In an echo of more general theories of adaptation, theories of the adaptation of a scholarly field describe a process involving struggles between a core establishment committed to a relatively coherent conception of truth and various peripheral challenges to that conception. The struggles reflect a necessary tension between the developments, refinement, and exploitation of existing knowledge and methods and the exploration of possible new directions. A hallmark of effective knowledge refinement and exploitation is a tight network among researchers. Such networks thrive on easy communication, and communication thrives on unified understandings. Consensus on the fundamentals is essential. Exploration, on the other hand, involves the examination of numerous possibilities, many of them dubious. It thrives on diversity and deviance. Because the efficiencies of coherence are useful immediately, they dominate local adaptive processes of learning. However, they are invitations to long-run stagnation. With exploratory diversity, disciplines, cultures, and languages turn in upon themselves. Thus, the emphasis in adaptive theory on maintaining a mix of both exploitation and exploration. (Explorations in Organizations, James G. March, 2008, p.329)

There is no theory for finding the optimum balance. It all depends on practical situations. According to James March,

“It is clear that a strategy of exploitation without exploration is a route to obsolescence. It is equally clear that a strategy of exploration without exploitation is a route to elimination. But it is not clear where the optimum lies between those two extremes. The problem is partly one ignorance about the distribution of costs and benefits, but it is only partly that. A deeper problem is that specifying the optimum requires comparing costs and returns across time and space. An exploitation/exploration balance that is good in the short run is likely not to be good in the long run. And a balance that is good for the individual actor is likely not to be good in the long run for the community of actors. Thus, although we cannot specify the optimum balance, we know that that optimum depends on the time and space perspective taken. More specifically, the longer the time horizon and the broader the space horizon, in general, the more the optimum moves toward exploration.” (Explorations in Organizations, 2008, p.109)

For the Life Strategy Activity, I also adopt the concept of Emergence for dealing with the pair of themes of “Exploitation - Exploration”. I was inspired by Henry Mintzberg’s ideas on strategic planning.

⁠

Source: The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning (Henry Mintzberg, p.359, 1994)

According to Henry Mintzberg, “…we believe, is that the concept of strategy formation has always been misconstrued, forcing strategic control to bypass one critical aspect — the possibility of emergent strategy. As shown in Figure 6–5, there is certainly the need to assess the performance of deliberate strategies (shown as B on the figure), and, stepping back (A), the need to assess the degree of realization of the strategies that were formally intended in the first place (in the words of Schended and Hofer’s book on strategic management, “whether (1) the strategy is being implemented as planned; and (2) the results produced by the strategy are those intended” [1979:18]). But before these must come another activity ( C ), namely the assessment of whatever strategies were, in fact, realized, whether intended or not. And the last activity must be enlarged (D) to encompass the assessment of the performance of all those strategies. In other words, strategic control must assess behavior as well as performance. Once again it must be appreciated that there is more to strategy formation than planning.”(1994, p.359)

By adopting the concept of Emergence, we can make a good balance between Exploitation and Exploration.

⁠

2. How to Think about Opposite Themes

There are many ways for thinking about Opposite Themes. I have developed several tools for this challenge.

The Dialectic Room

Theme U

The Mandala Diagram

2.1 The Dialectic Room

The Dialectic Room is a meta-diagram for applying dialectic logic to cope with structural tensions.

⁠

The Dialectic Room is a spatial metaphor. We can consider a tough situation with structural tension as a room with two windows and one door.

a tough situation = a room

a structural tension = a pair of Opposite Themes = two windows

a final action = a door

A room is a container which separates inside space and outside space. There are some actions people can do within a room. I pay attention to one special type of action: connect to the outside space from the inside space. Let’s call it “Process”.

The two windows are interfaces which refer to two “Tendencies”, Window1 refers to “Tendency 1” while Window 2 refers to “Tendency 2”. Each window has its own view of the outside space.

Finally, there is a door which allows people to actually go out of the room. The door refers to “Orientation” which represents a direction of a real action of going out of the inside space.

Once you get into the outside space, you can consider the new space as a new room and repeat the diagram.

