Europe
29 March 2013
I ordered three sample canvases that should come to my apartment any day now. I am very excited to see what they look like! Basketball ended two days ago, we dropped out of the NIT tournament with a loss to Saint Marries on Wednesday afternoon. This has been the first time since September 2012 that I actually have some time on my hands. I am starting to realize that I really want to get a job so that I can earn some money for Europe and all the other joys of life…I’ve learned that money is not everything, but it sure is important. Because our season ends at such an awkward time and the fact that I live in a college town, ABSOLUTELY NO ONE is hiring right now. I have decided the best money I can make at the moment is with my photography business. It looks like I am going to be knocking on doors in the “well-to-do” area above the temple trying to sell my new “Cambridge” package. Hence the canvases are on their way and I am prepping to put on my cutest puppy –dog face and make some sales.
Mission number 1: leverage photography business.
List of just a few of the places we want to go. We may have a problem in we only have 28 days..
Rome, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Olympia, Athens, Santorini, Florence, Pisa, Cinque Terre, Venice, Milan, Barcelona, Carcassonne, Paris,
Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Bern, Zurich, Berlin, Munich
We are going to have to make cuts somewhere…I just don’t want to!!!
After Oxford, the one week break before Cambridge starts a group of friends and I are planning on hitting up Spain (and maybe Southern France). By this point our brains will be fried and we will be dead tired so some time in Spain when the weather is so beautiful will be perfectly planned. This also frees up time to visit Greece and more of Northeast Europe in my initial 4 week backpack trip after England. Planning is crazy because you want to maximize both quantity and quality but still remain sane and have fun.
As I choose my classes for Cambridge, I SIMPLY CANNOT DECIDE! I want to take them all and I just don’t know which ones I should decide on. I am not stressing out too much because I know that I can always audit all the classes that I want…at least that is what I was told…I can just show up to the classes and the professors will never even know I wasn’t actually in the class. I guess technically you are not supposed to do it, but hey, I am a rule breaker. I am signed up for the business innovation and creativity class, travel writing, and a supervision course. I think I may switch to European History instead of travel writing because I have heard stellar things about that professor…Jonathan Steinberg. There is also no better way to learn European history than while in Europe. I am a little bummed that the Financial institutions class filled up…that would have been a great class to take especially considering I am a soon to be finance major-I think I have come to a conclusion on that. There is simply so much to do in so little time.
Kings College-Cambridge University
I just bought my train pass!!! Wooooohooo this is real. Also I just drained my bank account another $628…..I also met with Haven Barlow today to discuss Cambridge classes and the supervision requirements. I switched to European History and I think I will be glad that I did. After speaking with him I am going to do all I can to lock in a supervision spot and am very excited to take the creativity and business innovation class. Once again he told me to audit as many classes as I can because they are all incredible….I may go insane trying to schedule all the amazing things that are going on there into my life. It is a good thing I am doing my traveling beforehand…
European History 1900-2013
This course follows the history of Europe from the high point of Empire and world domination in 1900 to collapse and ruin in 1945 and on to recovery by the 1970s. The grand societies and rich nations which composed the European state system destroyed themselves in the first forty-five years. As many as eighty million Russians, Germans, Poles, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Italians and other Europeans died through war, disease and famine. Hundreds of thousands died in slave labor camps, and six million Jews were systematically murdered. On the 8th of May 1945, the day Nazi Germany surrendered, the once prosperous continent was a gigantic smoking ruin, covered by rubble, pock-marked by craters and full of miserable starving people. From the ‘zero point’ Europe recovered to find a new and much greater prosperity, to witness the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its new identity in a continental federation called the European Union. The crash of 2008 and the subsequent crisis of the common European currency have revealed a whole new set of tensions and conflicts. Individual members face domestic crises and the European Union as a whole faces several collective crises. The 17 members of the Eurozone have begun to think of themselves as the ‘ins and the ten non-members feel like the ‘outs’. Within the ‘ins’ sharp divisions have emerged between the northern members who have managed to contain their debts and the southern members who have not. Will the European Union survive to its sixtieth birthday in 2017? As we look back on this remarkable story from the twenty-first century, we understand that the twentieth century in Europe created the world in which we now live.
Creativity and Business Innovation
Innovation is often seen as crucial for companies’ performance, and indeed for economic growth and development. Business innovation is broader in scope than product or technological innovation, as it also involves changes to organizational processes, structures and services. Creativity is a central aspect of innovation, as it drives the generation of new ideas and behaviours. Thus, studying creativity is crucial for understanding innovation, and indeed for becoming more creative. Yet, many questions remain open. Are novel ideas based on imagination leaps or incremental processes? Is creativity about finding new solutions or about exploring new problems altogether? How can we become more creative? Moreover, is it always the “best” solutions that prevail in the market? If not, what else matters for success? In addition to creativity, innovation requires tailored expertise, coordinated resources and appropriate structures. Thus, most types of business innovation rely on a collective endeavour driven by the top management and employees from different functional areas. Collaboration with internal and external parties and constant changes of market and competitive factors expand innovation opportunities; however, they also complicate the innovation management process.
This course will address the above topics taking you through a journey from the creative processes within our minds to the management of innovation within organisations.