CPH127

The Mathematics of Knowledge Sharing

If you have 2 apples and I give you 2 more, how many apples do you have?

Our schoolteachers bothered us with puzzles like this one throughout our childhood. They sought to teach us arithmetic, in most cases successfully we presume. Indeed, the correct answer is 4 : 2 plus 2 equals 4. As children we are taught that this simple mathematical equation is true. And for good reason, insight into the behaviour of numbers is an indispensable tool in our complex world where we continuously need to make calculations. How much money do I have in my pocket? Can I afford to buy this house? Is this bill correct? At what time will the train arrive? And so on. By the time we are twelve years old, most of us have mastered the rules of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Thus:

2+2=4
2×2=4
4-2=2
2/2=1

The power of mathematics lies in its abstract nature and the resulting broad applicability. The above equations are true at any time in any situation, no matter the subject matter. The mathematics used for calculating the number of apples you get, is also used in physics, economics, biology or any other science. If we 2 apples to 2 other apples we get 4 apples, if we add 2 pears to 2 other pears we get 4 pears. If we add 2 ideas to 2 other ideas we get 4 ideas. No matter what we add, subtract, multiply or divide, the laws of mathematics always apply.

Or do they?

If we have 4 ideas, and I give you 2, how many ideas do I have left? Two, the mathematician would answer. Four minus two equals two. But is this really true? Do you really lose your ideas – or your knowledge – when you give them to someone else? Or do you simply keep the ideas that you just have given? Do the iron rules of mathematics apply here? Does 4-2=2 hold, or should we perhaps say:

4-2=4

By the same token, if I have 4 lessons learned and I share them with 4 other people, do we end up with one lesson learned? Or do we all have 4? Again, does 4/4=1 hold or should we say:

4/4=4

Or perhaps even:

4/4=16

Since now 4 people all have access to 4 lessons learned, this lead to the astonishing result that:

4/4=4×4

Could we therefore conclude that, when talking about knowledge, to share is to multiply?

True, isn’t it?

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Dear Community

Early this summer we had conversations with a few of you about developing the community even stronger – especially we want to thank Niti and Steve for pushing forward the ideas on having a conference/summit/forum which I posted about last week.

Now it’s time to move another project out of the hangar – the CPH127-WIKI - http://wiki.cph127.com

For those of you who don’t know what a WIKI is, please find more information here.

The idea behind the CPH127-WIKI is 3-fold:

1. We want to facilitate the important sense-making process around Design, Innovation and Leadership and believe that your active participation in the knowledge creation is crucial for the organic result.
2. Emergent possibilities like the ones facilitated by technology are interesting, and we want to explore, facilitate and create these interesting possibilities with you. In collaboration with you. Also as part of showing that anybody can’t foresee anything.
3. Simply reaching out for you - the REAL asset of the community. Compared to you we’re nothing.

Please add, share and tell us what you think….please.

Some “secrets” are still “secrets”, but not for long. They will be revealed very soon

NOTE – due to delay with the Domain Name Services you maybe will experience delay in displaying the CPH127-WIKI during the next 24 hours.

Ok so it’s been a while but I’ve been in careful consideration of the service design process at the Design Council in London for the past month. I am now thinking about the way in which you create services and is there a right and a wrong way to do this when you’re talking about social services, or big corporations, do you thiink about innovation in the same way.

Is it possible to create innovative services which really don’t necessarily look at new products, touch points, economic models, but rather new ways in which people might deal and understand them.

Is there space for innovative user thinking? Is there a new paradigm of services which are thinking about new user behaviours? How is that innovative, economically sustainable, can you apply the same performance criteria as any other service?

Arghhhh questions!!!! Any comments?

The concept of User Centered Design, People Centered design, and Experience Design, sometimes described as Empathic Design, all tend to hinge upon understanding the Customers context, mindset, or point of view. Many techniques like contextual interviews, ethnography, ‘living with customers’ are touted as a means to this end, so why are businesses so reluctant to spend a dime on this? It’s strange to me, because so many design consultancies position themselves around the concept of User Experience and Customer Experience and even when they’re hired contextual research is one of the first things to go out the window, or at least off the statement of work.

