Today I just wanna to share convergence rather fun/weird that happens me today. I'm now reading a book call "the rational optimist" by Matt Ridley, who is talking about how ideas and innovation is the motor behind the progress of humanity and how the exchange is the fuel for this to happen, when I came across with the column from Johan Lehrer in Wired magazine which is talking in this post (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/cultivating-genius/) about how throughout history geniuses had cluster in specific times and places. He bring the notion of meta-ideas, propose by Paul Romer, to solve the riddle of why this clustering -or clotting how he calls it- happens. By another hand Ridley go through the same issue discarding: government, intellectual property (a meta-idea propose by Romer), capital and science, only to set the "clotting agent" on the exchange. Information exchange. Were there is ideas being exchanged -or having sex as he stated- innovation, hence innovators, will happen.
Both authors state that innovation is needed urgently nowadays -to reactivate the economy, dodge the environmental collapse, fight the totalitarianism or corporatism or anarchism, or just change the world for better in some way- but even when they don't really agree in the essential factor, or factors, which detonates the appearance of innovation, the same question remains in the backstage of both arguments: to make a better societies -or world for what matter- we need more innovation; but for having more innovation, isn't that we need first to change ours societies?
This video is a quite interesting trip through the personal mobility history focused on describing how we found ourselves in the turning point of this industry. The arguments for this claim are the upcoming electrical technologies and material that are now being introduce in the develop of personal mobility devices, the longer performance of electrical batteries and the reduction of their sizes as well as the incorporation of high sensitive capabilities have opened broadly the spectrum of possibilities for imagining and realize new ways of interacting with the vehicles, new uses for them and, the most relevant issue, new categories of vehicles. Since the foundation of this industry both the morphology and the configuration of personal mobility vehicles has remain pretty much the same until recently devices like the SEGWAY and the Honda's U3-X (the main character of this video) have overlook the the idea that a personal vehicle has to be a car or a bike or, if you are an eccentric driver, a tricycle to bring a new category of self-balancing vehicles, and altogether opening a hole new branch in the mobility industry.
The proliferation of new devices in this area has already begun, and we can count now with transitional hybrids like one-wheeled motorcycles or Segway like devices for off road but the disruption of personal mobility it is far from being exhausted and I guess we will witness the arise of other new categories on which the power storage technology and the active sensitive capacity as well as the new ways of human vehicle interaction will have a main role.
From the Design point of view, being involved in this turning point means a bit more than just to make these new devices more aesthetically appealing or user friendly; it means also to imagine, research and prototype new ways to communicate the human will to an electromechanical device so the relationship between them can become more intuitive and responsive.
That's it for now, by the way, this video is produced by Gizmag and you can read the hole article here.
This is a documentary about how we choose to experience culture. It is a tricky issue because we can either say that is a consumer good and feel free to consume it or we can just take it and use it as we please. the thing is, if we call it a consumer good means that is a product being offer to us, the one we trade so we earn the right to use its inscripted functions (the functions intended by the creator of that cultural good) until its life cycle, a close cycle, is over. by the other hand if is available to be taken and use, so it is public domain, means that it has an open life cycle and with this comes two different implications. first, the trade is open, which means that that cultural good is traded not anymore between the creator -or the mediator-and and individual, but the social space (the community within the scope culturally influenced by that ''good''). Second, the functions of the good itself are open; this means that in this case not only the intended functions are available but also any function that the good, by its properties, allows and also the functions that the user of the good can imagine.
All this becomes meaningful when we understand that one of the functions of any cultural good is to be a building brick for whatever comes next. Every cultural object, in the broader sense of the word, is a functional part of the future of that culture. This movie-manifesto is about what happens when we overprotect the cultural goods on which the innovation, which enriches the future, is fed.
James Dyson, founder of Dyson corporation and responsible for the world famous machine looking vacuum cleaners, share his achievements and inspirations in a relaxed show-and-tell talk called ''the art of engineering'' at MIT. Dyson, graduated from the Royal College of Art, tell the story of how he went into engineering and how important it is not to be only a Designer or a Engineer, but to be a Designer/Engineer, and inventor as he said, and the relevance to make mistakes: ''...I think the schools got all wrong, they should be giving good grades to the ones that makes mistakes and learn from them.'' something that himself take to the limit, for his first cyclone vacuum cleaner he spend almost 5 years and did 5,126 prototypes!
The British inventor also criticized the definition of Design as a marketing tool arguing a more meaningful and systemic view that he inherit from one of his heroes, Buckminster Fuller, from whom also borrow the beautiful advice: ''...you see what needs to be done and do it.''
