by Sören Stamer May 26, 2007 at 05:28 PM

I love to read good books. I am always amazed to have the opportunity to dive into the ideas of brilliant minds. It is such a great pleasure. Recently, some friends asked my about my latest readings and the books I recommend. So I decided to write about those books in this blog.

The latest book I have read is from Sir Ken Robinson. I bought it rights after his amazing and humorous speech at the IBM PartnerWorld 2007 in St. Louis four weeks ago. Sir Ken Robinson amazed me with his deep analysis and clear message about the shortcomings of our school system and our very limited perception of intelligence. He argues, that conventional schools tend to kill creativity. While most children believe in their creativity, most adults think their creativity is gone. It is essential for our society to change this. To stay competitive in a world of accelerated change and rising complexity we need to be highly creative to create a desirable future for us all. With other words: Our creativity is the greatest gift we have.

I deeply enjoyed reading Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. It opened up my perception of intelligence and creativity by reframing my notion of both. Intelligence comes in multiple flavors and creativity is a great source in all of us. I very much recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a better school system, to parents, and to everyone who wants to enable highly creative environments. Sir Ken Robinson may inspire you as he already did with me. The chances are good.

Having read this book, I decided to foster creativity in everything I do. It feels real good.

by Sören Stamer May 25, 2007 at 07:32 PM

Most of us believe in centralized structures to coordinate things and solve important problems. The results are omnipresent hierarchies. Someone (string leader) has to decide in the end, right? Really?

Professor Thomas Malone from the MIT thinks not. Actually, he believes that the opposite is true. He makes the compelling case that we create better organizations and a better society if we use highly decentralized structures instead. I strongly believe we will. The great thing is that he also explains why.

Pleasel enjoy his interview about leadership and his own life: The Power of Decentralization: Discovering the New Physics of Organizing. It is from May 2001. However, it has a lot to do with Enterprise 2.0.

Henrik, thanks for the hint. Awesome!

by Sören Stamer May 15, 2007 at 03:36 PM

Being an entrepreneur means being creative. You have to be creative to start your own company. You have to stay creative to keep your company going. And - in a highly complex and dynamic world like ours - you also have to create an environment that nurtures the creativity of everyone involved to stay alive and kicking.

Furthermore, creativity is our only tool to create a desirable future for all of us and all of our children.

But why do most grown-ups lack the amazing creativity of our children?

At TED conference 2006 Sir Ken Robinson made a compelling case to change our education system fundamentally. He says, our existing system undermines creativity, instead of supporting it.

I am pretty confident that you will enjoy his brilliant speech at last years TED conference (Markus, thanks for the hint):

You won't be surprised to hear that Sir Ken Robinson was my personal highlight at IBM PartnerWorld 2007 two weeks ago in St. Louis. Thank you big blue.

Not surprisingly, nurturing creativity in my own company through diversity, open space workshops, Enterprise 2.0 software and our corporate culture is one of my top priorities at CoreMedia to stay competitive. And to be frank, there is always room for improvement but it is really amazing to work in a team where people are able to rediscover their creative power.

by Sören Stamer May 13, 2007 at 12:32 AM

I am still amazed when I think of Prof. Muhammad Yunus’ keynote speech at the 12th Trend Day in Hamburg earlier this week. The Nobel Peace Price Laureate 2006 shared with us his wonderful vision of a world without poverty. He told us about his fascinating journey to become Banker to the Poor, his strategy to do the exact opposite of what “normal banks” do, and his stunning truth that being poor is not the fault of poor people.

Prof. Muhammad Yunus made us think. In a special way he opened our eyes and showed us the shortcomings of our society, the limitations of our perception, and our misleading basic assumption about enterprises.

We tend to believe that enterprises are only made to maximize profits. But is this true? Is maximizing profits really the final goal of an enterprise? Is it a good idea to shape our perception of enterprises like this? Is there nothing else?

After you had the opportunity to listen to Prof. Yunus you might think differently about enterprises. You might even search for Social Business Entrepreneurs in your environment.

As the founder of Grameen Bank, Prof. Yunus uses microcredits to help millions of poor people in Bangladesh to start businesses. With his strong believes in a better society he already helped millions of people to escape poverty.

Dear Mr. Yunus, thank you very much for your wonderful thoughts.

This was my first Trend Day and I really do regret to have missed all the other ones. Congratulations!

by Sören Stamer May 10, 2007 at 04:19 PM

Letzte Woche durfte ich auf der next07 in Hamburg über meine persönlichen Erfahrungen mit Enterprise 2.0 bei CoreMedia zu sprechen. Eine wirklich spannende Erfahrung: In all meiner Begeisterung ist mir beim Vortrag komplett das Zeitgefühl entglitten. Aus geplanten 30 Minuten wurden laut sevenload.de stattliche 47. Dankenswerterweise wurde ich dennoch nicht aus dem Raum getrieben. Es bleibt mir zu sagen: Meinen herzlichen Dank für die Geduld und all das nette Feedback.

Link: sevenload.com

Besonders dankbar bin ich Mark Pohlmann und Martina Pickhardt. Mark hat mich eingeladen, auf der gelungenen next07 zu sprechen, obwohl CoreMedia vorher kaum "im Web 2.0" sichtbar war . Und Tina hat mich als Moderatorin bestens gecoacht und mit viel Geduld ausreden lassen. Merci Euch Beiden! Das war 'ne runde Sache.

by Sören Stamer May 10, 2007 at 03:22 PM

Andrew McAfee makes an important point: "Busyness" doesn't fit into an Enterprise 2.0: The Pursuit of Busyness

I could not agree more. Every time I heard the phrase "I have no time to write a blog" was a clear indicator to me that something was wrong. Over the past two years we invested time and effort at CoreMedia to change this behavioral pattern within the management team and the whole company. We introduced spare time for peer groups to be used on their own account, plus quarterly open space workshops with the whole team. We encouraged people to write blogs and we changed our own behavior.

Well, it takes time to accept this freedom and I am sure that we have still room for improvement at CoreMedia.