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Creativity in a Flower Pot: The Case of the Upside Down Vase
By Shlomo Maital
Upside Down Flower Pots, in Kaunas Lithuania
My wife Sharona and I are at a school psychology conference here in Kaunas, Lithuania. While enjoying supper at an outdoor café, Sharona (who has very sharp observational skills) spotted these upside down flower pots and photographed them.
So, what exactly is this about?
Creativity is widening the range of choices. You can plant flowers in a flower pot conventionally. Or, like the clever people in this apartment, you can take the flower pot, put holes in the bottom so that the roots poke through and ‘grab’ the pot, then put a lid on the pot — and hang them on your balcony, upside down.
Why upside down?
Because, that way, you get to see much more of the beautiful flowers and leaves, instead of just the big ugly pot.
Think different. Do things different. Can you do something upside down? A French cook did, she invented tarte tatin, which is simply apple pie, but with the crust on the bottom instead of on the top. It’s delicious. Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion liked to stand on his head, believing it was healthy. He was the Upside Down Prime Minister. Lots of small children love to do that. And sometimes, I love to have an upside down meal – first, dessert, then the meal. Try it.
When Will the Yuan Replace the Dollar?
By Shlomo Maital
Most of the world’s foreign trade and foreign investment is still done in dollars. Perhaps 80 percent or more of transactions on the London foreign exchange market, still the world’s biggest, involve dollars.
For the global economy, this is a problem. America’s economy is weak and unstable, hence so is the currency – and the currency is not just America’s money, but it is the world’s, so when America has a problem, so do we all. As the U.S. Treasury Secretary once said, the dollar is our currency – and your (the world’s) problem.
With China’s economy now the world’s largest, by some measures, it makes sense that the Chinese currency, the renminbi (ren – min – bi, ‘money of the people’) should take a correspondingly important role in world trade and finance. But China has been unwilling to loosen its tight control of the RMB, because the undervalued exchange rate, around 6 RMB per dollar, provides strong advantages for exports. Since 2005, though, China has been gradually (everything China does is gradual) loosening control of the RMB (that was the year it dropped the fixed ‘peg’, or fixed exchange rate, and let the RMB slowly slowly gain in value) and since 2009, it has loosened restrictions on yuan trading outside China.
Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, more and more American firms are paying for Chinese goods in RMB (yuan). Ford Motor Co., for instance, has reacted swiftly to the China’s government easing of restrictions on use of the yuan by global companies. There are big advantages – if you can pay directly in yuan, you can save substantial trading costs.
U.S.-China trade totals $500 b. America has been pressing China for years to let its currency appreciate more, reflecting its true value, and making Chinese exports more expensive.
According to the B.I.S. (Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements), the Central Banks’ bank, the yuan is the 9th most traded currency in the world.
Ninth is very far from first. But look for the yuan to move up in the World Cup forex rankings. There are big opportunities here for experts in forex and financial services. Japan, for instance, doggedly resists making the yen a global currency, by imposing restrictions on foreign currency movements into and out of Japan. I believe this was a big mistake. China seems about to avoid Japan’s strategic error.
What do Polite People Say, When They Say “Bathroom”?
How Gleaming Bathrooms Built an Innovation
By Shlomo Maital
“spend a penny”
How do you say “bathroom”, if you’re very polite, delicate, discreet and don’t actually want to use the B-word? In Britain, you could say, I’m going to spend a penny, because that’s what it once cost to use a public toilet (see picture). Today it will cost you 30 pence.. is that inflation, or what? Or you could say, I need to go to the lou…or the WC (Water Closet). Or, I’m going to powder my nose, if you are female. Or, I’m going to the little girl’s room… The list is endless.
But bathrooms are serious! Here is a story I heard, from a very senior academician, here in Kaunas, Lithuania, where my wife and I are attending a school psychology conference.
Many years ago, universities were launched to enroll young Lithuanian men who sought to avoid military service. [Lithuania was the first Soviet satellite to gain its independence, in March 1990; other countries like Poland quickly followed suit. The USSR sent troops, but they gave up and finally left in 1993].
