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UK wants every home wind-powered by 2020

In an ambitious scheme than even industry proponents seem skeptical of, Britain has unveiled plans to power every home in the country via off-shore wind farms by the year 2020. Right now the UK produces approximately half a gigawatt through this method of power generation, enough to provide 2% of the country's electricity, but nowhere near the 33 gigawatts called for in business secretary John Hutton's proposal. According to the British Wind Association Trade Group, while more offshore farms are always welcome, it is far more reasonable to expect a 20 gigawatt output by 2020 -- the bottleneck, apparently, is in procuring an adequate number of turbines. Another issue is the economic cost of wind power, which continues to exceed that of fossil fuel-based alternatives; luckily for the Brits, favorable exchange rates should help them pick up some American-made turbines on the cheap.

On Having Potential

End of the busy-ness has consumed my mind. The situation has only been exacerbated through developing a hernia. There is no correlation between my body's happenstance versus my mental confusion of course. I read that there is a genetic predisposition which is validated by the constantly odd realization that everything my Dad and Mom have had body-wise, I eventually encounter in my own life. Perhaps it is a simple way of reminding me to observe filial piety.

The older I get, the more disconnected I seem to feel my mind and body have become. My mind seems to think it is completely weird that the body in which it lives is constantly in a state of decay; meanwhile, my body could care less what my mind thinks of course, because it can't think at all without the mind and thus really has no perspective on the matter. Aging is great because your mind gets so much more agile in the conceptual dimensions (memory does indeed degrade however) so it is a pity that the body doesn't follow along a similar growth curve. Or maybe that is the blessing -- as your body fades, your mind gets to spend more on its own development and doesn't have to manage the physical plant the way it used to in the younger years. I guess that makes sense.

A visitor recently told me a story told by a prominent young leader. It went something like this:

"When you're young you are told that you have so much potential to offer; when you're older, instead you're told how great you are for what you did in the past. The key is ... to always be told you have potential."

I hope you realize your true potential in the little remainder of this year of 2007.

S I M P L I C I T Y by John Maeda at the MIT Media Lab

FuelPod2 converts excess cooking oil into biodiesel

Engineering folks have long since been powering their automobiles with less than scrumptious liquids, but Green Fuels is hoping to make the usage of homegrown biodiesel entirely more common. The firm's FuelPod2 is aimed squarely at the domestic market and is capable of churning out 50-liters of fuel each day from waste cooking oil. Reportedly, the 140-centimeter high device utilizes external, thermostatically-controlled band heaters to pre-heat the oil, which ensures that the warming takes places prior to the addition of chemicals. Customers will also receive a "comprehensive operating manual" and can feel free to phone up a dedicated helpline in case of emergency, but truthfully, we'd expect nothing less from a system starting at £1,750 ($3,607).

[Via UberReview]

The Pac-Man Christmas tree

Finally, Blinky, Pinky, Inky, Clyde, and even old Pacster get some religious iconography happening for themselves. A creative group of X-mas-and-Pac-Man-loving cats and kittens in Madrid have created a truly festive monument to the holiday... and the video game. Check the video after the break for the whole, utility-burning display in action -- and commenters, feel free to translate.

[Via technabob]

Continue reading The Pac-Man Christmas tree

Puma-Inspired Hybrid Car Prowls Mexican University Campus

It's only fitting that the new multi-platform hybrid vehicle out of Mexico's National Autonomous University was inspired by the university's beloved mascot, the puma. We hope the hydrogen and fuel cell-powered vehicle will inspire the same fanaticism that the soccer-playing Pumas ignite. The car was developed by students in the industrial design graduate program, headed by Óscar Salinas. The car fits into Salinas's Ecovía project, launched in 2005 to develop ecological solutions to transportation problems. Ecovía says the vehicle will have an average speed of 70-80 km/h (about 50-55 mph) and will be able to run for 300 km (190 miles) before refueling. The most innovative...

via TreeHugger

Geek 2.0

Logic + Emotion

Conversation by Design

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What is Design?

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Web 2.0

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Why design?

Designer Philippe Starck -- with no pretty slides to show -- spends 18 minutes reaching for the very roots of the question "Why design?" Listen carefully for one perfect mantra for all of us, genius or not.

Dell Goes Hot In Design.

Dell is moving heavily into design to get away from its corporate commodity/low price business model and shift into a personal experience/higher price model. So I'm not totally surprised by this ad--a supermodel type selling Dell's new, stylish XPS PC. Well, maybe a little surprised, coming from Dell. Sony is selling its Vaio with a supermodel, so why not Dell?

Dell is unveiling the XPS at Armani/Casa in New York's Soho on Dec. 6. It's advertised as the perfect combination of "beauty, innovation and style." Sounds like a good consumer experience to me.

vía BusinessWeek Online - NussbaumOnDesign d

Official: Google's quest for 700MHz is so on

Filed under: Wireless

Hear that America? That's the sound of the hammer dropping on our beloved cartel of carriers. Google's bid for the 700MHz "C Block" is on. Eric Schmidt, Google Chairman and CEO, says the following:

"We believe it's important to put our money where our principles are. Consumers deserve more competition and innovation than they have in today's wireless world. No matter which bidder ultimately prevails, the real winners of this auction are American consumers who likely will see more choices than ever before in how they access the Internet."

The bidding begins on January 24th with a minimum of $4.6 billion required for the open-access C Block. Wake the kids, phone the neighbors, it's going to get ugly fast.

Roachbot / Walter Robot

The latest episodes of Boing Boing TV cover roach-controlled robots, a video by MAKE contributor Bill Barminski, the giant Atrai joystick shown off at the recent Felt Club/Maker Square event in LA, and 8-bit therapy with Dr. Jardin.

Boing Boing TV - Link

Japanese competition robot father/son team

Geegdad segment of Wired Science on a father and son who build competition humanoid robots. Wired Science Geek Dad: Nao Maru & King Kizer - Link

Rockefeller Center Christmas tree goes LED

It looks like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree will be a considerably smaller energy hog this holiday season than it has been in years past, as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced yesterday that the tree will be lit up with LED lights for the first time - 30,000 of 'em, to be specific. That'll apparently reduce the tree's energy consumption from 3,510 kilowatt hours per day to just 1,297 -- a savings that, as the AP points out, is roughly equivalent to the amount of electricity consumed by a typical 2,000-square-foot house in a month. While it's not clear if it'll be used for the tree or not, the owners of Rockefeller Center also took the opportunity to show off a new 365-panel solar array on the roof of one of the complex's buildings, which is apparently big enough to lay claim to the title of the largest privately owned solar roof in Manhattan.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Siemens rolls out ultrasound-equipped MacBook Pro

We've seen MacBooks re-purposed for various uses in the past, but never quite like Siemens new "P50" laptop, which takes a standard issue (if slightly outdated) MacBook Pro and outfits it with some ultrasound equipment to accomodate doctors that just can't be tied down. Apparently designed specifically for cardiology and vascular applications, this one boasts an "array of transducers," along with an integrated stress echo function and a range of cardiology application packages which, Siemens says, "considerably simplifies and accelerates the workflow in echocardiography and vascular diagnosis." Mac fans may not want to boast too much about this one, however, as it seems that Siemens has opted to use Windows as a basis for the platform.

