Dear Glenn,

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

The way you have redeveloped the theme, one must either add a great
deal or nothing much.

I agree with much of what you write.

Addressing the questions you raise is real work.

There has been a lot of work done on these issues in fields outside
design. Psychology, creativity studies, innovation studies, social
psychology, and organizational development have done serious work on
describing and identifying talented and creative people. There has
been much work on developing creativity and talent in all these
fields, as well as in education and pedagogy. Developing an
environment that nurtures talent and creativity is yet a third issue
you identify, and this has been studied in these fields as well as in
knowledge management and organizational learning.

The past six decades have seen astonishing progress in all these
areas. Much is known on these themes - and there is still much to
learn.

We know much more today about talent, creativity, and innovation than
the medieval world knew about combustion engines.

So far, relatively little of this work has crossed over into design
research circles, but some adventurous scholars are now exploring
this territory and developing knowledge for application and
development here.

Over the past few days, I have been reading two extraordinary papers
by Geoffrey Caban and Jenny Wilson of the University of Technology,
Sydney.

The papers are titled, "Understanding learning styles: implications
for design education within the academy," and "Understanding learning
styles: implications for design education in external settings."

Caban and Wilson start with some implications of David Kolb's
learning styles research, applying these to design education. They
develop important implications for ways to nurture talent in the
university, in museum education, and in professional development.

The paper will be presented at the CLTAD conference on enhancing the
curricula. You can read the abstracts if you go to the CLTAD web site,

http://www.linst.ac.uk/cltad/home.htm

Click on the conference, and then on the abstracts header. All
abstracts are listed by author name. They will be published in full
form later.

Several other papers at this conference address the themes of
identifying and developing talent through the way we teach. You are
not alone in believing that the time is ripe for this kind of work.
Since I have only read Caban and Wilson, I will not discuss the
others. There are many promising abstracts.

Other than to thank you for your note, I will not say more on this
topic. I have been immersed in trying to write a response to Keith
Russell's note on building communities of concern, and it has turned
into a description of the review process. Despite my reputation as a
fast writer, the real secret of fast writing is slow work. To write
anything sensible, I write, edit, and rewrite many drafts. I have
planned to finish my final draft of this post every day for the past
three days. Because I am so deeply immersed in that note, I am going
to beg off answering your important questions.

Half a dozen of the speakers at the CLTAD conference subscribe to
PhD-Design. Perhaps one of these authors will go further into the
issue of nurturing talent and creativity among design students and
designers.

Best regards,

Ken





Glenn Johnson wrote:

-snip-

It needs talent to function and this talent stands on the shoulders
of the art and crafts movement - and sometimes this process is
reduced to an instantaneous moment of inspiration after considerable
'process' in the part of the brain we really know little about.

It is a like a combustion engine placed in medieaval times. The
medieaval folk would know what to press and eliminate to modify the
engine performance - yet no clue as to 'how'. Cutting out and
shocking parts of the brain modify it's performance too,  (surprise,
surprise)

We are still in a dark ages reference this process of design talent.

Why is it, that sometimes instantaneous - and on the toilet (or
middle of night, etc) - that the best design occurs?

Finally, in eliminating talent - can a useful design process even begin?

So, what is this kernel of talent and why the instantaneous design 'muse'.

I don't know either, but it seems pretty crucial to studying design
as a research activity.

-snip-


--

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management

Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University