Someone had a brilliant idea that young Lithuanian women too wanted and needed to go to college, and started a college for women only. He suffered ridicule (“Geisha University”, and worse), but persevered. Faculty were brought from outside Lithuania, many of them women.
How do you attract, and keep senior female faculty, in Lithuania, at a time when it was relatively poor? Where do you invest your resources?
Bathrooms, under the Soviets, were utterly disastrous. And let’s be honest, bathrooms matter to women especially, because of, well, anatomical issues. I’ve known women to suffer in order to wait to get to a clean decent bathroom.
So, this innovative Dean invested his resources in – gleaming beautiful lovely modern bathrooms. Honest! And it mattered. It was the first thing visiting female faculty noticed. A very small detail, but a crucial one. He had the most beautiful bathrooms in Lithuania. And by doing so, communicated to his visitors that he understood them and would do everything to make their stay pleasant.
God is in the details, especially when it comes to innovation. Keep this in mind the next time you visit an unworthy bathroom.
Why YOU Should Consider Writing a Blog
By Shlomo Maital
Here is why I think YOU, dear reader, should consider writing some sort of blog, even if you choose not to publish it.
This blog is #1,172. Over the past six years, I’ve written a 300-word-or-so blog at least two or three times a week. It’s now become part of my life.
Writing a blog brings this key benefit: If you know you will need to write about something, to share with others whom you care about, your brain is constantly working out, searching for new ideas, new tools, new facts, new things you can use, new stories that inspire.
Motivation is the key to action. And my motivation in writing the blog has been the need to share, to remain relevant, to share with others.
I try to work out at least every other day, alternating jogging, speed walking, stair walking (hey – take the stairs, skip the escalators), and moderate weights. But my blog gives my brain a workout too.
So, think about writing your own. Try writing a few before you publish them. Write about things that matter to YOU. Chances are, they may matter to others too. Some blogs have created raging worldwide successes, like the blog about preparing one recipe a day for a whole year, based on Julia Childs’ cookbook – a blog that led to a book and a great movie.
The insert shows the cover of our new book, Cracking the Creativity Code, soon to be published by SAGE India. We’re deeply grateful to SAGE for their wonderful creative cover design. Our theme in our book: Your brain is a muscle, exercise it daily, hourly. And a blog is one great way to do that.
7-1!! How Did Germany Do It?
By Shlomo Maital
Thomas Muller
OK, World Cup soccer (football) fans! How did Germany win 7-1 over a strong Brazilian team? Ask veteran sportswriter George Vecsey, who for decades has given us the inside story of what really goes on in baseball, and other sports.
It starts with failure. Great achievement OFTEN, perhaps even always, starts with some sort of failure. The German football team failed to advance beyond the group stage of the European championship – a huge trauma. This generated a development plan. In 366 districts of Germany, youngsters were screened, examined and picked for further training. The system produced an outstanding wave of players now in their mid-20s. One of them is Thomas Muller, the creative star who seems to be everywhere, and who combines the two key elements of creativity: discovery (being in unexpected surprising places, figuring out just WHERE to be), and delivery, the ability to convert chances into goals, like his amazing goal scored from a volley, against Brazil, after a corner kick reached his right foot.
Want to be a world champion? Find talent (including your own). Develop it patiently. Be focused. Show your people the vision. And work very very very hard. Vecsey quotes British star Gary Lineker, “football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.”
Let’s learn from them. Not everyone is thrilled by the 7-1 triumph. But all of us can learn from it, about how creativity and discipline can unite to achieve true greatness.
Vaccines: Time for Legislation
By Shlomo Maital
New York Times report Elisabeth Rosenthal reveals to us another Big Pharma ripoff – this time related to vaccines. When in the world will the U.S. Congress act to end this travesty?
According to Rosenthal, Big Pharma uses the ‘new improved yogurt’ trick to fatten profits and hurt the middle class and the poor. If you sell price-regulated yogurt, change the package, add something (fermented kiwi juice) – and claim it is a new product, hence not subject to the old price controls.
