Recently I came across the article ‘Survive the Recession – Become an Innovator at Work’ by Paul Sloane and I found it really interesting. The article starts with a quote of Bill Gates saying:

‘We are in an economic downturn but an innovation upturn.’

And from here it gives seven ways of focusing on the opportunity for innovation than on the downturn and the dangers it poses. One of the best advices Paul Sloane gives is to become a change agent.

Make suggestions. Introduce ideas and recommendations. Look for ways in which your department could bring in new products, business processes or partnerships. Ask yourself – is there a better way to meet the needs of our customers? Anticipate trends and suggest ways of changing the department to exploit new opportunities and new technologies.

The other six advices are as follows:

1. Adopt a positive attitude.
2. Listen to customers.
3. Watch the competition.
4. Be sensitive to office politics.
5. Don’t insist on the glory.
6. Be prepared for rejection.

If you are interested to find out more about these steps you can take towards ‘maximising your chances in the change maelstrom’ you can read the rest of the article here: ‘Survive the Recession’. What are your thoughts on this? What are your steps to survive the recession?

I try and try and try to avoid using Apple as an innovation exemplar. For one, big brand stories just aren’t relevant to small and medium sized enterprises. “How can I operate at that level? What does that have to do with me?” We strive to tell the stories of smaller organisations leveraging design to innovate and grow. And frankly, it’s a cop out to say the same rules are transferable. We continually paint a picture that this is for the big guy.

However, the words of Jonathan Ive, from a recent and rare public appearance beg repeating to organisations of any size:

Ive also had bad news for anyone looking to foster a design or innovation-driven culture within an enterprise that doesn’t at heart “get” it. Unless the disciplines are acknowledged and embraced as core values by every employee, they won’t gain traction. “We don’t have identity manuals reminding us of points of philosophy for why our company exists … I’m sure those things are very well meaning, but if you have to institutionalize stuff, you end up chasing your tail.” In other words, unless the commitment to innovation or design is authentic and heartfelt, rather than this month’s short-term strategy to cater to a hot trend, it will be nigh on impossible to build a true, innovation-led culture.

I’d rather focus resources on the organisations that are committed; and work together to make a tangible impact, than fill a hundred auditoriums to put on a good show about what design can do.

Read the BusinessWeek article.

Photo from IDEO

Is the way we educate keeping pace with the changing needs of the marketplace? Are we creating graduates with the right skills for the 21st century? There are some good signs in the work we’ve been doing with the industrial design programme and industry here at IT Sligo and in other initiatives around problem-based learning. In a recent article from Metropolis magazine, IDEO summarises ten tips based on their Design for Learning efforts for the 21st century classroom.

I particularly like the call to stop calling creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy, and adaptability ‘soft skills,’ as if they were a bonus as opposed to a necessity. I’ve argued before that creativity can be taught, and certainly when it comes to ideas, the ability to come up with ideas is nothing without the ability to communicate them, or work together to commercialise them.

How do we begin to measure and evaluate process as well as outcome?

Read IDEO’s Ten Tips For Creating a 21st–Century Classroom Experience

Just a few weeks ago I was talking about “The age of speed” and how technology evolves so quickly in this century. I was talking about Microsoft Surface and being one step closer to teleportation. But technology evolves a lot faster than we can imagine.

A group of students from MIT Media Lab in Long Beach California, transformed the Internet into a ‘Sixth Human Sense’. They developed a wearable computing system which can turn any surface into an interactive display screen. The system relies on a webcam as an input device and a small projector with a mirror as the output device.

Here are only some of the functionalities of their system:

• Creating a frame by using your fingers tells the camera to take a photo.
• You can project the photos that you took on any surface and use your fingers to browse through them, rearrange them or resize them.
• You can browse through menus.
• You can search locations on a map.
• You can draw on a wall just by using your fingers.
• You can even call your friends by dialing their number on the palm of your hand.
• On the way to the airport you could check if your flight is delayed or not.
• You could know the time just by drawing a watch on your wrist.
• You could project information about any person you meet.
• And even watch a video of the news that interest you in the newspaper.

If you want to find out more and see how the system works, here are two videos that show its functionality:

Students transform the Internet into ‘The Sixth Human Sense’ – Video1

Students transform the Internet into ‘The Sixth Human Sense’ – Video2

For a while now everybody is talking about this century as being the age of speed, but most of us don’t even begin to imagine how fast technology is evolving.

