http://www.youthstop.net Tue, 15 May 2012 07:48:53 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Use imagination to Quit Smoking http://www.youthstop.net/use-imagination-to-quit-smoking http://www.youthstop.net/use-imagination-to-quit-smoking#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 07:48:53 +0000 sandeep http://www.youthstop.net/?p=596 I used to smoke 20 cigarettes a day and I did it perpetually for 12 years but now I have left smoking completely. When I thought of quitting smoking, I started to seek advice from Doctors and friends on how to quit smoking. Most of them advised me to leave it gradually by reducing the number of cigarettes consumed every day. I also tried some of the sprays and anti smoking chewing gums but without result. Surprisingly I left smoking suddenly one fine day.

I used imagination to quit smoking instantly. I made a note of how my brain functions during pre and post smoking scenarios. The urge to smoke was more or less time specific and it lasted till had a smoke. Suddenly increasing or reducing the number of cigarettes caused discomfort, when I analyzed the reason for it I found that it was basically because my brain was sending an instruction to my body but the body was not complying with it. I tried to identify the same discomfort with some other activities I do. I read for about half an hour before sleeping, when I stopped reading, it caused discomfort and it took me more time to fall asleep. I shifted my time to have breakfast by an hour, I felt discomfort in the beginning but after a few days my body adjusted to the new timing.

For sleeping and breakfast the body had an alternate time to adjust with but for smoking the body has to live without it. So, I concluded that I have to tame my mind or rather fool my brain. I collected pictures of people smoking and pasted it in my room and washroom. I looked at details of the pictures and imagined how happy and satisfied the person in the picture would be feeling while smoking. I did it several times in the day so that the picture pops up in my mind without even without looking at it. It is also necessary to remember the feelings we associate with smoking.

Whenever I felt like smoking I closed my eyes and remembered the pictures and the feelings. My brain could immediately identify the feelings and my urge to smoke was gone in five minutes. I kept doing it repeatedly to keep away from smoking. It is a year now I have left smoking but my brain still believes that I smoke.

 

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]]> http://www.youthstop.net/use-imagination-to-quit-smoking/feed 0 What makes a Great Team http://www.youthstop.net/what-makes-a-great-team http://www.youthstop.net/what-makes-a-great-team#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 14:30:48 +0000 sandeep http://www.youthstop.net/?p=572 “What makes a great team?” – The question kept me thinking for several days. People never forget to talk about leadership, motivation and empowerment while defining a great team. Although these are essential ingredients which go into building a successful team but a different perspective goes into building a “great team”.

Henry ford said “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success”……. I just want to add one more perspective to it – “Thinking together is greatness”.

What I feel is that “A great leader may build a great team but a great team will always give a great leader”. Now some people might debate, which comes first – the leader or the team. Let’s look at an example:

The famous Orpheus Chamber Orchestra of New York City has won the heart and minds of millions by staging the greatest performances ever, but “without a leader”. The leadership roles are taken up by members in turns while the rest of the members “thinks together” and contributes to create the magic in their performances.

“Leadership” is a “top heavy” word and clearly discriminates the leader from the rest of the team. Although the role of a leader in a team is non-negotiable, the spectrum of leadership which nourishes collective thinking only has the right to achieve sustainable greatness. Some leaders feel tempted to act intelligent to establish his supremacy but an effective leader creates a collective opinion by allowing everyone to contribute their ideas.

A successful organisation is the one which has more market share but sustainable greatness is achieved by organisations which invest more in training, development and R&D creating intellectual and proprietary capital.

A great team is actually a team of great leaders who exercise “thinking leadership” to align the team’s thinking with his own, and creates magical synergy.