At he end of the talk, in Q&A, he discuss how he manage the creative processes within his organization and how he see the future regarding the rising of the new Asian productive power. Surely an invigorating example of how to make you way through with a huge accent on innovation.
Opensource is probably the most philosophically relevant idea coming from the computer sciences. Actually the idea of sharing knowledge it's, of course, not new but it the age on which patent and rights have drag the technical knowledge to a exclusive corporate corner sharing information about how things work it's a revolutionary endeavor. In a good metaphor expressed in this documentary the Opensource is compared with Gutenberg's movable type printer. Before Gutenberg the production of books were in hands of a few, mostly cleric,that controlled what could be read, hence what could be know, after him the amount and more important the variety of books explode given the people the chance of build themselves for themselves a body of knowledge to understand the world. Gutenberg's printer was a very important piece of Open hardware that boost society into a new direction.
Today we are confronting a similar scenario. We are surrounding by technological devices like cellphones, computers, consoles, mp-players, etc. That we barely know how to use and we are even less inform about how they actually works. This disinformation has huge consecuenses in a world on which the number of this kind of devices may be even bigger than the actual population. Think on what is lost every time that a computer or a cellphone goes to the trash, maybe the system as a whole doesn't work but, what about all those little parts that give life to that cellphone or that computer? what if we can do something with those parts? what if we can play and tinker with that old low resolution cellphone camera or that screen? what about the spinning wheel of that broken mouse or the optics of that old digital camera? the possibilities are amazingly wide. For doing that we need knowledge and tools, but as we know big part of the knowledge comes from playing with the tools and here is where Arduino comes into scene. this piece of very cheap and non-exclusive piece of hardware is the tool which allow us to start connecting all those little parts and give them a purpose, whatever this purpose would be. Here is the potential of this little device that have been revolutionizing the digital world, and the revolution consist on materialize the digital world itself for sake of fun, what purpose beautiful and productive than that.
Following fun and with the help of Opensource tools as Arduino and Processing amazing things have come to life like 3d printers that cost little more than a thousand dollars or new music instrument and a lot of new robots. Opensource tools like Arduino bring down the technical threshold of electronic devices world to a level that allow not specialized people to start to interact in a expressive and creative way with it, and the best part... in a social way too, because is not about what I can do and how I can make profit out of that (not only at least) but what We can do and how we take this thing into the next level.
Opensource means sharing knowledge, and sharing knowledge means better and faster understanding and develop of communities. It may not be new but as a movement based on the technologies that are changing the face of our daily living surely, is a philosophy to adopt.
Edward De Bono in his ''Lateral thinking'' said, ''the whole purpose of lateral thinking is to restructure the mind patterns, to disrupt them, to be able to see the things in a different way''. When I watched this presentation it gave me the idea of being reading a really good summary of De Bono's book. Here Luke Williams apply the notion of disruptiveness to three main areas: strategies, thinking and expectations and explain how the introduction of this concept can leverage innovation, hence success, in your company.
This talk is full with real business cases of Frog design (where the speaker is a fellow) and other business leader that relate this theoretical process with real successful innovations. One thing that I personally found really interesting is that the organizational processes to innovate are shifting their focus from efficiency and system theory to a more anthropological area, actually they are going into the psychology of the people involve in these processes. What DeBono wrote thinking in the improvement of the creative performance of individuals now is been taken as a way to improve organizational performance on innovation, in other words, how we can make innovation part of our organization process? or how we can build an organization centered on innovation? well...improving the creative performance of each person involved in the organization. But it is still a gap of going from the individual to the organizational level, and it is how we translate an mind process in a collective process. Again De Bono give us a hand in his book the "Six thinking hats'', but even when he manage to describe how to deal with the collective addressing of problem there is still an environmental issues to solve in order to empowered the creative processes in collective work settings, but that's another post.
For now it's good to enjoy a very dynamic talk, full of nice examples, of how to address the innovation through disruptiveness, a concept cast almost forty years ago that still remain fresh.
A new post on innovation-report inform about a new ''break through'' on material sciences coming from the University of Cincinnati, a Disposable e-paper. Actually from the scientific side it's really a break through. A paper based technology that enables to display information, in different ways including video, as the screens are doing it today but with the difference that would be flexible and low cost; todays standard technology (as kindle and ipad) relays on complex circuitry printed on glass that's expensive and of course rigid.
