You can imagine what happened next. In order to make sure that all of the processes go well Disney has a huge source of tools which help cast members to solve all of the issues which come across.

Combining all of the three delivery systems Disney makes it possible to create Magical Moments. These are pre-organized special moments in which guests experience something extra-ordinary. But maybe even more important it is a high-touch moment which reinforces the meaning of Walt Disney World to its cast members.

One of these magical moments happened to a family at a Walt Disney World hotel. The family included three little girls still young enough to take their teddy bears with them. At the end of the first day, the family returned from one of the parks to their hotel room. There, seated around the table, were the three bears with cookies and milk placed before them. The little girls were delighted, of course, and the following evening they urged their parents to hurry back to the hotel. This time, the three bears were placed sitting up in bed reading Mickey Mouse books. One can imagine the joy this scene evoked in the youngsters. The third evening, the girls found their beard again at the table, but this time they were arranged as though they were playing cards.

An appreciative leadership style
An underexposed subject so far is Disney’s leadership style. This is described by the ability to establish and manage a creative climate in which individuals and teams are self-motivated to the successful achievement of long-term goals in an environment of mutual trust and respect. Quite servant isn’t it! Again the focus is on openness and the appreciation of every individual, which encourages creativity and fun at work.

All of this together results in Disney’s business model; Leadership -> Cast excellence -> Guest satisfaction -> Business results! A model which focuses on a network of people at the first place and therefore it emphasizes on value-in-context, a true service-dominant logic approach.

Master of Imagineering
Within the framework of the Master of Imagineering I think that these books together really help to understand what it takes to create a strong concept brand. But in my opinion it is not really necessary to read all of them. There is quite some overlap in the tools which are mentioned and because of the strong basics the message of most of the books is similar. This review therefore can be seen as a summary which connects the dots.

My advice therefore is to buy the book ‘Be our guest’, because it is efficient in its writing and it invites you to rethink your business step by step; easy and understandable. Also the book ‘The Imagineering Way’ is highly useful as a source of inspiration. The other books are nice to read if you want to know some in-depth information but do not particularly offer anything new.

Finally, I have been a cast member myself and I have experienced all of the things mentioned above which have guided me with my Disney transformation. And isn’t that what made Disney famous anyway?! Think about all of the transformations in all of the Disney movies you know; Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Princess and the Frog; Transformations are at the core of Disney’s purpose!

Do more than imagine… Live the dream!

Rob van Vlokhoven

Book presentation Fresh Fish

2010-06-25T06:39:00.000-07:00

This bookreview is written by Lieke van der Zanden.

It was posted under the name of Carlijn Simons, since lieke was unable to post it.

A remarkable novel about lasting changes at your work.

Subject: Change management.

This book describes the subject which most of us are dealing with at the moment. Trying to give people a new lens, which changes their perspective and eventually changes their mindset. It is a book about the worldwide used training program: Fish!

I advise you to watch the following video before reading the book review on YouTube:

FISH! Culture story (trailer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNDP9jLuzXU&feature=related

The world famous Pike Place Fish market in Seattle is one of the sources of inspiration of this method.

Why it is meaningful to my personal story?

The first time I read this book was 2 years ago, during my minor Imagineering at the Academy for Leisure. This book is a translation of theories into a practical example. It is fun to read, easy to relate to, it sticks with you and best of all it inspires you!

At the moment I’m a bit struggling at my Application Company as I was standing in front of my bookshelf looking for inspiration and new energy. This book is a good practical example about organizing change. Because implementing is one thing but to make sure that it is a lasting change, which continues in the future, that’s the biggest challenge.

Overview of the content

Starting the process of changing is easy but it is a real challenge to let it be a change forever. To realize lasting change, you need dedicated and committed employees. In the beginning of every major change initiative, external energy is always needed. That energy can be used to attract everybody’s attention. But external energy is only effective on the short term. In the long term external energy needs to be replaced by natural energy. This is energy that makes the change part of the companies culture, part of the mindset of people. Because in the beginning the new (external) things are the sources of new energy but in the long term you have to find deeper and more connected sources of energy to keep it alive.

For many companies vision is only something on paper. The recognitions of highlights in a vision are only reflected upon when it is brought back to life in peoples daily work. This is what they call “Vision moments”, moments on which you as employee can show what the vision of the company means to you. According to the book, there moments are the trick to keep the vision alive; by experiencing individual but also collective vision moments.

But how do you realize that? Were do you start?

It is very simple; Start dialogues with people about their work and about “It”.

“It” is your personal part of the vision. Most of the time a vision is of strategic level and much broader, but has nothing personal in it for employees. Your own individual part of a vision is different for everybody and has to be more specific. You can find it by talking to other people and talking about your part of the vision. By talking about your own “It”, new energy arise. Almost everybody likes to talk about the personal things which make them proud of themselves.

The following questions could be used as an example;

- On which moment of the day do you express the vision? (being aware of it)

- Which experience are you trying to create for your customers and people around you?

- How do you make the vision personal?

- How can we support each other to keep our way of working alive and vital?

Coaching is what they describe as the present we can give each other to keep our vision strong and alive. If it is about the way we do our job, or the way we work together. Feedback has to go in every direction. Coaching is no ego trip. We only do it for the vision.

In your application company you need to follow your own path. The best guideline the book gives is, give commitment and trust, have it in yourself, your process and give it to the people you work with.

Find “it”

Live “it”

Coach “it”

If everybody understands these 3 stirring principles it is time for action. You’re ready to start your journey to reach your destined goal. Because commitment and trust is something abstract until we go in to action. This is what you can do to make them more ‘visible’.

Reflection; the value of the book for Imagineering

The combination with Imagineering could be very strong.

Developing a vision based on the core values of a company and a vision. Translating that to a high involvement experience concept. And using that concept as a translation of the vision and using visions moments to show that it is alive. It is about starting the dialogue. Finding your own “It” and spreading the word around. It all starts with having REAL Conversations.

External energy’s can help to motivate people in working in a new way but after a while those external energy’s aren’t good enough anymore. It has to come from natural energy instead of external energy. I believe the inspiration guide is equal to this principle. It has to be something, which triggers people to start, dialogue’s but that’s just the outside. It is all about what happens inside, in the mindset of people. That has to change and be lasting.

Inspiration

And as my coach told me this week, maybe I could say to you; “Welcome to the real world of large enterprises”. I now found the answer to the question; What is my story to inspire them?

Maybe my plan did not work out the way I hoped and expected, but I am not ready to give up and this book shows me simple guidelines and tips. So the next thing what I am going to do is; Talking with people, REAL conversations to start a new inspiring dialogue!

Thank you for reading with me,

Lieke

Book review ‘Het Innovatieplatform’ – Frans Nauta

2010-06-24T05:37:00.000-07:00

The book has only been released in Dutch, but there is not much imagination needed to understand that the title of it means ‘The Innovation Platform’.
This Innovation Platform (IP) is an actual platform consisting of businessmen, politicians and board members from higher education institutions, under the chairmanship of the then current Prime Minister Balkenende and writer of the book, Frans Nauta, as secretary. This platform still exists (see http://www.innovatieplatform.nl/), however Frans Nauta has quit his secretary function and unravelled the successes and failures of the IP in this book.

Setup of the book
The basis for the book has been Nauta’s personal dairy, which a friend / mentor of him told him to do since the day he was asked for this honourable job. As a result, the book is very personal and detailed into specific conversations the author has had.
The book gives an insight into the political gameplays and the bureaucracy where (most) governments are known for. Moreover, the book gives a quite humoristic (but realistic) picture about it and emphasises that the Dutch government wants (or does not want) to put on innovation.
After all of the 24 chapters Nauta gives some lessons, bonus tips and survival tips which can be taken into account in generally all business environments.

Story in short
In August 2003, via a telephone call from Prime Minister Balkenende, Nauta becomes secretary of the Innovation Platform, a very honourable function for him, since he has been striving for The Netherlands to focus on innovation of the knowledge economy with his own institution ‘Nederland Kennisland’ (since 1999). Nauta regards Finland as a school model example of what to establish with the IP.
As from his own research, Finland’s success as innovative country is no co-incidence. In 1985 the Science and Technology Policy Council was established to deal with the problem of huge resignations due to automation and the moving of work to cheap-labour countries. At that time it was already clear that current jobs could be preserved, but only for a short due. The Finnish sought after an offensive strategy: Finland as a country with ideal circumstances for start-ups of knowledge based industries. The government started to invest in more high employed people, more researchers in technical educations, a more international oriented culture and a population that speaks English well. Furthermore they saw how Stanford University (in the U.S.) was cooperating with businesses and copied this model to establish ‘research parks’ close to universities. Furthermore Finland was educated by bankers from Stanford what ‘venture capital’ was and the Finnish applied this. All this became the corner stone of the success of Finland’s current strong economy.
Nauta knew that this result could be copied to The Netherlands, but only by a consistent strategy (which took Finland nearly 25 years).
At 22 August 2003 the IP was presented to the public, consisting of 18 members of which businessmen, people from higher education institutions and politicians. However, in this large group it was hard to decide what the shared goal was, even more so because there was a political game going on to use the IP for allocating the EUR 140 million for innovative projects.
This struggle became even more a clash of interests when higher education institutions also battled for the government money, and there were a few of the board members of those institutions in the IP. Also from the media there was much negative news on the IP, which was now forced to start producing something. A list with practical annoyances that needed to be resolved was there quickly, however, also this attempt was held back by bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, the outside world got tips that the IP had to spend up to EUR 800 million on innovation, which was not true. The IP only was there to make plans for the cabinet, and could not give fiats to certain projects. Nevertheless they were threatened as if they had.

