It’s easy to be irked by what some are calling innovation these days. Just because it’s new, doesn’t make it innovative. For instance, is the latest automotive design particularly innovative? We’ve been re-noodling and re-dressing the same transportation model for over a century. Innovation should entail pioneering and the ability to fundamentally alter people’s perspective. Everything else seems to be reinvention, at best.

Real innovation is out there, however. Theo Jansen, a Dutch sculptor and engineer, comes to mind. Using genetic algorithms, Jansen has created a series of large-scale, animated sculptures which he releases into an environment, observing and analyzing their performance. The physical mechanics of his work are simple, intriguing and elegant, and the conceptual complexity behind the work is captivating. Jansen’s models for artificial life contradict everything that contemporary technology has worked toward and everything contemporary culture has envisioned for how an integrated society may look someday. Forget about Rosie the Jetsons’ maid-robot, and think herds of kinetic species roaming wild, deriving energy and direction from the natural environment.

I remember reading once that an orange, as it exists in nature, can be viewed as the ultimate product design; simple built-in packaging, surprisingly beautiful once unwrapped, and living in complete balance with its environment. No one has quite hit the orange benchmark in design, but Theo Jansen appears to be well on his way. And considering that he’s building intelligent creatures without a lick of silicon, anyone concerned about a future with limited energy resources should pay keen attention to what he’s doing and harness his learnings.

ttp://www.strandbeest.com
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/theo_jansen_creates_new_creatures.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcR7U2tuNoY

The other week I saw a great exhibit on Cuban art and found myself lingering in the room full of protest posters from the late 60s/early 70s. That room of revolution and the images from Seoul’s recent massive protests have me thinking about the need to redesign activism in America.

The 90s didn’t give my generation very much to get upset about, but I spent my younger years feeling the absence of a particular collaborative participation. I imagined the past, where a collective voice could mean anything from sitting around the turntable listening to Bob Dylan albums to gathering around the State House to make opinions heard. Though these images have an idealized air, I do continue to believe that the outlets that served my parents – and our country – in the last century are no longer effective.

And yet, the venues that seem to have replaced them in communal dialogue lack a certain visibility – or group effervescence. That picture of Seoul is powerful, seeing tens of thousands of people physically joined in protest. The blogosphere doesn’t so much impress that upon me; perhaps it’s too nuanced for such mass participation and in some ways, I can see how the dialogue has evolved beyond this. But aren’t there times when a common voice would be valued? Aren’t there times when you wish there were a way to have one? I won’t politicize the idea: I am sure you can come up with your own example.

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I began this week with the new album from Gregg Gillis, or Girl Talk, a mash-up master who uses parts and pieces of tunes with seemingly no value judgment and often a tongue in cheek (Yo La Tengo + Missy + Cat Stevens + Timbaland). I love the album. I love that he knits an entirely new piece of music out of collected scraps even more.

It strikes me that we do this in other parts of our creative world these days too, using already manufactured goods as raw materials. In his Smoke Furniture, Maarten Baas uses controlled burning and finishing to “process” antiques into pieces with new layers of meaning. Tobi Wong has made a career of this, including on his bill of materials everything from MacDonalds coffee stirs to Alvar Aalto Savoy vases to the dollar bill.

The means for reediting our consumer world are handed down to us common folk as well. There is a whole website dedicated to hacking IKEA products into new objects. And Make Magazine presents us with dozens of ways monthly to rejigger the things around us.

Is this the privilege of an uber-consumer society? Indulgence, intelligent reuse, appropriation? I don’t know, but it does have a groove.

Great talk by Mark Bittman, NYTimes culinary journalist, on how we’re diligently marching off an agricultural cliff to certain planetary demise.

Bittman offers a humorous retrospective of American consumption, from the grain-obsessed 20th century to the carb-phobic, protein-gorging 21st, and how our food industry is effecting harm on the environment and our health. Parts of his rant are reassuring (it’s not your fault you still crave overly-processed macaroni and cheese; there was a war somewhere and Mom had to find work at the Twinkie plant downtown), and other parts less reassuring (so you enjoy that organic salmon? It was vacuum-packed in plastic, crated in styrofoam and flown up on a jumbo-jet from Chile). His data is thorough and his observations sobering.

