BIF Speak - Design
Design and the Elastic Mind
Follow-up to a blog entry a couple of weeks ago about the innovation and design exhibit at MoMA. Paolo Antonelli, the exhibits curator, appeared on the Charlie Rose show last week. Antonelli is an Italian-born, self-described "generalist." Watch the interview and you'll realize quickly how insightful she is too. During the hour-long talk, she descibes the bridging of science and design (developing comfort and trust between both parties is key) as well as the changing face of scale in 2008, the relationship of architecture and nanotechnology and the need to push designers toward "pragmatic intellectualism."
Dancing with Complexity: Roger Martin on The Opposable Mind
Yesterday I spent some time at the offices of Continuum. The Boston-based design firm was hosting a book signing soiree for Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School in Toronto and author of the new book The Opposable Mind.
Martin has spent the past few years searching for patterns in thinking among great leaders. His conclusion: success comes from an ability to utilize tensions between different business models in order to build a better one. He calls it 'integrative thinking' and it's a direct assault on the reductionist, either/or approach to decision-making,which is typically taught in business schools. This holistic - and yes,more complex and often times ambiguous - approach to thinking, Martin says, is at the heart of many great, new business models.
An Artful Wink at Innovation + Design at NYC's MoMA
If you're in the area, New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has a new exhibition about the future of innovation called "Design and the Elastic Mind."
The exhibition highlights many examples of successful translation of disruptive innovation, examples based on ongoing research, as well as reflections on the future responsibilities of design. Of particular interest is the exploration of the relationship between design and science and the approach to scale."Designers stand between revolutions and everyday life," explains the exhibition's introduction.
BIF Research Advisor Andrew Hargadon on the Design of New Ventures
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n anticipation of our workshop on the design of networked innovation, bestselling author Andrew Hargadon passed along an article he wrote a while back called Leading with Vision: The Design of New Ventures. Great primer before our hands-on workshop next Thursday, April 24th.
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New BIF Project: Introducing the Nursing Home of the Future
In case you missed it, the Business Innovation Factory is partnering with the Tockwotton Home, Quality Partners of Rhode Island and the MIT AgeLab to create a real-world laboratory for developing and testing new solutions, products and models for improving elderly care. Leveraging the BIF Experience Lab platform, the "Nursing Home of the Future" will create a platform for innovators and industry partners to transform current approaches to elderly care in assisted living and nursing care facilities.
BIF Research Advisor Harry West on The Cross-Discipline Design Imperative
This week we're hosting a sold-out workshop on design thinking with Dan Buchner, Vice President of Innovation and Design and his team of designers from Continuum. In preparation for Thursday's event, Dan wanted to share an article on Design Thinking written by BIF Research Advisor Harry West, Continuum's VP of Strategy and Innovation.
It's a good, quick overview on design thinking and its power to marry creative right-brain thinking and analytical left-brain thinking. This talent is at a premium today because innovation so often happens in the space between disciplines. Design thinking can get you into those spaces - it's a strategic methodology, long used by industrial design firms but now it's being used for business process too. I'll share more from the workshop next week but in the meantime, head over to BusinessWeek for the article.
Business Innovation Factory Welcomes Mickey Ackerman to Leadership Team
The Business Innovation Factory announced this week that industrial design guru Mickey Ackerman has signed on to oversee the next phase of development for BIF’s Experience Labs--BIF’s platform for conducting collaborative innovation projects that experiment with new ways to deliver value across traditional industry and organizational boundaries.
Wanted: Chief Integration Officer
I had an interesting conversation last week with BIF research advisor Stefan Thomke and MIT professor Eric von Hippel about the role of the integrator. What's more important, we asked, the various components that go into a successful innovation or the foundation/platform that the components are built upon?
BusinessWeek Assistant Managing Editor Bruce Nussbaum Joins BIF Research Advisory Council
I have exciting news for the BIF community: Bruce Nussbaum has been appointed to our Research Advisory Council. Bruce is an assistant managing editor for BusinessWeek, responsible for coverage of design and innovation.
For years, Bruce has been at the center of a global conversation on the discipline of innovation and is a fierce advocate of the field of design thinking. He has written extensively about how organizations,both inside and outside the corporate sphere, should apply design thinking concepts to their innovation strategy. His blog, NussbaumOnDesign reflects his personal and provocative take on what smart companies are doing (or should be doing) in the U.S., Asia and Europe.