In vaccines Rosenthal writes:
“Old vaccines have been reformulated with higher costs. New ones have entered the market at once-unthinkable prices. Together, since 1986, they have pushed up the average cost to fully vaccinate a child with private insurance to the age of 18 to $2,192 from $100, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even with deep discounts, the costs for the federal government, which buys half of all vaccines for the nation’s children, have increased 15-fold during that period. The most expensive shot for young children in Dr. Irvin’s refrigerator is Prevnar 13, which prevents diseases caused by pneumococcal bacteria, from ear infections to pneumonia. Like many vaccines, Prevnar requires multiple jabs. Each shot is priced at $136, and every child in the United States is required to get four doses before entering school. Pfizer, the sole manufacturer, had revenues of nearly $4 billion from its Prevnar vaccine line last year, about double what it made from high-profile drugs like Lipitor and Viagra, which now face generic competitors.”
Let’s see that again. A price rise from $100 to $2,192??? And remember vaccination is not optional; it is essential for the lifetime health and wellbeing of every child.
Half of all vaccines are bought by the U.S. federal government. Their costs have risen 15-fold! Why is it that when we ordinary folks get ripped off, we scream – but when Big Pharma rips off the government, there is silence?? At a time when deep budget cuts are hurting everyone?
When one company, Pfizer, makes $4 billion from ONE vaccine, Prevnar, double what it makes from a high-profile blockbuster drug, something is radically wrong. Wake up America!
The Coursera Revolution: Make EVERY Day Compassion Day
By Shlomo Maital
Daphne Koller
“College,” humorist Mark Twain is alleged to have remarked, “is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’ lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either.” As a 47-year veteran of college teaching, I find this quip painfully accurate, even if humorist Twain, himself, did not really say it.
Almost every university teaches innovation, especially those with business schools. Yet, very few actually practice it. In Harvard Yard there is a statue of John Harvard, the clergyman whose deathbed bequest in 1638 established the university named after him. If the statue were to come to life and visit my own classroom, he would feel right at home nearly four centuries later.
He might wonder about the PowerPoint, the white boards and students’ noses buried in their cell phones. But he would instantly recognize the droning lecturers reading from their notes while the students diligently write down their instructors’ words in their own notebooks or tablets. That is why I listened avidly to a recent talk given at Technion on “The Online Revolution: Education for All” by Stanford University Professor Daphne Koller, an Israeli computer scientist who earned her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Hebrew U. when she was only 18.
Two years ago, together with her colleague Andrew Ng, head of Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence lab, Koller, 46, founded Coursera, today the world’s largest provider of “MOOC’s” (massive open online courses). After her talk, I had the opportunity to chat with her. I learned that Coursera currently has 8.3 million users enrolled in 673 courses from 110 partner institutions. Each course is organized and approved by a university or college – a majority of which are outside the US.
Coursera’s students are about evenly split between the US other developed countries and emerging countries. Some 600,000 students are from India, 530,000 from China and 48,000 from Israel. According to Koller, so far 10,000 years of video have been watched, 44 million quizzes administered, four million peer-graded sessions and 1.25 million courses have been completed. A significant part of Coursera accessing is done through smartphones or tablets and the rest on laptops and desktops. Of the students enrolled, 70 percent are adults over 30.
The largest Coursera course, on social psychology, is taught by Wesleyan University’s Scott Plous. Last fall it had 250,000 students enrolled! (The next round of the course begins July 14). How can you interact with a student body equal to the population of Haifa? If each of the quarter million students submitted an assignment on one sheet of paper, the stack would be eight stories high! Rather daunting for a poorly paid teaching assistant.
“Several homework assignments will encourage you to experiment with your life, observe the results, and analyze what took place,” Plous tells students. Students interact through the Social Psychology online network. The final assignment of Plous’s course is called “The Day of Compassion”. Students are asked to live for 24 hours as compassionately as possible and to analyze the experience using social psychology. Roughly 700 students received a perfect score (peer graded) on the assignment, each captured in a video film or a written narrative. The whole class then voted on which of these 700 students deserved a Day of Compassion Award sponsored by the Stanford University Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE).
