Einfach-Schnell-Klar » Global Local

Learn from the Positive Deviants and Design Thinkers

Felix — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:13:56 +0000

“Best Practices” are often “Past Practices”. Moreover, they are also typically difficult to re-use due to the different context in which they have been created.

Thanks to David Gurteen’s newsletter I’ve come across the “Positive Deviance” method which is in use especially in development projects. This approach focusses on those people in a community who as individuals or as a group achieve a better outcome even if they face similar challenges and use the same resources. The book review by Kevin Bishop of Anecdote clearly shows the paradigm shift in consulting which the usage of this approach leads to: rely on local expertise.

The very strong article of the Stanford Social Innovation Review establishes the bridge between Positive Deviance and Design Thinking. Design Thinking addresses the needs of the people who will consume a service or a service. Design Thinking – and this is like closing the loop for me – is also taught by the Hasso-Plattner-Institute (HPI) in Potsdam. No wonder that the HPI will be part of the next Vision Summit in Berlin (April 2011). I’m looking forward to participating in this event.

They would never hurt a fly

Felix — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:49:38 +0000

More than 8.000 citizens of Srebrenica were killed 15 years ago. I’ve read the book “They Would Never Hurt a Fly” by the Croation author Slavenka Drakulic during my vacations in Croatia. Drakulic offers the portrait of nine war criminals of the Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian civil war on trial in The Hague. The thirteenths chapter “Why We Need Monsters” is the most important one (excerpt):

“… The more you know them, the more you wonder how they could have commited such crimes – these waiters and taxi drivers, teachers and peasants in front of you. And the more you realise that war criminals might be ordinary people, the more afraid you become. Of course, this is because the consequences are more serious than if they were monsters. If ordinary people commited war crimes, it means that any of us could commit them. Now you understand why it is so easy and comfortable to accept that war criminals are monsters, rather than to agree with Erwin Staub that ‘evils that arises out of ordinary thinking and is commited by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception’…”

Sustainability Why Not?

Felix — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:03:31 +0000

Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker for the first time in 2008, offers a new collaborative website on “sustainability” innovation. The site combines appealing visualization, marketing for its own innovations, and last but not least a contest to elicit even more ideas for safety, water, land, air, community, and energy topics. Well done, however, the site is just collecting the ideas with only limited interaction opportunities. It goes along with the current US marketing campaign. A background on the campaign is given e.g. in this blog post.
Thanks to Jens Hoffmann for pointing me to the “Lean Thinking” group at Xing where I came across the link in a recent post.

SAP’s approach to sustainability

Felix — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:38:12 +0000

Disclaimer: I’m an SAP employee.
Eventually, the two main topics of my professional career get together with SAP’s approach to sustainability. On the one hand the environmental management topics familiar since the study of environmental sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, on the other hand SAP as an employer of choice who encourages personal development, gives a tremendous amount of degrees of freedom to his employees, and offers a flexible workplace. This was about the “What”-dimension of sustainability which seems to be shared by most of the voters on the current SAP Vote on Sustainability (see also the vote results).
Moreover from a knowledge manager’s point of view, I’m glad that SAP encourages the 2.0-kind of interactions with its stakeholders (see the new Sustainability Report collaborative workspace).
Anyway, what do the figures in the report mean? Let’s take one example: the close to 400,000 metric tons of overall global carbon dioxide emissions by SAP employees (incl. business travel and car fleet) in 2007. The absolute number corresponds to the carbon dioxide emissions of the country of Bhutan. If you divide these emissions by the 44,000 employees you get about 9.2 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per SAP employee. This corresponds to the average emission by a citizen of South Africa. The ratio of GDP (aka revenue) per metric ton of carbon dioxide emission is about 33 for SAP (excellent in comparison with countries).
Thank you, James Farrar (see also SUN’s blog on Corporate Social Responsibility).

Support developing-world communities

Felix — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:12:40 +0000

Sponsoring a child is another nice way of connecting people with people. The following points have convinced us to take part in the activities of Plan International:

our daughters establish a relationship with a child in a totally different part of the world (Assitan lives in Mali – a fantastic country that I got to know back in 1997)
the funds benefit the whole community in which the child lives
Plan is a transparent organization

One Laptop Per Child (for Germany please)

Felix — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:52:30 +0000

My daughter has closed her first year at the local primary school. The exposure to new technologies during this first year was 0.0% of all lessons. If you linger along the corridors and across the classrooms of this school you will remember your own primary school days back in the seventies. Nothing has changed (Did you know that? …
Therefore, I admire the “One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)” project by Nicolas Negroponte. It seems that OLPC has done important steps from vision (see e.g. the initial TED presentation) to execution (see e.g. the updated TED video). Nevertheless, what I do miss is an impact assessment: what has the usage of the OLPC really delivered for the children and schools involved?

They are back and I’m back

Felix — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:15:19 +0000

Surprise of the day: while I was walking with my daughter to the kindergarten we saw a stork couple flying over our heads in the red light of the sunrise. Damn, 23 January and the storks are back from their wintering grounds… It seems not to be a singular case (e.g. newspaper article). So, they are back and send a signal: our climate changes.
And I am back to blogging and send a signal: my life has changed…

It’s your climate

Felix — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 18:43:34 +0000

�Sunshines replaces snow in Alps� headlines the English edition of the ‘Neue Zürcher Zeitung’ newspaper today. Climate change was one of the most important topics in 2006 (it received more than 88 millions hits with Google during the last year; that’s 6 millions more hits than �information management�, 15 millions more hits than �George W. Bush�, 38 millions more hits than �knowledge management�, and 41 millions more hits than �stock exchange� � based on searches with www.google.de).
What can an ordinary man like me do to mitigate the �inconvenient truth�? One way is to offset the environmental impact of emissions from air travel by purchasing a ‘myclimate’ ticket. ‘Myclimate‘ is a spin-off from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich which invests its funds in carbon offset projects that lead to a direct reduction of greenhouse gases; e.g. electricity from biomass in India. I bought one ticket to offset my family and my collective 12.528 km of air travel in 2006. When will you buy your own ‘myclimate’ ticket?

Couleur 3, Mali and Us

Felix — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 20:02:23 +0000

Couleur 3 always reminds me of my younger days in Switzerland. Those were the days when a third state-run radio programme was the innovation in media. I still listen to this radio station nowadays, especially for the live broadcasts of the Swiss national football team‘s matches. From the 11th to the 17th of December Couleur 3 will be broadcasting from Bamako in Mali. Mali always reminds me of the most eventful consulting assignments during my first professional career as an International Environmental Management Consultant. This year we started a “godparent” programme (Plan Mali) with a family in the Boulouli region in order to try and become a bit more closely connected to the wonderful people of Mali.

TED presentations available online

Felix — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 19:32:55 +0000

Jim McGee pointed it out to me, as a reader of his blog, that the presentations of the TED conference are now available to download (audio / video podcasts) under the new category �TEDTalks�. This is an excellent opportunity for those who weren’t able to attend the event itself. The speakers include Kevin Kelly, Burt Rutan, Iqubal Quadir, Steven Levitt, Mena Trott, Al Gore, Hans Rosling, and others.