CPH127

DesignLondon will develop, research and deliver radically new practices, tools and processes to transform the way businesses innovate, and translate their creativity into commercial success.

- Simulator - Teach - Incubator - Research

This new venture combines creativity and expertise in design from the Royal College of Art, engineering from Imperial College’s Faculty of Engineering and the business of innovation from Imperial College’s Tanaka Business School. It was established following the Cox Review: Creativity in Business that highlighted the need to stir together the scientific, engineering, business and creative design communities to enhance business and public sector innovation. Design London has four main pillars: creating new teaching programmes, conducting top-level research, incubating new business ideas and pioneering the next generation of innovation technology. It will deliver integrated design and business programmes for MBA and Masters of Engineering students at Imperial College, as well as for the MA students at the Royal College of Art.The innovation triangle blends design (represented by the Royal College of Art), engineering and technology (represented by Imperial College Faculty of Engineering) and the business of innovation (represented by Imperial’s Tanaka Business School). It has initial funding of £5.8 million from HEFCE and NESTA.

Read more at DesignLondon. Via. Royal College of Art News

Last week I went to a course on Complexity, Knowledge Management and future Innovation - gosh it was interesting. Maybe you already know Dave Snowden - a real thought-leader in that specific field. And he knows…

Nevertheless Dave and Cognitive Edge is on the track of something “new” and VERY interesting. The Cynefin-framework is outstanding when it comes to some sort of explanation of what is happening in the intersection between traditionel Knowledge Management, Technology and future growth and Innovation. As a true believer in proper use of Social Technologies - aka Web2.0 - internally in companies, I strongly believe that the flow of information between people is THE way to enhance innovation capacity, not by putting everything into a rigid data structure on a server.

Dave describes the development by setting up opposites:

Interesting - in Wemind we see that every day and try to advice our clients to move away from the old paradigm of thinking. It’s a tough call, a mental journey for most people.

Last week I was educated as a Accredited Practitioner in The Cynefin framework and I would love to have a conversation with you on how to cope with complexity in an internal organizational setting an still manage to make positive bottom lines.

If you are interested in further reading - and in Dave Snowden’ thoughts - you may be interested in these podcasts:

KM Australia 2007 Keynote
Jon Husband interview with Dave Snowden on Web 2.0
KM World 2007
KM Asia 2007 Keynote
Oil & Gas Exchange Houston September 2007

or the blogsposts:

Reporting on sin…
sense-making & path-finding
Safe-fail probes
Whence goeth KM?
Natural numbers, networks & communities
Volunteer not conscript
If the world is flat, seek out the bumpy bits
Good judgement comes from experiences. Experience comes from bad judgement
Confusing story telling with narrative

How to you see the challenges in management of today - is the cure to find in the books written around the time of the industrial revolution or is there by any chance new insights hidden in areas where we haven’t looked, yet? What do you think, and which implications does that have on our view on how to conceive business and companies?

A few months ago I almost stumbled over an article when reading a comment on the Google Transforming Group. Kamille  invited me back in September/October and I’ve been on and off in the discussion since then. I an highly recommend the group if you’re interested in the definition of the “new” field of design & innovation.

In October I came across this interesting article by Robert K. Logan and Greg Van Alstyne - Design Ecology: Designing for Emergence and Innovation II

What I find especially interesting is how they:

1. define the role of the designer, which not necessary is a designer…
2. see innovation and-what-ever-processes as adaptive complex systems - I definitely agree!
3. combine theoretical areas like Biology, Technology, Sociology and Ecology into a new decipline…

I don’t know about you, but as I see it they are up to something VERY interesting and  important to understand, if coping with the challenges of tomorrow. But maybe I look in the wrong direction?

We’ve been writing a lot about the impact of thinking the design methodology into business process. Now Businessweek has an article, which at it’s best could be called a recap on the importance of diversity in innovation.

The point is of course still valid - important. And of course it’s interesting to look ont how different knowledge domains get’s in play, but the hole discussion lack’s a discussion about the management/leadership implications.

Perspectives?

Richard Dennison has a great post on the BT-case, and how they used Social Software internally.

To quote:

“The power of social software is undeniable in the free, anarchic world of the global internet. But what happens when you bring these tools into the constrained, policy-driven, risk-averse world of the corporate intranet where the user population is small, where expressing oneself as an individual and on a personal level can feel threatening, and where management is watching your every move? Well, that’s just what one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions, BT, has chosen to do. Richard Dennison, BT’s Internal Programme Manager, tells the story.”

Which organizational dynamics do you think is released by this interesting initiative?

JP Rangaswami has some thoughts on the individuals capacity creating and maintaining relationships. He has a rant on the new Dubar numer in the digital world where social networks setup new premisses for interactions and relationships.

Quite interesting stuff.

I agree with JP, but I also think that the number in the different circles of intimacy will differ a lot. Some relations expects a real-life-meeting, other don’t.

What is the new Dunbar number for you?

Last summer I attended a class at Wharton Business School about Peripheral Vision – it was part of a Leadership Development Program arranged by LinKS here in Denmark.

The visit was great for several reasons, and one of the outcomes from my stay here was some great learning points about acting on the unexpected.

My teacher was Paul Shoemaker – GREAT authority in the field of strategic planning.

In my daily work I advice clients on how to cope with uncertainty, creating innovation cultures and helping them to understand how they can use multidisciplinary approaches towards better product- and business development.

Since my posting here at CPH127 back in the early 2006 I’ve been struggling with how I could link design thinking to the use of social software. In Connecta we are heavy users of Social Software as part of our problem solving process

But few months ago I got it – I think. Like the design-thinking ingredient I began to realize that social software provide several aspects which I believe is crucial for good development processes:

• Multi disciplinary input
• Open processes
• Ability to prototype
• Democratized dialogue 
• Rapid development
• Improved timing in product launch

And by seeing that I think I got the reason why start blogging here at CPH127 again

If you know about Social Software, innovation and design-thinking which similarities do you see - if any?

The Omnium Creative Network [OCN] is a free, non-profit online global community of creative people (students, professionals, educators,
theorists writers and more). It’s aim is to encourage members from all over
the world to collaborate in a variety of ways, to focus their attention on more
socially aware and ethically responsible art and design projects.

Membership is made up of participants from a wide variety of countries worldwide; in particular countries less fortunate in terms of having easy access to creative interaction through conferences,, publications and exhibitions.

Check it out…and join in.

Mark just linked me to a great site about experience economy and design processes. It’s a MUST resource for the many of us, really great and with some thoughtful links an resources too.

I just read an article there about experience economy and creating sense/meaning. It refers to the development of an innovation or an experience concept which involves a process of thinking, doing and reflecting. It states that both parties can certainly work together in this process, and they will book more success through their collaboration than either one could do individually.

Important in this regard are four building blocks that the article find in the work of Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004). They speak of the DART principle:

1. Dialogue
Dialogue means interactivity, being engaged with each other and listening to eachother. Both parties (supplier and customer) intend to accomplish something. It also means that attention is given to the interests of both parties. This requires both a location in which the dialogue can take place and a number of rules with which both parties must comply in order to be able to hold a useful dialogue. The principle of ‘learning by sharing’ holds here: the company learns through the dialogue with the customer and vice versa.

2. Access
The traditional focus

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