I was lucky to attend the Learning Technologies 2012 conference in London’s Olympia 2 this week. I was covering the event for Personnel Today (see my day one and day two reviews) and spent the majority of my time in the conference sessions.
Thanks to see some inspired speaker selection, delegates were treated to a range of thinking from the keynote speakers which, although related to learning and development, was way beyond the day-to-day practicalities of the job.
The three keynotes, Edward de Bono, Ray Kurzweil and Jaron Lanier, took us from thinking and creativity to machine intelligence and our humanity in the face of technological advances. Big themes set in the real world context of fast and big technological change.
Edward do Bono struck a chord for me as his focus was on us as individuals and how our brains process information and how we make decisions. I liked his concept of being able to ‘move things on’. Instead of thinking in terms of right or wrong we need to be able to think about how we can challenge ideas and thinking in order to improve something.
Sounds simple but de Bono has made a very successful career showing others how to do this. Organisations are terrible at moving things on, enabling employees to challenge perceived thinking in a way that enables others to want to keep developing ideas. My experience of challenging has been mostly that it just creates negative responses from those being challenged.
We talk about collaboration and innovation but are we really that good at it? de Bono shows us how we can be more effective and I buy his thinking. To be better at innovation we need to be able to open up to ideas and challenge current thinking and perceptions around that.