After several attempts (for instance: working on key markets to invest in) the IP agreed to see ‘relationships’ as the key: relationships with businesses and higher education. Having them literally close together (via the Silicon Valley model) would have a synergetic effect and attract even more venture capital. It would also encourage entrepreneurship of students at higher educations. The main indicators to deal with as IP were;
- Quality of education
- Education rate of the population
- Quality of research in The Netherlands
- Investments of companies in R&D
- Foreign students and knowledge workers
- Start-ups coming from higher education students
- Market share of Dutch companies in growing markets
- Return-on-investment of companies from new products and services
Finally in 2006 (after Nauta already left the IP) this so-called Knowledge Investment Agenda (‘Kennisinvesteringsagenda’) was signed by 21 parties, which was basically a money claim for the new cabinet.
Nauta reflects on his secretary function (August 2003 till December 2004) as no fun, but docile. Let’s say a ‘failed practice’ in stead of a ‘best practice’. After this he was a regular member of the IP for one more year, but the illusion that he would change The Netherlands and its economic power with this did not come to life. However this is not specifically a problem of the government: whether it be The Hague or a large company: change perish in the centre of the power. Sometimes it works, but more often it will not, because it is so busy in this centre. The IP could not be successful then, but at the same time minister Hoogervorst got an important change of the Dutch care system through the cabinet (for the first time in 20 years). Needed is a sense of urgency (to speak with Kotter), plus a bit of luck. For real change you seldom need to be in the centre of the power.

The lessons and tips
Hereunder is a selection of he lessons and tips that Nauta gives in relation to the content of the book. I made a selection of what I find useful (for instance in situations in my application company):

Lessons
1. Do it or don’t do it at all: both the employer and employee need to be dedicated.
2. Listen! By making and feeling yourself responsible for everything, life becomes lonely. ‘The power to say no’ is a popular form of power in The Hague; you can only practise this if you listen.
3. Intuition does not lie & ego is a bad adviser.
4. Set the mood at the beginning, otherwise others will do that for you (and put emphasis on their own priorities).
5. They are just people. CEO’s and prime ministers behave like people: so also the good and bad human aspects.
6. Negotiate at the gate. If you are too much impressed at the start, you may be not assertive enough, however this is a crucial moment.
7. Inspire and motivate your people: give them responsibilities and inspiring projects.
8. Taking a decision is not the same as executing. Involve an executer in the decision-making process; this will make things go faster.
9. If there are no key players in your project, it will fail.
10. Find your true ally and your real blockade.
11. Without a shared vision, people will put their own priorities and statements first.
12. Tell them! Important business people and politicians are flooded by information. They will not read your reports (etc.), so tell them what they need to know in a short presentation.
13. Confront the brutal facts. If someone has the courage to name hard facts, support him/her.

Bonus tips
1. Do not plan your jobs strategically; do a start-up of what you are passionate to do and the work will find you.
2. Play a lot of table tennis: informal contacts are the best ways to get to know the atmosphere best.
3. Honestly relaxed? The best way to find out if it is fake of true friendliness is to check whether you are relaxed yourself. Is you breathing deep and calm?

Survival tips
1. The rule of speed: in essence if there are two parties if you are in a hurry and the other is not, he will make you struggle and negotiate hard. Speed is only effective if the other party is also in a hurry: doing business together is running smooth.
2. Arrange a working space close to your client: business is done in between two meetings.
3. Be politely brutal: on a way which could be between the rules of the company / law / etc.
4. Do not be a shepherd of cats: whatever you do it is not possible to arrange them in a herd.
5. Get a mentor or someone who helps you reflect on yourself. Especially on important moments: a talk of two minutes is enough.
6. Limit your accessibility: read your e-mail twice a day, answer your phone two hours a day. It will make you more productive.
7. Bring painful news on a Friday afternoon before the holidays: just a few people will notice it.
8. Keep a dairy!

About the author
Since 2007 Frans Nauta has a professorship (lectoraat) in ‘Innovation in the Public Sector’ at the HAN University. This particular sector has been on the background in research to innovation; this professorship aims to put ‘best practices’ covered. More information: http://www.han.nl/start/graduate-school/onderzoek/lectoraten-kenniskringen/innovatie/ and http://www.lectoraatinnovatie.nl/

Connection to my Application Company / Imagineering
However the book is just an actual reading book and no economic textbook with models and new ideas, it offers quite some information and tips on the topic of change management and leadership. All this in a quickly readable form and with the knowledge that all content has happened in ‘the real world’. Several rules of ‘Leading Change’ by Kotter (1995) and ‘Speed’ by Meyer (2009) get woven into the text (without literally referring to these authors).
To me ‘imagineering’ is about transforming (whether it be people, company structures or value systems) and a lot of this comes back in the lessons and tips in this book, like: having a shared vision, knowing when to take the lead, etcetera.
The author is connected to my application company (HAN University) and a highly respected professor. His interests for the public good and national politics are easy to catch and it is a boost for my research which partly deals with his matter of expertise: innovation in the public domain.

Details
Frans Nauta, 2008, Het Innovatieplatform, 204 p., ISBN 9879052616957, Sdu Uitgevers BV, Den Haag, Creative Commons licentie.

I hope some of the lessons and tips that I conducted from the book are useful to you.

Best regards,
Bram van Boekholt

Business Model Generation -

2010-06-23T03:26:00.000-07:00

Business Model Generation describes how to use a business model as a tool instead of a theory. The five main sections guide you through the business model know-how. This book is a practical book, plug and play. If you just start reading, even if you never heard before about business models, you will have some sort of understanding about business models. The build up of the sections and the use of popular examples accomplish this.

First chapter explains the Business model canvas. The canvas is used to explain all factors in the business model that makes it a success. Indeed after a good understanding you will be able to talk about business model much easier. A shared language therefore is the main goal of this chapter. The definition of a business model in this book is: A Business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value.

Starting to read this chapter you will notice that some of the blocks and explanations are not SD-logic based, like the following definition; “The Value Propositions building blocks describes the bundle of products and services that create value for a specific customer segment” (p.22.). On the other hand they already talk about co-creation in this first chapter and that is for an Imagineer a comfortable landmark.

The first chapter is closed with an example of the business model of Apple. Off course a well-known example, in this case a good way to explain it even more.

Chapter Patterns is interesting. They describe 5 different types of business models. Now you really get a feeling about the importance of understanding and talking about business models. Unbundled models, Long tail, Multi-sided platforms, Free as a business model, and Open Business models. Especially the last three models are in the Imagineering way of thinking. It is not all new, but you will have some “aha” moments. It will be a tool to explain your principal how to earn money with an Imagineering based business model.

The design chapter can be amazing for people that never have been in touch with creative techniques. For imagineers I believe it is nothing very new and complementary. They describe Story telling, Scenarios, Visual thinking, Customer insights, and Ideation. Main principle of this chapter is that business model generation is about designing. “Business people need to become designers.” Especially in the thesis phase of our master, you need to remind yourself once in a time about this principle. You need to take in account lots of different factors. In my opinion the emotional and the “fingerspitzengefuhl” is also very important and is one of the ingredients of a designer. In the book they describe that we need some tools for making a design attitude possible. I that sense I agree that it can be useful for non-creative people and to evoke positive and creative thinking.

Strategy gives you the opportunity to place your business model into the real world and context. Now you can exam and review your business model. In this section they describe the Blue Ocean Strategy and mention the ambidextrous organization. In my opinion this section is a bit obvious material, not really in line with the rest of the book.

It becomes more logical starting with the last chapter Process. They provide you with a good described model / process to design a business model. The five phases are; Mobilize, Understand, Design, Implement, and Manage. Each phase is described and complete with the recommended techniques you can use. If you read this through you will see it is very common with the Imagineering Roadmap. Mobileze; assabeling a Mars-team, Understand is Inspiration researching the environment and understand your clients, and so on.

Conclusion

I will use this book in my application company for two reasons. One is that it gives me a sort of guide together with the Imagineering Roadmap to lead the process to a new and sustainable business model. Second reason is that it is a highly visual and nice designed book. The book is very attractive to graph and go true for the people in my application company. It will give them a feeling with business models.

On the other hand, it is for imagineers not very new and complementary. The theories are not new and even sometimes based on GD-Logic. The description of the modern business models are useful to get an extra feeling with them.

Should you read it? Not necessarily. Are you working with business models or designing one, yes you should. But the theory is not that refreshing and deep.

Should you buy it? Yes, it is a very nice book to show and read. It is well designed and a piece of art on itself. If you receive the book at home, you will have a good feeling. The feeling of the quality of the cover and the paper and the satisfying feeling that you have the book and be member of Osterwalder, the business model Guru!

http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/

http://www.businessmodelalchemist.com/

http://alexosterwalder.com/

http://ch.linkedin.com/in/osterwalder

Book review 'Our iceberg is melting'

2010-06-16T23:30:00.000-07:00

Our iceberg is melting

Our Iceberg Is Melting is a fable about a colony of 268 penguins facing a dilemma. At first sight it seems a simple story, the use of cartoons enhances this feeling. After reading and re-reading you’ll explore the story under the surface. This book contains within the story and characters a powerful message about the fear of change. The latter in combination with a process how to motivate people to face the future and take action.

let’s meet the key playersThe main characters are: Fred, Alice, Louis, Buddy & NoNo. Fred loves knowledge, he a strong observer. Louis is the head of the colony, Alice is member of the leadership team & specialized in communication, Buddy is one of the young inspiring penguins; he is able to built bridges between the different groups within the colony. NoNo he is a senior member of the colony and weather forecaster. His standard reaction is: NO.
Meet the virtual actors at www.ouricebergismelting.com

The story in a nutshell
Fred experienced on an adventurous trips that the iceberg, they live on, shows certain crackers. What to do with this information?
Fred is not part of the leadership team and doubts …who & how to contact. He is convinced that the habitat of his colony is in danger. Fred decides to contact Alice and tells her about his findings. Alice informs the leadership team and invites them to join Fred on a trip to check the situation themselves. The members are not interested in this; they are too busy with their daily routine.
Alice is looking for alternatives (how to address the topic) she is successful in asking Louis, to invite Fred for their next meeting.
Fred presents his findings via a new & unexpected idea: the model of the iceberg.
Fred puts the model in place at the meeting venue, the evening before. When is arriving the next day all board members are standing around the model and talking. After Fred’s presentation there is a great silence.
NoNo ‘breaks the ice’ with his first reaction: a madly of creative options to say NO. Fred is getting insecure, Alice shows him to stay calm. Alice wants to set up a general meeting, this idea scares the other team members. Fred is offering a test idea. Fred explains his plan and get’s a go.
An exploring team is created, the first expedition can begin, experiences & insights are shared afterwards. An old cultural standard has been changed in a creative way by the children. By doing so new options are available now to find solutions for a challenging future.