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]]> http://www.youthstop.net/what-makes-a-great-team/feed 1 An interesting road side tea stall http://www.youthstop.net/an-interesting-road-side-tea-stall http://www.youthstop.net/an-interesting-road-side-tea-stall#comments Sun, 04 Dec 2011 17:55:31 +0000 sandeep http://www.youthstop.net/?p=562 If you feel mechanisation is an engineering term or a corporate term, you are wrong. Here’s a road side tea stall which uses the concept, notice the small fan he uses to blow air into the earthen stove. In most cases people uses a handmade fan for this purpose. It’s also an example of innovation, by “putting things to other use” at the grass root level.

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]]> http://www.youthstop.net/an-interesting-road-side-tea-stall/feed 1 Innovation through substitution http://www.youthstop.net/innovation-through-substitution http://www.youthstop.net/innovation-through-substitution#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2011 11:52:18 +0000 sandeep http://www.youthstop.net/?p=549 A brand of shampoo was cleverly advertised in Frankfurt, Germany. They substituted bus handles with artificial hair plait hanging from the overhead rods. Commuters held onto the hair plait (with the product mentioned on it) as they stood inside the bus.

Have you ever experienced eating in a completely dark restaurant? A restaurant in London replaced waiters with normal vision with blind waiters, turned the restaurant into a dark restaurant where guests are completely dependent on their blind guides as they enjoy the delicious cuisine. That’s adventurous, isn’t it?

The need to substitute conventional energy triggered the idea of harnessing solar energy. The introduction of margarine as a substitute for butter helped reduce risk of heart diseases significantly. The vegetable oil based margarine was created by a Frenchman in 1870 and named after the Greek word “margarites” meaning pearl.

Chalkboards were introduced to facilitate teaching and revolutionized the way education is imparted. Imagine the tedious work teachers had to do without a blackboard, mostly depending on verbal mode of communication and rewriting on the slates of individual students every time he has to use written communication. For ages chalkboards or blackboards continued as the inseparable part of classrooms till recently most of the blackboards started to get substituted with whiteboards. Conventional use of chalk makes the classroom dirty and some teachers are allergic to it. A smarter tool for education evolved in the form of whiteboards with marker pens.

Carrying cash has always created several problems for people in transit. The introduction of Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) and the ATM cards has simplified the process of cash handling and carrying out simple banking transactions.

Innovation through substitution has wide application in the field of medical science. Body parts and malfunctioning organs are substituted with artificial and external duplicates to reinstate original biological conditions. Millions live a healthy life with the substitute encouraging scientists to think beyond conventional replacements and explore possibilities of growing organs in the lab.
Candles create a bit of mess with melting wax falling around it. Can we substitute wax with something which can solve this problem? Remember, we are not talking about electrical candles, poor people can’t afford them and they are the ones who use candles the most. Do a research on your own and try to find a solution.
How can we substitute the juvenile prisons with moral rehabilitation units?

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]]> http://www.youthstop.net/innovation-through-substitution/feed 1 Creativity and Thinking games http://www.youthstop.net/creativity-and-thinking-games http://www.youthstop.net/creativity-and-thinking-games#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:16:39 +0000 sandeep http://www.youthstop.net/?p=543 Game -1

This game uses random pictures as stimulus and would be useful for a group of 20 participants.

Objective: To encourage faster thinking and creativity through dynamic stimulus received from 2 different sources.

Preparation: Choose pictures which have a theme, it should not be pictures of individuals. Allocate at least 5 random pictures per group.

Trainer’s narration to the audience: A picture will appear on the screen and one of your team members has to come and start a story with the picture as stimuli. He will speak to the audience with his back to the screen. After a minute I will change the picture on the screen without informing the speaker. The speaker is not allowed to look back to see the new picture. The other members of his group have to link the story to the new random picture. As soon as someone from the team volunteers to continue he can stop the present speaker and replace him. This will continue with 5 different pictures for the same group. The next group will see a different set of pictures.

