What did you learn today?
-Unfortunately I just arrived but maybe that is okay in order to answer the question…. Regarding the presentation of Søren Merit about the Danish design tradition. How is the Danish tradition user orientated? Because it is crucial to understand what user orientated acutally is.
- Søren Merit: One of the key elements of Scandinavian design is functionality. Understanding of how the product is going to be used. Certainly we have become much more advanced over time but if you compare it with the tradition in for example the latin countries the design is much more about expression. So much more about functionality.
- But isn’t there a contradiction between functionality and experience? Because to me functionality is rational and experience emotional?
- Søren: I fully agree! Because functionality is going much more toward experience with emotional aspect. We here in the North are more modest about emotions and expressing ourselves so this is a part we can become better at.
- At this table there are lots of people from arts and theater. You are famous for the dogma films which are famous and good because of restraints - can we find the dogma rules of innovation?
- Betina: Many people think that innovation start with a piece of blank paper. We ask: do you have a good idea? That is difficult to say. You have to put som restraints, some limits within which people can be creative.
- Barry Katz, what did you learn today?
- Barry Katz: the presentations was liberatingly free of cliches. But despite talking about diversity, many were very polite and there were actually many disagreements underneath. First Nel from Unilever told us that the more diverse a group is the more efficient it will be. Then we heard the opposite from the next speaker… From one man we heard both that tradition is good and tradition is bad. Post its are good, post its are bad. So there is a lot of contradictions. This indicates a very interesting time where the old and simple system is no longer reliable. We are in a period of considerable confusion and we must learn to use this confusion to move forward instead of being intimidated by it.
-Bettina: This is central to innovation. The ones that are able to use innovation are the ones able to identify and use the contradictions. You need more than one person to get innovation. You must develop mechanisms to get the best of both the one person and the group .(…) It is about managing contradictions and find out what is the most appropriate response according to the context. Finding the contradictions…
- Roxana: There is a quote from Rumi: "On the other side of right doing and wrong doing there is a field - I will meet you there."
- What do you think Susanne? What do you agree with?
- Susanne: It’s been incredibly interesting to see different aspects of diversity. There has been very different approaches to diversity and how we can understand it and use all aspects. The presentations were not alike and did not agree, and I am delighted about that.
- Something that you did not agree with?
- I don’t know if it’s all about diversity of mind. There is a strong link between diversity of mind and the people bearing that mind. We have to use that link.
… And now time for drinks, networking, dinner and more networking… :o)