The grand winner was Dr. Balesh Jindal, a physician and artist from a rural area near New Delhi, India. She won the grand prize by finding a way to address the problem of sexual violence towards girls in her community. During the Day of Compassion, she visited a local school with more than 2,000 female students, ages four to 17, from poor backgrounds.
Jindal taught each of five separate age groups about inappropriate touching and how to report incidents of abuse. These talks uncovered multiple cases of abuse by neighbors, brothers, cousins, and even fathers. After the Day of Compassion, Jindal invited the mothers of abused girls to her nearby clinic for free counseling. She decided to set aside one day each week to help these girls and to work on reducing child sexual abuse.
In reading this inspiring account, I was struck by how a single creative teacher like Plous can touch the lives of a quarter of a million students all over the world who, in turn, change the world for countless others using online technology.
Thanks, Daphne. Thanks, Coursera. Thanks, Scott Plous. Thanks, Dr. Balesh Jindal. What if every single one of us, not just those taking Coursera courses, made today, and every day, a Day of Compassion? What if Compassion 101 became a required course, for membership in Humanity?
If You Disrespect Teachers, You Disrespect Learning
By Shlomo Maital
Once, long ago, becoming a school teacher was a worthy and socially respected goal. Norman Rockwell’s wonderful portrait of “Happy Birthday, Miss Jones” was the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, March 17, 1956 issue. That was almost 60 years ago. The reason Rockwell’s portrait is out-of-date is not the blackboard, now replaced by whiteboards – but the love shown by students for their teacher. It’s largely gone.
A new study by the OECD, known as TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey) questioned over 100,000 lower secondary school teachers and 6,500 principals, from 34 countries. A Google search on “TALIS OECD” will bring you to it.
Here are the main results:
- Society no longer values the work of teachers, in the perception of the teachers themselves. Only about 5 per cent of French and Swedish teachers said “society valued their work”. In the U.S., the proportion was only about one-third. This contrasts with 68 per cent in Singapore. The head of the schools division at OECD, normally understated, said the results were ‘shocking’.
- Why do Singaporean kids score so high on international tests in math, science and literacy? Smaller classes? Better methods? Sure … but also, because in Singapore, teachers are respected and valued, hence bright people choose teaching as a profession. Who wants to pick a profession that nobody values? Teaching then becomes a last-choice default, rather than a first-choice priority.
- For a majority of surveyed countries, “few attract the most experienced teachers to the most challenging schools [more than 30 per cent of the students are from low socioeconomic backgrounds]”, said one of the study’s authors Julie Belanger. In other words, as a teacher gains seniority, he or she uses it to teach in a ‘desired’ school rather than in a tough one. That leaves the younger less experienced teachers to deal with the tougher schools. It should be the opposite.
- Large numbers of teachers face imminent retirement; teachers’ average age is 43. Teachers have an average of 16 years teaching experience.
- 68% of all teachers are women, but 51% of principals are men. Why??? What makes a man qualified to be principal, just because of his gender??? In our capitalist business-model approach to schools, where productivity is measured by test scores, teachers become trainers, rather than educators. No wonder we don’t respect them. According to the TALIS study, 93% of teachers report “students should be allowed to think of solutions to a problem themselves before teachers show them the solution”. Nearly half of all teachers report they frequently have their students work in small groups. Do we truly value how teachers spur creativity in our kids, rather than how they train them to excel in tests? If Norman Rockwell were to draw “Happy Birthday, Miss Jones” today – it would look a whole lot different. And a whole lot worse.
- The TALIS study should ring alarm bells. Quality education is NOT principally about resources, budgets, or even class size. It is about teachers – finding motivated, creative people who choose education as a first choice, and who thrive because they are respected and valued. If society were to highly value teaching, that alone would partly compensate for current low salaries. But low respect, and low salaries, together are lethal.
- Despite the fact that society does not seem to value what they do, most teachers do love their jobs and would choose teaching again as a career, if they had to.