Steps:

  1. Divide the group into smaller groups of 4.
  2. Show one picture on the screen.
  3. Call one member from a group and make him stand facing the audience, and then ask him to start a story with the picture as stimuli.
  4. After a minute change the picture on the screen without informing the speaker.
  5. Then let the game take its course

Expected outcome of the game: The participants face enormous challenge of quick idea generation, receiving stimulus from the speaker’s story and the picture, and then linking both of them to create a new story line. This is in harmony with basic objective of creative thinking – To explore and think out of the box quickly.

Image: pixtawan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Game – 2

This game is designed using maim as a technique and would be useful for a group of 20 participants.

Objective: To encourage participants to use imagination and create perceptions for others and guide them to the right answer.

Preparation: Make paper slips, each carrying 2 topics written on it like….

Paper Slip 1 – Riding a bicycle & Riding a bicycle uphill

Paper Slip 2 – Taking photographs & Taking war photographs

Steps:

  1. Divide the group into smaller groups of 4.
  2. Then one by one ask two members from each group to come and pick a slip, read it and maim both the topics given on the slip, one topic by each volunteer.
  3. The other members of their group are supposed to watch them and identify the topics.
  4. The same thing can be repeated for any number of rounds.

Expected outcome of the game: The participants are forced to imagine and include more details while they are maiming. The difference between a normal maim act and this is that it gives more room for the mind to evaluate options to create better perceptions while including more details into the act.

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]]> http://www.youthstop.net/creativity-and-thinking-games/feed 0 Innovation through modification http://www.youthstop.net/innovation-through-modification http://www.youthstop.net/innovation-through-modification#comments Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:15:05 +0000 sandeep http://www.youthstop.net/?p=536 Modification is a useful technique for innovation” , by modifying the colour, form or shape we can create innovative products. New models of car and bike keep hitting the market almost every week. Two wheeler and automobile manufacturers use the modification technique constantly to upgrade their product with a new look or design. Modern homes and offices are dotted with innovative modified furniture marking a new beginning in luxury and lifestyle.

Packaging of products is modified to retain the freshness of the products, to facilitate better usage of the product or to make it look more attractive. The innovative concept of Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) is used in some countries to increase the shelf life of fresh food products. The modification process uses a gas mix inside the packaging to keep the food fresh.

Innovation through modification has taken giant leaps in the field of genetically modified animals. Scientists are experimenting on creation of animals for producing medicine and organs for transplant which could benefit mankind. Some researchers are trying to develop genetically modified mosquitoes to eradicate malaria. Same has been done for crops; scientists have genetically modified sweet corn so that it produces a poison which kills harmful insects, the farmers does not require insecticides to fight insects.

Kaizen is a concept developed by the Japanese to encourage small improvements on a regular basis. It is implemented in organisations to improve everything related to the organisation ranging from a business process to a production process. These changes are brought about by making small modifications in daily activities, the cumulative effect of which is quite remarkable when reviewed over a period of time. Though many people might not consider Kaizen as an innovation tool but it definitely acts as an enabler and a trigger for new idea generation. I met a salesman who writes down at least two lines about every sales call in his personal diary. He uses the information to modify and improve his approach on his subsequent visits to the customer. He is Kaizen personified.

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]]> http://www.youthstop.net/innovation-through-modification/feed 0 Rearrange to generate new ideas http://www.youthstop.net/rearrange-to-generate-new-ideas http://www.youthstop.net/rearrange-to-generate-new-ideas#comments Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:38:43 +0000 sandeep http://www.youthstop.net/?p=525 Some restaurants are rearranged to get the customers to pay first and then have food. Editing in movies is done by rearranging shots and footages to make the movie more entertaining. “Rearrange” can be used as an innovation tool to identify possibilities of changing set patterns and realigning it to explore various solutions. Let us take the example of Olympic rings.

Olympic rings were designed by a Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1912; he is also the founder of International Olympics committee. The five multicoloured rings stand for five continents, the interlocking signifies unity between the nations. The five colours and the white background of Olympic rings have at least one colour of every nation’s flag in them.

