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.
Sometimes we forget that the environmental issue is not just technological, political and social, but also cultural. Art is one of the stronger cultural tool that we have because its critical sensibility. Some Art connect with us through beautiful aesthetics and other Arts through critical reflexions, and some really good art combine both ways (and other ways too) in multilayer artistics representations. I think this is the case of this animation on wich a very critical view is presented in a delightful visual and sounding experience that tells us not about what is happening but what is supposed to happend with our sensibility regarding the energetical issue. The windmill farmer of Joaquin Baldwin, is talking about the involvement of our felling and hopes in the enviromental issue, saying when we manage to feel deep sandness instead of just neglect what's happening in our sorrounding we'll achieve the point of inner motivation to get involve ourselves in processes of change and not just be simple spectators of what others do. In my own personal way to see it, it's not just a beautiful animation but a calling to feel and act.
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 came across with the knowledge that we posses some neurons call mirror system-or mirror neurons- wich give us the ability to feel what others are felling, just by see them or by hear them. Well this system is the base of the empathy, but empathy may be the base of another big thing...Society perhaps? but how study empathy can give us insights of how society evolve? -here it gets really good- because studying empathy we can study the history of human social counsiousness or to whom we think -and fell- we are related to. From the blood ties, passing through religion to Nations states and going further, Jeremy Rifkin explain the ideas coming from his six years research on this topic. This video extract, and illustrate in the very clear way of CongnitiveMedia, a part of a talk given by the autor on which he refers to the discovery of the mirror system and how that new insight open a new path for understand history, pass and future.
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
Recently I came across with a video that introduces the idea that we have a neuronal mechanism that allows us to share the experience of other people just by look at them or heard them. This mechanism it's call the Mirror System. This neuronal device, that don't depend on any specific brain structure, was first found on monkeys as an unexpected neuronal response when some scientific team in Parma were studying the response of some neural groups related with conscious movement. The exercise was grab a piece of food, when the monkey grab it the neurons ''turn on'', the surprise was when the exactly group of neurons also ''turn on'' when the monkey saw one person of the team grab the food.
That found opens a complete new research branch in neuroscience and until now it has been prove that this system has incidence in motor, sensitive and symbolic system. This means that through the ''mirror system'' it can be trigger motion, sensitive and emotional responses in the subject that look or hear an action. This is why we make funny faces when we see a football player get kick by another, or why movies make us cry.
The mirror system it's the only mechanism that has proven to be fundamentally social, that means that it is a specific device to learn and behave socially. The thing that I see as a relevant issue here is that when you are worried about to understand human behaviour (like Design as a discipline it is) you have to be conscious about the importance of firsthand experience and above all, of observation; because this means that through experience and observe the human behavior you can easily address gestures, emotions and comprehensions that can drive conceptually and formally the develop of a project.
The relevance and functions of the mirror system go, of course, far beyond the field of design and can give us a knowledge greater than confirm a fact well know by experience (observation and firsthand experience are our best tool for design) and it can put us in the real and deep understanding of human behaviour.