[Via The Raw Feed]

RSS in Plain English

A Simple Thought

"A beautiful side effect of making things is you start to look around and wonder, 'how did they do that?'; you learn to see, analyze, and appreciate different approaches, well-made things, and clever solutions."
- Lili Cheng

First Aid

First: emergency phones, fire extinguishers, hoses, gurneys, people qualified for first aid, etc... What next? What about in 10 or 20 years when new deseases arrive?





At Los Angeles airport you can find in common aisles these defibrillators. Every second counts in saving one single life.

Human Computation

Last year, Luis Von Ahn from Google, gave a very interesting talk about how Google itself and other companies are turning current computer boundaries into new product development and business opportunities thanks to human natural propension for gaming and competition... and a hell out of free time we are suppose to have (we spent in 2003 more than 8 billion hours playing Solitario...)

A year later this trend continues to be state of the art.

Ihre Meinung

Passengers clearing immigration in Frankfurt airport are given copious opportunity to feedback about the quality of service via this relatively lengthy form.

Jumping over to China - passengers arriving in Beijing airport can give immediate likert feedback on an electronic feedback tool - tricky to get a photo since its in Chinese immigration but very similar to this in the Gulangyu branch of the Bank of China.

For each mechanism: the motivation and satisfaction that comes from giving feedback; the extent that satisfaction is affected by immediacy; the likelihood that the feedback affects an outcome; and given that the opportunity to give feedback can engender the passenger with a degree of control, the extent to which the actual feedback is irrelevant i.e. the feedback mechanism is the message.

Japan immigration has just started photographing and fingerprinting foreign visitors. Welcome. Really.

vía Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect

The Crisis of Success in Design/Innovation.

I gave speech at the most amazing design conference I've ever attended last week in San Francisco, the Connecting '07 World Design Congress. Some of the top designers in the world were there. Many of the top innovation thinkers were there. Maybe a thousand of top students in design and design thinking were there.

Organized by the brilliant Bill Moggridge, IDEO co-founder and pioneer in interaction design, it had nearly 2000 people attending (15 from P&G alone), 144 presentations and workshops and well-spring of optimism. The Industrial Society of America put it all together and it did a brilliant job.

It's not every day that you have Dieter Ram, the great designer of Braun products, Yves Behar, Roger Martin, Hans Rosling, Tim Brown, Patrick Whitney and Cat Chow in one conference.

I'll be blogging over the next couple of days on the major themes and trends that I saw there. For the day-to-day, check out the Core77 site.

The IDSA gave out its annual Industrial Design Excellence Awards on Saturday night. I gave an opening talk, which draws on the excellent work being done on design thinking by Chris Conley at Gravity Tank, Diego Rodriguez at IDEO, Dick Bolland and Fred Collopy at Case Western and others.

Here is the speech. You can substitute the word "innovate" for "design" or "design thinking." Or call it a banana, I don't care what the methodology and philosophy is called. Let me know your thoughts please.

The Crisis of Success
10/20/07 IDSA Speech

I'd like to speak tonight about a crisis—a crisis in design. Of course, design has had many crises. There was the crisis of acceptance. Business just wouldn’t give respect to design. There was the crisis of money. Designers were paid miserably for their work. Then there was the bubble crisis. Tech collapsed and work disappeared.

Today, we have a another crisis—the Crisis of Success. Everywhere in every sphere, people are asking the question, Can Design Help? Why is the answer to so many problems today design?

It’s simple really In a society of little change, the answer to most problems is efficiency. Doing the same things, only better, makes them better. Maximizing efficiency creates values.

But in a society undergoing huge change—like ours now—the answer to most problems is possibility, not efficiency. New solutions makes things better. Maximizing possibilities of what could be creates value. This is what design can do. Design sees around corners. And that is why this is design’s moment.

Just look around. What do you see? Our business models are melting. Our healthcare models are collapsing. Our education models are failing. And efficiency, such as testing kids again and again, is not the answer.

So what is the power of design to provide answers? Why are people embracing it?

1- Design is the curator of conversations. To solve problems, design begins with people and cultures in communities, from rural villages at the bottom of the pyramid to social networks at the top of the pyramid. It observes, integrates, imagines and proposes.

2- Because of this approach, design is authentic and real in business and civic societies awash in fake and hype.

3- Design can abstract, deconstruct and recombine. It can reposition small, narrow problems in new broader contexts.

4- Design can visualize many possible outcomes and solutions using limited knowledge and speed decision-making.

5- Design can both reduce risk and manage higher risk in the process of developing new products, services and experiences. And it can do this within many spheres: business, health, education, transportation and others.

Wow. So powerful is this methodology that society is reaching out to embrace it. We are seeing the field of design go from simple design to design thinking to just thinking as it is embraced and embedded in corporate and civic cultures.

And this is setting off a crisis of success. Plug into my blog, NussbaumOnDesign, or the blogs of Core77, BplusD, Design Observer, Design Thinking and others and you see a huge conversation—or battle—underway.

Should designers become managers? Is design innovation? Will managers take over design? Does beauty trump strategy? Are blondes better than smarty-pants design thinkers? Should industrial design become international design? Is design education failing? Are B-Schools taking over the field of design? What the heck is design thinking anyway? Is the media hyping design or reflecting its growing influence in business and society? Is design and innovation just a fad? Is a backlash underway?

Oh, the passion, the name-calling, the worry, the fights. And oh, the incredible vibrancy of this conversation. Design is alive with debate because it has grown so very much. The swirling intellectual eddies reflect its growing depth and sophistication as a method for maximizing options and promoting change.

Most important, the debate highlights the choice now facing design. Will the success of design generate a backlash and cause it to retreat or can it continue to move forward? Will society’s embrace of the field of design force a return to the insular, the familiar and the narrow or will design move to embrace society? Will design choose to be on the periphery or the center of the big challenges of our day?

If you are a young designer today, you are blessed by success. And you are truly challenged by it. You have the tools to make cool, hip objects that also pollute the planet. Or you can design cradle-to-cradle things that save the planet. You can design for your friends or you can journey to the communities of the aging, the sick and the poor. You can stay in San Francisco, Palo Alto, the Lower East Side or Brooklyn or you can go to Century Village in Florida or the HIV-ridden villages of Swaziland.

These are your choices in this moment of success for design. I implore you, I beg you to make a difference. Design has always been a calling. Now it has a chance of becoming a mission.

Thank you.

vía BusinessWeek Online - NussbaumOnDesign de bruce_nussbaum

Panic Button

Details count. And the world known clothes retailer GAP knows it. They've put this little blue call-the-steward-like buttons inside every fitting room (at least in Victoria Gardens at Rancho Cucamonga, CA store) so when pressed the girl/guy in charge of the fitting rooms comes and grabs for you another size or whatever your request is.

Caregivers if I might say.

Teachers Should Blog, Tweet and Flirt Online Like the Rest of Us

Teachers in Ohio are advised not to post profiles on social networking or online dating sites because it could lead to the appearance of improper relationships with students. Commentary by Regina Lynn.

vía Wired Lifestyle

Wikis in Plain English

Clever Advert on Bridge in Amsterdam

This clever advert gives drivers something to think about when waiting for the bridge to lower. The car is a lot rarer in Amsterdam than most cities, and it's great to see that, despite that, they still run campaigns like this. ::Wooster Collective..

