Tag Archives: business

In Tech, Starting Up by Failing

Posted on by
Reply

the pivot, interesting term for switching directions.

Article that highlights companies that change their tactics quickly and stresses the importance of failing.

“To pivot is, essentially, to fail gracefully. While the term has been in the start-up lexicon for decades, it is coming up more often in the current Internet boom, as entrepreneurs find that many investors are willing to keep the money flowing even if a start-up takes a hard left turn.” – Jenna Wortham
(http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/business/for-some-internet-start-ups-a-failure-is-just-the-beginning.html?_r=2&hp, Accessed Jan 19, 2012)

Tropical Salvage

Posted on by
Reply

Collaborative/Interdisciplinary company to look at.

“We believe that the business community must lead in addressing today’s unprecedented challenges to our world’s social and environmental integrity. Tropical Salvage combines business with social and environmental activism. Our mission is to create good, steady, eco-positive jobs in places experiencing economic hardship; to assist in implementing conservation, forest restoration and environmental education projects to protect the world’s remaining primary tropical forests; and to advocate for best responsible social and environmental practices throughout the business world.”

Tim Brown: Change by Design — book notes

Posted on by
Reply

I wrote this as we chatted today:
Design is no longer about making an object, but rather a system in which a need occurs and is resolved. Why this now? In a consumer society, we’ve saturated ourselves with products and waste, and yet our needs still persist. We need to redefine who we are and what we need. Choice is not a matter of 30 brands of toothpaste lining up your drugstore shelf. Rather, it’s choosing and controlling life’s milestones: birth, education, family, health and death. Services need to become more human-centered and less profit-oriented. As designers, we have an edge up on balancing diverse viewpoints in a creative process. Let’s share our skills as we embark on a colossal re-envisioning of ourselves and the things we use.

==================
Brown writes how we need to “extend the perimeter” (205) of the design project, beyond just the making of the artifact, but to the complex system of its use and the need that it fulfills in a broader social spectrum. For example, in the case of the Ararind eye hospital in India, it’s not about the expensive eye lens, but the need of a poor population for care. What this project needed, and got, was an extremely low-cost yet viable solution to the problem.

Ideas in the book, annotated:
Design moving upstream (20)
Project space (35)
Empathy (44)
Wisdom of crowds (58)
Experience design (110, 114)
Storytelling (133, 140 Intel Video, 148)
Interaction design (134)
MBA/design programs (160)
Nurture — medical consultancy (167-9)
Ararind eye hospital, India (209)
Ormondale Elementary (224)
How to, step by step (229)

Change by Design book by Tim Brown

Posted on by
Reply

Book that we should look at written by the CEO of IDEO, fusing business with design thinking.

“Design thinking is not just applicable to so-called creative industries or people who work in the design field. It’s an approach that has been used by organizations such as Kaiser Permanente to increase the quality of patient care by re-examining the ways that their nurses manage shift change or Kraft to rethink supply chain management. This book is for creative business leaders who seek to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.”