RT @BernieSpofforth: BRUSSELS - Farmers have paralysed the city as thousands of tractors protest about new EU agricultural targets and the… 2 weeks ago
Knowning your 5 key strengths will give you the focus for your career and life all together. This semester you have this special opportunity as a current CREATIVITY ENGINEERING class participant, as well as an ALUMNI:
Professional Leadership Package – exclusively for Creativity Engineering Community
It includes the Gallup Strength Finder Assessment itself + 2 sessions with Martin, a Leadership Development Expert of a kind I was so lucky to get to meet.
Looking forward to hearing from you and your experiences in and after your CE class.
Send me an email or find me on Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin
Inspirational regards
Jutta
Digital Economy Strategist and Partnership Architect
19 New Ideas entering into the creative production channel
Happy to welcome all participants who pitched their ideas and founded 27 teams around creative projects and ideas they were carrying in their hearts and minds.
The team casting was a swift, inspirational and fun!
G01 Urban Gardening
G02 Solar Power
G03 Soccer Club Management
G04 Low Cost Incubator – NEST
G05 3-D Printing
G06 City Scooter
G07 Hospital at home
G08 Zero Waste Cafe
G09 Personal Budget App
G10 Uni Gym for students
G11 Healthy McDonald
G12 Key Band
G13 Virtual Match
G14 Smart Traffic lights
G15 Intelligent Air Conditioner
G16 Ruben`s Pipe
G17 Cook Bag
G18 Urban Levy
G19 Low tech Fabrication lab
This photo is dedicated to Group 14 which is investigating Life on Mars – Let us know if you want to join this experiment!
Happy to welcome all participants who pitched their ideas and founded 27 teams around creative projects and ideas they were carrying in their hearts and minds.
This year we had the record of groupsand participants at the start and also at the end – this means that only 4 groups of out 27 did not reach the goal.
What is exceptional is that several groups contacted me with the news that they will actually pursue their project as a business venture and could already connect with potential partners for the implementations. Other reported that their projects are used for their thesis or that the Creativity Engineering work lead to a internship in a company.
The e-heels Project – the use of piezoelectric materials inside an insole to produce energy
Great to hear these news!
Even more interesting is when alumni stay in touch after their Creativity Engineering course and let us know about the ventures they started based on the seed that was planted at the Vienna University of Technology.
Sometimes there is a long incubation period but the virus did find a host … 🙂 – here is one case to share with you:
I want to congratulate Johana who was at the Creativity Engineering Summer School I was teaching in Vienna in 2012. I am very happy to see that Creativity Engineering was part of the road to lead her to become the Cofounder and Director of C-INNOVA.
An Austrian Startup that believes in empowering teams across the world to execute new tech-based business ideas with success. Their Innovation Platform guides you through a state-of-the-art process to grow your ideas to investment readiness.
This year’s CREATIVITY ENGINEERING class has the privilege to use their tool along the process of growing their ideas.
The CE class this WS2015/1016 is the largest ever since its starts 8 years ago. This lead to 27 teams that formed on the start of the semester.
G01 Smart Home
G02 BioFuel
G03 AccoMobile
G04 Mobile CRM for Therapists
G06 Education Games
G07 Research Finder
G09 Ski Boots
G10 ReTroCycling
G11 CommunicAPE
G13 Automated Hail Protector
G15 Independent Tire Sensors
G17 Keep it GREEN
G18 Reliable Delivery
G19 Retro Market
G21 Parking Lots
G23 EcoCrowd
G24 ABC
G25 Sorting BIN
G27 Hexagon
When you search the net you very quickly find the statement “90% of startups fail”. An indicator for the importance of the topic. Many studies have looked into this question.
It is really worth listening to 6:40 MinutesTED2015 Talk from Bill Gross sharing the results of his research with data from hundreds of companies to answer the question:
What is the single biggest reason for a startup to succeed or not?
I do not want to reveal the answer here. Listen to Bill! It will stick in your mind and you will remember next time when you are in the situation to decide if you invest time and energy into an idea / startup or development.
Here are the factors he considered:
> Ideas > Teams > Business model > Funding > Timing
Guess before you listen to the video …
My guess was < team >.
