Takemusu Aiki: Insights into Optimizing Ideational Flow

The Fourth Art of Management and Organization Conference, Banff, Canada, 9-12 August 2008This paper will investigate how designers can connect broader understandings of ‘leadership’with specific design knowledge to enhance creative performance. The emphasis is on how designers can potentially ‘manage’ their thinking within the ideation process – maximise “ways”to spread ‘memes’. A meme is a rule, concept, or idea that can be spread from one person to another. Designers have been described as ‘memetic engineers’ (Dawkins, 1989) because they produce memes or units of cultural information that are recycled and evolve over time. Memes emerge through ‘imitation and recombination’ according to Blackmore (1999), by mixing up ideas to produce new combinations. One approach to understanding and reflecting on existing disciplinary experiences, as well as challenging creative potential, is through researching other conative “ways” – such as ‘Aikido’ – to embrace and reflect on ‘how’ we think instead of purely ‘what’ we think

Michael H.R. Tolkien (1920-84): a research travelogue

This article will attempt to put together a portrait of Michael H.R. Tolkien’s life through recent archival and research visits to various locations related to him in the United Kingdom. These visits were conducted during the Spring and Fall of 2015, and while much still needs to be compiled the information as it is currently known, along with the photographs and video footage, provide a unique portrait of Michael H.R. Tolkien never before known. The presentation of the information as it was uncovered is given chronologically, because the volume of research began as an avalanche that affected subsequent tangents and visits, and also because the reader will appreciate the unraveling of the documentation in this manner (almost like a detective story)