Set up of the book
The fable is presented in 115 pages. Kotter invites to reflect on the story and the process. An overview follows of the most remarkable changes & a more in-depth view on the role of thinking & feeling.

The roots of the bookKotter wrote the book ‘Leading Change’ (1996) and won an award for being the best selling manager’s book. Kotter designed his famous 8 steps for change. Six years later Kotter wrote ‘a new chapter’ with Dan Cohen: The heart of change. Their most important insight where:
•people are less temped to change themselves and others based on facts & analysis, they prefer inspiring experiences;
•the speed of change is getting faster and faster & 90% of the companies have a tendency to ignore the relevance of change;
•the way of handling change becomes an important competence for more people than only the top management;
•middle and lower management had hardly no knowledge about how to react on & handle with change;
•the need of urgency should be addressed more powerful.

In that time Kotter met Rathgeber, together they designed a training model based on a penguin colony.The next step was the book: Our iceberg is melting.
The aim of this book was to change behavior, based on the power of a good story.
Good narratives can inspire big groups of different people to come into action.
In my humble opinion there is an interesting parallel between step 1 (create a sense of urgency) and the policy the authors used to promote their fable...

Online support
the book is only one tool in the Kotter change management tool box. His company also offers workshops and online tools like websites: www.ouricebergismelting.com ; www.theheartofchange.com and www.johnkotter.com
Online you can meet Mr. Kotter via a selection of video clips in which he presents his books and explains his theories.
These tools are also easy to use for the more mobile living & working members of the 21st century.

Mr. John P. Kotter …
•Emeritus at the Harvard Business School
•A graduate of MIT & Harvard
•Cofounder of Kotter International www.kotterinternational.com

The connection with my application company
I used the 8 steps guideline to reflect my active knowledge and my task at the application company.
I use the content in two ways: What is happening at my application company & what is happening in the field.
o basic: more insight information about change, the need & the process
o I created a MARS team
o communicate, communicate: I’m part if the online communication group
o empower broad based action: My task is to set up a Community of Practice
o generate short term wins: I wrote a tourism vision & I’m part of the event Day of the Dike

In general
o I think it is of great value that both individuals and groups can learn from the fable.
o Even when you are not part of an obvious change management process, the content prepares you for the future.
o The Dutch edition is easy to as a starting point for a creative session about change and/or change leaders.

Book details
Our Iceberg is Melting, Kotter, John & Rathgeber, Holger, (2005) publisher St. Martins Press, New York; translationin Dutch 2007 7th edition, publisher Business Contact www.businesscontact.nl - ISBN 978-90-470-0092-1

Give yourself a break and read this book !
Wilma Lankhorst

RAG also in the Netherlands

2010-03-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

During our field trip in Pretoria I learned about the RAG week: RAG meaning Reach Out and Give. Students of the University of Pretoria told enthusiastic stories about this annual event during which they collect money for all kind of projects. Today the RAG week starts in my own home town the university city of Nijmegen. For the third time on a row the students of Radboud University organise a RAG week. In our regional newspaper RAG is explained at being a small piece of used paper that is re-used to write little poems on. Students in the Uk in the early 1900sold these poems to collect money for charity.The UK initiative is already more than 100 years old. In the Netherlands the University of Maastricht introduced the RAG week in the year 2000. In 2005 Utrecht was the second city and Nijmegen joined in 2008. This year the Nijmegen students raise money for the Mundico Foundation and the Bart Foundation. The latter is named after the Bart de Graaff, one of Holland's most inspiring young TV personalities who passed away in 2003. The Nijmegen 2010 RAG program contains 8 days with 53 active groups organising 64 events. The total program can be viewed at www.ru.nl/ragweek. Maybe this sustainable initiative is also an option the explore, exploit and export by an active X team from NHTV in Breda. Imagine RAG week Breda 2011 ... that would be a HIEC (High Involvement Experience Concept): go for it. Wilma Lankhorst

South Africa!!! country of co-creation

2010-02-26T04:07:00.000-08:00

Did you know....

The university of Pretoria has a tour of campus that lasts more than 2 hours....(huge)
Jacussi's CAN be build in a day....
You can clean your own pool, just ask Karim how to do it...
Kishore is not recognized without his laptop...
If you walk around with "blanke" benen you get really cold according to Jenny...
South Afrika is the most beautiful place in the world...
Guys in South Africa CAN dance...
Dutch girls DO have rythem...
Lieke baked her own cake according to a prof...
Tu was made to swim... with or without a cell phone...
Bobby still wonders how to drink a cocktail...
The people are more beautiful in South Africa...because of.... the sun?
You can gain about 5 kilo's in 2 weeks by eating out all day...the best food in the world
Tuks is the oldests university of South Africa...
Drinks are only 0,60 cents...
According to the men the girls here are not only pretty but also SWEET!!! so are the drinks...
Bobby and Tu found some extra closet space outside their room last morning...
BARCARDI, HIELO, LIMON, COCA COLA....
For breeding you need to have a bull and a cow...
Louis Vuiton cows have the actual LV sign on them ...

I am because we are....

to be continued...

Class of 2010

„W O R D S create W O R L D S - and when they collide they create value.“

2010-02-06T05:31:00.001-08:00

This week the worlds of business and fine arts collided in Breda: some of St.Joost’s graduating students and the Imagineering Masterclass 2009/2010 met for a 2-day workshop in order to envision and visualise the future of our application companies.
“Standing on the Shoulders of Giants; Brands in 2015” – the header under which the workshop took place was a pilot project in order to start co-creation amongst different areas of expertise, so that the upcoming master years in Imagineering have a solid and creative basis for mingling their knowledge with professional design skills. As we learned in one of our first weeks in class, both managers and designers have to expand their knowledge and skills into more areas. A combination of design and strategic management therefore does not seem so devious; it even is suggested! Ultimately, it is not a coincidence that Imagineering is called a ‘design approach’…
Being invited to the building of St.Joost was the first real chance to change perspectives. I remember walking in with some classmates the first day: feeling a bit like tourists, being fascinated from this old abbey hidden somewhere between highway and forests. It was huge, giving students space to move and think, giving me back the feeling of old school days and giving inspirations in form of design projecs at nearly each corner. The entire building had a black/white scale, but exactly that brought the creative projects of its students to the fore.

DAY I: Analysis
We started off with some ‘gezellig’ (that’s what the Dutch people say for something like ‘cosy’) introduction including coffee, tea, cookies and some small talk for getting to know each other. In total we were a group of more or less 20 students and four teachers/coordinators. After that the more formal part came with introducing our studies to each other. We students were responsible to come up with presentation of our studies, the teachers guided us. In addition we followed an interesting lecture from Marco Bevolo about socio-cultural values and how they will look like in five years from now. Bevolo was employed ten years at Philips in the Netherlands and gave us some tipps and tricks on how to approach best the upcoming hours. After lunch, which was used to socialize and find some matches amongst the St. Joost students, we started off with the actual analysis part of the day. It was at us Imagineers (the storytellers) to give the designers (the interpreters) a solid basis for their work. With our knowledge and research about our application companies we defined a so-called “degree zero”, a starting point reflecting where the company stands at this point of time. From there on we tried to develop a concept for the same brand and how it should look like in the future. The visualisation was at the designers, the vision at us. Two hours later, many ideas more and a starting point richer we presented our results to the teachers. Another two hours later we left the design world and went home into our own wolrds, being curious about the upcoming day…

DAY II: Creativity
The second and last day started the same way as the one before, but included even more creative freedom for us. After a wrap-up we could start again where we ended. All of us were very eager and enjoyed working into the direction we defined with our analysis and it was great to see that it became clearer with every hour. In the end we were supposed to come up with a ‘visual passport’ that reflects our application company in 5 years after having applied Imagineering. In the lunch break we were all remarkably quiet, I guess our energy was mainly put into our projects and the newly gained energy was saved for the rest of the day to finalize what we started. At 4pm we proudly presented our results. Me and my team developed ‘McConnect’, a connecting platform for international students at one of the McDonald’s restaurants in Breda. Others also came up with simple but catchy concepts, such as creating the image of the Dutch airport (schiphol) as a small city that connects many places and people, or a real city that wants to make the core values more visible. Another concept was DAVE. DAVE symbolized a loner out of America, striving to fulfil the American Dream. But instead of fulfilling it in the States, he went to an Indian city which was an application company of one Imagineering student. In the end the results were satisfying, we were satisfied and the last days were about to end. That called for some drinks!
Leaving the old abbey, I took a lot of impressions but also appreciation with me. Not only the building, but also the design students inspired me for my project and taught me how important it is to take a step out of your own world and take a glimpse into another. Letting our worlds collide, we created something tangible for my company but also something valuable for me: a much clearer insight of what I really want to do with Imagineering at my application company and how it could look like. I was amazed that there are more creative heads, just around the corner! Sometimes things are so close but still so far away - until you (or in our case the Imagineering Academy) take(s) the initiative to trespass the boarders. I guess the theme of NHTV of ‘Discover your world’ could be expanded to ‘Discover your world and those of others’…
Sitting here and typing these lines I think bringing together these two worlds is similar to me being here in the Netherlands: Important in both cases is to elaborate on a common level of language. One world uses these words and attaches this meaning, the other world othes those words and attaches that meaning. Common vocabulary has to be co-created so that you can connect on a different but very interesting level which in the end makes you broaden your own horizon. In any case you gotta be open for the unknown, be appreciative and not judging but rather be curious and passionated about new things, see them as challenges that deliver some great experiences you will never forget. And in the end these are the things that make you become who you are.

