Designed to matter: Social design of the participatory approach to enhance innovation capacity
Chew et al. 2015 introduce their blending of the psychological concept of ‘mattering’ with the theoretical aspects of agency and empowerment, in their paper looking at ICT4D and women micro-entrepreneurs in India. Mattering is an empirically verified and validated concept from the field of social psychology 1. It is defined as the perception that people […]
Applying the Systems Test to the Regional Informal Economic System
If the informal economic system, as seen in east Africa, is a system, and there are social practices at both the rural end of the interconnections and flows that comprise the functioning of the system, then taking a systems approach to food security would facilitate not only the increase in stocks i.e. the yield of […]
Regular programming to resume
The semester ends next week. I want to go back to regular blogging which I’d begun in earnest back in March 2021. I am very pleased with my courses. We made that vacuum cleaner nozzle as part of an intensive doctoral level programme on 3D printing and circular economy concepts. Our partner for the project […]
Coursework update
Since late September, classes began for this semester in full earnest. After a year of disruption on my part, I finally got the chance to take a full load of courses which have kept me engaged, taught me something new, and exercised skills I haven’t used since studying for my O Levels in 1982. I’ve […]
Revisiting Design Thinking: Pondering the process and principles
I have not written on design thinking in more than a decade. The era when I’d be cited in Fast Company or Rita Sue Siegel’s handbook on Industrial Design careers is long gone. Which one of these definitions should I use going forward? “Design thinking in business takes this problem solving aspect one step further […]
Framing Transdisciplinarity from the Perspective of Human Centered Design
In a previous post, I had introduced the concept of transdisciplinarity as a means to conceptualize the space I inhabit with my research and work through the use of Czarniawska’s joy at the discovery of anthropology and its methods for understanding humans in the context of organizational studies (Czarniawska, 2008). Today, I would like to […]
This is my song
It is too early to say whether the journey I began in March to look for my word song and the magic I’d thought I’d found when I read the Kalevala has categorically been a success. I am not yet settled into the word song I’ve been hearing in my mind’s eye. I had already […]
Disrupting oneself
Disrupting oneself deliberately can often be the hardest thing to do. One takes a cold, hard look at where one is at and says, this needs to change. It takes courage. And, a willingness to let go of comfortable routines and established achievements. When you are at the top of your game, it can be […]
On Reflection
The new semester’s classes start tomorrow. My first reading assignment has already landed metaphorically on my desk. The two articles to be read are on reflection, reflective writing, and what does this mean in practice. I was intimidated by them – did I know how to reflect in writing? would I be able to grasp […]
A change of perspective and a whole new set of metaphors (Czarniawska, 2008)
“…each excursion into another field of knowledge brings with it things that were embedded in a different type of soil, and it is inevitable that particles of that soil are still clinging to the roots, practically invisible to the new owner. Additionally, a re-embedding into the new soil could produce deviations and hybrids that are […]