The takeaway? Buy local. Buy seasonal. More produce. Less meat.

What’s Wrong With What We Eat
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/263

Here’s Starbucks’ caffeinated take on social networking–a site within a site that allows customers and partners (aka Starbucks’ employees) to share, comment on and rank new ideas, with the most favored ideas rising like frothy cappuccino foam to the top. Most importantly, the site has an “Ideas in Action” section, where the best ideas and most frequently raised issues are discussed. If they keep this site alive, it could grow into a real dialogue between the company and its customers. At the very least, it gives Starbucks a good sense for what flavor of frappucino their die-hard latté junkies are jonesing for.

A recent NY Times article highlighted CNN Shirt, a Beta test offering from CNN.com Videos that provides t-shirts with “popular“ headlines printed on them. I have always been fascinated with t-shirt societies, and more and more lately, I find myself returning to the BustedTees.com site. It’s my culture shot at how news events are impacting the college crowd. If you track the site, you can get a pretty timely playback of significant events and trends–nicely digested in printed t-shirt form. But now, you can get your personal wearable belief statement directly from a trusted news source. I am glad that headlines are getting the second life they deserve–that is some of my favorite copywriting that just seems to go to waste after the news cycle is over.

The diverse culture in that region is probably the most attractive to me when I put on my design researcher’s hat. Within a radius of 20 miles from Pasadena, you’re likely to run into people from most parts of the world. It reminds me of this funny story from 2003. I also forget how much of a pain it is to get to places. Even though I spent 8 years living in LA, I still can’t believe people are just “used to it”. There’s got to be a better way! I tried taking the public transportation system from Diamond Bar to Pasadena and it would have taken me 2.5 hours if I had managed to get on the right bus. Instead it took me 30 minutes because my mom rescued me from middle of nowhere and drove me straight to Pasadena. Facing the global climate change, LA will require major change, lots of it, and fast.

Sohrab Vossoughi’s latest article on Businessweek.com talks about innovation not delivering anymore. He goes onto examine Experience Design as the next potential differentiator.

In the article he mentions one our clients, American Express. I was very happy to see them singled out in such a positive article about the next evolution of what I do for a living. But I was even happier to see Apple Computer NOT mentioned.

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The Boston Globe ran an article yesterday on Rhode Island and its emergence as a hub for tech and innovation. Check it out. Rhode Island in general, and our partners the Business Innovation Factory, has certainly proven its agility and ability in terms of innovation and new ways of thinking. Many of the things being done in Rhode Island are great models for how cities and regions can embrace next generation ways of thinking and doing.

In the words of Saul Kaplan, executive director of BIF:

Now, the smallest state is trying to position itself as an entrepreneurial hub, offering tax incentives and playing off its location between New York and Boston, its size, its universities, and Providence’s urban renaissance.

This is central to our economic development strategy - we’re trying to create an innovation economy,” said Saul Kaplan, executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation. “The whole state is 1,000 square miles with 1 million people in it and we all know each other - in an innovation economy, that’s a huge ad vantage. Connecting the dots across sectors and silos is what innovation is all about, and we have the perfect real world test bed.

Our work with BIF has been inspiring and rewarding. Check out our seminar on March 27th and keep an eye out for their annual innovation summit in October. It is one of the best events of its kind.

We talked with Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School at the University of Toronto, on his new book, The Opposable Mind. In the book, Martin shares how successful leaders win through integrative thinking. What results is a study on the power of creativity and design thinking.

Q: Can you describe to us in a few sentences what integrative thinking is and why it is so powerful?

A: Integrative Thinking is the ability to constructively face the tension of opposing models and, instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generating a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new model.

The new model contains elements of the individual models but is superior to each.

This means that Integrative Thinkers are model creators not model takers. Because of this, they are disproportionately able to come up with breakthrough ways of doing things. They emerge as the admired and revered innovators.

Q: Why is the design world such an important force in all this?

A: The best of design education and design practice is about the creation of options or models that don’t now exist. This is an essential part of Integrative Thinking. This is why I have taken a deep dive into design and design thinking with the help of great designers– including the folks at Continuum.

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