Can it get any more exciting???

2010-02-03T10:36:00.000-08:00

Hello World,

Seriously, can it get any more exciting? or complicated? or crazy?

Seems like everything is coming together at the same time... We're working on the most important asignments for the RMC, which should be the cornerstone for our BTR, in which we'll be working on for the upcoming 5-6 months, so a lot of reading and fun writing for the next couple of weeks, also the Carnival is almost here, you can see costumes sold everywhere, so how not to get excited, then there's of course South Africa, just around the corner..... and.... hold your breath.... Oh yes!!! Let's not forget about the EXAM!!!!!

And for me personally and to make things worse... all that's on my mind right now is the Super Bowl XLIV which will be played in Miami, between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints, both teams feature Highly-powered offenses... My pick: Indianapolis will win... but it will be an exciting game with lots of points.... But let me tell you something about being a hardcore NFL fan and living in Europe.... it's definetely not good for your sleeping habits... Super Bowl Kickoff is at 5 pm in America, which is great for America, but for me it means that the game starts at 1 am, plus the Halftime show which will feature The Who.... I'm probably going to bed at around 5 am. Not the best way to begin study week but I wouldn't miss this game for anything in the world....

In the mean time, some of us are taking a break on Friday afternoon to go to the Movies to watch "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" and enjoy some free drinks and snacks provided by the kind folks of our local Cinema. The movie should be interesting, not just for the name but because it was the movie that Heath Ledger was shooting at the time of his mysterious death. Most of the scenes had already been shot, but still there was no way to finish the movie as planned, after some time the director decided to go on, but he had to go on with some new ideas and new actors, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell took on Heath L's character in the new scenes. The result should be very interesting with such good actors....

Stay tuned...

Xavier

Let's co-create

2010-01-22T03:10:00.000-08:00

What is co-creation? How to implement it within a real organization? It is easier to say than perform. This week, we have experience a Co-creation Masterclass with Martijn Staal and Slooten. It is an interesting lecture. Because this subject is so new, so we heard only few examples such as Dell, Martijn Staal’s story, achmea “The Brain Room”. Of course, we see the co-creation is everywhere on the internet or even in our local, town or city, ect. But do we realize it or not? We have passed from one to another co-creation event or process as such our conventional activities and then forget it or remember it as a memory.

Internet has given people around the world a bigger chance than ever to co-create and together build up a better world. There are facebook, youtube, hyves, linkedin, and thousands and thousands forums, blogs which were created to connect people and will be more. Thus we see co-creation is everywhere. How do we implement it in a company or an organization in which we are working or participate? This is what Imagineering students have learned, POST methodology. Theory is never enough, so practical assignments are needed. We worked on assignment 1 to fortify our theory knowledge of half POST model; it means only PO (people and objectives). Then each group presents their concept to share idea and give commend each other. Part 2 is the most exciting one, ST (strategy and technology) part. How do we apply technology and strategy create an accomplish platform of co-creation for the company or the organization. The final result uh? ……….. to me nothing more valuable than an experience of sharing idea and a fun lecture. These are also the core elements of co-creation.

Now is time to come back to the study program. I have nothing to tell other than WOWh. WOWh here is not perfect, amazing or wonderful. It is a WOWh of a range of literatures which are waiting for me to read and a lot of things for me to do such as RMC, ITR, BTR, ect. Sharing a bit my thought with you to release stresses and then I come back with my affair. Hope everyone a good weekend and then come back with our Imagineering journey. For those who are not Imaginers, have fun and let co-creation.

The Way of the Web

2010-01-20T01:43:00.000-08:00

Dear Everybody,

Recently we have been talking nearly every single day about web 2.0, 3.0 or whatever name one would like to attach to it. Of course given the developments globally within this field, it is, and remains a very interesting topic to talk, think, and dream about. Certainly if we look at the potential it has in line with our thoughts about business and life.

Today has provided me with a number of insights on this very subject. Insights I found worth sharing on the blog. Hope you guys agree. Bear with me for this article, as my thoughts deviate quite often. Character flaw perhaps..

Anyhow. Today, one of my fellow future Imagineers presented a book called: “we think”. Likely a title that sounds familiar or rings a bell. Btw, interesting presentation Bram! Here we go, first deviation.

Now, this book basically deals with the potential of the web 2.0 and how it will influence our lives. Whether or not it is that revolutionary tool so many claim it to be. Me including. If we let our minds flow, an endless array of opportunities pass by. We can see worlds open up now and in the future. We can see people and communities connecting which we could not have imagined 10 years ago. Or should I say 12 years ago when google was first introduced to us. Just 12 years ago. I usually catch myself smiling and daydreaming about this subject, as I find it an incredibly interesting, intriguing subject. It amazes me with what speed people come up with the most far sought, however useful, applications to be used online. Can you recall life before google?

Of course relating this all back to Imagineering, the internet or web 2.0 if you will, has been and is a catalyser, facilitator and supporter of the Imagineering way of thinking. It causes organizations to rethink their business model. Everybody is all of a sudden able to produce whatever they want, wherever they want and in the form they want. Internet being the absolute Icon for co-creation. Few examples being ‘Youtube’ or for instance ‘Wikipedia’ as mentioned today in the discussion about “we think”. Another example I find incredibly illustrating; ‘couchsurfing’. This for the reason that it is being run by, correct me if I am wrong, just under 10 people.(of course co-managed by all its users) Imagine this 20 years ago. How big would this company have to be to be able to deliver the same thing they do today…

For anyhow interested in these stream of thoughts and haven’t seen the ‘Did you know’ movies.( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8)

Web 2.0 had and has a general positive feel to it because of the unlimited possibilities. And along side this, it is said to empower the powerless. Everybody is able to make a distinction. To achieve whatever goal one has with very limited need for supporting means. From becoming a new born millionaire, to starting political movements and/or other communities. I mean, Obama funded a great deal of his campaign through online communities. Perhaps not the best example of empowering the powerless(or perhaps the best example, give or take an interpretation), but it shows the potential and the recognition of its power by, by now, the president of the united states.

So what could this all mean to the third world? How could we use the potential to better the world and make it one happy place? With all these unlimited possibilities, we are opening our doors to share our knowledge and wisdom with the world! Are we?....

Multiple interpretation are possible. Today, Bram highlighted some views of critics of the web which were discussed in the book ‘We Think’. It made me think. When I got home, I was browsing the internet and found the following newsitem: http://www.nu.nl/internet/2165387/nederland-blijft-in-top-internetlanden.html

Apologies for the non-dutch speaking. Let me summarize it very briefly as my post is getting kind of long. Daydreaming, so many differing thoughts being the cause of it…

The item starts of by mentioning the top countries if it comes to internet penetration. And guess what, we are number four!! Lucky us. Now a little further down it mentions the average penetration worldwide. A mere 5%, that’s it. With a note attached to it that there are still 99 countries with an internet penetration of less than 1%.

Now what does this mean for these countries. Are we bridging gaps as the western world or are we actually widening them. As an (future) Imagineer I am approaching this question in an appreciative manner, and focus on the opportunities and good things internet can and has achieved. However, it is very easy to ask yourself; are we widening the gap between rich and poor because of the opportunities that web 2.0 brings us and not the millions if not billions on the planet that could really benefit if….

So I would like to end this uncontrolled stream of thoughts by rephrasing this very question through the lens of appreciative inquiry into: How can we as the western world, enable the ones who lack the benefit of an internet connection now and in the coming years, to optimally benefit from the endless array of opportunities the web brings?

Thanks for bearing with me. Hope I made you think.

Grts,

Joep Peeters

Best Design

2010-01-18T13:36:00.000-08:00

In the last Block of Creativity there was an interesting topic for discussion, towards its end. The Guest Lecturer asked all of us to come up with the Best Design we could think of. First thing that came to me was, “We” - the human beings. But then one can argue that we didn’t design it, or that we are making the best out of an existing design.

After going through the rigorous programme of RMC (Research Methodology Course) which runs parallel with rest of the programme, I had this natural tendency to do some research before I wrote something. But I have resisted this temptation and decided that I would jot down what ever comes on the fly. Last thing I want to do is to do an academic research before I write a cool blog. Probably this would be the last text I would be scripting without references. I can imagine what my state would be with regard to evaluation of content at the end of the programme, if you know what state I am in, half way.

Coming back to the topic, I ruled out myself the argument of human being as the best design, since we have no contribution to this design. One can still argue that we designed ourselves though the process of evolution, shedding the useless and enhancing the useful.

Next best thing I could think of was Fire, yes, that’s it, Fire we all know. Again we didn’t design fire, neither did we design Wood. We use wood a natural resource to design things to our convenience, so is fire. I think fire has become such an integral part of our life that, taming fire, to be produced at our convenience is being taken for granted. I can’t imagine where progress we talk about would have been, if we still have to eat raw vegetables & meat and waiting for ever it to digest. Lightening, thunder and water currents are astonishing phenomenons of nature as well, it is just that we are yet to tame it. Though we are now learning to make best use of wind and sun.

I don’t want to elaborate on this; I would now leave to the imagination of the reader.

I give Fire and taming fire, a perfect ten, for the best design, which perfectly fits all the prerequisites by definition of my mankind for design, in its attempt to define everything within the frame work of words.

:-) Kishore

'Be what you are'...

