The NY Times covers the new census figures…
Among adults, 97 million Internet users sought news online last year, 92 million bought a product, 91 million made a travel reservation, 16 million used a social or professional networking site and 13 million created a blog.
I just learned Leslie Harpold past away. She and I didn’t know each other well; we shared some mailing lists and traded some emails. But we didn’t know each other well for a while — I can vividly remember reading her circa 1999. In my mind she is one of that small group of passionate people who loved the web from the earliest days and devoted a great deal of effort to exploring what it could be, so in some small way I feel we all owe a tiny debt of gratitude to Leslie for making the web a wonderful place.
The [[37Signals]] Getting Real book is now available free online as well as in PDF and paperback formats. With a focus on building web apps, it’s a great perspective on using an agile/craft way of working. It’s also a clever publishing strategy, analogous to the traditional hardcover/paperback progression:
Not too shabby.
Here’s a small but important lesson about getting field research done in a corporate environment. If you propose research, folks may hear that word and think R&D, and that’s not capitalizable, i.e. the cost can’t be allocated against a particular product/service. That means the cost can’t be delayed and counted against future revenues (delaying costs can be good for budget reasons or simply for the time value of money). This is because if you’re doing work for a project you have a much higher degree of confidence it will provide a return versus doing pure research & development.
If you can make it clear that the work is applied against a particular project, great, but otherwise be careful of using the word research to people who might interpret it in the accounting sense of the word. As an alternative, how about information gathering? Any other suggestions?
My friend Harry received this useful piece of advice from his writing coach. She suggested you follow this schedule during a day of writing:
Some folks are asking this question. I’ve spent the past two years making the transition from designer to business consultant, jumping a lot of hurdles along the way. Here’s a little of what I learned:
And I’ve beat the design thinking drum as much as anyone, but it’s naive to believe only designers think this way.
I had the pleasure of getting to know Chris Conley at Overlap and was impressed with the breadth of his teaching, from agile innovation to applying real options to innovation investments. In his role as professor he’ll be pimping the Institute of Design here on Oct 30, discussing design education and its relevance to innovation and business.
“He used to liken [design thinking] to climbing into a volcano: It’s messy and it’s risky and it’s dangerous.”
That metaphor might work for me if I’d been inside a volcano.
Torch is Wicked is the blog of The Torch Partnership, a new consulting firm based in Toronto that uses design methods to grapple with business problems.
Idealized design is a way of thinking about change that is deceptively simple to state: In solving problems of virtually any kind, the way to get the best outcome is to imagine what the ideal solution would be and then work backward to where you are today. This ensures that you do not erect imaginary obstacles before you even know what the ideal is.
…not unlike tangible futures.
Link courtesy of Austin.
Until I get around to recording my own observations, here’s Michael Roger’s review of the recent World Future Society conference in Toronto.
The fools at Fast Company lent me the keys to their blog last week. Here’s what I scrawled in lipstick on their bathroom mirror…
Once in while I hear someone talk about innovation as leapfrogging the competition. I love this phrase because it’s so bold. It not only says we are going to innovate on the level of products or processes or management, but also that we’re going to do it in a way that jumps forward to a generation beyond the competition. A leapfrog is the most ambitious an organization can be, and few organizations are actually equipped to make such a massive change. But leapfrogging as a creative exercise to expand our thinking can be a powerful tool.
Let’s say you’re a supermarket getting your lunch eaten by Whole Foods and you want to find an innovative new positioning. You could start by reverse engineering Whole Foods to figure out what makes them so successful and then imagine what it would take to ‘leapfrog’ that success. One way Whole Foods succeeded was by combining the progressive-but-ugly health food store with the attractive interior design and high quality merchandise of newer supermarkets. Lately they’ve also combined their stores with a vitamin store called Whole Foods Body. To leapfrog them you could brainstorm around the question, “What haven’t they combined yet?” One answer is exercise, as in diet and exercise — the keys to a healthy lifestyle. We see this combination happening as gyms open health food cafes, but this is on a smaller scale. The opportunity space for you is a modern, attractive gym and food market that combines the two in a way customers love.
How will your organization leapfrog the competition?
I’ll be giving a presentation on Tangible Futures in Denver next Wednesday, August 16th. Since giving the talk in Philadelphia I’ve refined the how-to part of the talk quite a bit with more perspective of the people on the receiving end of this work. If you’re in the neighborhood and interested I’d love to meet you…
Tangible Futures: Creating Designs of the Future to Influence the PresentEdward de Bono has said, “You can analyse the past, but the future has to be designed.” As designers, we have influence not only over the products and services people will use in the future but also in how companies plan for the future. We can improve the quality of our influence by using our design skills to more actively anticipate and shape the future. Examples of this vary from auto designers’ concept cars to Bruce Mau’s Massive Change. These “tangible futures” act as a clear, compelling vision that helps organizations make progress.