Until now everything it's OK but what catch my attention was the link between low-cost and disposability. The scientist claim that this technology would be so affordable that at the end of the day or the week you can just throw it to the garbage can. My worries are why we attached the value of and object, and in this case a really awesome product of Technic, just to its monetary value. In other words, why because is cheap it's OK to throw it to the garbage! It's not so that we cannot see value in other things other that money like functionality, convenience or even human effort (of developing such device) or the notion that maybe the intrinsic value that having something like that in our possession maybe higher that let it go to the property (and personal preoccupation and involvement free) space of the trash stream.
Cheap cannot be a synonym of disposability. Affordability cannot be a synonym of bad quality. And the garbage can cannot be the goal for technology development nor the end point of the value chain.
The report claims this technology maybe available in the market three to five years from now, we can only expect that until then our ways to see this issues change a little bit.
Chile will have the first research center in South America of one of the most innovative research institutions in the world, The Fraunhofer Institut. The largest research institute in Europe is focused on transforming scientific expertise into applications of practical utility. Funded in part by public grants and mostly by privates contracts the Fraunhofer institute brings to Chile a new model of research that institutionalize the cooperation between the industry and the fundamental research institutions as the universities. The aim of this institute is to develop product starting from basic science all the way to commercial maturity, it's the link between invention and commercialization, what we can say is an innovation machine.
The research center projected in Chile will address the System Biotechnology and will work in agriculture, aquaculture and sustainable use of natural resources, boosting up big part of our raw material economy. Some of the partners in this alliance are Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Universidad de Talca and Fundacíon Chile; and it is cofounded by INNOVAchile.
Maybe is too much to ask but now that we have cover the agriculture and aquaculture it may be good to start thinking on address forestry and minery, and how we can jump into develop and commercialization products in this areas to give our resources more value and leave behind the raw material economy.
En este blog la verdad creo que nunca he publicado nada acerca de negocios, mas bien esta dedicado a temas de diseño, tecnología, ciencia y una que otra disvariación acerca de como desarrollamos y trabajamos en base a procesos creativos. Pero aunque a veces no nos guste el negocio es una actividad transversal a casi todas las otras.
En el diseño el negocio...bueno casi se podría decir que el diseño es negocio. Desde el diseño como la venerable herramienta de marketing, que permite a las compañias dar una expresión formal, percibible, disfrutable y por que no deseable a los idolatrados estudios de mercado, hasta el diseño de debate plantea conceptos radicales y exploraciones filosóficas y éticas que nos llevan a cuestionarnos importantes elementos de nuestra cultura y sociedad y aunque por lo general no llegan a ser consumidos por las masas, llegan a ser apreciados por las masas en los museos los cuales pagan grandes sumas de dinero por estos objetos y así permiten a seguir generando dinero y nuevos debates con nuevos objetos, es decir continuar con el negocio.
En cuanto a la Tecnología se podría decir que desde sus inicios ha sido parte de la estructura fundamental de el negocio. Cada avance tecnológico implica primero un esfuerzo por desarrollarlo, lo que conlleva -sino una industria- un negocio en sí, pero además producto de la innovación tecnológica (desde la incremental hasta la profundamentedisruptiva) se abren nuevos espacios ya sea para profundizar un negocio ya existente o para generar nuevos negocios o incluso nuevas industrias.
Cuando se trata de Ciencia el negocio permite generar y suplir la infraestructura necesaria para desarrollar el trabajo científico. Y el resultado de ese trabajo científico, el nuevo conocimiento, sustenta el negocio de su divulgación, y por cierto los negocios que se surten de ese conocimiento como el desarrollo tecnológico.
¿Pero por que tratar de encontrar el negocio en todas estas áreas cuando el objetivo de este blog nunca han sido los negocios? Y es aquí donde el vídeo posteado se justifica. De hace tiempo ya es de mi interés la idea de estudiar y aplicar los conceptos extraídos de la naturaleza en los diversos campos del conocimiento humano, la biomimética. Y en función de eso me he dejado asombrar por como la ciencia y sus nuevas técnicas nos permiten conocer los secretos microscopios de las estructuras naturales o por la tecnología cada ves se acerca mas a la eficiencia en materiales y recursos del modelo natural y por como el diseño se nutre de la inteligencia geométrica de los organismos vivos para desarrollar nuevos elementos de nuestro mundo material. Pero hasta el día de hoy jamas me había topado con la idea -bastante lógica por lo demás- de que nuestro ecosistema podría enseñarnos como estructurar una metodología para llevar a cabo algo tan propiamente humano como el negocio. Hasta hoy hemos aprendido de las estructuras de lo más pequeño y lo más grande de nuestro universo, desde las partículas elementales que componen la masa hasta los procesos siderales que dan forma al universo. Pero resulta ser que hemos pasado en alto el equilibrio base que da sustento a todos esos procesos. Podemos saber como las plantas son capaces de levantar agua hasta más de 100 metros sin la necesidad de poderosas bombas de succión pero si no sabemos por que han decidido acarrearla tan arriba y cual es la función sistémica dentro de su entorno perdemos las nociones que nos permitirían aplicar de manera coherente ese conocimiento. En una ciudad donde viven millones de personas la cantidad de desperdicio producido puede llegar a ocupar un volumen peligrosamente cercano al de la ciudad misma, en un bosque o selva donde la cantidad de habitantes -seres vivos- puede ser significativamente superior al de una ciudad los desperdicios simplemente no existen. El producto de cada proceso es alimento del siguiente.
