Noise Between Stations

March 2005

  • Empathy and the design of JetBlue

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    1 min read

    David Batstone recaps a conversation with David Neeleman, the CEO and founder of JetBlue in the March 2005 Harvard Business Review and shows perfectly how the empathy of great design thinking improves both human experience and the bottom line simultaneously: For starters, Neeleman was troubled by the vast inequities of privilege and poverty he saw…

  • New: comments on this blog

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    1 min read

    Those of you reading this via RSS — 2 out of 3 of you — can now come to the site and post your comments. I became convinced that the emerging practice of applying design thinking to business should be a conversation to hasten progress, so I’ve opened up my blog to discussion. Hope to…

  • metacool is itself cool

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    1 min read

    Diego Rodriguez — instructor at Stanford’s d.school — has a blog called metacool that’s the product of an engineering + MBA educated brain, definitely worth a look. For example, he discusses Nike’s Considered line of shoes: Considered shoes generate 63% less waste in manufacturing than a typical Nike design.  The use of solvents has been…

  • The manager-knows-best effect

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    2 min read

    I’ve been thinking about why it can be hard to convince managers to trust the wisdom of their teams, allowing work to emerge from a collaborative process instead of dictating the what. The Wisdom of Crowds illustrates the evidence for multiple points of view rather than one, but I think we need more to make…

  • Stuff vs. Process

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    2 min read

    We understand stuff. We’ve been dealing with stuff for millions of years, from soil to animals to teapots to computers. Cognitively, we’ve got stuff under control. Process is another matter. Many of us share the same way of lacing our shoes and brushing our teeth, but that’s about it. As a result I think it’s…

  • Bill Gates Ponders Microsoft’s Future

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    2 min read

    On the front page of the Wall Street Journal today is an article about Bill Gates’ self-education… At a spartan lakeside cottage, the Microsoft chief isolates himself for a twice-yearly “Think Week,” which he uses to ponder the future of technology, and then propagate those thoughts across the Microsoft empire. This might work for Microsoft,…

  • Addressing management consulting’s flaws

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    2 min read

    Question: What’s the difference between a management consultant and a used-car salesman? Answer: A used car salesman knows when he is lying. The common perception of management consultants is that they’re smart and sometimes necessary, but too detached from the responsibility of running an organization. The Wikipedia entry on management consulting mentions the established stereotype:…

  • Integrated thinking in health care

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    2 min read

    Brett points to The Quality Cure? (paid archive) a New York Times profile of David Cutler’s ideas for reforming healthcare in America, where providing more care without going bankrupt seems impossible. Cutler, an economist, developed financial models to show how we should “focus on improving the quality of care rather than on reducing our consumption…

  • David Byrne’s Journal

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    2 min read

    David Byrne always presents something new, something interesting, all wrapped in a consistent and genuine funky catchiness. He’s posted an mp3 of his song My Fair Lady to OurMedia, has a new album of opera-influenced songs and has been writing an online journal. From the latter, there’s introspection and honesty not common among his peers:…

  • Co-creation and business

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    1 min read

    Migrating the practice of multidisciplinary collaboration from the product design world to the business design world can be tricky. This is especially true if taken to the level of “co-creation” — making everything together as much as is possible. There’s a bit about this in the literature (e.g. Co-Creating Health Services, HR & Management, and…

  • d.school design thinking books

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    1 min read

    Diego Rodriguez posted a list of design thinking books recommended for his class at the d.school. Diego also has a weblog, metacool. Someone else at the CEO Read blog found the soon-to-be-released Democratizing Innovation by Eric von Hippel who shows that product and service development is concentrated among “lead users,” who are ahead on marketplace…

  • Human-centered corporate ethics

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    2 min read

    In the Wall Street Journal today: Adelphia is close to a $725 million settlement with the SEC for a corporate looting and accounting scandal AIG’s woes continue as two top executives are fired and the CEO has to decide whether to cooperate with the government’s investigation The former controller of WorldCom awaits sentencing after his…

  • CPH127: Design and Innovation are Boarding

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    1 min read

    CPH127 is a promising new blog from like-minds in Copenhagen: This is a brand spanking new blog about the major influence of design as a motor for innovation, and like wise the other way around. We are neither 100% design-focused nor are we 100% business-focused. Our team consists designers, MBAs, dot-com entreprenours and all the…

  • Quotes on design thinking and business

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    1 min read

    I’ve started collecting quotes and references to get an overview of who’s saying what about design thinking as applied to business. The idea is still young and in development; it seems we’re only now reaching the conversation stage that leads to differing points of view. An example: We should not underestimate the crucial importance of…

  • Human-centered sales targets

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    2 min read

    Carol Hymowitz of the Wall Street Journal has been investigating aggressive revenue targets and the effects on employees, summed up by this quote from Roger King from Lloyd’s TSB Bank: In over 30 years as a banker, I have seen the toll that the relentless pressure to turn in ever better quarterly and annual numbers…