Ithaa: An UnderSea Restaurant

Ithaa, positioned five metres (15 feet) below sea level is the world’s leading undersea restaurant enclosed by a coral reef, at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island in Rangalifinolhu, Maldives. Synonymous to Pearl in Dhivehi, the restaurant is sheathed in R-Cast acrylic, which is a translucent acrylic roof providing 270° panoramic view to its patrons. Served with a Maldavian-Western Fusion menu with a price range varying from $120-$250, counted 14 people can dine in one go.

Designed and developed by a New Zealand-based design consultancy company M.J. Murphy Ltd, this $5 million restaurant was constructed in Singapore and was later shipped to the island on a colossal barge outfitted with a massive derrick to enable it dive in the sea. The thrilling experience starts right on the way as the unique wooden walkway directs you to reach the welcoming door of restaurant. Carsten Schieck, the GM commented on the usage of aquarium technology that serves diner face-to-face with the spectacular submarine surroundings of the Maldives.

Via Elite Choice

The Need for Sleep

ZOMG! No Android phones till Q4 2008... right on schedule!

There's a lot of hoopla today over a Wall Street Journal piece stating that Google's first Android device has been pushed back to late 2008 for release -- yet the article fails to mention that this is right inline with what Google has been saying for quite awhile now. Admittedly, the fresh-faced mobile competitor probably is finding itself somewhat mired in carrier demands, which doesn't seem unexpected given the broad swath of partners it's collaborating with and the open source nature of the project, but as phone release schedules go, it hasn't veered off the path much. The breakdown is something like this: from what we've been told, you can expect an Android-powered handset before the new year (i.e., HTC's Dream driven by Google's OS), followed by a crop of higher profile phones showing up in early 2009 (as previously stated by companies like LG and Samsung). So... feel free to switch off the alarms anytime you like.

[Via GigaOM]

IDEO'S TIM BROWN ON HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

The fact that the Harvard Business Review asked IDEO's CEO Tim Brown to write about Design Thinking in the current issue is as important as what he had to say in the piece. It marks the acceptance and legitimization of design/innovation as an important business process and strategic tool for managers.

HBR was behind for a time in covering innovation and design but it is running some very interesting pieces now and Brown's article brings it up to date/a>. I think that lag reflects the reluctance of business schools to embrace design thinking and innovation process. This is now changing, but slowly. Harvard Business School is making efforts to incorporate innovation, but in the end, we are talking about a sharp paradigm change embodied in curricula and teaching, and that is happening in only one B-School that I can think of--the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto run by Dean Roger Martin.

Brown's HBR piece is an excellent primer. He begins by showing how

Design Thinking is a formalization of the methodology used by none other than Thomas Edison who not only invented the lightbulb but envisioned and built a whole electric industry (we'd call that an ecosystem today) devoted to meeting the unmet needs of consumers (needs they couldn't yet visualize). He used a team-based approach to innovation in his famous lab, iterated famously (his "99% perspiration" comment), failed often and learned from his mistakes.

The HBR piece has great stories on medical service innovation at Kaiser and the Aravind Eye Care System in India. There's another on the Keep The Change program at Bank of America.

At the end of the article are two short takes. One is A Design Thinker's Personality Profile (Empathy, Integrative Thinking, Optimism, Experimentalism, Collaboration). The other is How to Make Design Thinking Part of the Innovation Process (check out the piece).

I also like Brown's definition of design thinking--"it is a discipline that uses the designer's sensibility and methods to match people's needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity."

Does that work for you?

vía BusinessWeek Online - NussbaumOnDesign de bruce_nussbaum el 25/06/08