En el sobre gerrificado lenguaje de los negocios siempre se ha de contar con ''daños colaterales'' que simplemente no entran en la ecuación. Así el fantástico negocio del biodiesel por ejemplo a costado cientos y cientos de hectáreas en el amazonas para plantar soya para hacer combustible. Pero que pasaría si en vez de buscar ser ''el mas fuerte'' en los negocios "bioficaramos" su lenguaje para hacerlo mas equilibrado, para balancear la cadena de suministros con la de desperdicios. Si en vez de pensar del todo en la etapa como desperdicio de la vida útil de los objetos habláramos de su segundo estado como suministro. En el bosque el cuerpo del animal muerto es suministro del los demás vivos y del suelo donde cae.
Esta es la impresión que me deja GunterPaulin en esta charla, en este mundo tenemos la capacidad para convertir casi todo en objeto de negocio, quizás sea tiempo de convertir el negocio en parte de nuestro mundo.
Some weeks ago I went in a local bookstore just to kill some time , and after take a quick look into the shelves a small green spine cath my attention in the design theorie area (after that I notice that theorie books even when it comes to design, are usually graphically bored). I take it from the shelf and just there another two things call my interest. First, all the cover was illustrated with doodles that looks like made by a school kid -a thing that I found clever in a bookshelf full of elaborated computer renderings- very warm and very beautiful. The second thing was ''foreword by John Maeda'' writen under the autors name, Rich Gold. Then when I went into the book, to my surprise I didn't found any pictures, any renders, any oversimplify diagrams, nothing but words..and CARTOONS! yes cartoons. Every chapter or section starts with a cartoon, and also every main idea on the book is stressed with a cartoon. There is a cartoon to explain the overstuffed enviroment in wich we live that Gold calls ''the plenitude'', there is also a cartoon that show clearly the four disciplines (and professions pursuit by the autor) that have the responsability of around 97% of the plenitude, there is a cartoons to explain the seven path of innovation, the five problems of the Plenitude and the seven solutions for that; and even for explain how the Plenitude of ones is based in the poverty of others.
After been exposed to that amount of quality information two thoughts came to my mind, cartoons rules and I have to reed this book.
The book is about thing, or better say Stuff. What it is, from where it comes, where it goes, how we can deal with it and why we need to be sorrounded by this thing call ''the plenitude'' (after write this post I'm not sure anymore if this book it's really about ''stuff'')
The Plenitude, Creativity, Innovation and Making Stuff
Building organs block by block Analogy can go a little bit further than a create a juicer looking like a tin-tin spaceship, and a little bit useful too. When everybody is thinking in cell printers to do 3D tissues structures -with everybody I don't mean you, me or the next door neighbour, but the biotechnology research community- a guy came with the idea of making bricks out of cells, like legos! and then he call this technique with the awesome name of ''micromasonry''. With this new concept Javier Gomez Fernandez (who has to be someones neighbour)put in every lab the the chance to build this kind of structures without depend on advance motion control technology. Big point for creative thinking in science.
The great tragedy of our era will not be ecological, but ethnographical
''...Biologist suggest that perhaps 20 percent of mammals , 11 percent of birds, and 5 percent of fish are threatened, and the botanist anticipate the loss of 10 percent of floristic diversity, linguist and anthropologist today bear witness the imminent disappearance of half the extant languages of the world.'' '' Of the 7000 languages spoken today, fully half...will disappear within our lifetime.''