What is your guess?
I completely share the believe with Bill that a startup organization is one of the greatest forms to make the world a better place.
WS 2014/15: Great student participation, great atmosphere, great results … energy felt.
Several projects with a product prototype or even on the market already as a result of previous lecture. Impact of the class is growing. Recommendations from previous classes echos.
I liked this one:
Woo Hoo – We give teachers more time to teach
-> a software used by 16 paying schools and more than 10.000 users.
Student Feedback
“Teams are able to create a higher quality outcome than you could do alone as everyone can submit something and you can support eachother. I hope that I can contribute to the group by keeping track of our work and analyzingthe process.”
Anna-Sophie
“Not only did we create a (more or less plausible) business plan, but also had the chance to present our idea and receive constructive feedback. Furthermore we learned more about our strengths and weaknesses, and how to use and cope with them. “
Alexei
The Creativity Engineering Course at the Vienna University of Technology is on again. After the traditional TEAM FINDING phase that takes place online and offline, teams have taken their seats.
This is the 8th year. Registrations keep on raising: this time we reached the mark of 250 which lead us to the highest number of projects and students in the course ever.
I am looking forward to working with the teams. It will be a challenge with such a large number of projects and students. A challenge that I am willing to take, asking for support and help from people interested in helping ideas to grow.
Interesting and diverse projects, this year almost all of them are based on IT or IT related technologies. We had an entertaining TEAM CASTING event with great discussion of the ideas and a rating from the entire class for each idea.
Discussed feedback from our session:
It would be great to have more input from students studying social sciences to complement the teams.
Therefore we are looking for
Students who want to join in and lend the teams a hand or ear
Educators who want to join in to discuss a collaborative approach for the next session
Here is a selection of the projects
:: Walking in the past :: Coffee personality check :: Awake Alarm
I regularily read Dan Ariely`s Blog, I particpated in his MOOC and can only recommend everyone to do so. Why? It really helps you to understand human irrationality and why we repeatedly and predictably make the wrong decisions in many aspects of our lives.
This part of his latest blog articles about the Apple Pay question he answered is particularly interesting for the entire industry of technology and innovation. We need to think about designing technology in a way that helps us make better decisions.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Dear Dan,
Apple recently announced Apple Pay, which will allow iPhone and Apple Watch users to simply wave their gadgets to pay for purchases. How might this technology change our spending habits? Could Apple Pay and other such hassle-free payment mechanisms (such as Amazon’s “1-click ordering”) lead us to spend more—particularly on stuff we don’t need?
—Nikki
The essence of payment is opportunity cost. Every time we face a purchasing decision, we should ask ourselves if getting this one thing is worth giving up the ability to purchase something else, now or in the future.
Different ways of paying make us think differently about those opportunity costs. For example, if we have $20 in cash in our pockets, we will have a hard time not thinking about opportunity cost. If we consider buying a sandwich, we realize that we won’t have money for coffee; if we get a cab, we realize that we won’t have money for dinner. But when we use a credit card or gift certificate, our thinking about opportunity cost will be less natural and prevalent—which means we’re likely to spend more without fully thinking about the consequences.
This is why the general answer to your questions is both yes and no. As you suggest, electronic payment mechanisms can easily lead us to think less about opportunity cost and spend more recklessly. But this doesn’t have to be the case. Electronic payment could be designed in ways that get us to more fully understand our opportunity costs and make more reasonable decisions. Apple Pay and the like could be game-changers, helping us think about our spending much more rigorously than we ever could with cash.
So the questions are: Who is designing these electronic wallets, and for what purpose? Will they be designed to get us to spend more money—or to help us make better decisions? Right now, electronic payments seem to be going down the path of less thinking and more spending—but I hope that at some point, some of the payment companies will change their approach, adopt the perspective of their users and offer electronic payment methods that help us make better financial decisions.
October 1st is the day when the Creativity Engineering class starts every year. This one is the 8th time. The registrations for the class have been growing since the first time the class was offered. This year we received almost 250. Thank you for your overwhelming interest.
Students interested come from various backgrounds and study focuses with national backgrounds from all over the European Union and a few from beyond.