Design Thinking

Esta nueva forma de abordar los problemas con los que nos enfrentamos no ayuda a poner la creatividad y la innovación por encima de estudios de mercado y viejas técnicas de percepción de los clientes. En un buen acercamiento a este tema el equipo de Hipercubo nos ofrece un artículo bastante interesante y accesible.

Design Thinking

Andi Bell explains the `link method` memory technique

If natural thinking is based in what we know, in our memory, wikiknowledge is based on virtual hiperinterconectedmemory.

This is very much how the web actually works. Nothing new if we consider is the same method we have been using to think since we got to the Homo Sapiens. The wikiworld is nothing but an extension (of astronomical proportions) of this linking process. Therefore mere storage of information does not constitute by itself any kind of memory; amount of data is not important rather how it is connected and moreover how do we access to it. Knowing now means to know the appropriate gate, whether is a search engine, a blog, a youtube video or even a facebook profile.

RGV

Zero House by Scott Specht

Vaporware prefabs that never get past the rendering stage are as common as rotting FEMA specials these days, and don't get the exposure they used to when modern prefab was finding its legs a couple of years ago. Then there are some that are so compelling that we just have to show them, such as Scott Specht's 650 square foot Zero House. It generates its own electrical power from that dramatic canopy roof; collects its own water for a rooftop 2700 gallon cistern, and processes its own waste in a composting system at the lowest level. ...

vía TreeHugger

Actics.com, the "Ethical Facebook”

The recent craze about social networks like Facebook hasn’t calmed down a bit. On the contrary, even green social networks are popping up like mushrooms with a special theme for each interest. The question is which one to join? Which one will win the popularity contest? Only last week we featured the latest community orientated network Tree-nation, and here’s another newcomer for this week: Actics.com, aligning actions and ethics. Actics is the world's first online ethical rating tool pioneering the new trend in ethic...

vía TreeHugger

Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law

Una plática interesante sobre el presente y futuro de los derechos de autor.

Larry Lessig

Wisdom from Ghana

Max Vardon from Ghana wrote me a response to my recent post on Leaders vs Managers that he has allowed me to share with you.

"The difference to me is primarily and simply one of temporal orientation.

The Leader is future-oriented, mapping out a (generally) long-term direction for hir (his/her) team or tribe, and often has abundant personal charisma that inspires hir followers. Typically the effective leader will delegate important (process) components in order to remain free to envision the next stage, whilst reserving the option to lead by example. Essentially too, the notion of 'followers' implies a voluntary, concious and active common alignment of values and/or purpose.

The Manager conversely tends to be focussed on achieving a set (of) goal(s) in the present / here-and-now and typically mobilises resources and motivates hir team towards the target (typically shorter-term) objective(s). The often-expressed need for team-building highlights the initial absence of shared values and objectives common amongst followers.

A Boss on the other hand may be a manager with a 'command and control' mindset as opposed to one with a more participative style.

Of course successful leaders will embody management skills to some extent, as will successful managers also display some degree of leadership abilities but I would submit that if you have to motivate, then you're not leading......!"

vía Maeda's SIMPLICITY

The Podcars Are Coming

Photo simulation of pod car track in Stockholm by Vectus The quaint college town of Uppsala, Sweden seems like the last type of place to test these funny-looking personal rapid transit (PRT) electric pod cars from Korea-based Vectus. But the Swedish Rail Administration (SJ), which gave Vectus permission to both build a test track and let engineers drive the pods around, is not as staid as its name implies - SJ was the first in Europe to put in service a biogas train last year on the route between the towns of Västervik and Linköping (try to say that name three times fast). Th..

vía TreeHugger

Doodling: diseño y prototipado rápidos

FRONT, un grupo de diseñadores suecos, ha desarrollado un método para el diseño y prototipado rápido de muebles. La principal innovación es que permite diseñar a mano alzada:

The four FRONT members have developed a method to materialise free hand sketches. They make it possible by using a unique method where two advanced techniques are combined. Pen strokes made in the air are recorded with Motion Capture and become 3D digital files; these are then materialised through Rapid Prototyping into real pieces of furniture.

Utilizan técnicas propias de la animación para capturar el movimiento de las manos y transformarlo en diseños en 3D que se convierten en prototipos utilizando una “impresora” que utiliza un plástico líquido. Kevin Kelly, en CT2 (Conceptual Trends and Current Topics), usa el término doodling para definir este método y plantea que puede ser un concepto y una forma de trabajo importante en el futuro.

Why We Love The Idea of Printing Buildings

Demo of Behrokh Khoshnevis' building printer techology A great article in Harvard Design Review telling architects to ::Innovate or Perish:, explaining why new technology like this will be so good for the environment: Environmentalists will rejoice over printed buildings, since 92% of building waste is now the resu...

vía TreeHugger

Universidades y web 2.0: retos institucionales (Fourth International Seminar. Web 2.0 and education. UOC UNESCO Chair in eLearning)

Del 17 al 19 de Octubre se celebra en Barcelona el Fourth International Seminar. Web 2.0 and education de la UOC UNESCO Chair in eLearning (Programa). Participo en este seminario con una ponencia sobre Universities and Web 2.0: Institutional challenges. He preparado un texto con las ideas fundamentales que se puede descargar aquí (versión pdf). Mi intervención tratará cinco grandes temas (sobre los que ya he escrito en numerosas ocasiones en este blog), en que analizo la realidad, los problemas y amenazas y las oportunidades que representa la web 2.0 para las universidades como organizaciones, y algunas ideas sobre como podríaa una universidad introducir en su sistema de educación las web 2.0 como tecnología y como paradigma de conocimiento abierto:

1. The promises and reality of web 2.0
2. What is web 2.0? Beyond technology; open knowledge and network collaboration
3. Bottlenecks for institutional adoption of web 2.0
4. Institutional fears of web 2.0
5. Elements for a strategy of web 2.0 adoption in universities

Como complemento, sobre el papel de la web 2.0 en los sistemas de aprendizaje se puede consultar este post y la presentación y video que se incluyen.

vía Juan Freire

DigitAll magazine

Here's a link to an interview I did with Samsung's DigitAll magazine. Also interviewed are Dave Lawrence of Shimano, Pandora's Tim Westergren, and Chris Beard from Mozilla. There's some interesting stuff in there.

via Metacool

Formal / Informal

The re-designed First Direct site includes an un-bank like vocabulary in it's footer: "We're obsessive about the quality of our service, so we monitor or record calls to make sure everything's tickety boo." An extension of First Direct's branding of being an un-bank like bank.