2010-01-11T02:12:00.000-08:00

2010... is about being what you are.
Understanding your abilities and being the best of you isn't always easy. Assessment @ the imagineering academy can amaze you to the extend that you are stunned and overwhelmed by the insights about yourself. At least, that was my experience. As soon as I walked out the room where my coach and school director did my assessment, I almost got emotional about the things they said. Carlijn, you do great but it seems like you're driving a car with not one but five seatbelts on.... 'Please don't always drive on the safe side, cause it won't get you to that next place where you want to be'....
That's me !!!! was the thought that came up in my head. I felt vunerable by the way they both got under my skin. My weak spot was struck for the first time. I normally get the confirmation of doing well (interships, classes, projects etc.). However nobody ever told me that I was staying in my comfort zone and should step out to really become that person I am feeling I am but is not always shown to others.
That does not mean of course that I'm not myself. I am, but there is more to see... more to discover..but only if I take my chances. So 2010 is about being what I am and more...

Carlijn

Welcome 2010!

2010-01-11T00:31:00.000-08:00

To start the blog for the first week of 2010, at first all the best wishes for the New Year! I hope it will be an inspiring, creative and successful year. With a little retrospect on 2009 we prepare ourselves for the future.

December was a busy month. Besides of course all the great Christmas parties and New Years Eve we were all very busy with studying for our second exam, assessment and some of us with preparing their book presentations. Looking back on this month and being honest, we were all looking forward to our well deserved vacation.

2009 was the year in which we all chose to participate in a new challenging program, each of us with different reasons for being here. Despite, or even because of this we became a very strong group within a short period of time: we support each other, we have fun together, learn a lot together and co-create our futures. I believe the reason for that is because we share a passion: Imagineering!
Enough with praising 2009, we now live in 2010!

Week 1 was a good start into the second phase, Organisation Transformation: Innovation Management was introduced to us by Sören Kaplan. Wow, this guy is very interesting! What he taught the first day seemed to be quite simple, easy and fun. In the end though, it all turned out to have an important message beyond: look out of the box.

By acting according to the rules, doing things the way they are always done, you set your focus on just one thing. Of course focus is good but it could be that you might missing some important things that happen around you. For a company to keep up with the world it is acting in it is important to not just focus on processing your own actions but look around and see what is happening outside your company. The world around you is part of your future and you have to be aware of that there is more than just one perspective.

This day already enlightened us in this new year and gave us refreshing input from that American guy who seems to be quite successful as he is working with many big companies such as HP and Colgate. After that external input, we provided ourselves with our own input: we students finished the day with our book presentations. ‘Grown up digital, One fine line, What’s the secret and the Creative city’ - we all shared the most important parts of the content with each other.

I did a presentation about the book ‘Grown up digital’. It is about meeting the ‘Net Generation’ (the so-called ‘Generation X’ which has grown up with internet, computers, iPod, Facebook etc.). The book’s bottom line is that if you understand this generation, you will understand the future. I found it an really interesting, easy to read book and if you are not a part of the Net Generation I would definitely recommend reading it to take a look into the heads of this new generation. Same the other way around: for those who have grown up digital it is worthy to see that not everything we take for granted in today’s digital world is obvious the way it is. Also the fact that we can handle all the digital stuff easily is not as easy for everybody.

Thursday and Friday we also had interesting lectures of Sören Kaplan. He taught us a lot about business models and on Friday we spent the whole day very appreciative in the workshop of appreciative inquiry. These three days were already very inspiring to me; I learned a lot of useful theories and techniques to apply later on in my application company. For me it is very helpful that he uses a lot of examples and lets us practice with several techniques. Next week we have one more day to go with him and I know for sure that even now that it is very cold outside with all the snow and ice, it wouldn’t bother me to leave my warm bed to be present at the Imagineering Academy.

To close down the week I want to say that it was good and felt nice to have a couple of days off, but now we are all back in business I remember again why I am here. Every day is an inspiring, creative and definitely a challenging day, so I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Lieke van der Zanden

Being a Busy Bee

2009-11-30T11:43:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

At this moment I do a lot of things at the same time, interchangeable. I have to prepare for the exam next week, write my project, prepare my ITR, write a semiotic assignment and answer questions about the RMC 4 assignment.

I will share some of the things happened this week. Last week we had a very interesting guest lecture of Jan Rijkenberg, who wrote the book 'Concepting'.

Jan told us a lot of interesting and inspiring insights about his way of thinking and his book. What I found very interesting was that he told us that people are more interesting in mindware stuff and that we have to change the marketing toolbox. At this time we are going to 'the communication driven phase' (concepting) and 'the communicator' becomes the new type of leader. He gave a lot of interesting examples that had triggered me. A lot of the things Jan explained, we already knew. But it was very nice to hear it from another perspective. He gave us a title of a book: 'The naked Ape, that inspired him to write his book 10 years ago.

He also inspired me to read 'The naked Ape' for my second book presentation.

The class today was also very interesting. Geoff Maree told us about creativity and how we should use creative techniques in our application company. During the morning he explained us a lot of theory about the basic skills of creativity and showed us a lot of creative techniques.

This afternoon we used the creativity techniques in groups to come up with new ideas. This was a very nice exercise and we had a lot of fun. Time flew by and we came up with a lot of important insights. For example: When you organize a creative session, it's very important to have fun, have a nice, inspiring location, have a good preperation and try to focus on the quantity of ideas.

I have to quit writing because I have to do a thousand things.

Regards,
Sanne

The Imagineering Roller Coaster....takes another loop

2009-11-21T01:37:00.000-08:00

A random day on the ‘Imagineering Roller coaster’… getting up at 8.15am, having a breakfast that will keep me energized till 11.30am. 9.45am, chatting to the classmates about stupid stuff, having a laugh and meeting a new face (the lecturer of the day). 10am Another day starts, with some interesting introductions, all eyes on the lecturer.

11.30am Inspired, walking towards the coffee machine discussing all the information we’ve just took in. 1pm Time for another energy boost called lunch. ‘Why can we never talk about something else?:)’ Imagineering, RMC, Creativity, Imagineering, RMC, Identity, Imagineering…. Lunch is supposed to be re-energizing, not here! Lol

2pm: Back to class.. joined by a bigger cup of coffee. Workshops, eyeopeners, writing down notes, discussions, interaction, presentations and more. 3.30pm The coffee machine + toilet is calling!!!! 5.pm Walking towards our bikes, talking, living, and breathing the topic of the day. The evening still about Imagineering… I always thought people who spend their evenings voluntary on studying, reading and searching the Internet are crazy. My brother, mum, dad, boyfriend, girlfriends know all the ins and outs about Imagineering cause I am breathing Imagineering, can’t stop talking about it and they are even considering the course next year. Luckily I can find the discipline to stop myself and find a few hours/day every week to check out.

This week:

Whenever we enter the classroom on Monday-morning, the smiling faces of my colleagues light up the room. You can feel we are all excited to hear what's next. I keep being surprised by the variety of the subjects that pop up every week. Hans Bouwknegt and Semiotics last week, this week Robert Bood and Scenario Thinking...on Monday.

Robert showed us examples of his own experience and had us perform workshops together. The essence of scenario thinking in my words is to look for all the possible scenario's in the future and adapt your organization towards these scenario's to be ahead of the competition and stay innovative. Geoff Maree let us think about ourselves and what we define as creativity on Wednesday. This day was very inspiring and this coming Monday he will be in school with Marco Bevolo.

Kaj Morel… Identity marketing. Very interesting, we started the day with presenting each other. But not in the regular way of course!! This time the assignment was ‘present your fellow student as a brand’. Some came up with stories about the other, keywords of the so called brand.

We had a practical workshop in asking questions to your application company. Kaj gave us the questions and they were really good in getting the real identity. The questions gave ME a really new insight in identity marketing and/or Imagineering. Identity should be known in order to be appreciative and vibrant. Same in the personal life. If people lose themselves…and don’t know what their real identity is anymore they struggle to seek for their identity. We are all identities and relate to each other through these identities. Psychologists lead these people back towards their identity to relate to the world and others again. Consultants are these “psychologists” in the business world. Whenever businesses tend to lose their core identity some objective outsiteforce needs to lead them back to that identity. Yesterday we preformed all the workshop techniques from Thursday on the application company of Karim. For the first time I saw the effect on people and how we really CAN use these techniques in practice.

This is only 1/40 of what we’ve heard and practiced today, it’s consuming your mind. In a positive way, it inspires, motivates, stimulates and is overwhelming to structure within your head.

For me the challenge in this course lies in ‘how to process’ all this information and make it my own. Next to this bulk of great information I try to read my book ‘ The Creative City’ by Charles Laundry. This also is very interesting because it is related to my application company which is a city. The application company is an adventure on itself, speaking to all the stakeholders, experiencing the passion for this city, the debating about the build up of these coming months etc. Etc…

My day to day life has changes intensly since I took this ride called ‘ the imagineering rollercoaster’. This roller coaster is taking another turn every other day and I might not be able to get off until next year September… then the theme park ‘The dream called imagineering’ will open it’s doors to me.

Are you in for a thrill?....:)

Article Tip: Barnham, C. 2008. Qualis? From theory to practice. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 11, 414-424.

www.carlijnsimons.com

Back to Communication Basics

2009-11-15T07:02:00.000-08:00

The past week the emphasis has been on the quite amazing phenomenon of communication. Signs, actually. And the bright spirit who took us back to the very basics of this ‘taken-for-granted’, ongoing happening was Hans Bouwknegt. Mr. Bouwknegt taught us the ins and outs of semiotics, in particular the use of semiotics in media. Terms such as the signifier and signified, connotations and denotations were mentioned; names such as Saussure and Eco were brought up; and we have been taught that creativity is based on knowledge, and NOT only on talent.

All together a very fruitful week with meaningful insights, and I am not only talking about the lessons and theory provided. As the deadline for the search for an application company is approaching in less than a week, I am still in desperate search for one. Unfortunately I was turned down friday by a company which would have been absolutely PERFECT for me. I always thought I was pretty adequate on a communicative level, which was happily (re)confirmed and most welcomed by the potential application company, after which they decided to employ the computer nerd. Naturally, there is more to the story and there is no-one in particular to blame, but it is still a major bummer! And so the frantic search continues.