Ringing in the new year with Anpan-man
Before the holiday, I wrote a blog entry about John Maeda's appointment as RISD's next president. John has maintained a blog for quite some time. And if you go back and read some of his earlier entries, you can tell he's been thinking a good deal about what it takes to be an effective leader. I want to share a portion of his entry from November 17th, Always keep a stock of spare heads which tells a delightful story of Japanese comicbook hero Anpan-Man.
Video stories about sustainable design now available
A follow-up to my earlier blog entry Increasing the Ripple Effect of Green Design. Our friends at Continuum have posted the videos from their recent symposium on green design. There were so many inspired ideas worth spreading. From short-term strategies that can have an immediate impact on our atmosphere to long-term technologies that might render fossil fuels obsolete, from profiles in courage to a vision of a footprint free company, 7 innovators in the realm of green design gathered to share their thoughts on the necessary convergence of design thinking and thinking green.
Increasing the Ripple Effect of Green Design
Last Thursday, 60 or so green designers gathered at BIF member Continuum’s Newton, MA offices to spend the day talking about green design. Included in this conversation were 8 green believers who are trying to change the world. They came from all walks of life and from their stories, we were all trying to answer two big questions: what is sustainable design and how do you build (or evolve) a business model around it?
Matt Cottam: An Actor Prepares
by Brian Jepson
Matt Cottam is an innovator who I've been crossing paths with on and off recently, but who I'm only meeting for the first time today at BIF-3. He and I first got to know each other when I learned he's a big fan of a gadget that's near and dear to my heart. Matt is an Adjunct Professor of Industrial Design at RISD, but I think of him as a Physical Computing pioneer, someone who is making devices smarter, more fun to interact with, and easier for people to build on their own...
Eyes on the Prize: Creating the Trauma Bay of the Future
Someone made a passing – albeit complimentary – comment to me at lunch yesterday saying, “Oh, you’re with BIF - you guys hold such great events.” OK, it’s true, we do hold great events. But the meat of BIF…the stuff that keeps us going…can be found in our Experience Laboratories. With so many eyeballs on us because of the summit next week. I thought I would take the time to share one of the projects under development in our Patient Lab…
Design-Thinking in Action: Meet BIF-3 Storyteller Matt Cottam
At it's core, a design-thinking approach to innovation focuses nearly all its energy on the end user. The process has been written about extensively - I've blogged about it before and BIF member Continuum even presented a full-day seminar on it last year. I find though that I learn better through example rather than theory. Meet BIF-3 storyteller Matt Cottam - CEO of Providence’s Tellart design studio and an adjunct professor at the Rhode Island School of Design...
Innovation and Collaboration: The BIF Way
An interview with BIF Chief Catalyst Saul Kaplan is posted on Steve Hardy’s Creative Generalist blog where the two talk about everything from Rhode Island’s position as a national innovation hot spot to the real world innovation lab BIF is developing to what it takes to really drive systems change.
Report from the Field: Thoughts on Design Thinking
Some 40 attendees participated in last week's experiential workshop Design Thinking: Beyond the Buzz Words hosted by Dan Buchner, Vice President of Innovation and Design at renowned design consultancy Continuum. A lively and engaging workshop from beginning to end, Dan and his team of designers presented a day-long deep dive into the world of design thinking. Turns out that you can indeed use design thinking to solve business objectives - all you need is an open mind and a few tools.
Want to learn about innovation? Head to Toronto
I’m thinking I should move to Canada... This past Tuesday I traveled to the University of Toronto with BIF chief catalyst Saul Kaplan to spend an incredible day with Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School, Richard Florida of Rise of the Creative Class fame, and Heather Fraser who directs a unique program on campus called “DesignWorks.”
Ripples in the Pond
A point of view is a terrible thing to waste. It should be shared as broadly as possible and improved with vigorous and diverse input. Only then will a point of view have a chance to become shared and an actionable platform to make things happen. I recently asserted in a BIFspeak post Creating a Passion Economy that we must move from a knowledge-based economy to a passion-based economy. I claimed that we could create a more prosperous economy and stronger communities if we enable connections between passionate people and create an environment where innovators can more easily pursue their passions.
Cloud Watching
Words are an amazingly rich form of data, but because they are impossible to ‘analyze’ in the usual (numerical) sense, it's always been difficult to convey the essence of a text without resorting back to yet another abstract and wordy discussion. The invention of the word cloud, an elegant visualization of word frequency, was first used as a way to extract the topical content of long-winded political speeches.
