Sensemaking sparks creativity
The recognition and understanding of the need was the primary condition of the creative act. When people feel they had to express themselves for originality for its own sake, that tends not to be creativity. Only when you get into the problem and the problem becomes clear, can creativity take over. ~ Charles Eames This […]
A Synthesis of Sensemaking, from a social design perspective
Vanderlinden and colleagues, (Vanderlinden et al., 2020) – a globally distributed team of climate scientists – link sensemaking’s capacity to clarify ambiguities for communities facing socio-environmental changes to fostering their agency for adaptation, and consider this transdisciplinary and knowledge-based activity to be a place-based and community-centric exercise. In light of this, and before I proceed […]
Contextualizing design of remote interventions for local food systems resilience strategies in literature
I began my academic explorations on this blog a couple of months ago with a post on the power of sensemaking to transform the context and frame of reference, and thus provide a means for empowering one to make decisions for a decidedly unknown near future, where increased uncertainty and volatility have become the norm. […]
Situating sensemaking in the process of innovation
“the bottom-line goal of Sense-Making from its inception has been to find out what users – audiences, customers, patrons, employees – ‘really’ think, feel, want, dream” (Dervin, 1998) Morente & Ferràs (2018) paper, based on the practical and theoretical contributions of Brenda Dervin’s Sense-Making Theory (2015), provided me with this quoted reference that set me […]
Strategy Tools for Value Creation by Including Informal Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
There is a lot to unpack in the title of this post and not all of it might happen here today. Consider this the amuse bouche of my current thinking and writing, with the unexpected side effect of releasing the first faint sounds of music that’s been long hidden in my keyboard. The phrasing of […]
Sensemaking in extreme conditions for enhancing resilience: Literature Review
Here, I want to explore themes of resilience and sensemaking together in extreme conditions. For now, I have considered the systemic shock of the global pandemic as an increase in volatility, complexity, and uncertainty of operating conditions, from the perspective of the informal urban food system in Nairobi, Kenya. Therefore I have deliberately excluded literature […]
Book Review: The graphic novel as a format for visual sensemaking and the change poets of ‘Unrig’
My local library – part of the Helsinki City system – had this book on display yesterday among the handful of English language books accessible for browsing within the current constraints of the pandemic. I devoured it in one sitting. As I wrote in a private paid-for social media platform where I’m part of the […]
Finding the magic of word song in the literature of change agents: Weick’s change poets
The minute I set off on a path to unknown discovery, I came across Weick’s reflections on change poetry. Given that I picked up my metaphorical pen to write again after a decade or more of constricted silence after being inspired by the magic of word song – the runot of Finland’s Kalevala. Simplistically put, […]
Disrupting the Default: Must it fall under “development” if the geography is Africa?
Where does it say that if the geography of the study or innovation or project is in Africa then it must be ‘development’? Is it Tuesday, that it must be Belgium? Will the ‘tyranny of dominant logic’ continue to hold us in thrall regardless of all the massive changes overtaking our world today; including the […]
Design of Visual Sensemaking Tools for Informal Economy: Literature Review
Since I have long been exposed to the concept of sensemaking from the perspective of the synthesis phase of human centered design research, and design/innovation planning & concept development, I hadn’t thought to review the literature last year when building customized sensemaking tools for market women and vegetable vendors sourcing and supplying fresh vegetables in […]