There is also a time and place for happy thoughts this rainy Friday: SOUTH AFRICA!!! Ticket prices are reasonable, I will have Bobby as my travel-buddy, and I am already thinking of which outfits to bring = exciting!

Upcoming week will be a rather busy week, with 4 instead of 3 school days and the first set of book presentations! It had been decided to apply the newly developed book-presentation-concept to the third and fourth set of book presentations, so that we have more time to gather a greater attendance and make it an even more nerve-wrecking event. I am confident that there will be an elaborately written blog on these events in weeks 10 and 16 of 2010.

Yours sincerely,
Jessica

Autumn break! Holiday! Happiness??

2009-10-27T06:55:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

Autumn break! Holiday! Happiness??

Is everybody enjoying his/her freedom?

Does this break mean that we become a little bit more happy in life. Do we get the chance to recharge our happiness during these 7 days of no commitments? Or is it the commitments themselves that keep some of us happy? A few heavy questions about life you’ll be able to think about during this autumn break.

Why?

Today I read an item on the website http://http://www.nu.nl/,this stated that the Erasmus university in Rotterdam has published a worldmap of happiness. And apparently we(Holland) are ranked 12th, where Costa Rica is leading the charts and Zimbabwe is the least happy country in the world.

An average inhabitant of Costa Rica has 66 happy years in his life, where Zimbabwe only has 12. We as the Dutch need to deal with 60 happy years in our life. Very remarkable is that the people of Iceland have 66.4 happy years in their life. So that automatically leads to the question: How important is money in once life? Given the fact that the last few years haven't exactly been prosperous for Iceland. And just as important, how has hapiness been measured

To answer this question. Or better put, to be able to understand this question, we need to look at how this research is performed.
Technical details (Veenhoven. R.. Happy Life Years in 148 nations 2000-2009. World Database of Happiness. Rank Report 2009-2d. Internet: worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl)
1. Average enjoyment of life assessed by means of surveys in general public samples.
2. Life expectancy is estimated on the basis of civil registrations of birth and death around 2005. Source
3. Happy Life Years' is an estimate of how long and happy the average citizen will live in that nation in this era. Computation: 0-1 enjoyment of life multiplied by expected length of life.
I would like to invite you as readers of this blog to think about this, and preferably comment on this blog.

Enjoy the mind breaker for this week.

Regards,
Joep

Sharks in a Blue Ocean

2009-10-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

Every single student of the Master in Imagineering class is very busy: attending lectures, preparing lectures with reading (academic) articles and books, finding an application company (or even already visiting one), learning for the oral exam, working on the Research Methodology Course (RMC), editing the Individual Transformation Report (ITR) and as a relief: planning the trip to South-Africa!
There are quite a few of us who already booked their flight to Johannesburg. The dilemma is to choose for celebrating ‘carnaval’ in The Netherlands or using the spring holiday to have a vacation in South-Africa.
Some things that we can already dream of doing over there are; visiting the Kruger Park, cage diving with sharks, the highest bungeejump in the world, riding an ostrich, visiting Mandela’s prison island, climbing the Table mountain, attending a football match of Ajax Capetown, having a ‘braai’, etcetera.

To continue on the White-shark-cage-diving. Let me explain this, you do it in an ocean of course, the Indian Ocean. It is quite a bloody ocean actually, because the tour operators throw in blood and guts to attract the nasty-looking Great Whites. The tourist dives in the cage underwater when they see a dorsal fin approaching, probably to get one of the greatest thrills of their lives; seeing a Great White Shark alive and in the wild! The controversy is that in this area the sharks started to associate humans with food now. But only the little pieces of fish that the boatmen throw in is not enough. They must still be hunting for their own food of course; seals.
In South-Africa, more precisely around Seal Island (close to False Bay), the seals are many! So there are many sharks as well! In this 'red ocean' sharks need to hunt with ‘surprise’ as main element, because the seals are much faster and (when escaping from an attack) can easily outrun their competition. The easiest option to surprise a seal is a vertical approach when they enter the water. This is possible because the physical environment is perfectly shaped for this. The main leaving and entering point of Seal Island is very close to deep waters, which gives the sharks the option of a vertical-approach-surprise-attack. With all the brutal force the sharks attack the seals from underneath and with this torpedo-like technique they fire themselves out of the water!
This is the most likely theory why Seal Island (South-Africa) is the only place in the world where sharks have this behavior. You could say they found a ‘blue ocean’ in hunting. Of course it is not really ‘an uncontested market space’, because the seals might change their behavior to evade the ‘jumping’ sharks, but in the world of hunting one would possibly not find another specie of animal that is not hunted on by any other animal… Let’s hope that in February 2010 the sharks will still be torpedoing themselves so we can be amazed then!

To ladder or not to ladder?

2009-10-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

It took a while but finally the outcome of our laddering class-assignment was there: the value map that represented the value we expect that our mobile phones must represent.
On Thursday the 8th of October we started by questioning each other what features we like best on a mobile phone. From these ‘attributes’ we questioned further (using the laddering technique) to get to the customer values. Most of us had no experiences with this methodology yet. Thus we were also not completely aware of the 36 values of Rokeach or the 57 values of Schwartz. This made the coding (on Monday the 12th of October) even harder, plus the fact that we did it altogether and not very objective.
Attributes, consequences and values which were mentioned less than 3 times were scrapped. We needed another moment of a day later that week (Wednesday the 14th of October) to finish the implication matrix and the value map. See the pictures attached to this blog post. According to this the main value our mobile phones represent for us are ‘self esteem’ and ‘caring for loves ones’.
The use of this outcome is for mobile phone manufacturers to focus on attributes belonging to these values and for marketing agencies to communicate these values in their campaigns.

A part of the methodology of laddering, probing questions is also a technique used in other methodologies such as PAT (Profile Accumulation Technique), CIT (Critical Incident Technique) and mythological analysis. That’s why it was quite dominant in our two weeks of ‘New research’.

My next blog post will be about a more popular and less scientific subject: the blue ocean!

Which one of the three?

2009-10-13T12:48:00.000-07:00

The moment of the truth: Monday the 12^th of October from 15h30 till 17h15. Within those hours were the presentations of three different concepts, which were kept really secret for each other. But all have the same intention: to share the knowledge of popular management books. I was pretty exited to hear the other presentations (and to do our own), because we will choose the best concept and implement it directly so that the concept will be up and running when the first book presentations will be held (in the week of November 16).

Because of the high potential of all three concepts, I may not present them on this blog in detail (since they’re not patented yet). So I will just give an idea of what the concepts were.

Group 1 started with the introduction of a nice viral marketing campaign and they explained their concept via the ABCDEF-model (with emphasis on the Brooding phase). They came up with a type of interactional reading.

Group 2 (myself) explained their concept via the ABCDEF-model as well and put emphasis on the Concept phase. They came up with a way to facilitate reviews and physical meetings of interested managers.

Group 3 came up with a concept that involved us as students in sharing the contents of popular management books.

We actually didn’t really do a voting for which concept would win this ‘pitch’, but instead we formed a group of members of all three groups. The best idea to reach our goal (spreading the knowledge of popular management books) is probably a combination of all three concepts.

The key is to make it work and hopefully exploit it in a way that we can be real entrepreneurs and earn some money with it. That is... if the management books don't show us how to do that!

Organising the results of laddering

2009-10-09T01:32:00.000-07:00

This Thursday we had to practice how to the laddering research technique can be used. In order to learn how it works, we practiced it ourselves by finding out what we like about our mobile telephone. We asked each other about the key features a phone should possess, after which we asked each other why that feature is so important. This questioning went on until we got a sense of terminal values. Values that are in you as a person and that do not easily come out.

Meanwhile during the interviews our classmate Wilma found out that the green wall in our classroom is never looked at, while this is the most 'inspirational' wall, as it is being green opposed to the other walls who are all white. Most of us agreed upon switching the lecturers view to the other side. Maybe in the upcoming time the class rooms view will change suddenly 180 degrees ;-).

However, when we all finished our interviews we had to put each answer of the why questions on a yellow sticky note and bring it to the front of the class. We had to put each answer under the right header of abstract attributes untill terminal values. It went kind a like this in the beginning, but in the end we all contributed to putting the right yellow sticky notes on the right places and even clustering them together when we found out some answers were kind of the same.

Next week Bram wil maybe tell how the laddering results were interpreted further :-).

Using Endnote and experience research

2009-10-07T09:26:00.000-07:00

This week we had to hand in the first RMC assigment. As I underestimated the assigment in hours of work, the weekend before was vanished into time to make sure the work was carried out in a good way.

The upcoming week was promosing a week full of new research methods given by Proffesor W. van Gool and associates. It promised to be less wonderfull as the three weeks of inspirational lessons before, however I know I need to know about the methods available concerning qualitative research as it will help me during my work I will be doing in the application company.

Monday we got a workshop about EndNote; a referencing program. We got explained how to use it to insert references from available databases and how to get these references to work within Word for writing the Business transformation report, our thesis of the Master in Imagineering.

The Wednesday we got a lecture of Nick Johns who flew over from the UK to talk about qualitative experience research. For example using the PAT methodology. It was quit interesting how photographs of a holiday can result into scientific research ;-).

There is another blog post about the Thursday is coming up. stay tuned..

R-to-the-M-to-the-C

2009-10-03T08:53:00.000-07:00

Before the next blogger takes over on Monday, I promised to tell you something about Thursdays lectures. This week was all about the change in consumer behaviour that appears to take place in recent years. Although most of the information was already discussed in the last two weeks, it was nice to hear some different examples as well as other lecturers' views on Imagineering and customer behaviour. The different views of the lecturers and some students resulted in a number of interesting discussions. The flow of information was a bit less than previous weeks, but there was enough work to be done, due to another major part of the programme: the Research Methodology Course (RMC).