Here are some common objections:

• We know our customers
• You know our customers
• You know this industry
• We’ve already done the market research

Here’s a couple of ideas for selling contextual research:

• Don’t sell general concepts, it sounds interesting but when it comes to writing a check the client doesn’t want to pay for you to "live with users"
• Tie the research to specific deliverables, and demonstrate how they form a foundation of success for the project
• Be clear about the specific questions you need to answer, that way you can demonstrate the inadequacies of the generic market research the client is trying to fob you off with

Now for some caveats, yes I know there are some great contextual research companies out there that are doing very well (our own Steve Portigal for instance I just feel that some hybrid companies that sell the design/build aspect could do better at selling the contextual research side of things. I’d love to hear success stories as well as other common objections or problems.

Today I had a wonderful meeting with Hans Henrik and Magnus. It was not just a typical meeting in the cockpit, it was more like a strategy session for the future of CPH127. On that extend I’d like to tell you guys how well we are doing.

We will soon have exceeded all of our expectations in regards of visitors and RSS-subscribers. This totally blows our minds, but the greatest thing is that you, our readers, are coming from some very interesting institutions and organizations that we would like to collaborate with. More on collaboration later when we’ll unveil our new big thing. Untill then here’s a list of some of our most frequent visitors (looked up by hostnames). If you are connected to one of the organizations mentioned, please contact us and we’ll see what we can do together.

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Recently the designer has seen an unprecedented awareness of the benefit and value their craft brings to the development of products and services across the business landscape. Where previously the designer may have been brought in at the end of the conceptual or prototyping process to add ‘styling” we see an apparent integration of what has been defined as “design thinking” at the core of industry. The rise of the blog in telling the story of this evolution is evidence enough that something is at least happening to change the way design and, by inference, designers are perceived within industrial and organizational cultures.

As a design professional, one cannot help but be curious about how far the business world will take this new - found love of the value that effective and innovative design can provide to a project. A reading of most recent literature sees an assumption that design is inherently good. Clearly this is not the case.

Graduates from serious design education programs across the globe enter their professional life having been exposed to a wide range of knowledge and skill – based areas. There has been much discussion about the most appropriate content of such programs in the contemporary multi-disciplinary paradigm. Mostly, discussion centers on the urgency for design education that maintains design leadership and credibility for the profession, or on the lack of apparent business training in d –schools. In itself this is no bad thing, and it is clearly high time such approaches were integrated into design education programs at appropriate levels.

What remains unclear is how much of the design curriculum the business world will integrate into its processes. Strong design education courses generally include contextual studies. Contextual studies usually explore issues of professional, social and environmental responsibility. Design students learn about the evolution of the design profession within the context of industry, and the broader societal impact that has been brought by several centuries of what can essentially be described as ongoing innovation.

As business becomes more focused on the value of design to increase profits, reduce costs and to produce innovative products and services, it seems logical that contextual studies may be introduced into MBA programs that include design, or have a design focus. It would seem fairly imperative that we extend the awareness of the overall impact of design and design thinking in business as an important agenda item. As innovative businesses becomes more aware of the power of design, they might also become more aware of the responsibility they wield.

I’m thinking about Victor Papanek, and looking at World Changing…

What do you think?

As an economist my self I’ve been schooled in statistics for years. It’s definitely not the strongest site of my character, but still….:-)

Chris Anderson has made a big deal out of describing how there is a market for every thing – at least in the long tail.

I’ve been wondering how that effect’s design and innovation strategies. On the one site companies want to innovate, pushing new products out in the market. On the other site it looks like there is a lot of money to be earned on the “old” portfolio.

How to cope with “product-innovation-portfolio-management”? When do you dare to cut a productline, well knowing that there is a lot of money to be earned in “The Long Tail”?

Wikipedia has a great explanation on “The Long Tail” – you could also visit the weblog of Chris Anderson himself. Or maybe just listen to the recent podcast from Itconversations…

• Creatividad Estratégica : : Strategic Creativity
  (tags: creativity design business valuecreation consultant spain hanshenrik)

Ralf just posted his marvellous insights about “Design Thinking” – Ralf, I’m amazed by the fact that I every time I read your blog find new ways, new sources of interest, and interesting perspectives. Thank you for that…

Ralf mentions Lombardi’s six adjectives characterising “Design Thinking” where the first ”Collaborative” is especially interesting for the crew here at CPH127. In fact it’s the title of the wiki we have been working on the last weeks – which will be launced next week.

Isn’t that GREAT? What a coincidence

People work. People play. Are they independent aspects of life or can play facilitate work?

The 2005 AWF conference will explore how products and services, arrived
at through user-centered design research, can aid in making work more
productive, profitable and fun.

The program is still a kind of "loose".

Will you attend? I would be interested in a copy of the presentations

Got it from Frogboy.