A night's stopover in Frankfurt on the way to Accra - jetlag providing an opportunity to catch up (un-)banking admin.

vía Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect

Premio Vico Magistretti: A Contest for Living Simplicity in Design

The good people at designboom recently teamed up with Italy's DePadova to organize and present the "Premio Vico Magistretti" design contest (to commemorate Vico Magistretti, the Italian architect and designer). 5402 designers from 98 different counties submitted entries on theme of "Living Simplicity and Furniture Design," and, after the dust settled, some really interesting designs rose to the top. The winner, as selected by an international jury of architects, designers and engineers, was "Bo...

vía TreeHugger

Rutas para la innovación abierta: costes, aceleración y creatividad

Charles Leadbeater ha publicado en Open Business una interesante propuesta sobre las Two faces of open innovation. El concepto de innovación abierta se está convirtiendo en una especie de panacea para muchos, pero habitualmente se engloban bajo el mismo término procesos que, aún compartiendo muchas similitudes, representan modelos organizativos muy diferentes. Pero, lo realmente relevante es que, estos procesos de innovación abierta representan además retos radicalmente distintos para las organizaciones que tratan de incorporarlos a sus estructuras y rentabilizarlos de uno u otro modo. Por eso, antes de abrazar la “innovación abierta”, se debería pensar ¿qué forma de innovación abierta nos interesa y podemos integrar exitosamente? y ¿cómo vamos a ser capaces de explotarla?.

Leadbeater propone dos modelos básicos de innovación abierta:

* Open Innovation IN: un modelo de innovación en una empresa u organización que propone, por ejemplo, uno de los gurús de este tema como es Henry Chesbrough (autor de Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape). Este modelo a desembocado en la última tendencia en organización empresarial, el crowdsourcing, que podríamos considerar el paradigma más desarrollado del modelo IN. En este esquema, las organizaciones aprovechan una red externa (y por tanto más amplia que la que podrían lograr únicamente con sus recursos internos) de talento e ideas con la que “alimentar” (en palabras de Leadbeater) un modelo de negocio que permanece inalterado respcto a las formas de explotación y comercialización de la propiedad intelectual.
* Open Innovation OUT: en este caso una organización (formal, como una empresa, o informal, como una red social) crea un “kernel” o plataforma (en resumen una serie de herramientas) con las que los usuarios desarrollan ideas y productos o servicios. El modelo OUT trata de maximizar la creatividad (podríamos decir “la innovación del proceso innovador”): “…is designed to allow a process of evolutionary innovation that accretes and grows as each new person adds their piece of information, code or module. Open innovation OUT is Wikipedia and Linux, open source and social movements like Avaaz and Move On”.

Por supuesto el propio Leadbeater reconoce que ambos modelos no son incompatibles, bien al contrario pueden ser movilizados en un mismo entorno y comparten tres característcias básicas: colaboración, redes y propiedad compartida. Pero, también presentan diferencias radicales (que incrementan las dificultades para combinarlos en una misma organización). Mientas el principal valor del crowdsourcing es reducir costes o acelerar procesos (dado que el modelo de negocio no se altera), la innovación OUT podría definirse como “crowdcreating” y, por tanto, necesita cambios en los “modelos de negocios”, en particular en lo que se refiere a la definición y gestión de la propiedad intelectual.

La propuesta de Leadbeater es muy sugerente y avanza, creo, en la dirección adecuada, y permite iniciar el análisis de la innovación como un proceso dinámico que genera cambios en las propias organizaciones. Así, en mi opinión, existen tres tipos de beneficios (complementarios) que se generan en procesos de innovación abierta:

* Reducción de costes: crowdsourcing como una forma de abaratar el coste de la innovación respecto al modelo interno.
* Aceleración de la innovación: en una dinámica económica cada vez más rápida, donde los ciclos de creación de nuevos productos o servicios, comercialización y obsolescencia son más cortos, la innovación abierta permite acelerar el proceso y mantener a una empresa dentro del ritmo del mercado.
* aumento de creatividad: el proceso colectivo e generación de nuevas ideas es más diverso que el que se puede desarrollar dentro de los departamentos de I+D de una organización, por lo que no sólo se reducen costes o se aceleran los procesos, la innovación abierta dará lugar a más y diferentes servicios, procesos o productos que los que se lograrían en un modelo IN.

Si analizamos estos procesos con una perspectiva evolutiva podríamos encontrarnos con dos tipos de rutas en las que una organización incorpora la innovación abierta y, como consecuencia, debe modificar su modelo organizativo y de relación con sus clientes o usuarios. En resumen, como se crean negocios abiertos (o como se reconvierten en abiertos negocios cerrados):

1. Las empresas (con ánimo de lucro y una ventaja competitiva inicial procedente de la protección de su propiedad intelectual), se acercan al crowdsourcing como una forma de reducir costes y/o acelerar procesos. En este sentido, y aunque parecer un contrasentido, el crowdsourcing reduce aún más los costes de transacción que justifican la existencia de las organizaciones formales, tal como propuso Ronald Coase en su theory of the firm. Si este cambio tiene éxito, o sea logran aumentar beneficios y/o el valor de su cartera de propiedad intelectual, se plantearán avanzar hacia el modelo “plataforma” como única manera de continuar incrementando su eficiencia. En este proceso se encontrarán una serie de barreras difíciles de superar: ¿cómo liberar su propiedad intelectual?, ¿cómo aprender a competir sin esa defensa? y ¿cómo “abrir” su organización para transformarla, en todo o en parte, en una plataforma?. En esta ruta se encuentran hoy en día numerosas empresas que se encuentran en diferentes fases del proceso de cambio, desde Lego a Google pasando por Procter & Gamble. En todos estos casos, las empresas han decidido ceder parte de sus opciones de acaparar propiedad intelectual para generara una mayor creatividad que deben explotar rápidamente.

2. Las plataformas abiertas (inicialmente, en general, sin ánimo de lucro ni intenciones de apropiarse de la propiedad intelectual que se genere) darán lugar a innovaciones con éxito en los “mercados” (por supuesto, la tasa de mortalidad de estas plataformas y/o sus innovaciones es muy elevada, pero consideremos aquí los casos de éxito). En este escenario, bien las propias plataformas bien otras organizaciones buscarán como generar nuevos beneficios (incluyendo, pero no exclusivamente, la rentabilidad económica) lo cual nos lleva a un reto fundamental: ¿cómo crear modelos de negocio a partir de plataformas abiertas sin ánimo de lucro ni propiedad intelectual que explotar?. Las empresas de software libre han seguido este camino explotando los servicios asociados a productos abiertos. La Fundación Mozilla es un ejemplo de como una plataforma abierta trata de incorporar las ventajas del modelo organziativo de las empresas para seguir creciendo e innovando. En todos estos casos las organziaciones tratan de mejorar la eficacia con que se explota la gran creatividad generada en una comunidad externa.

vía Juan Freire

[Sostenibilidad urbana 4] Rutas hacia la sostenibilidad: De lo tangible a lo intangible

4. Rutas hacia la sostenibilidad: De lo tangible a lo intangible
4.1) Del contenido al contexto: "preferiría no hacerlo"

Sostenibilidad urbana y arquitectura: del contenido al contexto: reflexión a partir del artículo de Iñaki Ábalos en Babelia, Bartleby, el arquitecto. Se puede entender la arquitectura y el urbanismo de dos formas diferentes:

* como creadores de contenido;
* como diseñadores de contextos donde los propios usuarios puedan desarrollar su contenido

El desarrollo reciente de Internet (especialmente de la web 2.0) nos ha enseñado que las industrias "diseñadoras de contextos" son más existosas que aquellas dedicadas a los contenidos. Al incluir al usuario en el proceso de creación de contenidos se movilizan redes sociales más amplias y activas que generan más y mejores innovaciones. Volviendo al urbanismo, nos encontramos con dos estrategias que pueden (y deberían) ser complementarias, pero en las que hoy en día domina sólo la primera tendencia:

* Planificación urbanística + Construcción: LO TANGIBLE
* Urbanismo 2.0 (Política local): Redes sociales + "Tecnología efímera". LO INTANGIBLE

4.2) Un ejemplo contra-intuitivo: el caso de la gestión del tráfico

Más detalles en: Gestión del tráfico sin reglas: entre la auto-organización y el diseño.