This is a special type of spatial logic. The terms such as “Process”, “Tendency” and “Orientation” are placeholders of texts for describing the spatial logic. From the perspective of my diagram theory, the pure meta-diagram doesn’t need texts. For instance, the Yin-yang symbol or

Taijitu⁠

is a meta-diagram, can you find one text from it? However, we can add some texts as placeholders to a pure meta-diagram in order to better describe it.

We can adopt Hegel’s Dialectic (see the diagram below) to understand the Pairs of Opposite Themes. We can consider Theme 1 as Thesis and Theme 2 as Antithesis. By adopting Hegel’s Dialectic, the Fit between Theme 1 and Theme 2 means finding the Synthesis between Thesis and Antithesis.

⁠

The dialectic room is another visual layout of the dialectic logic. Now let’s adopt Hegel’s theory of Concept to understand Themes.

According to Andy Blunden, “As Hegel explained, every concept exists as Individual, Particular and Universal. These three moments of the concept are never completely in accord. There is always a measure of dissonance between them, and this is manifested in the dynamics of the concept. What an individual means when they use the word is never quite the same as the meaning produced in any other context.” (2012, p.295)

Themes are Concepts too. If we want to fit a pair of opposite themes, we can fit them in three sub-dimensions: Individual dimension, Particular dimension, and Universal dimension.

You can find more details in

The Dialectic Room: A new metaphor for innovation⁠

2.2 Theme U

Theme U is a meta-diagram for displaying three pairs of themes with a special spatial structure. Three levels can be used to define three Dimensions. For example, the diagram below shows an example of using Theme U to display Pairs of Opposite Themes. For each dimension, you can select two themes that form a pair. For example, Theme A1 and Theme A2 are a pair of opposite themes which share Dimension A.

⁠

I use the above diagram to discuss my

personal innovation⁠

. I defined the following dimensions for curating three pairs of opposite themes of my career experience.

Dimension A: Cross-cultural work & life

Dimension B: Cross-discipline knowledge

Dimension C: Cross-domain cognition

You don’t have to use these examples of dimensions since you have your unique career experience.

⁠

In addition to three dimensions, the Theme U diagram also uses Left Field and Right Field to group themes.

By combining Dimensions and Fields, you can make a configuration of your themes with the Theme U diagram. The about diagram shows some examples of dimensions and fields. You can define your own dimensions and fields too.

⁠

You can find more details about Theme U in

The Knowledge Curation Toolkit #1: Theme U for Single-theory Curation⁠

2.3 The Mandala Diagram

The Mandala Diagram is based on the Hubhood meta-diagram. See the picture below.

⁠

The Hubhood meta-diagram is designed with two dimensions, four thematic spaces, and four connected Hubs. It is a perfect container for containing pairs of opposition themes.

On Jan 4, 2022, I made a Mandala diagram for modeling a life development program with the Hubhood diagram. See the diagram below.

⁠

The name of the above diagram is The Sailor’s Mandala which refers to a metaphor: Life as Sailing.

Life: it is a journey such as sailing at sea.

Boat: social container such as family, team, group, project, company, community, etc.

Sea: social context and social environment.

The diagram was designed with the following two dimensions:

Individual Psychological Intervention

Social Practice Acceleration

From the feedback and our discussion, we learned a lesson that Life Transition is not only about individual psychological situations, but also about a person’s social practice and work activities. So, I suggested that the program should expand its service to consider social practice acceleration.

Based on the above two dimensions, I identified four thematic spaces:

Psychological: Cognition and Emotion

Social Practice: Opportunity and Resource

The program is successful on Individual Psychological Intervention. We found the feedback is pretty positive.

You can find more details in

The Sailor’s Mandala: A Life Discovery Framework⁠

⁠

3. The “Present - Future” Fit

Life Discovery is a “cross-the-gap” activity which aims to explore a new place in a certain direction. There is a spatial distance between the existing place where we are and the expected place where we want to be.

We can consider Life Discovery as Boundary Innovation because it is about a dialogue between Present (the existing place) and Future (the expected place).

⁠

Now, let’s apply the ECHO Way (v2.0) to the “Present — Future” fit for the Life Discovery Activity. We can roughly use three phases for this process:

Life U: Think with the Theme U diagram.

