Of Warmth, Of Coldness - Oslo Chronicles

I had so much fun in the long dark winters last year. A novelty I had never experienced before. People used to come up to me, and say winters in Sweden (or Scandinavia) were long, harsh and depressing, and totally got to them, but my response was, how great this nation must be, with half the year in utter darkness and coldness, still managed to do really well for themselves. It all seemed very inspiring to me .... the fighting spirit, the resolve, seeing people going to work 6 o clock in the morning, through the snow clad roads. I also went to take the language classes 7:30 in the morning in complete darkness in December/January, fighting the harsh weather, but enjoying the flurries of snow as well at the same time. Snowflakes and the crystals they formed, with little light around, shone in a way that the silver would shy away from competition.

The excitement of my first winter in the Nordics had a context and background to it. I had always lived in hot countries. Summers in my part of the world, were close to how the hell will burn. It is something to be scared of, ... to not to look forward to. The temperature ranged from 40 to 50+ degrees C. Winters were moderately cold, that too as dry and piercing as it could get, without much rains, much snow. Had never seen snow actually falling. The winter last year, I was in for a treat.

Little did I know, a greater treat awaited me still....the real pleasures and beauties were yet to come... with the turn of the calendar year, in came the spring. From desert sands to heavenly beautiful spring, stark contrast it was. Never did I see so much beauty in life. I was stunned. Shocked. Immovable.

Not just the sun, the warmth, and the beauty around it all, but the days never seemed to end in summer. Longevity of life, of spirit, of light. Ah, ... what you wouldn't do to always have those days in life, every signal day of it. Summers in this part of the world are not to get weary of but something to celebrate ... to look forward to, so much so, to take the days off, not to avoid the heat waves mind you but to actually go out and to breathe, and bathe and absorb all that you can while it still lasts. It's the time of the year to hold dear ones dearer and closer ... in the open, and enjoy the greatest and simplest pleasures of life, of warmth.

It is after those delightful and heavenly summers, I dread winters that my heart almost sinks with the thought of it. It hasn't really begun yet, but the leaves already left their trees, and the winds gush and whistle, and it stays dark till 7:30. Cold weather is limiting, restrictive ... and rude. The snow has become all too common. What once fascinated me, thrilled me, are the greatest hassles of my way now. I feel the burden upon me, .. the stress, the anxiety, and the tension that every dark period brings with it. Dark nights do not excite me anymore; they pose to test my courage, my spirit.

Out my window, I see the city lights, painted well with the glowing and shining spots on the black canvas. But how far and long could a man survive the darkness and coldness, who all his life had abundance of light and warmth. How callously we took for granted all the great things we had had, and longed for whatever we hadn’t had.

Romantized notions and ideals have hefty price to pay. Such are love affairs, and their logical endings.

Ideal Seminar as I would like to have it

I have been attending seminars both literature and case, for 6 months now. If I were to comment on an ideal seminar I would say, an ideal seminar would be characterized by intellectual debates, quality discussions on topics related to all things Innovation. The type of discussion where, if not all, most of the students or participants would have gone through the related or the assignment literature/material or the case. They would have taken the time out to reflect on the problems, and the possible (not right or wrong) solutions.

In my opinion, attending the seminar physically should not be equated to actually having participated in one. I can tell from experience that many participants who attend seminar take away very little from them. The spirit of the seminar should be the expression of personal thoughts, inferences from the literature, and the insights from the case. Diverse opinions, different lenses and approaches to look at the same problem, and sharing it with the rest of the class.

Practically the discussion is lead wherever the dominate speaker wants to take it, who may be professing the right opinion, or not so right opinion. The moderator’s role, who is well-versed with the topic under discussion, and who would have seen a lot of discussions like these before, should be to steer the discussion to the right course again, if it digressed. Many a time, I’ve observed that the discussions go on and on, frequently off the main topic, and without indicating an emerging understanding or conclusion.

The literature suggested in Module A is varied, deep and touches upon all important aspects of the innovation dynamics. Honestly, I could only focus on our module, Managing Innovation within Firms, and could hardly even skim the other areas, which by the way, are very important as well to completely understand the dynamics of innovation.

I’d like to mention here another point, that all the themes in the Module A were very important to understand, and in this short period of time that we were given, it was next to impossible to read all articles. So we focused on our theme, and relied on the presentation of other groups to understand and grasps the concepts. Unfortunately, I felt the presentations were not enough for understanding each theme in due detail. Not every group was good at teaching, and explaining what they had learned from the literature. Participants should be at ease, communicative, as if they were teaching or sharing their knowledge with other participants, not stress because they had to present something in front of the class. Through these presentations, you could get a holistic idea, but the varied arguments and theories are only to be read. There are no substitutes for that. One thing I was thinking about was that, if could try an old method, of getting an executive summary of each article, so that we at least know what each article talked about. But then I guess, that’s too old school.

The reason I am doing this course is that, I find it quite interesting, and that I have rather limited knowledge of the field. All I knew before was from my practical experience, where I was tasked to manage the idea generation and screening procedure. The method itself was procedural, so after the procedure or the process had been defined, there wasn’t much innovative there to define or to do. The interesting thing next was to set up an innovation lab, which would allow all the employees of the company to spend some of their time there (20%) and work on any idea or product they’d want to work on. They’d be provided with a dummy (not real, but close to the real data) data to work and base their innovations on.

As for the theories on the topic, frankly speaking, I am finding it hard to come to grips with the already assigned theories. As we go along, get acquainted with more theories and models in the study of innovation management, I am sure I would have more thoughts on what more theories we could consult from during this course or seminars.