Next Monday, we have to hand in the first assignment for the RMC course. This course is developed in order to get our research skills at an academic level within eight months and have us writing a proper research proposal for our theses. The emphasis is currently on searching for relevant and reliable academic articles. The first exercise was to state three possible research questions, and find an academic article for each one. The next step then was to judge the articles' reliability and usefulness. I happened to find the holy grail, in this case an article about a research model which perfectly sums up everything I'm planning to study for the Emmen Zoo. The other two articles were about the role of the internet for Zoos and a study on destination loyalty among tourists. It really got me inspired and I ended up with some great ideas for my research. Not having done anything for the RMC up till Friday, with interesting and inspiring articles like that I managed to finish the assignment on Friday afternoon. It feels like I'm off for a good start. Hopefully I won't find a lot of my fellow students on Monday struggling to finish the assignment on time.

I'll see you guys around.

Getting started at the application company

2009-10-01T01:22:00.000-07:00

This morning I finally had the time to post something on the blog again. It's been a busy first part of the week, with the second full day at my application company on Tuesday and my graduation party on Wednesday. Since I was the first to have an application company, I'll tell you a bit about my experiences so far.

The idea behind these application companies is that each student has the opportunity to immediately put everything they learned into practise. The Master thesis will be written as an advisory report for this company, although they won't be grading it. While most of my fellow students are still struggling to find an application company, I had the opportunity to start already in week 1 of the Master programme.
Months before the Master started, me and my girlfriend visited the Zoo in Emmen (http://www.zoo-emmen.nl/). She had worked there for a while, and through her I found out about the plans to move the Zoo from the city centre to a location outside the city. This involves designing a 33ha Zoo from scratch, but also reviewing all the human processes regarding customer contact and redesigning the entire back office to suit the characteristics of the new Zoo. I figured this would be the perfect application company for my Master in Imagineering. When I first met people from the Master, I told them about my ideas regarding the Zoo, and I found out that the Zoo had already asked them for advice. So I had a nice way in.
In the months after, I convinced the Zoo about how I could help them, and they agreed to employ me for one day a week, and in the course of the year expand that to two days, and finally full-time. In return, they would pay the tuition fee for the Master.

I started two weeks ago, and there wasn't a lot for me to do since the people I was supposed to work with were out of office for most of the day. So I just focussed on getting some basic things done, like requesting keys to the office and login data for the computer network.
A week later, I joined the marketing manager and the programme manager (who is in charge of the development of the new Zoo) on a trip to a market research organization in Zoetermeer. They where doing interviews with possible visitors of the new Zoo, who were selected on age, social class and income, and were asked to participate given the fact that they go on day trips every now and then. These people didn't know why they were there and what they would be talking about, neither did they know about the plans for the new Zoo in Emmen. Therefore they gave us a nice insight of how the average Dutch family would respond on the plans and, more importantly, whether they would like to pay us a visit. There was also a lot of nice feedback about for example the routing in the Zoo and the possible price for a ticket.
Having met most of the people working on the development of the new Zoo, last Tuesday I met a couple of people who keep the current (old) Zoo running. Together with the marketing manager I agreed on my activities for the coming months. I will be looking into how they want the visitors to experience the Zoo, then team up with some key members of the staff to find out how they think about their jobs, contact with visitors, the role of management and what they themselves add to the experience of the visitor. At the same time I will be doing research among visitors, probably using a questionnaire, to find out how they actually experience the Zoo and what they think about the role of its personnel. Then, in the remainder of the year, I will be doing a lot of supporting research to finally come up with a report giving advice on how the new Zoo can give the visitors an even better experience than they hope for, and how to arrange the entire organization in order to facilitate in that.
I put my plans on paper last Tuesday and right now I'm waiting for them to be approved, so I can start doing my research. It's already clear that I will have a lot of freedom to do what I want. There's an office I can use each Tuesday, but I can also arrange meetings somewhere else if necessary. I will also be doing several jobs throughout the Zoo for one day, to get a good picture of what everybody does and what it takes to keep an organization like that running. I'm anxious to start!

Today I'll be back in Breda after skipping an interesting guest lecture yesterday, because I had my graduation party in Leeuwarden. Hopefully it'll be easy to get up to date with all that's been said and discussed yesterday. Today will be about the 'Age of Experience', which to me seems like a pretty vague subject but I hope the lecturer will come up with some inspiring insights. I'll let you know how it all worked out.

A little piece about what's on my mind

2009-09-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

A little more than a year ago, I bought a pair of running shoes. I had a room in Leeuwarden at the time and, since my life as a student was starting to develop some physical evidence, I figured it would be nice to do some running in the evenings. Before I knew, the summer holiday arrived and I had to look for an internship for the following year. I soon found one at a small record company in Den Bosch. This company was run by one man and had no other employees accept for two interns. There was also no such thing as an office or something, business was done at the kitchen table or standing around the computer in the attic. Together we decided that the two of us could do our work from our homes, and we would meet in Den Bosch once a week. Having no need to stay in Leeuwarden, I gave up my room and went back to living with my parents.
With not a lot of work in the first 7 months of my 10 month internship, I found myself hanging around the house, wondering what to do. It would have been great to do some running a couple of times a week, but I ended up spending most of the time behind my computer and slightly too much time in bed. I found our bumpy quarter-of-a-mile driveway quite discouraging, as well as not having someone to run with.
The year went by and I got this feeling of guilt every now and then, when I came across my shoes. Until I decided to wear them whenever I had to go somewhere. This summer, my running shoes have taken me to pubs in Utrecht as well as beaches in Biarritz, France. Most of the time not faster than your average grandmother. If so, on the throttle of my car.
Last week, the moment was there. Me and my girlfriend drove to the forest and ran (with intervals) for about 45 minutes. She turned out to be the perfect running mate. It all went great and when we got home we decided we would really like to do this at least twice a week. Now here's my situation:
I live in the country-side near Meppel, Drenthe. The Imagineering Academy is in Breda. In between is, well, the Netherlands. I get up at 6 AM to go to school, and when I get home around 9 PM, I'm too tired to do anything else but to have something to eat and go to sleep. I spend 3 hours in the train to get to Breda and another 3 to get back home. It's hard to describe what it does to ones body, to be sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a train that accelerates and stops every ten minutes, but I think it can be summarized as constantly feeling the urge to move. To exercise. To run… BUT NOW I CAN'T!

The Imagineering-way of thinking includes the idea that people buy certain goods in order to achieve a certain personal transformation. I bought my shoes with the goal to lose some weight and work on my stamina. In my experience, the effect was rather, let's say, limited. Now I often get the chance to think about them, think about the opportunities I had to use them, and the chances that will come. Is their value lost? No. It's just a different kind of value. Somewhat… spiritual.

My name is Niels van der Haven and I will be posting on this blog this week. Tomorrow will be my second day at my application company, I'll tell you more about that later.

Guest lectures

2009-09-24T23:40:00.000-07:00

One of the things I do like very much about this Master study is a weekly guest lecture presented by an authority in the field of Imagineering. Last week we welcomed Professor Koen vandenbempt from the university of Antwerp and he guided us into the field of strategic innovation. This week we welcomed Professor Ton de Leeuw, who was teaching till his retirement ,3 years ago, at the University of Groningen. As he pronounced his hobbies still are in the field of Research Methodology and Organizational Change.
To prepare this guest lecture we had to read an academic article with the title “Answers for questions to come: reflective dialogue as an enabler of strategic innovation”. In my humble opinion a tuff paper with lost of words in which the message would have come better across with less words.
After a short personal introduction Mr. Ton de Leeuw guided us through the process how to start your project at the application Company. He emphasized on the ways you can come up with questions. Where does the language from questions come from? We did some practical test with Q&A with a fellow student. During and after the break had had to make an assignment in combination with the prepared article. In small groups we had to raise & formulate questions about the article and how we could use the content in combination with our Application Company. In small group we came up with a model in which we combined the 3 basic blocks of the article: mental maps, reflective dialogue and strategic innovation. We all struggled with the content and set up of the article and it was quite a relieve when Professor de Leeuw told us his personal view on academic articles. "Always try to find your own words in which you can explain the message of the academic article to your grandmother in a way she can understand the raised topic”, he adviced. I was very happy with this approach since I’m quite a practical person with not a great appetite for academic words. Communication is, my background and I always try to find the words through which 'my' audience gets the message. And this is in line with the advice of Professor De Leeuw.

At the end of this interesting day I asked Mr. De Leeuw what he personally thinks about Imagineering. He told us that in the beginning he taught it was a bit vague. Since he’s an engineer he did look for the connection between Imagineering & Engineering, since Imagineering is a composed word. But now after a few years he explains the position of Imagineering by making a comparison between Marketing and Imagineering. A marketing question is: How can I control my client? an Imagineer will ask : How can the client control the organization (or you)? At that time is was already 5 pm, the end of our day at the university.