Project I: Act with the Developmental Project model.

Echo Z: Reach the end of the journey: an expected place.

⁠

The ECHO Way (v2.0) is a practical framework for knowledge curation and boundary innovation. We can consider Life Discovery as Boundary Innovation because it is about a dialogue between Present and Future. The Developmental Project model is an abstract framework, you can adopt it to design a real developmental project for your Life Discovery Activities.

⁠

The above picture is the standard diagram of the Developmental Project Model. It uses eight elements to describe a developmental project:

Purpose: Why do you want to initiate or join the project?

Position: What’s the social structure of the project?

Program: Does the project have formal organizational processes?

Social: How do you connect with others due to joining the project?

Content: How do you acquire new information and knowledge due to joining the project?

Action: What actually do you do due to joining the project?

Theme: Do you find some new and interesting themes for your career development?

Identity: How do you perceive your identity before and after joining the project?

If we turn these elements into Project I and combine them with Life U, then we get the

Career-fit⁠

diagram.

⁠

The final diagram can be considered as “an ecological approach” of career development because it refers to the structure of “organism (personal themes of career) — action (fitting) — environment(impact projects)”.

The eight elements of Project I form three groups as a process of transformation.

The first group is defined as Situational Context which highlights three important aspects of Developmental Projects: Purpose, Position, and Program.

The second group is defined as Developmental Resources which highlights three types of potential opportunities of Developmental Projects: Social, Content, and Action.

The third group is defined as Impact by Projects which considers personal development caused by joining Developmental Projects from two dimensions: Theme and Identity.

The three-phase structure of the “Present - Future” Fit emphasizes “Think — Act — Reach” actions. The last phase is the most important phase for the whole journey. Let’s look at the Echozone of the Activity U project. The diagram below only shows the Echozone with some notes for discussing the process of fit between career themes and developmental projects.

⁠

The above diagram presents fits of two pairs of opposite themes. The “Theory v.s. Practice” fit is described with three movements:

Practice-based Reflection: building rough models with intuition.

Theory-based Reflection: improving models with theoretical resources.

Theory-Practice Dialogue: turn models into frameworks and test it with cast studies.

The article

Platform Innovation as Concept-fit⁠

offers a real example of these three steps.

It’s a challenge to share complex personal knowing within the Echozone. I try so hard to design visual diagrams and write a book. The second part of THE ECHO WAY uses 76 pages to describe what I experienced with the Echozone. It’s all about deep thinking, personal reflection, boundary dialogue, etc.

You can find more details in

The “Present — Future” Fit and The ECHO Way⁠

⁠

4. Personal Innovation as Career-fit

The Career-fit framework has four key words: Experience > Themes > Projects > Opportunities. It roughly suggests the following five steps for personal innovation:

Reflect on career experience

Discover pairs of opposite themes

Fit all pairs of opposite themes

Join or initiate relevant projects

Fit career themes with career opportunity

⁠

The above diagram shows three Pairs of Opposite Themes of my career experience.

China v.s. America

Theory v.s. Practice

Concept v.s. Diagram

The core of the Career-fit framework is Structure and Dynamics of career themes. The idea of Pairs of Opposite Themes refers to significant differences between career themes. The idea of Meta-themes refers to using one high level theme to curate similar career themes. The idea of Development of Themes refers to the transformation of career themes.

If we want to explore personal innovation, the great starting point is Pairs of Opposite Themes because they could lead to Structural Tensions such as boundary, distance, difference, heterogeneity, contradiction, and complementation. If we can turn one or more structural tensions into creative opportunities, then we could find the way of personal innovation.

In May 2021, I used the Concept-fit framework to reflect on my career experience. I’d like to share my story as an example of the framework.

I found three major Pairs of Opposite Themes from my past over twenty years of work experience. The first Pair of Opposite Themes “China v.s. America” refers to cross-cultural work & life experience. There are significant differences between China and America. The second Pair of Opposite Themes “Theory v.s. Practice” refers to cross-discipline knowledge experience. There is a huge gap between academic knowledge and practical work activities. The third Pair of Opposite Theme “Concept v.s. Diagram” refers to cross-domain cognitive experience. According to Cognitive scientist and psychologist Barbara Tversky, Concept is about linguistic thought while Diagram is about spatial thought.