Now, without changing the meaning and spirit of the rings, think of various ring arrangements. Some questions which can help us to change the pattern are as follows:

Why two rings at the bottom? Why there are gaps between the top three rings? Some people could think of as many as 20 different ring arrangements.

Computer keyboard used by us is a good example of problem solving by rearrangement. In 1860s the typewriter keys were in alphabetical order but it had problems with fast typing. Letters used to get tangled and the typist had to manually untangle the type bars. To solve the problem keys were rearranged in QWERTY format (it is the sequence of the keys) to facilitate fast typing. QWERTY is designed for English language after a lot of research. Layout of computer keyboard is rearranged according to the country where it is used. QWERTY layout is the most commonly used. QWERTZ layout is widely used in Germany and much of Central Europe, AZERTY layout is used in France and Belgium.

Ask any hotelier and they will tell you the importance of rearranging buffet tables to suit the occasion. Cricket teams are rearranged according to the playing conditions. Shopping malls rearrange their layout to enhance customer convenience. Can you think of anything else which you can improve by rearranging?

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]]> http://www.youthstop.net/rearrange-to-generate-new-ideas/feed 0 How to overcome the risk of innovation http://www.youthstop.net/how-to-overcome-the-risk-of-innovation http://www.youthstop.net/how-to-overcome-the-risk-of-innovation#comments Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:34:32 +0000 sandeep http://www.youthstop.net/?p=516 There are three different major kinds of risk associated with innovation- time, money and reputation. These are the key reasons why some individuals and organizations are reluctant to invest in innovation. Let us understand the risks and try to find a way out.

Time: “Time is money”, an organization is answerable to its stakeholder and achievements would be measured at the end of every quarter. Such a scenario creates a mindset like a pre-programmed robot. Some organizations talks about their so called “Think Tank” which is the only reliable source of innovation and rest are all chip driven execution units. If the “Tank” goes dry, the organization fails. I feel this is where the thinking needs to change. Allow everyone to think and innovate at least once in a week to create the enormous pool of ideas which the “Think Tank” can then mobilize. It also creates a sense of ownership among employees. Decentralization of idea generation could be a solution to the “time risk” involved in innovation.

Money: “Innovation” is a much hyped word which is often used as a premium. “Research and Development” is another very heavy word which often means huge expenses. Creativity is not about rocket science and expensive labs with hooded humans moving around with fuming test tubes. Creative inspiration requires encouragement and the right environment, and then every workstation can become a virtual lab. Newton got the great idea sitting under a tree, all of us are not Newton and we are not sitting under a tree either. Encourage people to come up with low cost ideas, empower them to execute and the “money risk” of innovation could soon become irrelevant.

Reputation: The risk of reputation emerges from the fear of failure or criticism. We have seen so many instances of authors being criticized or attacked for writing on topics they believe in. But we keep getting new breed of writers across generations who are fearless with the pen. Such mindsets could become inspiration for others. Intent and self belief differentiates the winner from the loser.

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]]> http://www.youthstop.net/how-to-overcome-the-risk-of-innovation/feed 0 Innovate to adapt to the environment http://www.youthstop.net/innovate-to-adapt-to-the-environment http://www.youthstop.net/innovate-to-adapt-to-the-environment#comments Fri, 02 Sep 2011 05:14:34 +0000 sandeep http://www.youthstop.net/?p=502 It is all about utilizing tools and ideas within new contexts and situations. Mc Donald sells vegetarian burgers in India, Pizza hut sells vegetarian Pizzas. Whenever any foreign car maker enters India, they adapt their car designs to make it suitable for Indian roads and families. Special types of education are adapted for children with special needs.

Kellogg’s failed miserably after it launched in India. They were the first to introduce branded corn flakes for the Indian middle class. With the increasing number of urban women going to work, it seemed Kellogg’s cornflakes are just the “right fit” for the situation, but it failed. What was wrong? Kellogg’s corn flakes were meant for cold milk, but Indians like hot milk. It is only after making a cereal suitable for hot milk that Kellogg’s started to get accepted by Indians.