The first phase is the IDEA and TEAM FINDING phase where people present ideas they would like to develop and find team members who want to join them on this path. This year we are running a pilot to check out if the use of the MakerSquare platform is useful for us.
Why do I decide to do this? I wanted to see how the this statement “By bringing together teams of passionate, curious, like-minded people and enabling crowd-sourcing of under-utilized resources, we aim to create new paths towards innovation, discovery, and entrepreneurship.” taken from the MakerSquare “What we do” page does really apply to reality.
The best is that feedback from all participants will be fed back to the MakerSquare developers team.
Excited to see how this will work out. A new adventure and twist to our pathway!
I am happy to have had Martin Asmus on my side to support such a large group of participants every year. Thank you very much, Martin.
This year I found another supporter, Carina Müller, who will be supporting the pilot with me.
All the best for the course, have fun in what you do!
Interesting projects also this year – Creativity Engineering Summer University in Vienna
Using Cisco collaboration technology connecting from Austria, Germany, Spain and Switzerland. For some it is the first time to experience the technology and power to keep connected and work together where ever we are.
Four interesting project implementations, four good teams, four ideas … what is your idea to improve life and who are your partners to grow the idea to be used by many?
Since we are a team of three experts who will be leading you through the idea development process from different viewpoints, ther will be several rounds of introduction and presentations of yourself and your ideas.
Exchange of thought with a Creativity Engineering Summer School participant at the Vienna University of Technology
Participant from China:
I think it’s something about personal style. Everyone has different talking and thinking style. There is nothing wrong, but you may be uncomfortable when you feel that someone says almost everything against you.
But at last we reached the common point by fully communication.
I just don’t like that, when I raise a creative idea, someone always put the black hat and try to deny it. If I can choose, I would like to work with someone who is more positive and optimistic.
Course coach:
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
I can fully understand what you mean.
I also prefer to work with positive people rather than people who are negative and try to stop everything new from happening.
I have similar experiences in some of my projects as you.
Then I received the recommendation to see negative comments as a constructive input improving my idea.
Usually negative comments are not negative comment against you as a person.
To understand this it is always recommended to look at the cultural setting a discussion happens in:
In Western culture a discussion is focused on the idea and not the person. They comment on your idea. Actually it is quite good if an idea is commented a lot, in a positive or negative way. It means that it created thought in other people.
If this is different in your own culture, it would be worth trying to convince yourself that a negative comment for an idea you raised is not about you but only about the idea. Then you don’t feel hurt and you can argue easily for your idea and proof that the comment raised is not applicable or taken into account.
I hope that my explanation was understandable and meaningful to you. Let me know if you have questions or more thoughts about this.
Thanks again – it is nice to share experiences and thoughts.
Email Conversation from the Creativity Engineering Course at the Vienna University of Technology during the idea and team finding phase
Emma
Dear Jutta,
I have an idea. I actually have two ideas.
After I broke my knee and my doctor said, it will be a long time to heal… I imagined that there is a possibility, that it can never happen. At that moment I realized, that I wanted to do many things, but just postponed them like running a marathon, jumps with turns (I am an ice skater), etc… . I started thinking about “our” goals, which are mostly unrealized.I would like to design a concept of a social network.The main idea of the network would be a list of goals … (student continues to describe the idea in much detail) …. BUT there are two problems:1) I am not a leader, I am not able to get people interested.
I can speak perfectly 3 languages, but English is not my strong side.
2) I don’t have time for the implementation.
I saw a nice sentence once. I cannot find it now. I don’t know from whom it was. … The sentence was: “We think we will do everything in the future that may not come to pass. We have to do things as long as we have opportunities”.
Thank you for your attention,
Emma
Jutta
Dear Emma,
thanks for sharing your ideas.
I have to tell you that there is research that says the real leaders are people who say that they are not leaders :-)I think you should share your idea and see if others want to join in.
A semester is much to short for implementing something like this but it is long enough to start thinking about it and maybe shape it into something that will become implementable later.
Last semester I was lucky to have met such a group. They are now in the process of writing a business plan and starting as a company to implement their idea.