Career Themes are abstract concepts for curating various career activities. It’s hard to understand my career themes without knowing my work stories. The following sections share relevant details from my career experience. Readers can skip these details and directly jump to Part 2.

4.1 When China meets America

I was born in Jianyang which is a small town in China. My two sons were born in Houston which is a large city in America. We are a born global family.

I have over twenty years of work experience which can be divided into three stages: creative stage, strategic stage and innovative stage. At the creative stage, I worked for the advertising and media industry as a creative copywriter and designer. At the strategic state, I worked for pre-IPO stage enterprises as a business strategist and fundraising consultant. At the innovative stage, I worked on making brand new digital tools and platforms as a researcher and designer.

⁠

My first stage of career (1994–2001) was about advertising, marketing, and communication. At that stage, I worked on creative advertising campaigns, corporate visual identity design, brand management consulting, and marketing communication activities.

From 2001 to 2007, I worked for several private investors who are active in investing in mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States. Following first-round investments, I helped start-ups raise successive rounds of funds from venture capital firms and then raised funds from public markets through IPOs. As an authorized representative of the start-ups, I was a principal channel of communication with professionals, including sponsors, financial advisors, local and overseas lawyers, auditors, and surveyors. I also assisted presidents of start-ups in strategic planning, brand management, and investor relations.

At the end of 2007, I moved to the U.S. and joined the world of web/mobile startups and became a product strategist and an interaction designer.

As a product strategist, I used to work with founders and CEOs on product concept development including idea generation, market research, competitor analysis, and users research. As an interaction designer, I work with software programmers to turn product concepts into real web/mobile applications. At this stage, I work on product development plans, user interface design, visual brand identity system, test, etc. After product launch, I work on product growth, user research, new feature development and product redesign.

I was the Chief Information Architect and lead UX designer of BagTheWeb.com which is an early web content curation tool. We launched the site in 2010. I was responsible for the information architect design and the user interface design. BagTheWeb services global users from various domains such as content curation, educational teaching, personal study, etc. This project inspired me to research the general approach of curation and the outcome is a book titled Curativity and a framework for Knowledge Curation.

After 2017, I moved the direction of social apps and social curation. I tried to apply my theoretical frameworks to digital work activity and structured engagement activity.

The Social Platform Experience Design (#SocialPxD)⁠

framework is one of these frameworks.

4.2 When Theory meets Practice

My major practical work activities are 1) Corporate Strategy Development, 2) Product Design and UX Research, and 3) Creative Campaign Design. My major theoretical interests are 1) Ecological Psychology, 2) Activity Theory, and 3) Curativity Theory.

Before 2014, I spent most of my spare time on digital non-profit communities as a digital activist. During the 2014 to 2015, I transformed my focus from nonprofit activities to theoretical learning. Since then, I have been spending most of my spare time on learning Ecological Psychology, Creativity Research and other related subjects.

2014–2020: Ecological Psychology and Creativity Research

2014–2018: Action Science, Activity Theory, and Cognitive Science

2018–2019: Practice Theory, HCI, Strategy, and Work

2020: Social Theory, Social Media, Information Systems, and Platform

After learning Ecological Psychology for five years, I wrote a book titled Curativity during Sept 2018 to March 2019. During the process of writing, I developed a new theoretical approach called

the Ecological Practice Approach⁠

which aims to build an Affordance-based theory of action and adopt ideas of Ecological Psychology for analyzing various social practices.

Since then, I have written six quasi-academic books as unpublished drafts.

Curativity: The Ecological Approach to General Curation Practice (2018–2019, Chinese)

After Affordance: The Ecological Approach to Human Action (2020, Chinese)

Platform for Development: The Ecology of Adult Development in 21st Century (2020–2021, English)

Activity U: How to Think and Act Like an Activity Theorist (2020, English)

Project-oriented Activity Theory (2020–2021, English)

The ECHO Way: The Journey of Becoming A Knowledge Hero (2021, Chinese)

One insight I learned from the journey is a huge gap between academic knowledge and practical work activities. There are various theoretical concepts and theoretical frameworks that could help practitioners think. I think the way of combining theory-based reflection and practice-based reflection is better than the way of relying entirely on popular heuristics.