If a product is not tailor made for the situation, it could lead to failures; at times innovative adaptation is needed to enhance acceptability of products. One American company tried to sell tables in Japan, the height of the table was 29-inch while the average table height in Japan is 21 inches because Japanese sit on the floor at the table and do not use chairs. General Motors introduced the Nova in Latin America. Nova means, “it doesn’t go” in Spanish. The car had terrible sales. GM finally figured out the problem, renamed the car Caribe and immediately started getting accepted.

Chameleon by yosser, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License  by  yosser 

Charles Darwin said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”Human race has to innovative quickly to adapt to the changing global climate.Some companies in India have started to go green. Bajaj Auto launched innovative eco-friendly auto rickshaws (Three wheelers used for public transport), Lipton replaced wooden pallets with “slip-sheets” to ship teas. It is us who has to drive the change. Try to adapt, improvise and conserve in every possible way. Nation’s resources, natural resources are an imperative for our survival.

A hotel in Copenhagen found out an alternate way of producing electricity for the hotel. They designed an innovative free meal offer for any guest who is able to produce electricity for the hotel on an exercise bike attached to a generator.

You can go to Google and type – best eco practices, then find out how many practices you can adapt as your contribution towards a greener earth.

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]]> http://www.youthstop.net/innovate-to-adapt-to-the-environment/feed 0 Create an Innovation Culture http://www.youthstop.net/create-an-innovation-culture http://www.youthstop.net/create-an-innovation-culture#comments Sat, 27 Aug 2011 12:01:25 +0000 sandeep http://www.youthstop.net/?p=495 An innovation culture can’t be built overnight. The process of building the culture is a huge challenge. All leading organizations in the world are “leading” because they have successfully imbibed the culture in every member of their organization. Sometimes such organizations offer incentives and run contests for employees contributing new ideas; some create a separate URL which gets updated regularly with latest innovation related information. All employees are given access to the URL to enhance their knowledge and thinking ability but most importantly it creates the culture of innovation where “innovation” is not treated as alien.

Culture of innovation is frequently associated with organizations but I would like to imagine beyond that. Why can’t a nation try to seriously inculcate the culture? In the WIPO ranking of patents filed, some countries rank very high but that doesn’t confirm that all of them have an innovation culture. An innovation does not essentially have to win a patent; a new idea need not always hit the newspaper headlines. Innovation for self is the true spirit of an innovation culture. This change is not at all easy and will require great effort from leaders of the nation. The number of people showing willingness and effort to innovate would indicate the spread of the culture.

Image: tungphoto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

India ranks poorly in patents application ranking with only 761 patents applications in 2009 compared to over 7000 applications filed by China. Though the ranking is not an indication of the overall innovation culture but it is indicative of the intent. Countries like India have to take up “innovation” as one of their priority areas of improvement. In India we have the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) to promote innovation at the grass root level. Some corporate has initiated similar initiatives but it’s not enough. People have to start looking for solutions on their own for India to become a truly developed nation. Few bureaucrats and politicians cannot provide tailor-made solutions for 1.2 billion people but they can train people to find solutions and then support them in executing their ideas.

Thinking for innovation has to be a part of the school curriculum. Every student should be able to demonstrate innovative thinking to get their grades. The NIF has already shown us that innovation does not require formal education; even illiterate people from the rural hinterlands can come up with brilliant inventions to make their life easier. This should become an inspiration for many others. Awareness campaigns about Thinking for Innovation can be conducted through village panchayats which could be followed by training villagers on how to find solutions through innovative thinking.

Building an innovation culture might seem to be a luxury for countries finding it difficult to control poverty. Like human beings start imbibing their culture from childhood, the same is true for nations. Innovative thinking at the grass root level can start as a parallel initiative for countries fighting poverty. With the growing world population it is necessary that people become self dependent for innovative thinking by embracing the culture of innovation.

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