Things become possible – there just needs to be a start at some point.
The best point for starting is always now. As you have said it so clearly yourself.
I do know how hard this is. Especially when there are always so many other things that have to be accomplished and done at the same time.
See you tomorrow,
best regards
Jutta
Emma
Dear Jutta,
Thank You very much!I will share my idea right now! 🙂
If you rephrase the question or task at hand, depending on how you define this for yourself, it can be reworded to looking for a desk, a shared office or in new terms a co-working space.
As an EPU in Austria – EPU stands for Ein Personen Unternehmen which is a OPC One-Person-Company – finding a place to work in an office setting rather than in a coffee house or at home.
It is not only a step ahead if you do not work in your pajamas any more, but brings a manifold set of advantages:
lower costs than your own office
other goal-oriented people to talk to
a community of people who are potentially a network
motivation, entrepreneurial spirit and drive … which could very well be the most important factor of all
Community creates momentum
This movement was born in Vienna more than ten years ago, when universities started to build their entrepreneurial centers. It is great to see that the spark is spreading big time now. Check out the VIDEO Startup City of Vienna
It starts out with you wanting to learn something which may seem like a long way to go and a huge task. Depending on what you have in mind, it may really take quite a long time.
After you are done, finished the exam, start practicing and using the knowledge in your daily life and work, it seems effortless to you since you know what you are doing.
The knowledge became part of you and seemingly disappeared. You do not notice any more that you have the abilities you have. This can become an obstacle when you need to “sell” yourself, your expertise and knowledge, for example when job searching, or trying to move up in a company.
Then the ability of being able to look at yourself from a little distance would come in handy. Self reflection is a skill by itself, needs some practice and at best, support from another person.
When we think one step ahead: how about if we would like to help others gain knowledge, teach and mentor people to learn.
Why? I think the reasons lies in the fact that the learning path of everyone is different as we are all unique individuals and go different ways to reach our goals.
A good teacher leads the way for you to find your own learning path.
The new semester is here and Creativity Engineering started into its TEAM FINDING PHASE traditionally on its online forums. This year we also offered a Saturday TEAM MEETING SPACE event – live and old fashioned but much easier to talk to each other, groups were born and ideas connected to people or vice versa.
Here an overview about these year’s groups
Urban Renewal :: Be safe :: Volunteer Path :: 3D Experience :: Drainergy :: Collaboration :: Incognito :: Cradle to Cradle :: Casino Strategy
Group Finding Tool :: Future Transportation :: Dream Furniture
There are still open seats in teams for people who could not decided yet, which idea motivates and excites them most. Please go out there and connect to people and ideas.
WANTED
URBAN RENEWAL MAP looking for someone with
a background in MARKETING or INFORMATICS
More teams in the process of formation:
House Energy card, Interchangability Format, iCount, Go Gnceu, Goal Barter, Electrical Steam Generator, Temporary Summer Camp, Augmented Reality App, Ice Cream Glove
Time and energy are the main currencies you “spend” to create and deliver value to Customers. You may also receive benefits in these currencies: If your work energizes you, or leaves you plenty of free time for yourself, you’ve been paid in an extra-monetary form.
But there’s a third, hidden currency you should account for in your personal business model. As with the other currencies, it can be either a cost (What You Give) or a benefit (What You Get).
This hidden currency, though—unlike time—is hard to quantify. And unlike energy, sensing its day-to-day ebb and flow is tough.
Yet this precious third currency is very real. People who give too much of it to their work (or fail to receive enough in return) often quit their jobs in frustration—or start their own businesses
What is it?
Flexibility.
Flexibility is what you “pay” when you take a corporate job, for example. When you take a new position, you’re typically committing to a 50-week year where you’re required to be at a specific location the better part of each day. Most commonly, you immediately lose the flexibility to choose when and where you’ll work. You may even lose the flexibility to determine what you’ll work on and how.
One way to avoid spending all your flexibility currency is to become self-employed. Business Model You featured Jet Barendregt (page 73), who started her own personal assistant business after her employer decided to move to a new location that would have doubled her commute—and further reduced already sub-par flexibility. The move gave Jet extraordinary flexibility (and tripled her earnings).