De la auto-organización en ausencia de reglas ...
Ejemplos de comportamiento del tráfico en ciudades asiáticas en las que no existe o es muy escasa la señalización y las regulaciones del tráfico. Sorprendentemente no se generan muchos conflictos ni se producen accidentes (posiblemente menos que en una vía occidental "bien regulada")..

Hanoi traffic from above

... al diseño para la interacción social

Los resultados beneficiosos de la auto-organización también pueden lograrse de modo deliberado grcias al diseño. Ese fue el caso de la ciudad de Drachten (Holanda), hoy en día copiado en numerosas ciudades europeas, donde se eliminaron las aceras, los semáforos y casi toda la señalización viaria para lograr un cambio en el comportamiento de conductores y peatones.
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4.3) Ciudades creativas e innovadoras

Sobre ciudades creativas e innovadoras:

* Ciudades como redes sociales dinámicas gracias a la “ausencia de espacio”
* Diseñar lo intangible (“la red”)
* Crear condiciones que catalicen las capacidades existentes en proyectos sociales y empresariales
* Recuperación y/o revitalización de los espacios públicos:
o movilidad y conectividad
o coordinación institucional en la escala metropolitana
o promover el valor para los ciudadanos de los espacios públicos

4.4) Casos de diseño urbano intangible

Notas y referencias en dos conferencias previas:

* Las ciudades y los espacios públicos. Diseñando lo intangible
* La ciudad como espacio de creación: activando lo intangible

4.4.1. De Jane Jacobs a Rem Koolhaas
Jane Jacobs se puede considerar como el punto de partida de la visión de la ciudades como redes sociales dinámicas. Rem Koolhaas ha afrontado la comprensión de las ciudades como sistemas complejos y, en gran medida, auto-organizados, independientemente de los esfuerzos políticos para la planificación y la regulación. El trabajo de Koolhaas, en este sentido y aunque la conexión no sea evidente, amplia geográfica, cultural y temáticamente las aportaciones de Jacobs y nos muestra los pros y los contras de la idiosincrasia de la vida urbana, especialmente en las megaciudades.

Bajo esta aproximación, las preguntas clave para el desarrollo y la sostenibilidad serían:

* ¿Cómo empoderar a los ciudadanos?
* ¿Cómo activar las redes sociales?

La estrategia de gestión urbana propuesta por Jane Jacobs podría servirnos de punto de partida para contestar a estas dos preguntas:

* Estrategias de gestión urbana basadas en la comunidad
* Posiciones anti-planificación “centralizada”
* Capacidad de los individuos y los pequeños grupos frente a los gobiernos y las grandes corporaciones
* Diversidad de usos y concentraciones de elevada densidad
* El conocimiento local es clave

Utilizando las ideas de Jacobs y Koolhaas como punto de partida se presentan algunos ejemplos de "diseño urbano intangible", que podríamos agrupar en dos grandes tipos:

* casos liderados desde la política local en entornos especialmente difíciles por la conflictividad social, las crisis económicas y/o la falta de recursos (Curitiba o Bogotá) pero que se han convertido en ejemplos de transformación urbana que combina una ruta hacia la sostenibilidad con una mejora de las condiciones de vida locales
* intervenciones puntuales de colectivos sociales que pretenden provocar la reflexión (y el cambio) de los ciudadanos y los políticos

4.4.2. Curitiba (Brasil): simplicidad y acción rápida y efectiva

* redes de transporte colectivo rápidas y eficientes logradas mediante una combinación de la organización de flujos y aplicación de diseños y tecnologías novedosas
* espacios públicos verdes "útiles" (en oposición a otros espacios naturales urbanos no accesibles a los ciudadanos)
* recogida y reciclaje de resíduos (mediante incentivos y "mecanismos de mercado")



Una descripción de la estrategia de gestión urbana y proyectos desarrollados en Curitiba se presentó por Jaime Lernet, su antiguo alcalde e inspirador de este proyecto, en la conferencia TED2007. Bruno Guisani ha resumido su intervención:

Jaime Lerner is the former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, and currently the governor of the state of Paraná. An architect and urban planner, as mayor he imagined and implemented many innovative solutions to city problems, making Curitiba one of the world's most sustainable cities: he turned buses into a swift network of public transportation with the speed of light rail at a fraction of the cost (by making them long, giving them dedicated lanes, and creating "boarding tubes" that speed up boarding and exiting), and to encourage use turned tickets into lottery tickets ...

He transformed wetlands into parks (and put sheep in them to "trim" the grass); to curb the litter and trash problem, he offered to exchange bottles and cans and trash for food at exchange stations. Lerner sees cities not as problems, but as solutions, and believes in simplicity in tackling urban problems, and in fast decision-making (he turned downtown Curitiba into a pedestrian zone in 72 hours)...

Sustainability is not only about new sources of energy and new materials and new techs: it's about the design of the city. Our idea of mobility is trying to connect all the systems and modes of transport, combine them, make sure that they don't compete in the same space.

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4.4.3. El proyecto Bogotá y la recuperación de espacios públicos

* La importancia de la fuerza de la voluntad política (ejemplificada por el alcalde Enrique Peñalosa) y la gestión eficaz
* La importancia de la recuperación de los espacios públicos (especialmente para la población más pobre, que no puede sustituir los servicios proporcionados por los espacios públicos por alternativas privadas)

Comentado en detalle en Estrategias para la revitalización de los espacios públicos urbanos (ver texto aquí).

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4.4.4. PARK(ing): "remix, reconfigure and reconsider"

Comentado en PARK(ing): "remix, remake, reconfigure and reconsider" para la transformación urbana

4.4.5. Worldchanging: redes digitales para la sostenibilidad urbana

Worldchanging ("Another World is here") es una comunidad de comunicadores y activistas que utilizan Internet para difundir herramientas, modelos e ideas que favorezcan la sostenibilidad. Son el prototipo de bright greens y favorecen las soluciones prácticas y efectivas sobre cuestiones morales e ideológicas (de las que tampoco están exentos).

En 2006 publicaron Worldchanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century, un libro que recopila muchas de las ideas publicadas antes en Internet y que puede pretende ser una guía para la sostenibilidad en este siglo.

De su manifiesto:

WorldChanging.com works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it's here. We only need to put the pieces together.

Como buen ejemplo de bright greens defienden enfáticamente las ciudades densas como modelo de sostenibilidad:
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4.4.6. La importancia de los detalles: ¿aceras, cemento y zonas verdes?

