Cool Collaborations

I’ve always had an interest in design and design thinking, although I’ve never pursued that interest in much depth. Cameron Norman, my guest on this episode of the Cool Collaborations podcast, is a professional designer, psychologist, evaluator, and educator with a great interest in the science and practice of innovation. He runs a consultancy called Censemaking and he is an adjunct professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.

In our conversation, we talk about what Cameron’s calls Design for Humans and how the concepts and approaches of design and of collaboration are closely linked. Please enjoy our conversation.

Some links to some of the things we discuss during this episode: 

• Cameron Norman
• Cense 
• Seth Godin
• Intersectionality
• Book: Organisational Aesthetics: Developing beautiful organisations by Steven de Groot 
• Pareto Principle
• Book: World Enough & Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down by Christian McEwen

Your host for the Cool Collaborations podcast is Scott Millar. Scott is the principle of Collaboration Dynamics, where he often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. 

Time to have some fun. Michael Kerr is my guest for a great conversation on the connections between humor in the workplace and collaboration. Michael is a researcher, writer, and Canadian Hall of Fame Speaker on inspiring workplace cultures and businesses that leverage their humor resources to drive outrageous results. His ideas on building better workplace cultures have been featured in hundreds of publications worldwide, his Inspiring Workplaces blog is internationally recognized and he’s authored 8 books, including, “The Jerk-Free Workplace,” “The Humor Advantage,” and “Hire, Inspire, and Fuel Their Fire.”

In our conversation, we connect the ideas of humor, culture, and the ability to collaborate as well as shed some light on the many benefits to incorporating humor into our workplaces and our collaborative endeavors. Please enjoy our conversation.

Some links to some of the things we discuss during this episode: 

• Michael Kerr and Humor at Work
• Zappos – Core Values
• Book: A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey
• Book: The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
• Book: The Humor Advantage by Michael Kerr
• Book: You Can’t Be Serious: Putting Humor to Work by Michael Kerr
• Book: Why is Everyone Smiling? By Paul Spiegelman

Your host for the Cool Collaborations podcast is Scott Millar. Scott is the principle of Collaboration Dynamics, where he often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. 

Episode #29 is a repost of one of the fantastic conversations from the first season on the Cool Collaborations podcast. For this episode, I tried something a little different. I was joined by both Anthony Boxshall and Max Hardy, from Australia, for a dive into Authentic Co-design. We explore the stories of Authentic Co-design came from and some of the different angles on how, when, and why you would use a co-design process. In our conversation, Max brings the engagement expertise while Anth brings the leadership, scientist, and government expertise. They are quite the team and I very much enjoyed having this conversation with them.   

Some links to some of the things we discuss during this episode: 

• Max Hardy at Max Hardy Consulting
• Anthony Boxshall at Science Into Action 
• Authentic Co-design
• Book: New Power: How Power Works in our Hyperconnected World, and How to Make it Work for You by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms 
• Book: Collaboration Design: A Step-by-Step Guide to Successful Collaboration by Mark Elliott
• Book: Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari  

Your host for the Cool Collaborations podcast is Scott Millar. Scott is the principle of Collaboration Dynamics, where he often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. 

Alex Ryan is my guest for episode #28. Alex helps governments and corporate partners innovate at MaRS Discovery District, in Toronto, Ontario with work in electricity, smart cities, community health. And what really attracted my attention, was Alex’s thinking in systemic design, complex thinking and innovation. While that’s pretty impressive, he’s also written on smart cities, data governance, policy innovation and social innovation and been published in the World Economic Forum, Fast Company, Axios, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Complexity.

We discuss the connections between collaboration and innovation, some of their common ingredients, and the importance of location on innovation. Enjoy our conversation.  

Some links to some of the things we discuss during this episode: 

• Alex Ryan 
• MaRS Discovery District
• Place Matters – at MaRS Discovery District
• Mission from MaRS – Climate Impact Challenge
• The CRANE Tool – assess the emissions reduction potential of climate technologies
• McConnell Foundation
• ABSI Connect - Alberta Social Innovation Connect
• Polarization to Progress: Lessons from the City of Edmonton's social innovation experiment, RECOVER
• When Individuals are More Innovative Than Teams
• Ten Types of Innovation - The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs
• Book: Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions by Donald A. Schon
• Book: Growing Wings on the Way by Rosalind Armson

Your host for the Cool Collaborations podcast is Scott Millar. Scott is the principle of Collaboration Dynamics, where he often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. 

It’s #27 and I’m joined by two guests for this episode. Jen Beardsley is the Prize Competitions Program Administrator for the United States Bureau of Reclamation and Taylor Gilliland is the Senior Advisor for Innovation Programs at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. For this episode we are again talking about crowdsourcing, but this time from the perspective of two people who routinely use crowdsourcing methods to solve problems inside their own agencies. We talk about how crowdsourcing and open innovation methods have been used to advance the work in invasive species, protective masks, and pipeline leaks, before exploring how agencies could consider these types of approaches in their own work.

Please enjoy my conversation with Jen and Taylor. 

Some links to some of the things we discuss during this episode: 

• Bureau of Reclamation
• Prize Competitions, Research and Development Office, Bureau of Reclamation
• C. Taylor Gilliland
• National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)
• National Institutes of Health
• Check out U.S. Government Crowdsource challenges at Challenge.gov
• Book: Where do Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson

Your host for the Cool Collaborations podcast is Scott Millar. Scott is the principle of Collaboration Dynamics, where he often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. 

For episode #26, I have the distinct pleasure of a conversation with Adam Kahane about his most recent book Facilitating Breakthrough: How to Remove Obstacles, Bridge Differences, and Move Forward Together. We discuss what Adam calls transformative facilitation and how its set of ‘shifts’ fit within collaboration.  

