Victor
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The Scoot-n-Swiff
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1 min read
+ = The Scoot-n-Swiff (patent pending) This idea came to me while visiting my sister this weekend. A lot of kids were over for a party, and I saw how the toddlers loved these ride-on toys. I also noticed my sister needing to swiff a few times per day to de-crumb after the kids. Clearly…
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Design envy
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1 min read
You know, I think the phrase design thinking is an oxymoron. The design mindset is synonomous with making and doing; it’s more action-oriented than merely talking and thinking. This is yet another reason to reframe design thinking. A friend of mine studying psychology says many in that field have physics envy: they want the capability…
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WorldChanging images of the future
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1 min read
My colleague Zap pointed me to some of WorldChanging’s links to images of the future… Pantopicon’s FFWD>> competition presents a series of themes, and asks for images set in 2005 and 2025 as illustration. (reference) The Onion’s 2056 issue. Alex Steffen — in a post wonderfully similar to MIG’s ideas on tangible futures — itemizes…
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Did you know there’s a vaccine for chickenpox?
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2 min read
I had no idea until a friend of mine, an adult, just caught chickenpox (she actually knew about the vaccine but her doctor told her she’d been ‘exposed’ and didn’t need it). Apparently the vaccine was approved in the U.S. in 1995. If you have never had chickenpox and haven’t been vaccinated, you can no…
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It’s telling that this BusinessWeek/BCG survey only lists executive titles in this answer, even as executive-focused publications like HBR are publishing articles telling us, “Because so much of the learning about customers and so much of the experimentation with different segmentations, value propositions, and delivery mechanisms involve the people who regularly deal with customers, it…
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The client-centered innovation imperative
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2 min read
There’s an inherent problem in trying to market anything complex like innovation: we practioners are passionate and by necessity employ a rich set of ideas, while our clients who need it, by definition, have focused on another aspect of business and may not have the time nor the inclination to understand these rich ideas in…
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An Inconvenient Truth is Al Gore’s film about global warming. A friend of a friend who saw a preview said it blew her mind. Who Killed the Electric Car? investigates, murder mystery style, the birth, limited commercialization and subsequent death of the electric vehicle in the United states.
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2006 Pratt Show, May 9-11
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1 min read
Since I’ll be teaching Business+Design at the Pratt Institute here in New York this Fall, I plan to check out the graduate show to get inside the heads of these bright young designers. The show is open to the public May 9-11. Inspired by graffiti, t1-12 by Victoria Haroian is a living room chair that…
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Radiate information – First Draft
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3 min read
[ this is a first draft of a chapter in Evolve, comments are appreciated ] Healthy organizations share information promiscuously to speed communication and generate tacit knowledge. Share current, important, non-urgent information using information radiators. In 1966 the New York Stock Exchange installed a huge electronic board that displayed the stock prices of every company…
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Design thinking for labor relations
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2 min read
Dr. Rudi Webster, a sports psychologist, is striving to improve the relationship between the West Indies cricket board and the players association prior to the 2007 Cricket World Cup to take place there. He’s advocating for a generative approach: …I feel that the time has come to use a new paradigm to resolve this problem.…
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Prosperity vs. freedom in China
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1 min read
The recent Frontline documentary on China, The Tank Man, set a striking contrast of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests against the business and economic boom created since then. They describe this flow one to the other as an unspoken social contract between the government and the people: we’ll give you jobs and prosperity if you…
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A new business+innovation+design event
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1 min read
Jess and I thought it would be great to host an event where people could explore the intersection of business, innovation, and design in more depth than conferences allow. So along with some friends we created Overlap which will happen at the end of May. It’s small, non-profit, inexpensive, and centered on conversations. We’re hoping…
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Concept car dreams
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2 min read
Since I’ve been thinking about tangible futures and why companies should envision the future (including car companies) I thought a visit to the Auto Show here in New York was worthwhile. The biggest surprise for me was the Toyota exhibit. While I love their process, I’m usually bored with their high quality but plain cars.…
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Customer-centered poetry
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1 min read
In Good Poems Keillor suggests that what makes a poem good depends both on what one intends to use it for and who intends to use it. If one wants a poem for English majors to analyze in a seminar room, certain qualities are likely to be prized—complexity, density, ambivalence. But if one intends poems…
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Principles for tangible futures
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1 min read
Tangible Futures, Part 3: Principles These are principles I’m using to develop tangible futures now… Tangible Futures are Inspirational, touching us both intellectually and emotionally. Pragmatic, optimistic in a realistic way. Innovative, they are a vision of something that is a mystery now because, by definition, we haven’t invented it yet. Strategic, describing something happening…