I Recently had the pleasure of visiting the Kaos Pilots in Aarhus Denmark. The school focuses on developing change-agents and action oriented revolutionaries through pedagogic models like appreciated inquiry, action learning, and systems thinking. The school uniquely combines elements of business, design, and the humanities into a challenging and truly world-class educational experience that harnesses the positive energy, aspirations, and attitudes of its students, faculty staff, and guests in all the right ways. This place embodies a serious-play model for real.

Before my talk began, the group met for Monday morning coffee on the school’s terrace. It became very apparent how close the KP’s are to one another; how well they know each other – and the how these relationships add an invaluable layer to the overall educational experience. I believe a 3 month long project based “out-post” in Shanghai was largely to thank for this. (This year’s class is traveling to Bogota Columbia). I heard many great stories about this and other “out-post” experiences during my time there. Placing students in a foreign place and challenging them to live, work on, and deliver client projects all on there own is an integral component to the KP experience and the school’s legacy.

So why was I there in the first place? Oh ya, lucky for me, I was invited by my good friend Pete Sims to share some of my own personal and project based experiences from within the design research / foresight context, and to introduce a situational awareness and sense making tool we call the Table of Context with one of the KP teams. This tool / cognitive aid helps to plan and establish the scope of front-end research, organize findings for group learning and socialization, catalyze imaginative inquiry, and facilitate co-creative dialogues. We’ve used Tables of Context both internally and externally (i.e. with clients) on several occasions to map out existing and emerging opportunity spaces, communicate research findings, and to inspire critical dialogues based on the potential and meaning of signals and the contexts they create and or occupy.

I thought this was particularly relevant to a Kaos Pilots’ learning because being placed at the ambiguous front-end of an innovation project -or stuck in the middle of chaos- without a previously defined starting point, clear plan of inquiry, or “map” of the landscape / context is now commonplace and can be a frustrating, scary, and even overwhelming experience- for students, designers, and corporate executives alike. That said, the table of context is meant to help reduce some of this ambiguity and chaos, and focus one’s attention on building up an accessible knowledge base (as a tangible, visual and or interactive resource) that can be expanded upon and leveraged over time to help innovation teams develop a better informed awareness or literacy about a given subject, context, problem or opportunity space.

Ultimately my goal was to highlight how foresight and design research practices and some of the tools/methods employed, especially at the “fuzzy-front-end” of innovation. I also wanted to point out that this type of work requires a personal commitment to the development, practice, and maintenance of an an always-on curiosity and appetite for collecting, questioning, sorting through and sharing the salient and not so salient bits that one comes upon throughout their day. Even when you’re not at work – and especially when you’re not at the office.

Please stay tuned! There’s more on the KP + Denmark experience to follow.

While the ticket prices are predicted to go lower than their current price tag of $200K, it is foreseen that the general public will soon have the opportunity enjoy the experience of weightlessness. Getting the public engaged and updated on the progresses however, is certainly one challenge that needs to be addressed now. The role of education in doing so is extremely important in order to prepare the next generation for the future’s new travel destinations. If people and the private sector are going to play key roles in the future of the private space travel, it is crucial for them to be well informed about the hurdles and the benefits of the space travel. This will in turn lead to better engagement by a larger population and will culture a new generation of entrepreneurs and innovators who understand the challenges and complexities of living and working in this new environment. 

Credit: Virgin Galactic

I recently attended the Next generation of Suborbital Researchers Conference in Boulder, Colorado and I’d like to share some observations that I found very interesting. Firstly, the involvement of the female researchers in this conference, was notably higher than any other professional conference I had been to in the field of space studies. It appears that there is going to be a shift in the male dominated field of Aerospace.

There was also a tremendous amount of attention and time centered around education and the future of suborbital flights. Teachers, professors, and government workers seem to all agree that the K-12 and university institutions need to be more involved in the future of suborbital research and it is the space sector’s role to be more open with their present material, future plans, as well as be willing to get involved in all layers and stages of the education.

T use of social networking sites to publish and engage people was one of the great ideas that was discussed in the conference. The initiative to involve the public by use of social media was brought to out attention by the Planetary Institute- an organization that runs different projects to involve public in their missions. 

An example of this is the mars express visual monitoring camera. European Space Agency’s operation center began a blog in August 2008 to invite the public to process the images received by the camera. They asked the public to take the raw images and process them further. What was important in this initiative though, was the trust created between the space institutions and the general public. It was the first time that data was provided to public as well as the first time public involvement was used in the creation of the final work. Within a few hours someone responded to the post and sent this image back:

This view of Venus is processed by an amateur, Mattias Malmer from 78 Mariner 10 frames captured through orange and ultraviolet filters.

On October 2008 Richaerd Garriet, the game designer and entrepreneur took his first flight with the Space Adventure to the ISS for his 12-day travel in space. Since the flight, Garriet has been giving talks and lectures in number of conferences and has shared his journey to researchers and people in industry. One great innovation by him is the Sports in Space website where people can play different sports on different planets. The interactive design of the game is a great tool to teach people how certain actions vary under different gravitational conditions. 

http://www.challenger.org/sportsinspace/

Whether you dream about playing football in space or simply gaze at the blue planet from the window of the spaceship, the sky is the limit. So, buckle your seatbelt, we’re on the root to an exciting time in the history of flight.

References:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/08/virgin-galactic/

http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/imaging/data.html

http://www.challenger.org/sportsinspace/

Take this quote for example:

… I spent a quarter-century as a professor at the Harvard Business School, including 15 years teaching in the MBA program. I have come to believe that much of what my colleagues and I taught has caused real suffering, suppressed wealth creation, destabilized the world economy, and accelerated the demise of the 20th century capitalism in which the U.S. played the leading role.

I’ve been a harsh critic of business education every since I went through the experience – largely because I always felt that my tier-1 Canadian business school decided what directions of business were of value or not. Having directed my education towards digital business as opposed to the administratively “approved” curriculums of traditional consulting, finance, or accounting, I always felt like my education was viewed as an afterthought.

I don’t expect the curriculums of business schools to change any time soon, but it’s nice to know that the tension I always felt as a student is represented by some professors as well.

A quick, but powerful read. Check it out.