Adam has published several books describing his thinking, approaches, and experiences from collaborating on significant issues all over the world. He is the Director of REOS Partners which is an “international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues”.

Enjoy my conversation with Adam. 

Some links to some of the things we discuss during this episode: 

• Adam Kahane
• Reos Partners
• Book: Facilitating Breakthrough: How to Remove Obstacles, Bridge Differences, and Move Forward Together

Other Books by Adam Kahane: 

• Collaborating with the Enemy 
• Transformative Scenario Planning: Working Together to Change the Future
• Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change
• Solving Tough Problems

 Adam Kahane and the others at Reos Partners do some interesting and amazing work. Check out their website for more information. 

Your host for the Cool Collaborations podcast is Scott Millar. Scott is the principle of Collaboration Dynamics, where he often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. 

Andrew Mangan joins me for episode #25 of the podcast. At the time we recorded the episode, Andrew was the Executive Director of the United States Business Council for Sustainable Development. Andy has recently stepped out of the Executive Director position and continues to serve on the Board for the US BCSD. Andrew Mangan founded the council in 1992 and developed it into a globally recognized leader in sustainable development solutions, collaboration, and innovation. In our conversation, we talk about how businesses that might normally never work together have found ways to collaborate to reduce waste and cost and improve their sustainability, the role of experimentation in sustainability, and how the growing drive for sustainable practices needs more collaboration. 

Some links to some of the things we discuss during this episode: 

• Andrew Mangan
• United States Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD)
• Gulf Coast Carbon Collaborative
• Great Lakes Carbon Collaborative
• Heliogen is a renewable energy technology company unlocking the power of sunlight to replace fossil fuels.
• ArcelorMittal is a steel manufacturer.
• Book: Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Travern

Check out more on the United Stated Business Council on Sustainable Development to see what kinds of collaborative work is happening in sustainable business and development. 

Your host for the Cool Collaborations podcast is Scott Millar. Scott is the principle of Collaboration Dynamics, where he often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. 

For episode #24, my guest is Kim Hyshka, the Principal of Dialogue Partners and a civic and public engagement expert based in Sherwood Park, Alberta. Kim is all about building capacity in people and communities so they can have meaningful dialogue and be able to work better together. It’s always a lot of fun to talk to Kim, because she carries such positive energy in the conversation. Today we talk about creating opportunities to bring people together, the quality of our conversations, failing and being vulnerable, and having good virtual conversations. 

Here’s some links to more information on some of the things we discuss during this episode: 

• Kim Hyshka
• Dialogue Partners
• Book: Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Stephen R. Covey (Foreword)
• Book: Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton.

As you can hear in this conversation, Kim believes that ‘life moves in the direction of the conversation we’re having’ and she has embodied that sentiment as she helps people and organizations have better and more productive conversations.  You can get in touch with Kim through Dialogue Partners.

Your host for the Cool Collaborations podcast is Scott Millar. Scott is the principle of Collaboration Dynamics, where he often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. 

Welcome to episode #23 of the Cool Collaborations podcast. My guest today is Paul Thagard, PhD, a is a philosopher, cognitive scientist, and author. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has been awarded the Molson Prize (2007) and a Killam Prize (2013) by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Our conversation covers a lot of ground as we explore collaboration in the world of people, animals, and artificial intelligence, in line with the work in Paul’s new book Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart? We speak about recursive thinking, empathy, complex problem solving, and creativity in the three worlds of bots, beasts, and humans. 

Here’s a few links to Paul Thagard’s latest book and some of the other things we discuss during the episode: 

• Paul Thagard, PhD
• Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart?
• Richard Nisbett, Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished University Professor, College of Literature, Science and the Arts, University of Michigan
• Keith Holyoak, Distinguished Professor, Stanford University
• Ocean’s Eleven
• Litt, Abninder & Eliasmith, Chris & Kroon, Frederick & Weinstein, Steven & Thagard, Paul. (2006). Is the brain a quantum computer?. Cognitive science. 30. 593-603. 10.1207/s15516709cog0000_59.
• Distributed Artificial Intelligence or Multiagent systems
• Deep Mind by Google
• IBM Watson
• AlphaGo – DeepMind playing the game Go.
• The concept of Emergence

Paul Thagard’s new book Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart? It comes out on October 19, 2021.  And, be sure to subscribe to the Cool Collaborations podcast with your podcast provider and share it with a friend you think would enjoy listening. 

Your host for the Cool Collaborations podcast is Scott Millar. Scott is the principle of Collaboration Dynamics, where he often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. 

Here's the second part of my conversation with Ryon Stewart and Christine Jenkins from NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation. As Challenge Coordinators at NASA, Ryon and Christine  bring crowdsourcing methods and expertise so that it can be a source of solutions for  problems facing NASA and agencies across the United States. In the conclusion of our conversation, Ryon and Christine talk about the problems that can be crowdsourced, how good ideas are recognized, and more. 

To find out more about the Center of Excellence and crowdsourcing projects at NASA, here’s a few links you might find interesting. 

• Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation 
• NASA Tournament Lab
• Ryon Stewart, Open Innovation Development
• Christine Ragno Jenkins, Business & Technical Integration
• Be part of future NASA Challenges by subscribing to the NASA Crowdsourcing Listserv
• Challenge.gov

 Be sure to subscribe to the Cool Collaborations podcast with your podcast provider and share it with a friend you think would enjoy listening. 

Your host for the Cool Collaborations podcast is Scott Millar. Scott is the principle of Collaboration Dynamics, where he often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together.