I like to stop todays contribution to the Imagineering blog with a nice hint from Professor De Leeuw. If you want to relax a second connect to You Tube and get inspired by the Bach Duo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZD8W2nO1lY

after watching….just a sustainable thought….
Looking at this clip I was fantasizing would it be possible to combine this way of playing the ‘piano’ with the cool sustainable dance floor in the Rotterdam Club Watt ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xu7hO7G4n8
and more energy.... Energy generating dance floor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzb3VFi3Sew

… and a co-creation idea ….. yesterday I saw at the 8 o’clock news an item about a new aerobic wave: Zumba. Enjoying the Bach duo clip I was thinking about a combination of Bach on the floor & Zumba. Have a look at Zumba @ San Jose Convention Center http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ziHDH7YV2g

To be continued …

Living in two worlds

2009-09-23T14:59:00.000-07:00

Being a master student now is quite different with my student life back in 1980. The main reason for the difference as I experience it is the feeling of a ‘double life’ in the recent situation. After being the owner of a communication consultancy for almost twenty years it is a new experience to be back at school for 3 days a week, having lots of homework and regular assignments and I also want to keep an eye on the running business. I’m really happy & blessed that I found a loyal & very trusting friend & colleague who is taking the business lead for the next 12 months. But although we agreed on this is it difficult for me at this stage to disconnect. However being hooked at my communication office & work and taking the warnings from the teachers and old Master students (about the heavy study load) seriously I see it as a personal challenge to keep things in a healthy balance.
For me there is a third important aspect to deal with and that is a good balance between private life next to study and the ongoing business. Back in the 1989 my only ‘concern’ was having a great learning time with a enthusiastic group of student-friends and a nice room in an enjoyable student house. Now I travel by train between Nijmegen and Breda which also is time consuming. Although this is only my third week at the University it is very expiring being here. Seeing new and also welcoming old teachers from the previous NWIT period is great. So far they are all very engaged to this unique master concept. The study material in English is another challenge. Due to the fact that we have to read at least 15 academic articles per week (besides study books) my list of new English words is growing day after day and so is my understanding of the language. Besides the international character of the class I do appreciate this aspect of this international Master class very much. So far so good.

a new kid on the blog

2009-09-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

Dear readers this is my first blog attempt. Let me introduce myself in a nutshell. I'm one of the 17 students for the Master of Imagineering at NHTV 2009-2010. I studied already once succesfully at the pre NHTV University for tourism NWIT from ... 1980 till 1984. I must admit it took some guts to start again 25 years after graduating. But here I'm ... back in a new area, with lots of new (digital) tools, some of my fellow astudents experience these tools as toys, but for me this is the biggest challenge. I'll take you with me on my journey this week. Are you ready to join me? ... enjoy & get inspired. Wilma

TRIGGGRRRR

2009-09-17T19:54:00.000-07:00

As Imagineering students we understand that we are on the edge of a new world. We are more connected and are looking for value at once. A nice movie which illustrates this can be found at watch.usnowfilm.com.

Knowing this is one thing, what to do now is something completely different. How are we going to implement this new thinking in our current system? To do so we can be catalysts. We can be the trigger within an organization. We know how to use the mirror and know how to inspire people. Creating opportunities to involve people and start a new dialogue. That is what it is all about.

As you will understand this is not an easy task, but fortunately we already have some really interesting examples of people using these new elements. They might not exactly know they do, but they felt that something needed to change.

Within the Academic field people have felt this too and as a result traditional research is starting to shift. Now it only is a matter of time before we will all have new foundations to build our business upon. And we all believe this will create a more beautiful world!

Trigger yourself!!

Rob - Future Master of Imagineering

Seeing is believing!... Or not?

2009-09-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

Innovation is now more important than ever. But why is it that hard to break free from our regular thinking? Since the industrial revolution we have created our current mindset and for many years this has been the status quo.

This means that we are used to think into certain dominant business recipes. If you are not able to realize this it is impossible to find new solutions. You will be trapped in your own thinking world. Therefore we need to implement a more explorational approach towards our business.

We need to find a new way to build bridges, a new way to look at our world. Therefore we need to throw away our believes, because they influence too much what we are able to see. Everything we see around us is created with our industrial mindset, which doesn’t make this an easy task.

But to experience this there is a nice experiment which in psychological context is called the ‘Stroop effect’. The only thing you need to do is read aloud the colour in which each of the following words is printed. DO NOT READ THE WORDS.

As you will experience this is quite hard to do. It is this hard, because your world is built upon the English or your own language. Now try to do it again but now the words are written in Greek. A language you probably not know and therefore have no beliefs about.

You will see it is easier now! This proofs that what you see is influenced by what you believe and therefore seeing isn’t just believing!

Rob - Future Master of Imagineering

Back to the Future

2009-09-14T01:31:00.000-07:00

From ‘Newton’ to ‘Chaos’. With the new communication tools which are available to us, we can re-shape our world. We only need to be ready and embrace it!

With Imagineering we will focus on the journey towards this new world. We will explore new roads and try to break free from our industrial logic. This way we will find different flowers and plant these seeds. We will also create new lenses and use new insights.

A nice metaphor is the way we have been creating robots. In the last years robots were there to help us making life easier. These robots are electric machines which have some ability to interact with physical objects and are given an electronic script to do a specific task or do a whole range of tasks or actions.

But in this new world a robot needs to show emotions too. They need a little heart. Therefore this new version must have the ability to perceive and absorb data differently. Almost in a way we as humans do.

Bottom line is in order to survive in the future we need to find a way to measure intangibles as love and happiness. This way we can implement these into our processes and will we be able to really add value with our businesses and therefore create a more beautiful world!

Rob - Future Master of Imagineering

BREDA you later

2009-09-11T09:10:00.000-07:00

It is the September 11th, 2009, in Breda. The Imagineering Masterclass of 2009-2010 has ‘checked-in’. This year a nicely mixed group will be given the tools to create beautiful worlds. But to actually transform the world, we first need an inner look towards ourselves.

I think that is what this Mastercourse is all about. Finding your own way to add value to people. Obviously you would say that within one week we can’t do a lot. But Imagine…

• That we can make a difference
• That small things can have a great impact
• That people are more connecting
• That you are able to re-open your eyes
• That random words create wonderful images
• That life is shared in new ways
• That love has many forms
• That there always is light
• Imagine…

An open-minded and positive approach will help us all to shape our journey. Therefore it is nice to see that our class of 2009 -2010 consists of different people with different backgrounds and different histories. This way we can share knowledge and beautiful stories.

Are you ready to check in too??

Rob - Future Master of Imagineering

FAQ

2009-09-01T05:30:00.000-07:00

What is the purpose of this blog?

The "alchemists of co-creation" blog is a platform where the Master in Imagineering students of the NHTV can share their thoughts, opinions and everyday experiences as a student in the Imagineering Academy. Each student chooses their own format and uses their own style to express themselves. Through this online platform, potential students interested in the Master course can gain an insider's perspective into what it's really like.

What does the Imagineering course involve?

To find out more information about imagineering and the Master course, go to http://www.imagineeringacademy.nl/.

Contact Us

2009-09-01T03:36:00.000-07:00

For more information about the Academy of Imagineering, you can go to http://www.imagineeringacademy.nl/.

For comments & suggestions on the blog, you can send an email to the administrator at 071265(at)nhtv.nl.

To see some videos about the Master in Imagineering, see the YouTube Channel of the Academy: www.youtube.com/user/ImagineeringAcademy.

About Us

2009-09-01T03:30:00.000-07:00

The 2009-2010 Master in Imagineering class blogs about their experiences during the course. Every week at university, one of the sixteen students takes on the authorship of the blog and writes about his or her own perceptions & thoughts. Here is a little bit about each of them:

Carlijn Simons
I started off as a Tourism and Leisure student, lived in the US for a year, then came back and started at the Academy for Leisure and did a minor in Imagineering in my final year. A long road with only one goal in mind, searching for MY ultimate destination in life. This Master program gives me the chance to put my mind to the test. The best part of all is analyzing all this information and making it your own. For the first time in my studying career all the information I read and listen to are interesting to me.The interaction with other professionals and students from all over the world, the discussions about the way we look at the world and how we all grow and learn keeps me motivated.

There is a small bestselling book that really struck me, because the title put my vision on life into words. If you do not own the book yet, give it a chance because it is worth it: It's not how GOOD you are, It's how GOOD you want to be. (Paul Arden, 2003)

Jessica Alink

Hi, my name is Jessica Alink, born on the 10th of Januari 1986 and a Media & Entertainment Management graduate. My ambitions are to get married and become a mum, but before that I want to apply my Imagineering knowledge, preferably outside of cold and rainy Holland.

Bram van Boekholt

After graduating in Commercial Economics (Marketing Management) I was doubting what to do. Traveling didn't necessarily give me insights in how to spend the rest of my life (although seeing as much of the world is an ambition), but being part of the organizing committee of the World University Championship Cycling 2008 did. I experienced that organizing a world championship from scratch can not be done only via a standardized process, especially not an event for young people. It involves creating a platform for people to contribute to 'our' (and so 'their') success. And after some more traveling I decided to enroll myself to the Master in Imagineering to make this mindset my own.

Kishore Menon
*********************************************************
I was in search of happiness for a long while,

then I stopped seeking and I found.

for me,

Life is a beautiful story, one gets to co-author
*********************************************************
:-) kishore

Jennifer Dahm
Hallo!:) Ich bin Jenny aus Deutschland., 23 Jahre alt und seit 2006 Studentin in Holland. Well, now I am actually the only German in this course but I still love to go to school! Why? Because of the ambiguity and creativity in this course. My classmates and me share the fact of an open and creative mindset, which makes co-creation a great experience! No matter in which way – be it business or personal, we come along very well! I even made some good friends in a short period of time which is just great. My dream was and still is to be significant to the world. Okay, that is far-fetched. Let me say it like this: I want to make a difference, be it just for one person. I want to facilitate others to create meaning in their very own way in order to share this with others. This is not only valid for persons, but also for companies because they belong to us in this ever-growing network society.

Bobby Verlaan

Who does enjoy life? Who does make meaning for themselves and tries to be meaningful to others? I like to take the human perspective in organizations as a starting point. Too many times I see things go wrong because procedures prescribe us to act as an robot to the other. That's one of the main reasons why I chose to follow the Master in Imagineering. I acknowledge the experience of an organization is the most important holistic way of thinking of the service a company is offering its clients. That's why trying to positively redefine
the service with the organization itself is an exciting and meaningful future job to me.
Lieke van der Zanden

I like the word WOW! Wow when something new happens. Wow, when you meet someone inspiring. Wow, when you reach something you never expected of achieving.

Wow is inspiring, it surprises me, it gives me a certain feeling, that motivates me to search for new Wow experiences.

Wow is different and special for everybody. Creating a Wow is challenging. To me Imagineering has the WOW factor. My new challenge is the Imagineering challenge to create a new WOW….