⁠

This insight leads me to the direction of closing the gap between Theory and Practice via Knowledge Curation.

4.3 When Concept meets Diagram

My work experience covers designing and writing. I can switch between verbal thinking and visual thinking. I like to develop brand new abstract concepts and design brand new concrete diagrams. I can switch between high level strategic ideas and pixel-level interface design.

Knowledge frameworks are formed with concepts and diagrams. Eventually, I move to the direction of Knowledge Curation and consider Knowledge frameworks as my creative products.

The diagram of the Career-fit framework is an application of the HERO U diagram which is generated by the WXMY diagram. For me, these diagrams are only one thing because they share one special type of spatial structure. I can create various frameworks by assembling different concepts with one diagram.

In 2018, I wrote a 108-page personal thesis titled Diagram Explained which offers a theoretical model about diagram and diagramming. I also collected over 80 cases for writing the thesis.

In fact, my recent book draft The ECHO Way also spends several chapters on discussing concepts, diagrams, and knowledge curation. You can find more details in

Personal Innovation as Career-fit⁠

⁠

5. A List of Opposite Themes

In Jan 2022, I moved to discover Pairs of Themes from professional mental models and use them to design knowledge diagrams such as the series of Mandala diagrams. You can find more details in

Thematic Space: A “Strategy-as-Curation” Weekend⁠

I also made a list of Pairs of Themes in

Thematic Space: A “Strategy-as-Curation” Weekend⁠

. I’d like to share the list again. You only have to pay attention to the bold text. Other parts are my personal notes. These pairs of themes are discovered from my Mandala diagrams and my other articles. The Hint offers a clue for thinking about a pair of themes from my perspective. I can’t offer more details for each hint in this article.

01. The “Self — Other” Relevance (hint: find

a good partner⁠

)

02. The “Explore — Exploit” Cycle (hint:

manage the Resource and Result⁠

)

03. The “Future — Present” Dynamic (hint: reduce

the Complexity between Anticipation and Performance⁠

)

04. The “Control — Support” Tension (hint: perceive the Unintended

Supportance⁠

)

05. The “Found — Designed” Scope (hint: taking

Affordances⁠

means Material Freedom)

06. The “Means — End” Spectrum (hint: all things can be

Mediating Instruments⁠

)

07. The “Enter — Exit” Trajectory (hint:

Sparks In, Statue Out⁠

)

08. The “Story — Model” Switch (hint: master

the Degrees of Abstraction⁠

)

09. The “Part — Whole” Curativity (hint: discover

Double Containers⁠

)

10. The “Attach — Detach” Flow (hint: know when to

leave and join⁠

)

11. The “Potential — Capability” Opportunity (hint:

get it done⁠

)

12. The “Object — Objective” Activity (hint: knowing future by

seeing change of objects⁠

)

13. The “Problem — Solution” Space (hint: you can

design a solution⁠

discover a new space⁠

)

14. The “Challenge — Response” Ladder (hint:

possible challenges lead to possible selves⁠

)

15. The “Past — Present” Evolution (hint: respect the history,

don’t hate your past self⁠

)

16. The “

Idea — Concept⁠

” Upgrade (hint: every moment starts from a clap)

17. The “

Experience — Theme⁠

” Mirror (hint: keep your uniqueness)

18. The “Structure — Tendency” Landscape (hint: understand

deep changes⁠

)

19. The “

Ambiguity — Precision⁠

” Clarification (hint: clarify your ideas)

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The Themes

Contents

1. An Example of Opposite Themes

2. How to Think with Opposite Themes?

3. The “Present - Future” Fit

4. Personal Innovation as Career-fit

5. A List of Opposite Themes

1. An Example of Opposite Themes

2. How to Think about Opposite Themes

2.1 The Dialectic Room

2.2 Theme U

2.3 The Mandala Diagram

3. The “Present - Future” Fit

4. Personal Innovation as Career-fit

4.1 When China meets America

4.2 When Theory meets Practice

4.3 When Concept meets Diagram

5. A List of Opposite Themes