Qubits: How to be in two places at the same time
By Shlomo Maital
Today’s New York Times has this headline, “Microsoft bets on quantum computing” by John Markoff (p. 21). Here is the basic idea, as described by Markoff:
“Conventional computing is based on a bit that can be either a 1 or a 0, representing a single value in a computation. But quantum computing is based on qubits, which simultaneously represent both zero and one values. If they are placed in an “entangled” state — physically separated but acting as though they are connected — with many other qubits, they can represent a vast number of values simultaneously. And the existing limitations of computing power are thrown out the window.”
Amazing? indeed. The visionary physicist Richard Feynman first proposed quantum computing in 1982. Initial research was funded by DARPA (America’s defense department) and America’s National Security Agency. Note how often governments fund pioneering basic research that later changes the world!
Microsoft’s visionary research is highly risky, simply because “the typic of exotic..particle needed to generate qubits has not been definitely proved to exist”.
Wow.. Go Microsoft! After decades of missing every trend and opportunity, including the Internet, Microsoft is now working on something that does not even exist (for sure). What a change!
But here’s the best news, especially for busy women. One day, you can be in two places at once. You can drive the kids to soccer, while you’re 600 miles away pitching to a potential new client. You can spend quality time with your spouse, while writing up a new ad campaign for Unilever.
On second thought, this is no breakthrough – I know many women, including my wife, who are already qubits. They multi-task so easily, so fluidly, that they don’t even need qubits. I urge Microsoft researchers to study these multi-tasking women. If they do, they will quickly find those elusive quantum particles; women have tons of them.
It’s us MEN who need them.
Reverse Privatization: Let Us Share Wal-Mart’s Profits, We Created Them!
By Shlomo Maital
Two seemingly unrelated pieces appear in today’s Global New York Times. But they are intimately connected.
- Timothy Egan’s Op-Ed piece reports that Wal-Mart made an obscene $17 b. in profits last year, paid its top executive over $20 m. and has made the six Walton family heirs worth at least $150 b. Meanwhile, a study by House Democrats shows the average Wal-Mart superstore cost taxpayers $904,000 a year in subsidies, or over $5,000 per employee. Egan writes, “Walmart’s humiliating wages force thousands of employees to look to food stamps, Medicaid and other forms of welfare. Working at Walmart may not make you poor, but it certainly keeps you poor – at the expense of the rest of us.” And a recent piece in Forbes magazine notes, “Walmart’s low-wage workers cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $6.2 billion in public assistance including food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized housing, according to a report published to coincide with Tax Day, April 15.”
- David Jolly reports that the board of the French industrial conglomerate Alsthom unanimously backed General Electric’s bid to acquire Alstom for $13.5 b. Initially the Socialist French government led by Francois Hollande opposed the takeover. It then changed its mind, after Siemens and Mitsubishi made a bid. France’s economy minister Arnaud Montebourg said that a condition of allowing GE to buy Alstom, was that the Agence des Participations de l’Etat, the French government’s national shareholdings agency, should acquire 20 per cent of Alstom stock.
What is the connection?
Suppose, just suppose, we tried ‘reverse privatization’. Privatization means, the government sells its interest in companies it once owned to private investors. This has happened all over the world. In Russia, oligarchs snatched control of state-owned assets and become instant billionaires.
Reverse privatization means, the government buys (not SELLS) an interest in companies, for the benefit of ordinary people.
If the GE Alstom merger succeeds, the French people will own 20 per cent of the profits. Moreover, with 2 out of every 10 seats on the Board of Directors, the French government will have access to inside information and will be able to influence hiring and wage policies of Alstom. Alstom/GE will be run by top managers, not by government. But government will oversee and share in the profits.
What if, just suppose, what if, the U.S. government had a 20 per cent stake in Walmart? First, that means $3.4 b. share in the total $17 b. in profits. That would go a long way to paying for the $6 b. of public assistance that Walmart workers get.
More and more capital is concentrating in fewer and fewer hands. What is the solution? Put some of that capital, as shares, into the hands of a government holding company, so that some of the profits get funneled not into the well-padded pockets of the super-rich, but into the empty pockets of ordinary citizens.
Reverse privatization. The French get it. Why don’t we?
TIMnovate 