Victor
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Architecture and employees
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1 min read
I wonder if this flashy, animated building facade — very not-financial services — changes employees’ perception of Lehman Brothers? Could it backfire and make employees more cynical?
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Blogs are over
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1 min read
Advertisement, Manhattan.
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Gain, v3.0
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1 min read
The new & improved Gain — the AIGA journal of business and design — has just re-launched. Congrats to Karen, Jeff, Liz, and the gang.
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Can large companies succeed with social media?
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1 min read
We think so.
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Your future is older, browner, and more feminine
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1 min read
The always entertaining Andrew Zolli has a new article in the current Fast Company mag, expanding on the themes he’s been talking about in person. Essentially he demonstrates the importance of looking through the demographics lens when thinking about the future… The hourglass society will bring an avalanche of new social challenges, cultural norms, and…
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In the past I’ve observed that as processor speed increases, software replaces dedicated hardware. For example, in music or video production programs like GarageBand and Final Cut Pro and a stock Macintosh can replace dedicated rack systems and DSP chips. Now with Web 2.0-ish advances on the Internet, we can go further and say as…
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Balancing Act: Westin
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1 min read
John Holusha of the New York Times profiles Westin’s decision to move to an all non-smoking format in their hotels. I think this rocks on several levels: It’s progressive, recognizing only 6% of customers request smoking rooms (only half of which actually smoke in the rooms), and this segment isn’t key to their success. Also…
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Tom and Jerry and management
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1 min read
My colleague Jim, from a recent interview: I was born in Hollywood and raised in Los Angeles. My father, mother and grandparents all worked in the film industry. My parents actually met when they were both working on Tom and Jerry cartoons. The culture of filmmaking has influenced my approach to design and business. Hollywood…
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Agile everywhere
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1 min read
I’m finding examples of agile work practices in more and more places, and see them as perfectly aligned with the application of design practice in innovation services. Here’s a running list… Agile programming has the most robust expression, including a philosophy, an alliance of various approaches, tools, software, and measured results. Agile project management Get…
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Dancing elephants: Lockheed
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1 min read
I love seeing big companies move in agile ways (because it’s so unusual), even if it only arises from panic of losing their old revenue streams. Here’s an example from Lockheed, whose old culture (despite their Skunk Works-style innovation) included bitter internal fights over whether to pursue unmanned aircraft… …It also designed and delivered the…
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On pre-sliced, preserved apple slices…
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1 min read
Twelve Easy Pieces… Not since the canneries of the early 20th century have food processors sought merely to preserve perishables. Processing foods now means redesigning them, making them easier to eat for a population that is steadily less willing to go to any trouble at all. Given the childhood obesity epidemic and the longstanding economic…
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Thinking numerically
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1 min read
I’m taking a class in financial models to round out my skill set. The instructor said something interesting last night, taking care to put us in the right frame of mind for this work. He said, “Teach yourself to see the world in numbers. Try to think numerically.” In that comment I hear that quantitative…
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Positive solutions that are neither left nor right
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2 min read
In this Bruce Mau talk on Global Creativity, he mostly discusses the Massive Change exhibit. But at the end he drops this, without making it clear how it’s tied in… (my paraphrasing) Why are we seeing things on the political right and left that are both interesting? They should be at odds. What we realized…
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Malcolm Gladwell’s Troublemakers extends his Blink thinking to how we generalize. The takeaway is “It doesn’t work to generalize about a relationship between a category and a trait when that relationship isn’t stable — or when the act of generalizing may itself change the basis of the generalization.” In the article he asks whether pit…
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U.S. jobs aren’t shorter, but they are riskier
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1 min read
James Surowiecki’s Lifers reviews some statistics and concludes that — contrary to popular belief — long-term employment in the U.S. hasn’t disappeared at all. But what has changed is the amount of risk employees are expected to shoulder in terms of… Benefits: Health benefits and pensions have decreased Stratification: “Companies now tie compensation more closely…