* ¿Es más habitable y sostenible el cemento o las zonas verdes?. Ejemplos desde el diseño urbano
* Arquitectura invisible: son la aceras, estúpido

4.5) Web 2.0 y redes hiperlocales

Internet, y en especial las herramientas para la colaboración denominadas genéricamente web 2.0, representan una oportunidad única para empoderar las redes sociales. En el ámbito local se pueden obtener sinergias de la unión de la proximidad física y las redes digitales que permitan formas muy efectivas de organización social. Estos temas han sido desarrollados en:

* La nueva frontera de Internet: las redes hiperlocales
* Web 2.0 y periodismo ciudadano en barrios marginales
* Puntos de fuga y nuevas redes hiperlocales
* Ideas y herramientas para la web 2.0 local

Algunos ejemplos de redes hiperlocales (o potencialmente hiperlocales) en España: Tagzania, Blog Ciudadano de Zaragoza, Bilbao.bi, Escoitar.org, Panoramio, Blogosfera Palentina,…. Los blogs de asociaciones de vecinos constituyen un ejemplo sencillo pero muy efectivo de la utilización de la web 2.0. Por ejemplo, en el casod de Coruña diferentes barrios han optado por utilizar blogs como herramienta de comunicación (recopilados aquí): Rosales, Mallos o Matogrande.

¿Cómo promover redes hiperlocales?. Diseñando el contexto.

* Conversaciones abiertas (web 2.0) en que participen ciudadanos y políticos
* Acceso abierto a Internet: redes de telecomunicaciones ubícuas y baratas
* Bases de conocimiento amplias y diversas: Digitalización de la vida municipal
* Formatos abiertos para la información pública
* Utilización de licencias abiertas y flexibles: Reutilización y recombinación creativa

4.6) Recetas para el urbanismo 2.0

Referencias:

* Urbanismo y política local 2.0: Alternativas para el gobierno de las ciudades
* Juan Freire (2006). Urbanismo y política local 2.0: Alternativas para el gobierno de las ciudades. Arquitectos 178 (2/2006), Construcción de Ciudad. (Versión pdf).

¿Qué es el urbanismo 2.0?

* transdisciplinar e integrador (“política local”)
* importan más las personas y las redes sociales que las infraestructuras,
* la tecnología y la imaginación permiten soluciones "de abajo a arriba“, baratas y efectivas (tecnología efímera vs. burocracia masiva),
* los ciudadanos somos usuarios activos y no consumidores pasivos

Algunas propuestas para el urbanismo y la política local 2.0:

1. Definir el modelo deseado de ciudad
2. Decisiones basadas en información objetiva
3. Eliminar la conexión perversa entre planificación urbana y financiación municipal
4. Favorecer los flujos (de personas, información y financieros)
5. Tecnología y diseño efímeros
6. Utilizar preferentemente mecanismos de mercado en la provisión de servicios
7. Densidad y diversidad de usos
8. Gestión ambiental basada en la internalización de costes de uso de servicios y recursos ambientales
9. Afrontar el problema de la delincuencia de modo realista y eficaz

vía Juan Freire

[Notas para la conferencia Redes sociales, tecnología y sostenibilidad urbana (wiki). Workshop Marbella: Recuperación de Ríos, Bosques y Playas urbanas en Marbella, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de la Universidad de Granada]

Universities are adopting blogs

Universities around the United States are starting to adopt blogs in order to attract potential applicants. The Boston Globe published an article describing the trend:

“Liu writes about her college experiences in as much excruciating detail as she wishes — for $10 an hour, courtesy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s admissions office. Uncensored blogs by Liu, nine other students, and four admissions and financial aid officers are the first thing that visitors to the admissions website see.”

vía Innovation Zen

True Talk: The How of Innovation

Artículo sobre el libre True Talk. Bastante Interesante

What’s TrueTalk?

It’s a way of communicating that lets your organization know you’re serious about the importance of innovating and of executing; that you’re ready to get beyond “business as usual”; ready to lead in new ways.

We all hear leaders everywhere exhorting their organizations to be more innovative, more imaginative. But, repeating these mantras does not help people to know how to do it.

Many knowledge workers think that innovation happens somewhere else—R & D, design centers, or “going offsite.”

But we’ve found that the real how of innovation today is constant, on the job, work-different behavior; it’s about everyone at all levels “getting it.”

Nowadays, we believe the formula for success looks something like this:

Success = Innovation + Execution

We no longer live in an “either/or” world. Today, it’s “both/and” or it’s curtains.

Innovation without execution? Empty ideas.

Executing old thinking? Pointless rigor.

In this article, we’ll take a look at developing an organization that gets the how of innovation.

Innovation

First, a definition. Innovative ideas are those that are both novel and useful. It takes both to make ideas valuable.

Why is it that some organizations regularly generate innovative ideas and others don’t?

We think an organization’s culture is a key differentiator between the two.

Creating a culture that enables individual and collective innovation is one of a leader’s greatest challenges. We’ve found that innovative cultures share a key characteristic: they’re seriously playful.

What does that mean?

It means that everybody approaches the serious business of delivering customer-focused value with a playful attitude.

Playful doesn’t mean “frivolous.” Ever watch kids playing? What they’re doing’s seriously important to them. What about the growth of video and online games? Psychologists studying play have found that we use play to help us explore new territory; play helps us learn.

Playful means approaching something important as if it were a game; as if it were a treasure hunt. And it’s those two little words, “as if” free people to try things they wouldn’t otherwise try. Which is where innovation happens: trying things out, tinkering, fiddling, constantly looking for something better, more interesting, novel.

How can you create an environment in which people innovate? Try these things for starters.

1. Positive Emotion – Our experience agrees with the work Harvard Business School’s creativity expert Theresa Amabile. She’s found that creativity thrives in positive environments. Creativity and positive emotion feed on one another in innovative cultures. This doesn’t mean uncritical acceptance of any and all ideas. It means establishing an environment in which new ideas (and new idea generators) are respected and given a chance to flourish. Give new ideas room to grow by developing an open culture that lets people express themselves free of fear or embarrassment.

2. Collaboration Trumps Competition – Contrary to popular myth, innovation rarely emerges from head-to-head competition. While one team might innovate in a competition with another team, competition within teams seldom produces desired results. Internal competition makes members reluctant to share ideas, and sharing ideas is the cornerstone of collective innovation. Enable an environment that rewards and recognizes collaboration if you’re interested in innovation.

3. Inquiry for reflection – We’ve found that when you ask the right people some very basic questions, they collectively come to own their solutions. What do we do well? How could we perform better? What gets in our way? What should we do differently? Getting the right people together to reflect on the formula for success provides the platform to build the new how mindset.

4. Relevance to Real Time Performance – We hear repeatedly that organizations are too busy with “now” to worry about “next”: “we don’t have enough time,” “we can’t get to it,” “there aren’t enough hours in the day.” To unleash the how of innovation demands a deep appreciation for the way we work now. The opportunity is to collectively explore ways to experiment, test new models, and capture the learning. Innovative thinking is contagious when it’s grounded in real-time work and immediately improves individual and group performance.

5. Everyone’s Creative – Many of us have come to believe that “creatives” are different from other people. But innovative cultures don’t leave people out, they invite them in. Even though we all differ in our natural abilities, creative thinking, like all complex skillsets, improves with practice. Practicing creative thinking leads to innovative breakthroughs. If you’re serious about developing an innovative culture, include everyone.

6. Technology Keeps Us in the Know – We always get excited when companies are responsive to using their technological tools to help colleagues share their learnings. Workers who are set up to tune in can stay informed about how teams are testing and experimenting. Most importantly, learning from mistakes is critical to the how of innovation. By staying connected, new teams shouldn’t have to make the same mistakes.