The other morning our new Strategy & Relationship Foreman Marc Braunstein discovered a simple tool, freely available at www.wordle.net, that allows you to instantly create word clouds that reveal the strength of individual words and concepts for any block of text you care to drop into it. Here's the one he created for the Business Innovation Factory:
Podcast Interview with Roger Martin Now Available
What a treat to present this podcast interview with newly appointed BIF Research Advisor Roger Martin. Dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, Roger has spent a career exploring and teaching how organizations can build, grow and sustain themselves through a concept he calls integrative thinking. Perfect timing in these financially turbulent times because according to Roger, integrative thinkers are wired to deliver breakthrough business models.
Design-Thinking's Role In Business Model Innovation
Thanks to Twitter I've connected with several new and interesting people in the innovation space during the past couple of weeks. One of them is Ralf Beuker who has written a good blog entry on design-thinking that should strike a chord with many in our community. What is design-thinking? Is it a process? A mind-set? A profession?
Podcast Interview with Continuum's Harry West Now Available
This week I’m pleased to present BIF research advisor Harry West. As Vice President for Strategy and Innovation at design consultancy Continuum, Harry has probably been in your business, your house and maybe even in your car.
Have you picked up a Swiffer lately? Seen the slick dashboard interface on a BMW? Or how about locked something up with one of those titanium Master Locks? West and his teams at Continuum have an impressive record conceiving innovations and delivering them to market.
Yet design shouldn’t be just about making things work better and look better. Instead it should be about understanding the emotions that drive buying decisions.
Register Now for Service-Driven Design Workshop with Continuum
Identifying opportunities for service moments. Creating systems that support them. Crafting meaningful experiences. Service Design is the multi-disciplinary practice of arranging the functional and emotional aspects of a customer’s journey.
Design firm Continuum returns to BIF for a half-day workshop on May 18th to teach the principles of service design and how to apply them to a diverse set of situations. You’ll learn by doing through this highly-interactive and collaborative experience and gain new perspective on how to define problems and identify solutions. In the end, you’ll walk away with tools and approaches that can be applied to your own business challenges.
Register Now
Empowering Consumers by Elevating Service Experience
An Interactive Design-thinking Workshop with Continuum
May 18, 2009
9:00 – 12:00 p.m.
BIF's Providence Headquarters
Seating is limited for this free event. Registration required. Lunch will be served.
Count me in! I want to register
Report from the Field: Thoughts on Service-Driven Design
“Service design helps consumers and businesses achieve their respective goals by creating systems of interactions that deliver on a brand promise.” ~ Continuum
Did you know that manufacturing's share of the total private U.S. workforce has been cut in half since the late 70s, shrinking to a mere 10% in 2006? According to a 2005 report by the Coalition of Service Industries, in the U.S., 84% of companies and 79% of employees are in the service sector. Sources of profitability are changing too. In 2005, within the nation’s top 10 non-energy firms, 85% of profits came from services.
The lifeblood of the service industry – what defines the winners from the losers – is the customer experience. Yet few companies know how to innovate upon it. At this week’s experiential Service Design Workshop led by design firm Continuum, forty BIF community members were led on an exploration of service innovation and the process of designing exemplar customer experiences.
BIF Summer Wine Extravaganza, Welcome Party for Chris Finlay
Join us at BIF on June 25 at 5:30pm for a summer wine tasting and meet and greet for BIF’s newest teammate, Chris Finlay. We yanked Chris away from NYC a month ago to run BIF’s new Student Experience Lab. Come say hello.
Thanks to Andrea Sloan at Best Beverage / FJN Fine Wines, LLC we’ll be sampling fresh summer whites, a few gloriously chilled reds and whatever else these wine wizards are serving this summer. Andrea will be here to introduce the wines and give you some tips on what to look for in a killer summer sipper.
BIF Student Experience Lab Featured in New England Journal of Higher Education
BIF Executive Director Melissa Withers was recently tapped by the New England Journal of Higher Education to write an article about the BIF Student Experience Lab. There article’s release is especially timely: the lab debuted outputs from its first phase of work earlier this month at the BIF-5 Summit and on October 7, debuted an interactive "experience map" based on research and interviews with students from all walks of life and at different stages of their academic career.
BIF Bookgroup's February Selection Is In!
Why does design thinking matter? This month the BIF Bookgroup will tackle the question and read Roger Martin's latest book The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage. Roger is a BIF research advisor and visionary Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
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