Who would have thought even a year and a half ago that we would be able to use a table in order to plan a project; or split a bill in the restaurant; or even share photos between devices; or plan a trip. Microsoft Surface is able to do this and much more.

Microsoft Surface

At the same time who would have imagined that we are this close to discovering teleportation?

According to LiveScience, a team of scientists from the University of Maryland have come pretty close to achieving Star Trek’s main way of transportation: teleportation. So far they achieved to transport the information from one atom to another across a distance of a meter.

The JQI team explains that teleportation works because of a remarkable quantum phenomenon called entanglement that only occurs on an atomic or subatomic scale.

The experiment that they conducted uses two identical ions (A and B). Ion A is afterwards irradiated; a process that can be explained as “writing in its memory the information that will be teleported”. Immediately after, both ions are “excited by a picosecond laser pulse” in order for each of them to emit a photon.

The photons are then captured by a lens and they will interact at a beamsplitter. When both detectors recorded a photon simultaneously, the ions are entangled. At that point, ion A is measured, revealing exactly what operation has to be performed on ion B to teleport ion A’s information (see illustration).

It is important to note that the information disappears from ion A when this one is being measured and appears on ion B. This is why the achievement is distinguished from any other kind of communication and is classified as teleportation.

You can find out more about this achievement in the original article from LiveScience: “Teleportation Milestone Achieved”

I’m all about space. A space does encourage or inhibit what takes place in it. I wasn’t aware until today that there was an actual Allen curve that “reveals the exponential drop of frequency of communication between engineers as the distance between them increases.” I’m sure if I had read David’s doctoral thesis on collaborative design teams, he probably cites Allen’s curve.

In an article from The Irish Times about Tom Allen’s upcoming presentation at the Innovation in Complex Social Systems conference at UCD, the benefit of having functional areas where people can meet to exchange information is discussed. Perhaps tea time is a gateway to innovation?

I suppose it’s time to put The Organization and Architecture of Innovation on the reading list.

via thecoolhunter

Though a few of the pictures were compelling of cooler car parks, I was most taken by the following quote:

Innovative developers and designers are recognising just how crucial this is – it’s almost too late by the time the consumer arrives at the front door. The “experience” of good design starts well before that.

How true. An experience begins and (ext)ends well before and beyond the actual “use” of a product or service. The winners and losers in the experience economy are the ones that have influenced as many touch points as possible from first impression to a lasting impression.

Photograph by Christopher Lamarca

The lessons that Amy Smith has learned developing the phase-change incubator, screenless hammer mill and sugarcane charcoal in the Third World are equally applicable to any design project. You might ask how “try living on $2/day” is relevant to everyday design projects. Sounds like deep understanding of those you are designing for to me.

I especially like the idea of providing skills, not just finished technologies. How does a solution go beyond just solving a problem and actual enable people to create solutions themselves?

For more, check out Amy Smith’s TED talk.

I look forward to reading the transcript from Bill Buxton‘s lecture tomorrow (11 June) at the Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon (CHIFOO). The Oregonian caught up with Microsoft’s principal researcher prior to the lecture for an interview and an explanation.

The pervasive notion was that thinking and knowledge were somehow something that happened inside the head … more recently, our notion of cognition has broadened considerably, and in particular, it embraces the notion that thought and knowledge may well occur as much in our physical and social environment as in the cortex itself.

Can design thinking be institutionalized, or does it happen to cities and businesses serendipitously?

This is one of the most important questions to ask. My answer is decidedly yes, it can be institutionalized. But at the same time, I have to qualify this by saying that the most creative challenge of any management is to figure out how.

Additional reading:

A New Mantra for Creativity

The title suggests these tips are just for those folks working within design consultancies and innovation labs, but the creative techniques in this Inc. magazine article are applicable to any group looking to stimulate creative thought. To some, these approaches might appear a bit bonkers, but essentially they boil down to tested themes: applying multiple perspectives to a problem; providing the time and space to explore wild ideas; encouraging risk; and hiring and rewarding smart, passionate people. The word “process” is mentioned once, and only in relation to lack of process. But aren’t these creative approaches processes in themselves?

Related link: frog Design Mind