7. Reward Effort AND Results – Remember the old management cliché?: “What gets measured, gets done.” Well, how do you measure innovation? Too often, managers make the mistake of believing that they should only reward team members if their work directly delivers financial results. We’ve seen plenty of examples of innovative ideas that initially “failed to deliver,” only to become big hits (sometimes in slightly different form) when resurrected later. So, leaders need to encourage efforts that don’t quite make it as well as those that do. One key to creating an innovative culture is understanding that innovators thrive on the opportunity to innovate. If you’re committed to developing continuous innovation, find ways to let innovators know that you value them, recognizing their efforts as well as their results.

These are just some of the key characteristics of creative social systems. Doing these things well will put you squarely on the road to getting the how of innovation.

True Talk

TED Links

Visitors arriving from the TED blog may want to download the original presentation titled Connections & Consequence [PowerPoint, PDF 4MB]. A list of related research is published here.

vía Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect

De los Ikea hackers a la fabricación personal

Del mismo modo que los usuarios avanzados de Lego Mindstorms se han lanzado a la subversión de las reglas de juego impuestas por una empresa a la que no pertenecen (Forbidden Lego: ¿la venganza de los crowdsourcers?), los Ikea Hackers combinan su pasión por el diseño y por el do-it-yourself con una cierta actitud subversiva, un tanto light, al proponer modos de hackear los productos de Ikea para dotarlos de otras funciones o estéticas. The New York Times les dedicó un artículo (Romancing the Flat Pack: Ikea, Repurposed) donde los sitúa cultural e ideológicamente:

Ms. Lam, Mr. Csiky and Ms. Domanic have never met but they are nonetheless related, connected by a global (and totally unofficial) collective known as the Ikea Hackers. Do-it-yourselfers and technogeeks, tinkerers, artists, crafters and product and furniture designers, the hackers are united only by their perspective, which looks upon an Ikea Billy bookcase or Lack table and sees not a finished object but raw material: a clean palette yearning to be embellished or repurposed. They make a subset of an expanding global D.I.Y. movement, itself a huge tent of philosophies and manifestoes including but not confined to anticonsumerism, antiglobalism, environmentalism and all-purpose iconoclasm.

Estos Ikea Hackers son sucesores, y una mezcla, de los coolhunters, el movimiento de deconstrución y los diseñadores que reutilizan objetos industriales:

…“The idea is you’re getting in through the backdoor,” Ms. Berger said, “and reinventing what’s there.”

In the 1990s, when Ms. Berger was a “cool hunter” at Y&R, the branding, marketing and advertising agency, “we used to call this ‘post-purchase product alteration, ’ ” she said, noting that Ikea hackers’ predecessors can be found in fashion, with the deconstruction movement fomented by the Belgians in the late ’80s, and in architecture.

“There is a long history of hacking industrial artifacts or found objects and turning them into high design,” she said, drawing a straight line from Buckminster Fuller to Lot-Ek, the Manhattan architectural firm that has played with cargo containers, industrial sinks and truck tanks. “But to my knowledge Ikea is the only company that is appealing to the do-it-yourselfer.”

Al igual que en el caso de Lego, puede que Ikea acabe aprovechando a “sus hackers” para ampliar su mercado al diversificar sus productos y “sugerir” diseños prohibidos (pero rentables). Algo diferente puede suceder cuando Ikea deje de proporcionar los “materiales” necesarios para los diseños de los hackers. Por ejemplo, cuando se popularicen y abaraten los fabricadores personales (fablabs; como el que se ha creado recientemente en el Institut d’Arquitectura Avançada de Catalunya), de modo que cualquiera pueda utilizar diseños compartidos en Internet para fabricarse cualquier tipo de objeto (y por supuesto, diseños “pirateados” del catálogo de Ikea). David de Ugarte considera que la fabricación personal es la nueva revolución en Internet, como la parte tangible de lo que denomina web 2.1.

Para hacernos una idea, en el mismo tono cool y ligero que transmiten los Ikea Hackers, nada mejor que el video The Spime Arrives creado por Bruce Sterling para explicar los spimes, un concepto ciertamente vago y extenso que presentó en su libro Shaping Things. Una de las facetas de los spimes es la fabricación personal y, de hecho, el video explica de un modo sencillo como funcionará este modelo de producción post-industrial de tangibles. Lo han anunciado en ToShare.it con los que Sterling colabora en estos momentos:

What does the future have in store for us? In whose hands will design be? What economic trends will prevail? …

Sterling predicts a further evolution of what we already call web 2.0, where phenomena like social-networking and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) see “objects” generating a new internet that someone has already defined as Web 3.0.

He foresees monumental changes in the world of design: a transformation of conventional users, with their currently available user-alterable gizmos, into “wranglers” with blobjects, spimes, and arphids in their pockets and briefcases.

¿Qué sucederá con la propiedad intelectual de los diseños? ¿Dónde estará el poder: en la fabricación de los fablabs, en los buscadores de diseños, en las tiendas de barrio donde “imprimamos” nuestros diseños? ¿Acabará Ikea convertida en una franquicia de copisterías? ¿Acabaremos pagando un canon por los tableros de contrachapado?

vía Juan Freire

Failure Sucks But Instructs

Homer is right. The only way to avoid failure is to do nothing. But failure has virtues, and is probably impossible to avoid (Indeed, doing nothing is a form of failure too).

There is no learning without failure. No creativity without failure. That is why Jeff Pfeffer and I argue that the best single diagnostic question you can ask about an organization is: What Happens When People Fail? As research on creativity and learning shows (see this story on the “July effect” in study by Robert Huckman and Jason Barro of 700 hospitals over 8 years – mortality rates went up 4% when the new residents came in), it is impossible to do anything new or learn anything new without making mistakes.

There is a silver lining, however, although it hurts, there is evidence that people think more deeply and learn more after a failure than a success.

Homer might not like the thinking part.

Failure Sucks But Instructs

Buscando la próxima red en los rincones del presente

A. ¿Cuáles son los motores del cambio?: Política, economía, cultura, Internet. ¿Es posible analizarlos de modo independiente?

B. Política

1. Internet es una red social distribuída pero una red física descentralizada. Las telecomunicaciones dependen de redes de infraestructuras “controlables”.
2. Peligros políticos. La paradoja del control. El caso del buscador Google y la “masacre de la plaza de Tiananmen”. “Don’t be evil”?
3. Oportunidades políticas: La revolución naranja en Ucrania
4. La revolución azafrán en Birmania: ¿oportunidad o peligro?
5. Perversiones políticas: el control del gobierno turco

C. Economía

1. ¿Del crowdsourcing a la venganza de los crowdsourcers?
2. Continuará desarrollándose la “larga cola” de las aplicaciones y negocios web (aunque Facebook no es (aún?) una larga cola)
3. ¿La economía del regalo?. El “caso” Radiohead.
4. La economía del regalo es rentable, pero ¿qué pasa con la antigua industria discográfica?

