About Our 1st Architecture Project!

Our 1st architecture design studio project is Make a Chair!
This is the presentation of our project. Everyone shows the creative chair.

It is really interesting to have this experience. For the last weeks we have been dealing with different sketches and materials.
The studio class peovides us opportunities to know about how real architects work. And we can innovate our minds during the process.
Looking forward to our next project--A house in Hydra!

Innovation key to HK survival, says academic

Patsy Moy
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Hong Kong's next generation needs to "think outside the box" and become more creative so that the territory's economy will stand out from neighboring cities, an expert on innovative management said.Ali Farhoomand, professor of innovation and information management at Hong Kong University, also warned that the SAR's education system, with its rigid and test- based curricula, will dampen motivation and hamper creativity.
"Students here are trained to memorize things instead of trying to understand," Farhoomand said. "They are cramming in so many subjects, and then after class, they have to learn swimming, music, drawing and so on. They learn so many things, but in reality, they learn nothing."

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Hong Kong, he said, should develop an innovative economy to survive the fierce global competition, and one way forward is to emulate the education systems of Finland, Spain and South Korea.
Farhoomand said education has played a key role in those three countries, which have successfully transformed their economies into high-value and high-margin models.
Spain's education system focuses on personal attention to students, and learning freedom in terms of pace and scope, to preserve the inquisitive nature of children.
The Finnish model encourages young children to play instead of learning formal numbers and literacy, and, in South Korea, pre- primary education aims at providing an appropriate environment to nurture children and promote their wholesome development through enjoyable activities, with diversified content and methods of instruction.
"People [in Hong Kong] are competing to be the fastest and work the longest hours, as well as being cost-effective," Farhoomand said.
But, the professor said, the old business model is no longer enough for Hong Kong to secure its position when faced with the fast pace of development in mainland cities.
"Bear in mind that Shanghai and Shenzhen are also getting more and more efficient, showing the old success model of Hong Kong can be easily copied by other cities."
Farhoomand said efficiency is no longer sufficient, but thinking is paramount to build an innovative economy, so that Hong Kong can stand out from other places.
Rachel Chan Ka-yee, founder and chief "catalyst" of Innofoco, which provides consultancy services to companies to improve service and build brand equity, agreed that the mind-set of most Hong Kong people has to change, including learning how to slow down and spend more time thinking.
Farhoomand will be among 10 speakers at the March 31 Thought Leaders Forum - The Innovative Imperative: Creating Opportunities in Challenging Times, organized by the Bauhinia Foundation Research Centre.

Where does an innovative company go next?

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Creativity steers organizations.

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On Creativity

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A article about what is, and what is not, creativity in general.

The 6 Myths of Creativity

The 6 Myths of Creativity

An interesting article about "myths" of creativity.

About Social Enterprise

Social enterprises are social mission driven organizations which apply market-based strategies to achieve a social purpose. The movement includes both non-profits that use business models to pursue their mission and for-profits whose primary purposes are social. Their aim – to accomplish targets that are social and/or environmental as well as financial – is often referred to as the triple bottom line. Many commercial businesses would consider themselves to have social objectives, but social enterprises are distinctive because their social or environmental purpose remains central to their operation.
Rather than maximizing shareholder value, the main aim of social enterprises is to generate profit to further their social and or environmental goals. This can be accomplished through a variety of ways and depends on the structure of the social enterprise. The profit from a business could be used to support a social aim, such as funding the programming of a non-profit organization. Moreover, a business could accomplish its social aim through its operation by employing individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds or lending to micro-businesses that have difficulty in securing investment from mainstream lenders.
The Social Enterprise World Forum was established in 2008 to provide an opportunity for social enterprise leaders and practitioners from around the world to collaborate in support of social enterprise development. To date over 1500 people have attended the annual world forums, these have been held in Edinburgh (2008), Melbourne (2009) and San Francisco (2010). The 2011 World Forum is being held in Johannesburg and the SEWF steering group is receiving expressions of interest for the 2012 World Forum to be held in Asia.

Some well known social enterprises include John Lewis, Welsh Water (Glas Cymru), Cafédirect, The Eden Project, Divine Chocolate (Kuapa Kokoo), The Big Issue, the Co-operative Group, Duchy Originals, the London Symphony Orchestra, and Jamie Oliver's Restaurant - 15.
Three common characteristics of social enterprises as defined by Social Enterprise London are:
1. Enterprise orientation: They are directly involved in producing goods or providing services to a market. They seek to be viable trading organisations, with an operating surplus.
2. Social Aims: They have explicit social aims such as job creation, training or the provision of local services. They have ethical values including a commitment to local capacity building, and they are accountable to their members and the wider community for their social environmental and economic impact.
3. Social ownership: They are autonomous organisations with governance and ownership structures based on participation by stakeholder groups (users or clients, local community groups etc.) or by trustees. Profits are distributed as profit sharing to stakeholders or used for the benefit of the community.

Business Design and Innovation Programme: Students’ Collective Perspective

Business Design and Innovation (BDI) is a program that enlightens our university life, frees our minds and rekindles our view of the world.  The program architect, Professor Ali Farhoomand, brewed the idea of BDI, designed the structure, directed the drawing board and delivered the project. We are proud to be some of the columns of this elegant structure.

The program is designed for students who aspire to be entrepreneurs or management specialists through creative thinking. It is designed for students who have the courage to choose their own academic career and design their future. It provides broad space to develop multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills, thus enabling us to visualize abstract problems, synthesize different parts and conceptualize through innovation and creativity. Through a design-oriented approach it empowers us to think creatively, kicks us off our comfort zone, challenges our perceptions and releases our ability to think out of the box. Pursuing of dreams is a wonderful process. BDI allows us discover our true potential and get closer to our dreams.

Cross-disciplinary studies are crucial to breed creative minds. One of the most attractive parts of this program is that it encourages faculty-student consultation to tailor-make a curriculum that suits a student’s interests and talents. Within a well-structured syllabus, we are given the opportunity to take courses offered by the Faculty of Architecture, Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Social Sciences. We learn not only about business innovation but also about social innovation – hopefully to make a difference in our society.

Before transferring to this program, we were like most other students, being pushed here and there and not knowing what we really wanted. Now we are enjoying what university life should be. The elite style of selecting students makes us a small but extremely united team.

“Find a partner and think about what is the most innovative thing you can say to him/her.”

This is the start of our Creativity and Business Innovation course. During the class, we talk about a wide range of topics related to innovation. We learn that the meaning of creativity and innovation is not just about thinking patterns, but also about our attitude. Having an innovative attitude, we can think about doing things differently and creatively.

Prof. Farhoomand always encourages interaction in class. The questions raised by him are not only about academic matters but also about life values. He triggers us to think and critically evaluate ourselves. Not only do we acquire academic knowledge but we also get to understand ourselves better. His questions seem difficult because we seldom think about them in our daily life.

Prof. Farhoomand is one of the teachers who has had great influence on our lives. His classes are really unforgettable. In each class he will pop up a question to challenge our creativity, and then goes deeper and deeper to push us think out of box. His courses are undoubtedly the most creative and thought-provoking courses we have taken in the university. In his classes, we are encouraged to share our thoughts with our classmates. These are not just business courses but also life courses, as they significantly change the way we analyze issues, look at the world and think about our lives. We hear from exchange students that they wish they could have a professor like him in their home universities. We believe there is real need to promote Professor Farhoomand's way of teaching in the university to inspire more students.