All this is not to say that self-employment or entrepreneurship is the only way to gain more flexibility. Savvy employers recognize that greater flexibility is a potent benefit within the “What You Get” building block.
So if you feel you’re either overpaying or are underpaid in flexibility, try negotiating. But whatever you do, start accounting for this crucial third currency within your personal business model.
While I was teaching Advanced German language courses at universities in Nagoya, Japan, I observed that it was difficult for students to understand how to explain the sequence of events in a story in German. Through in debt discussions and questioning how the same information would be composed into sentences in their mother tongue Japanese I discovered that it was not possible to convey the exact same information as in the German sentences.
The difference was that in German sentences it is explicit what happen first, simultaneously and after and how a decision was made or a conclusion about a situation was inferred. In Japanese this was not so clear.
The consequence of this for my teaching was that I made it a point to explain this in debt to students for them to understand:
1. that there are different concepts of thinking delivered with a language and
2. that they need to allow different thinking processes to happen in their mind for mastering this particular language.
This led me to think about how I could visualize this language border even for beginners in learning German language. A first attempt was the creation of a simple small app-like presentation that decoded this language borderline.
Example Language border German Japanese
Interestingly Keith Chen, Associate Professor of Economics at Yale School of Management, is also researching impacts of language on behavior. He hypothesizes that languages that grammatically associate the future and the present, foster future-oriented behavior.
Why I am so interested in this?
Different understanding about how decisions are made and how a person really understands his or her commitment to deliver what he or she is assigned to contribute in a team project ultimately has great impact on group performance.
This is what I observe in my Creativity Engineering class at the Technical University: team members come from different language back grounds. They use English as a common language. Most of the team problems relate to team members not delivering what they signed up for in time or at all, causing a decrease in group performance. Some groups even fall apart and do not finish the course, in some cases caused by one group member.
This year’s Creativity Engineering Class was able to inaugurate the team feedback tool to allow us to learn about perceptions of communication, teamwork and situation awareness among team members. I would like to share a few comments received:
Topic: Value of working in teams
“Together we are faster and stronger, with more ideas and solutions! ”
“If you work alone on a project there is often a lack on feedback, as you only see the good points of your idea. Therefore, it was really awesome to have some critical people within the group.”
“Having people from different academic background improves the idea generation process a lot.
Topic: What did I learn in the course
“I learned how different the roles of every group member can become after a while, even if you try to fix and discuss them right at the beginning.”
“I looked at our ideas from viewpoints different than the usual ways.”
“I learned working in a group and listen to other people.”
“We all learned to come to a compromise.”
Topic: Personal Achievements
“Learned about some tools used in business analysis and planning.”
“I am happy about my performance because I managed to do stuff I had never done before.”
“The strongest arguments win, so if you want something you have to argue very well. You would never learn this alone, because then you will make your own decisions.”
“I learned that as the only woman in a group, the way you have to state your case is differently. Because it can easily happen that you are not heard.”
One example of a situation during group work
“One weakness of our project was that we are dependent on suppliers. I explained this, two others agreed and I updated my point with some comments. But there was another understanding of this point from one more team member. He explained it and it was amazing. Because his understanding was completely different. I could not say that it was wrong. It has been interpreted in a totally different context and perception. And at that moment I realized that I brainstorm with participants from other countries is more efficient. Each of us knows something that is not available to another due to cultural differences. But when this knowledge is together, it creates a superposition principle like in physics.”
Dear Creative Engineers!
G01 Communication Net
G21 Life Detector
The Creativity Engineering Course at the Vienna University of Technology is on again. After the traditional TEAM FINDING phase that takes place online and offline, teams have taken their seats.
Dear Dan,
Exchange of thought with a Creativity Engineering Summer School participant at the Vienna University of Technology
Looking for an office is not what it used to be.
While I was teaching Advanced German language courses at universities in Nagoya, Japan, I observed that it was 
This year’s Creativity Engineering Class was able to inaugurate the team feedback tool to allow us to learn about perceptions of communication, teamwork and situation awareness among team members. I would like to share a few comments received:
KulturImPuls 