D. Cultura e Internet

1. El viejo orden digital. Los portales de finales del siglo XX. El nuevo (des)orden digital. Everything is miscellaneous. Agregadores y mashups del siglo XXI
2. Wikipedia como web 1.5: nuevos modelos con los viejos filtros y autoridades. Los nuevos wikis: múltiples usos, múltiples modelos. Geekpedia. Cordobapedia: lo que no tiene “interés general”. Debatepedia: el punto de vista “no neutral”.
3. Contenidos audiovisuales: web 2.0 para la distribución. YouTube. Saatchi Online. Web 3.0: contenido granular y etiquetable para la remezcla audiovisual. YouTube Remixer. Eyespot. Jumpcut …En la era de la exuberancia de contenidos, ¿la creatividad está en la remezcla?
4. ¿Del machinima a El Señor de los Anillos? El caso de Bloodspell, el primer largometraje machinima. ¿Dónde llegarán los usuarios utilizando contenidos abiertos y motores de videojuegos 3D?
5. De los Ikea Hackers a la fabricación personal: la web 3.0 tangible
6. Las redes hiperlocales híbridas (analógicas y digitales). Una especulación sobre nuestro futuro hiperlocal.
• Los spimes y la Internet of things (algunos esquemas).
• GPS, Internet móvil, conectividad ubícua …
• Urban Tapestries, en desarrollo ya en 2003 (una animación).
7. La vida en las redes: de la posmodernidad al “hiper”-realismo. No existe el Quinto Estado (William Hutton) ni el Tercer Entorno (Javier Echevarría).
• El conocimiento es un flujo distribuido; no es un stock localizado en una plataforma. Stephen Downes: “The greatest non-technical issue is the mindset. We have to view information as a flow rather than as a thing. Online learning is a flow. It’s like electricity or water. It’s there, it’s available and it flows. It’s not stuff you collect…”.
• Los usuarios como “comisarios” de conocimiento; los nuevos“brokers”.
• La larga cola de los mashups personales (creados con herramientas como Google Mashup Editor o Yahoo Pipes). Mashups just-in-time y just-in-place: el ejemplo de los incendios en California.

via http://nomada.blogs.com/jfreire/

What is Design Thinking? Who Teaches it Best?

Check out this video on design thinking. It's amazing. You have Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman Management School, Harry West head of strategy and innovation from Continuum, Dan Pink, Jeff Huang and others. It's part of our package on Talent.

Continuum produced the video as part of its Support Design Education program. Continuum has been working with Rotman to develop design thinking in its MBA program. From the Contiuum site, here is some of what the two partners are doing:

"Designers from our studio worked closely with a designworks team (DesignWorks is a Rotman program that encourages new ways of thinking to managers) coaching them through a consumer strategy project for elite bike company Cervelo. We shared processes, studios, outlooks and approaches. What resulted was an enlightened understanding from both parties, some solid ideas for the client, and an ongoing partnership."

And check out Harry West's article on a new, multi-skill approach where traditional design tactics are wedded to the needs of business.

It just may be that B-Schools are the best source of creative management--or programs that include business and design. What do you think?

vía BusinessWeek Online - NussbaumOnDesign

Design Vs. Design Thinking.

We're having an excellent conversation about design and design thinking and I'd really like it to continue. If you missed Christopher Fahey's recent comment, please read it here. It's an important contribution to the discussion.

"Here's an idea: A young person goes to an art school or a design school to learn design hands-on among designer peers, then they get a job in the real world to learn about business, then if they work hard and pay attention in a few years they flower into what you call a "design thinker".

Or they go to a business school and then start messing around with Photoshop, HTML and CSS, Visio or CAD, pencil and paper, or whatever design tools they can. They get a job in the real world working closely with designers. They actually practice design more and more -- they "pay their dues". And then, again, after a few years of work and dedication they also blossom into a "design thinker".

Bruce, I agree with you that design will more and more be the driving force behind business decisions, and I agree that business leaders with a deep understanding of design values and processes will have an edge in the future over their peers who do not. Which makes it all the more perplexing why you consistently advocate creating and cultivating the next generation of design managers through training them in business, not design, skillsets -- instead of cultivating business skills among those who already have strong foundation design talents and skills. Is it not obvious to you that these emerging design-conscious business leaders might be most profitably drawn from the ranks of, say, *designers*?

I'm not sure how someone with what is basically a business education and a smattering of hands-on design education is being trained to be a design leader (what's worse, many d-school programs seem to have no hands-on design whatsoever). As a design leader, I wouldn't hire anyone to directly manage designers who didn't actually have expert-level hands-on design skills. I fear that your d-schools are not training people to be hired by the innovative designers who are ascending through corporate America today -- they are, perhaps, actually training people to be hired by the MBAs the real design leaders are replacing.

Or maybe the subtext of your platform is that, despite all the hype around the value of design thinking, it's still just a subset of business thinking. Which might explain why we designers are constantly perplexed and put off by the whole idea.

I'm not trying to throw a Molotov cocktail here, but I've always found this "design thinking" thing confusing because you and others never explain what role designers -- people who sit down with pencil and paper, mouse and screen, and actually design things -- have to play in the design thinking equation. I personally think the role they (we) will have to play is profound and unprecedented in scope -- but what do *you* think? It would be great to hear your thoughts about design thinking as it pertains to someone who might not be an MBA -- e.g., for a *designer*."

Basically, Fahey asks what is the role of the designer in the new field of design thinking. In my back-and-forths with Pentagram's Michael Beirut at the Design Observer and other design folks, this is a major issue. In our discussion over the One Laptop Per Child, it developed as a key issue. And it's a critical issue in design education as well.

My own current thinking is that designers must play a critical role in the creation of this new field of design thinking. The whole core culture of design is essential to design thinking. In fact, I would argue that the rise of Web 2.0 and social networking reinforces the traditional design focus on empathy and integration--human factors, the user interface, culture. Web 2.0 technology is behind the boost to design in the corner office as businesses delve more deeply into the lives of their customers--who are demanding to be part of the process of creating and designing stuff. Social media reinforce their desire to participate.

But design thinking is such a new field that it's not clear whether design schools or business schools will develop the formal concepts and methodologies that turn it into a broad, deep and powerful tool of organizational change.

The fact is that design thinking (or whatever we wind up calling this new field) is being created at the borders of design, business, engineering and even marketing. And I don't know which institutions will take the lead in promoting it. We have the Stanford D-School, the IIT Institute of Design. and the Rotman School of Management in Toronto taking early leads in developing design thinking. The California College of the Arts is offering an MBA in Design Strategy.

But, as the list of 60 schools and programs shows, there are many more institutions in Europe and Asia working in the fields and many, many partnerships across the boundaries of design, engineering and business. No one really know how or where design thinking will take shape--only that it is.

Nick Leon director of Design London, the new program that links the Royal College of Art, the Tanaka Business School and Imperial College of London, thinks the term "design thinking" is ridiculous. Business people roll their eyes at "thinking." He wants more rigor and prefers the term "design method." OK by me.

I don't think design thinking is a subtext of management science or the traditional stuff they teach in B-Schools. But many business schools are moving to integrate design and innovation into their curricula and teaching. Where the best research on all this develops, I don't know. Right now I read the great stuff from the Design Management Institute, Rotman Magazine, the Harvard Business Review and the Innovation & Design channel--and a growing number of well-informed blogs. Here are just a handful. Experientia. Metacool. Logic + Emotion.

vía BusinessWeek Online - NussbaumOnDesign