The Scrapbook
To produce new concepts we need to imagine them first. Like an artist seeking inspiration before making a masterpiece, some wandering around helps us bring a concept to reality. During these flaring stages of ideation, no idea can escape the remix. Imagination does not belong to any individual or community. We draw inspiration and traits from others so we are able to inspire and share our own traits in a give and take exercise. From Seneca and Marcus Aurelius to Leonardo da Vinci, thinkers, strategists and artists have kept scrapbooks filled with private information items of every kind. These notebooks include quotes and materials from others and are also known as Commonplace Books or Commonplaces.
Good ideas can’t be forced into existence. However, we can give ourselves the space, time and resources to feel at ease and become more creative. Encouraging curiosity for people to look around, ask questions and listen and learn from others can propel learning. The Knowledge Cafe concept, coined by David Gurteen, is a simple and conversational event that almost anyone can put in practice. At its purest form, it brings people together on a mutual topic of interest with a high level purpose but no specific planned outcomes. Some of the purposes can be learning from each other, building relationships, uncovering problems or searching for opportunities.
Knowledge sharing can start within the walls of our comfort and proximity or expand beyond our regular networks. Open innovation was popularized by Henry Chesbrough in his book Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology. Opening up to people breaks silos we sometimes create with our own biases and processes. Information we have discarded as not useful in our context can become a powerful resource and applied in a different context by someone else.We all run our “Knowledge Cafes”, formally or informally with peers and friends in different settings. Many of us capture our thoughts and the ones from others and try to make sense of them.
Technology has exponentially increased our access to information. It’s becoming harder to keep all the inputs we receive organized. It takes some analysing and sorting to differentiate between what’s interesting, what’s valuable and what’s actionable. Nonaka and Takeuchi introduced the SECI model (Nonaka & Takeuchi 1996) which has become the cornerstone of knowledge creation and transfer theory. The model contains four phases of knowledge conversion: socialization, externalization, combination and internalization.
The same way Technology has created a challenge for us to process information, it has evolved AI and Advanced Search to facilitate tagging, sorting and finding. Capturing our learnings as knowledge assets that can be grouped, shared and found allows communities and organizations to find valuable knowledge quicker.
What was the last thought you kept in your personal notes that might be of interest to others? What methods do you use to organize and share your learnings?