Data, Innovation, Creativity, Salaries, & Goals

KM: still a long road ahead - KM World
An inordinate amount of time, approximately a quarter of the normal working week, is being spent gathering, collating and massaging data versus analyzing it and acting on it; UK managers spend an average of 11 hours per week; U.S. managers spend an average of 12 hours per week.

Innovation Nation - Forbes
Innovation has become the new currency of global competition as one country after another races toward a new high ground where the capacity for innovation is viewed as a hallmark of national success (Book Excerpt).

Teaching a new generation - CNN
Former Young & Rubicam CEO Peter Georgescu talks about why schools need to incorporate creativity in their curriculum.

Exclusive Salary Survey: Payday - Training Magazine
Despite a see-sawing economy that could make even the most cast-iron stomach queasy, salaries for trainers remain rock-solid at $81,940 in 2007

Learning the abc's of channel management Accelerate
Companies need to focus on achieving three goals: aligning channel strategy with execution; managing operational and supplier/collaborator behavior transformation; and matching the right capabilities to achieve the desired benefit. From the Fall 2007 issue.

Learning Theories, Innovation, eLearning, & Leadership

Your Learning Theory Explored - Elliott Masie
Stanton Wortham, a leading researcher from the Wharton/University of Penn program on Learning Leadership explores learning theories and our occasional contradictions.

Five Common Mistakes in Innovation - Business Week
If you work for Steve Jobs, innovation seems like second nature. If you don't, the only useful lesson seems to be to quit your job and go work for Apple. Rather, search inside yourself for moments of greatness, determine which activities spurred these moments of greatness, and then figure out how to do more of that.

How Long Should an E-learning Course Be? - eLearn Magazine
What is a good length for a module? Through countless hours of instructional design, field testing, and client feedback, I have found that 30 minutes is about the maximum, and less than 15 is too short.

Workplace Coach: Avoid the baby boom gap -- invest in new leaders today
Effective leadership today requires more than technical skills, expertise and solid work ethics. Collaboration (versus the old-school style of authoritative management) is essential for effective management of today's cross-functional operating groups and teams.

As Offshoring Gets Realistic, Can IT Workers Relax? - eWeek
"Globalization is an inevitable thing." While this article is directed at IT workers, it applies to just about all of us.

Behavior, Science, Knowledge, CEO Challenges, & Group Dynamics

Why do you do that? - Seattle PI
The survey found that past behavior wasn't the predictor of future behavior, but rather the commitment to the resolution is what drove change.

Explorers & Crusaders - The Daily Transcript
You can clearly divide scientists into two categories, those who build new models and those who prove old models. Usually the former are seeking the truth, while the latter are trying to confirm their own theories as if the idea was more important than reality.

Three Types of Knowledge Workers - Incredibly Dull There are essentially three types of knowledge workers: Knowledge Generators, Knowledge Consumers, & Knowledge Brokers.

Business Intelligence - Inside Training
CEOs top challenges include excellence of execution and finding talent.

Group Dynamics in Cyberspace - eNotAlone
Given the special psychological features of cyberspace, online groups can be quite different than in-person groups. Text-only communications, equalization of status, and the opportunity for altering or hiding one's identity are all unique monkey wrenches tossed into the online group process. Via TRDEV.

Is there really wisdom in crowds? - Cognitive Daily
A physicist says his students are constantly getting misinformation about physics from Wikipedia. While Wikipedia is fine for basic factual information you might find in a newspaper, when you get to the level of serious academic research, the information quality breaks down.

Online Communication, Learning, Long Tail, & Change

Online communication is not second best - Clive on Learning
We know online communication is practical, in that it allows us to keep in touch with each other at a distance, but we would normally consider it a second best to face-to-face communication

RSS Really Simple Stupid - e4innovation.com

• Conceptual - where I understood the concept of RSS feeds but couldn't/didn't use them,
• Applied - where I could use RSS feeds but it didn' t transform me/change my practice,
• Transformative - where the use of RSS feeds has actually changed the way I do things.

Virtual Slide Rule - ENGCOM
See how calculations used to be done before the days of electronic calculators. Find out about an important piece of engineering history. All pieces of the slide rule are draggable.

Good News, Bad News about Facebook Application Market: Long Tail Rules - O'Reilly
The good news has already been widely disseminated: there are nearly 5000 Facebook applications, and the top applications have tens of millions of installs and millions of active users. The bad news, alas, is in our report: 87% of the usage goes to only 84 applications! If you are interested in Chris Anderson's the Long Tail, be sure to read the comments in the article.

Social Networking Meets Corporate Learning - CLO
Assume you could develop a learning program that attracts millions of learners, holds their attention for hours, impels them to contribute often and come back with their friends.

The Future of the Future Overcoming resistance to change - KM World
Think of the movie, The Karate Kid. Wax on, wax off; wax on, wax off. Complete transformation can only occur when the desired change in behavior becomes habitual, to the point where you no longer have to think about it.

Science, Six Sigma, Behavior, Karl Kapp, & Facebook

The Really Hard Science - Scientific American
Between technical and popular science writing is what I call "integrative science," a process that blends data, theory and narrative. Without all three of these metaphorical legs, the seat on which the enterprise of science rests would collapse.

Most Science Studies Appear to Be Tainted By Sloppy Analysis -The Wall Street Journal
Statistically speaking, science suffers from an excess of significance. Overeager researchers often tinker too much with the statistical variables of their analysis to coax any meaningful insight from their data sets.

The Death of Six Sigma? Overview of the Enterprise Process Performance Improvement Model - Pursing Performance Blog
Just as TQM - Total Quality Management zealots saw the demise of their star in the 1990s, Six Sigma may be loosing some its advocates. It is too bad because both had something of real value to offer.

Human behavior linked to spontaneous brain activity - ars technnica
Spontaneous brain activity is more than simply a physiological artifact; it helps account for some of the variability in human behavior. In that sense, they argue for a greater acceptance of the view that our brain may have some intrinsic activity that's somewhat independent of sensory input.

FIVE QUESTIONS. . . For Karl M. Kapp - eLearn Magazine
Karl M. Kapp, of Bloomsburg University, is well-known for his applied work in the area of learning strategies and technologies. His latest book is titled Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning: Tools and Techniques for Transferring Know-How from Boomers to Gamers.

For U.S. workers, anxious times - CSM
While most economists believe that freer trade has been very positive for the US and world economies, concern about workers left behind has been growing. Even some of the strongest proponents of free trade are calling for more programs to help workers adjust to the pressure of a global job market - if only to prevent a protectionist backlash that might hurt the economy.

The Fakebook Generation - The New York Times
Facebook purports to be a place for human connectivity, but it's made us more wary of real human confrontation. When I was in college, people always warned against the dangers of "Facebook stalking" at a library computer - the person whose profile you're perusing might be right behind you. Dwelling online is a cowardly and utterly enjoyable alternative to real interaction.