Simon Koolwijk

"A whole new mind - Why right - brainers will rule the future" is a book which very much caught my inspiration. The book explains that in the coming decades the creative people will be the ones dominating and inspiring our work and economies. Daniel H. Pink explains that a lot of products and services have been standardized. Economies as China and India are much more competitative than our economies in producting standardized products. Therefore the challenge for European and American countries is to become innovative and creative. Daniel H. Pink recommends the six senses, which stimulate creative development: Design (make your product or service unique in its design) Story (connect a story to your product) Symphony (your service is like a music song, touching people at different stages) Empathy (replace yourself into the client and understand body language) Play (make people play and stimulate the inner child in them) Meaning (give meaning and understanding to y...

The last 4 weeks I have spended my time reading. Two books really caught my attention. The first one which gave me a lot of new inspiration is: "Creativiteit Hoe? Zo? - Igor Byttebier ." The book provides a number of brainstorm techniques on how to get new illunamous ideas. Normally with the traditional brainstorm methods you get the regular ideas, but with some exceptional techniques you can create new things, which you have not been thinking of before. Igor Byttebier clearifies from the beginning that creativity is not something, that is only given to a few number of people. It is something you can learn! The book gives some exercises which help you to develop these skills. Myself, I have started to look differently at pictures, photos and things in my surroundings. Last week I was looking at a picture with hot peppers! But when I looked it from a different perspective I saw women in red dresses dancing very passionately, or I saw that somebody had cut a white paper and ...

"This course was dynamic, informative, very useful and connected to our work! I can directly apply the tools in my work. I learned a lot from my colleagues. There was room for exchange and the input from the resource persons in the is course had an added value!" From 21 - 22 January 2009, Desk Officers from the development organisation ICCO participated in the second part of the training Capacity Development of Partner Organisations. This training which was facilitated by Simon Koolwijk , provided participants the space to present practical cases on how they had applied their lessons learned during the first training on 18 - 19 November 2008 . Cases where shared about capacity development of partner organisations in the Pacific, Asia and Africa. Desk officers had applied some of the organisational analysis tools to assess the capacities of their partners. Three resource persons; Hettie Walters, Angelica Senders (both from ICCO ) & Ben Haagsma ( IC Consult ) provided...

Elmine Wijnia , Joitske Hulsebosch , Sibrenne Wagenaar and Simon Koolwijk present themselves at the http://www.werkenmetweb2.wikispaces.com/ promotion video. Elmine Wijnia compiled a 4 minute video on what you can do with web2.0 tools and on how they can improve your work and give you the pleasure of a new adventure. For more information about our web 2.0 tools, contact us through http://www.werkenmetweb2.wikispaces.com/

How to keep the knowledge in the organisation? How do we improve the quality of our work? And how do we organize ourselves to meet the challenges for the future? What will be my role in a changing organisation? And which competencies do I need to develop? And which knowledge do we need? These were some of the key questions, which were discussed by staff members from the WVP unit of Rijkswaterstaat Ijsselmeergebied. WVP is a unit which is active in keeping up the infrastructure for waterinfrastructure and physical infrastructure to protect The Netherlands from wateroverflow. The unit is now in a phase that it wants to maintain the quality of its work by working more efficient. One of the challenges is to delegate more responsibilities to the Commercial Constructors and focus more on product and process controls. During the workshop on the 12th January 2009 staff members visualised and discussed on how they see their organisation develop towards 2012. The workshop was led by Fra...

Central Asia is one of the 11 regions to which ICCO is decentralising its operations. The operation is called ProCoDe. Pro = Programmatic approach where partner organisations work in thematic coalitions to deal with problems such as poverty alliviation, improve access to basic services, improve economic conditions and promote Peace and Democracy. Co = co-responsibility; This means that local key leaders and experts from each of the 11 regions are involved in long term policy making of ICCO. What are the main themes, the main target groups we would like to support in our region? These are some of the questions which are being dealt with by Regional Councils where these local leaders are being part of. De = Decentralisation; In this process responsibilities and roles from the Central Working Office in Utrecht, The Netherlands are being tranfered to the Regional Working Office in Central Asia (i.e. Kirchystan, Kazachstan & Tjajikistan). On the 8th January 2009 Simon Koolwijk ...