-Wade Davis. The Wayfinders, Why ancient wisdom matters in the modern world
The Ethnosphere, humanity's greatest legacy is in extintion danger. With the disappearence of the half of our own diversity we will loss also the half of our history, of our spirituality, and the half of our knowledge on wich we can stand upond to face the challenges of the future. Challenges like the climate change and the lost of biodiversity, because when these voices fade out it will fade away too the cultures wich have develop and conserve the most extensive knowledge about how to live in a true and simbiotic relation with nature.
the next video it's a sample of a lecture given by Wade Davis, for the complete lecture clickHERE
Probably the engineers from the University of Michigan weren't thinking about this when they came with the idea of storage energy through the same kind of mechanical device that makes the silicon gun works (looj at the hhel clutch in the upper picture), but the design analogy it's perfect. This hight-tech electromechanical prosthetic feet works (in the mechanical part) with the same basic principle that a silicon gun, a clever solution for a very complex problem and a really good sample of analogous thinking in the design process.
for the complete article with all the explanation follow this
Some days ago I read in WYSIWYW a really interesting and visceral post about Design & Art. This relationship has been discussed (above all in design schools, I have never hear an artist say a word about that) since the beginning of the design as a discipline, and to be honest I’m quite tired of hear arguments going in both ways, and I agree when the people from ''Sindicato de la Imagen'' says Art is Art and Design is Design, get over, don't lose more time in nonsense.
But this closure leaves us another question: what is the discussion in design by these days? And, what are the topics of that discussion?
Design, as any other consolidated discipline, has several components that converge to give substance to his theoretical and practical body: Methodology, Ethics, Technical issues, Aesthetics, Relation with the industry, Connection with other disciplines and Cultural relevance, just for say some. All these components can also be analyze by them self to find new areas to debate and to extract polar concept that define the extension of the discussion. For example, if we look the arguments in Methodology we can find ''Design thinking'' as one of the mayor driver of the praxis by these days, but also we can find ''Problem solving'' (coming from engineering) as one of the most common approaches to design. In other areas like Aesthetics polar concepts can be a little more diffuse, and they can go from naturalism (Bouroullec) to new rationalism (Lehanneur), from the nostalgia (Hayon) to the material and structural efficiency (Grcic) (fig 1).
In the same way of analysis we can find polar concept in Ethics. Today in design every day we can contrast the Super luxury -of cars, yachts, interiors, electronics, high-end audio systems, clothes, watches and almost a endless list of product focus on give pleasure and social relevance to his owners- with product and projects focus on solving social issues like education (OLXC), Health (Lifestraw), shelter ( rectionhousingsystem), energy ( ceramic jiko). Social focus has permeated design even further than poverty issues to address health and social behaviors in the developed world (NYC Condom).
The word Design its use today almost as a synonym of innovation, and in this relationship lays the Cultural relevance of design. As material culture dynamo, Design has the responsibility to innovate, but innovation can also be decompose in the polar concepts of Incremental Innovation and Conceptual Innovation. The difference lies in if the innovation comes to improve something that already exists (incremental) or introduces a new way to achieve a desire effect. For example you can design a new washing machine in which you can wash color and white clothes at the same time without worry about the white clothes get stained in the process, which would be a really good improvement in washing. That would be an incremental innovation. But if you make yourself the question: why do we need a big and complex machine to wash our clothes? Or even better, why do we need water to wash our clothes? You can find some new ideas on how to clean the clothes that can drive you to develop new objects and process of cleaning, which would be a conceptual break through, a conceptual innovation. The main difference between this two ways of innovate is the physical product of them. In incremental innovation the most of the cases ends in a new variation of a pre-existing product (like a better washing machine), but the product of conceptual innovation usually is a complete new item, that open a new branch on the technological tree (like self cleaning surfaces).
Another big difference between incremental and conceptual innovation it’s the risk level, improve an existing product it’s a safer road than develop something complete new one. But that is a subject of business rather than design, as it is also the scale of the production. Design is –and this it’s my position- in the solution, not in the repetition or the scale of the production.
The discussion on today Design it is a lot bigger than we just talk here, and we have to be aware that this isn’t a light conversation about taste or how improve the business strategy. This is about what to do in a discipline that every day has a more relevant role in society and culture.
This conversation should continue and I think one good introduction is this video where Tim Brow talk about different aspects of Design and Design thinking.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=6dcf2b0d-4fab-4099-9bad-fc4537c9b947)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3d9bd74d-a956-4415-bab9-75bb485dc63c)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=6533a0c6-dc89-4c51-8466-80abe5a426a8)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=45b7298a-2582-4686-abd7-1b58b359fbbb)