Humantific Archives: Making Innovation Real, Opening Ceremony Talk by GK VanPatter, Savonia University, Finland, 2011 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the consumer socialization of preschool age children in a peer-to-peer context as they participate in dramatic play in a grocery store setting. Design/methodology/approach – This research employs a case study approach as outlined by Yin. A preschool located within a major metropolitan area in the Southeastern USA was selected for investigation. Located within each of the three classrooms was a grocery store learning center. This learning center provided children the opportunity to engage in dramatic play while enacting grocery shopping scripts. A total of 55 children between the ages of three-and six-years old were observed over a six-week period. Observations were recorded via field notes and transcribed into an electronic data file. Emergent themes were compared with theoretical propositions, fleshing out an overall interpretation and description of the case context. Findings – Findings indicate that even very young children (ages three to six years) are able to successfully adopt and utilize adult shopping scripts within the grocery store shopping context. The children followed a common sequence of behaviors that mimicked adult shopping patterns. Furthermore, the children demonstrated peer-to-peer consumer socialization strategies, directing each other on how to perform appropriate shopping scripts. Originality/value – This study differs from previous research in that the data reveal that preschool age children do in fact exhibit peer-to-peer influence while enacting shopping scripts. Although research has examined children as consumers, no researchers have used dramatic play to study young children in a grocery store setting. The rich content obtained from observing children in dramatic play in a grocery store learning center is unique to the marketing literature and provides a better understanding of the consumer socialization of young children.
Journal of Documentation, 2017
Purpose — Serendipity is an interesting phenomenon to study in information science as it plays a fundamental - but perhaps underestimated - role in how we discover, explore, and learn in all fields of life. The purpose of this paper is to operationalize the concept of serendipity by providing terminological 'building blocks' for understanding connections between environmental and personal factors in serendipitous encounters. Understanding these connections is essential when designing affordances in physical and digital environments that can facilitate serendipity. Approach — In this paper, serendipity is defined as what happens when we, in unplanned ways, encounter resources (information, things, people, etc.) that we find interesting. In the outlined framework, serendipity is understood as an affordance, i.e. a usage potential when environmental and personal factors correspond with each other. The framework introduces three key affordances for facilitating serendipity: diversifiability, traversability, and sensoriability, covering capacities of physical and digital environments to be diversified, traversed, and sensed. The framework is structured around couplings between the three key affordances and three key personal serendipity factors: curiosity, mobility, and sensitivity. Ten sub-affordances for serendipity and ten coupled personal sub-factors are briefly outlined. Related research is compared with and mapped into the framework aiming at a theoretical validation. The affordance approach to serendipity is discussed, including different degrees and types of serendipity. Findings — All the terminological 'building blocks' in the framework are seen to resonate with the included related research. Serendipity is found to be a commonplace phenomenon in everyday life. It is argued that we cannot "engineer" nor "design" serendipity per se, but can design affordances for serendipity. Serendipity may thus be intended by designers, but must always be unplanned by users. The outlined affordance approach to serendipity points to the importance of our sensory-motor abilities to discover and explore serendipitous affordances. Research implications/limitations — Implications of the framework for designing physical and digital environments with affordances for serendipity are briefly considered. It is suggested that physical environments may have a primacy regarding affordances of sensoriability for facilitating serendipity, and digital environments a primacy regarding traversability, whereas physical and digital environments may afford similar degrees of diversifiability. In future research, the framework needs further empirical validation in physical and digital environments. Originality/value — No other research has been found addressing affordances for serendipity and connections between environmental and personal factors in similarly detailed ways. The outlined framework and typology may function as a baseline for further serendipity studies.
"Oasis Way and the Postnormal Era: How Understanding Serendipity Will Lead You to Success"
"Oasis Way and the Postnormal Era: How Understanding Serendipity Will Lead You to Success", 2014
This book is based on the experiences taken from ’netWork Oasis’ – and ’OpenINNO’ (ENPI – 631) - projects. It will describe the revolutionary change in our society and business fields having a transformative effect also to our innovation environments. The increasing importance of communities and sustainable ecosystems is highlighted. The emergent types of entrepreneurship – both effectual and social entrepreneurship - are explained and some great examples also outside Oasis and OpenINNO projects are illustrated. The key conclusion of the book is that innovation activities can be improved by understanding serendipity and applying serendipity management principles. The book gives practical, hands-on advices, how to harness serendipity on individual, community and organizational levels. It describes the possibilities to enhance serendipity in business environments by workspace design, both physical and virtual, and explains how to increase coincidencity in the team building process. Keywords: innovation environments, incubation, community building, ecosystem development, open innovation, collaboration platforms, serendipity, serendipity management
Communication of respect in interethnic service encounters
Language in Society, 1997
Divergent practices for displaying respect in face-to-face interaction are an ongoing cause of tension in the US between immigrant Korean retailers and their African American customers. Communicative practices in service encounters involving Korean customers contrast sharply with those involving African American customers in 25 liquor store encounters that were videotaped and transcribed for analysis. The relative restraint of immigrant Korean storekeepers in these encounters is perceived by many African Americans as a sign of racism, while the relatively personable involvement of African Americans is perceived by many storekeepers as disrespectful imposition. These contrasting interactional practices reflect differing concepts of the relationship between customer and storekeeper, and different ideas about the speech activities that are appropriate in service encounters. (Intercultural communication, respect, service encounters, African Americans, Koreans)
This paper explores the role of visuals such as images, colour, symbols and videos in shaping and influencing public deliberation on controversial policy issues. To date, scholars and practitioners have focused mainly on the role of speech and text in deliberative democracy, as opposed to various non-speech acts. Yet visuals are a powerful medium for communication in contemporary democracies, especially for projecting political meanings and mobilising citizens. This is especially so in a communicative era where political debates have become increasingly multi-sensual. This paper examines visuals in the enactment of democracy understood in deliberative terms. More specifically it considers the roles that visuals perform in deliberative systems that form around political controversies. Drawing on an in-depth case study of the public debate surrounding a controversial coal seam gas project in Australia, the paper identifies how visuals shape the discursive boundaries of debates, depict who is affected by the controversy, and both clarify and confuse arguments. The paper considers how these different roles of visuals can enhance (but at times also undermine) public deliberation especially in polarised controversies.
The library as heterotopia: Michel Foucault and the experience of library space
Journal of Documentation, 2015
Using Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia as a guide, the purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of considering the library as place, and specifically as a place that has the “curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect” (Foucault, 1986a, p. 24). The paper draws upon a range of literary examples and from biographical accounts of authors such as Alan Bennett, Michel Foucault, and Umberto Eco to show how the library space operates as a heterotopia. The paper finds that drawing together the constructs of heterotopia and serendipity can enrich the understanding of how libraries are experienced as sites of play, creativity, and adventure.