Day: December 14, 2007

business, career, creativity, education, experience, innovation, school

Something is blooming in the state of Denmark

Christa Avampato

I work for a toy company and we are always watching what’s happening in Denmark, mostly because there is such a rich history of play there, spurred on by a little company called Lego. Toys aren’t the only innovations they’re making. There’s something so wonderful happening in the world of business education in Denmark that it almost makes me want to go start my own b-school based on this model.

On one of the Business Week blogs, I learned about Anne Kirah and the 180°academy, a business school that seeks to mesh creative thinking, design, and business in one curriculum. Kirah is convinced that this approach will help keep the Danish economy in tip top competitive shape. And Kirah is very convincing.

The 180°academy’s goal is simple: innovation. She argues that doing what we know best won’t help us be better tomorrow. The whole idea is to break people of their comfort zones so that they can be comfortable anywhere in any situation. Kirah herself is an anthropologist by training, and as such is incredibly focused on human behavior patterns and cultural shifts. Best of all, she is able to apply what she’s observing in order to monetize it to a business’s advantage.

The school has corporate buy-in at the very highest levels. They believe in value of foreign immersion throughout the education process. For about half the cost of an American education and asks the each student commit to conducting an innovation project at their employer using all of the tools taught to them in the program. Kirah is concerned with having a complete mash-up for a student body and a faculty. She believes in bringing together as diverse a population as possible in order to have them draw on one another’s talents.

Very simply, Kirah is changing the paradigm of business school education. She is innovating to the extreme. She thinks different and as a result, may help all of us in business think different.

Take a look at the full article: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/dec2007/id2007125_072960.htm?chan=innovation_innovation+%2B+design_innovation+strategy

finance, money, technology

Making a mint

Christa Avampato

For a number of years, I have built elaborate spreadsheets of budgets to keep myself on track. I put myself through college and through graduate school working a whole host of jobs and with more than a little help from school loans and grants. I grew up in a family with very little money and was always paranoid about not having enough money or about not managing well the little I did have. These spreadsheets helped me stay on track and let me know when I needed to reel in the spending and when I could loosen the reigns a bit.
It is a lot of work to keep track this closely. A number of different sites to check, receipts to track, and accounts to balance. www.Mint.com has made that old news. A new, fun site recently featured in Fast Company, the founders wanted to help encourage young people to be more financial responsible and help all people to simplify the process of budgeting. Best of all it’s free. You can record budgets, have bank accounts, investments, and credit cards all tracked on one site. It will give you graphs that make it easy to see just how you’re faring in the world of balancing your spending and savings, and offer up specials that can help you take advantage of special bonuses from financial products you may not be aware of.
This is no easy feat. Most people don’t like the balancing act of money or the complexity of personal financial management. Mint.com just goes to show you that everything, even the most stressful of tasks, can be infused with a little fun for a whole lot of impact.
anthropology, creativity, experience, history, innovation, language, New York, society, technology, trend

Words on the street

Christa Avampato

I am fascinated by language. My dad spoke six of them. While I didn’t inherit his ability to learn language, as is evidenced by my sad attempts at French, I did inherit a love of hearing different languages and dialects. I particularly enjoy studying how a language truly shapes a culture and national behavior patterns. And the dynamism of language allows it to reflect societal trends.

It’s no wonder that my recent discovery of Urban Dictionary, http://www.urbandictionary.com/ , brought a smile to my face. The more tech-saavy readers of this blog will think that I just now have emerged from the dark ages. I fear that this is proof that my long, slow slide from hip, urban chick to crusty old broad may have finally begun. Nevertheless, I think this may also be a new find for some of you, or a refresher of knowledge gained long ago, so it is worthwhile to post the link.

Those out of the know may be asking, “So what is this urban dictionary all about?” It is a slang dictionary that is based on user-generated definitions. Literally, it is helping to define this quickly evolving world around us. And then there is a feature that allows the community members to vote on the definitions added. For example, “wOOt” is top of mind on Urban Dictionary today. It means “an expression of joy”. 3106 people give this definition a thumbs up. 565 shot it down.

The other cool feature that I love is that community members are recording the history of these words. From many definitions, we can learn where words come from, their original use, and how they’ve been adapted to become more main stream. So not only is this a dictionary, it is an anthropological history book. I’m so excited about this, it’s hard for me to sit still!

“WOOt” was recently voted word of the year for 2007 by the dictionary gurus at Merriam-Webster. Facebook was the runner up. In years past words like “google” and “blog” have received the top word honor – not a bad track record as these words are now commonplace in daily conversations. Is “wOOt” destined for this type of fame and recognition? Unclear. But it’s found its place in the American lexicon and I’m all for anything, or any word for that matter, that spreads joy.

business, career, files, Gmail, Google, technology, work

Can a mega-company like Google rewire our brains?

Christa Avampato

A few years ago I switched over to Gmail from AOL and have never looked back. I love the friendly interface, the nearly-infinite storage, the ever-expanding address book, and on and on it goes. It took some getting used to after I had been with AOL for so long. In particular I had to adjust to the lack of buckets and folders in which I was used to grouping my emails.

I am a file fanatic. I like being able to pull a folder on a topic and seeing everything I have on the subject. Doesn’t happen with Google. Instead, it has a robust search function that will pull up every email I have that contains a keyword I type in. It’s forced me to be very deliberate in how I select email titles so that I can easily recall them later on. The trouble with this is I have had to become a synonym expert. For example, if I want to pull up all of my emails relating to “being green”, I may need to search “sustainability”, “eco-friendly”, “environment”, etc. If I had a folder entitled “green”, I could drop them all in there and pull them in one swoop!
Gmail’s search function has forced into a few work-arounds. I am considering starting a business, so I’ve created a new Gmail account of emails that just relate to the business idea. I’ve also become more addicted to blog posting so I’ve started emailing to a new account about everything I need to post on my blog. For the truly important topics like these, I’m still finding that my buckets are necessary.
While I love the idea of a way to simplify and reduce the amount of filing, bookmarking, and flagging I need to do, a certain amount of it may be so deeply entrenched in my behavior patterns that it will be tough to shake! More food for thought for the talented folks at Google to consider in their quest for continuous improvement.