CPH127

Products and their Ecosystems:

Understanding the power of context in product innovation

Date: June 6th, 2006
Location: 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna St., San Francisco, CA
Schedule: 1-6pm
Tickets: $125 by May 19. After May 19th: $175

Moderator: Jessie Scanlon, BusinessWeek
Panelists:
Peter Rojas, Editor-in-chief, Engadget
Diego Rodriguez, Founder, Metacool
Steve Portigal, Founder, Portigal Consulting - PILOT HERE AT CPH127
Robyn Waters, Founder, RW Trend

"Products exist in a vast, often-messy environment of services, brands,
cultures and competitors. But successful companies are realizing that
deliberately and strategically designing products for the context in which
they live can result in more imaginative, better integrated, and ultimately
more humane offerings. From MP3 players and gaming consoles to kitchen
appliances and office furniture, this panel discussion will focus on how to
incorporate holistic thinking into product development, creating objects
that are not only sensitive to their surroundings, but often define them."

Full details at http://www.core77.com/design2.0

Over the
last years everything happens do be deployed in beta. Everything is launched as
beta, everything happens to be unfinished.

Is that a
good or a bad thing, and why is that happening right now?

It seems
that companies and individuals are in the need to be involved, to create
together, to find an answer on how to cope with speed, complexity and instant
change.
As I see it
– and I’m not the only one – beta is the answer.

And – I need
to say that – beta is very much a state of creation, innovation, creating
change, facilitating change with high speed and with the use of many of the
principles discussed here at CPH127.

Together with
good friends I’ve started to write on a beta-manifesto, where we until know
have gathered a few principles, please help us to make the list even more
complete…

1. being in beta is a natural state of life. Everything aroundus is either evolving or dying.
2. beta is playing. Experimenting. Trying.
3. beta is constant learning.
4. beta is profiting in the true nature of the word “profit”. Making progress.
5. beta is never perfect. Never
   completely without fault. Just like any human being. Everything can be
   made better. Allways. Achieving temporary perfection is better than
   aspiring for the ultimate perfection that is never reached.
6. beta is release as soon as it
   is safe. But never sooner. Only daredevils flies planes in beta or
   takes unfinished medicine.
7. beta is a natural state of things. Your body is in perpetual beta until you die (maybe..)
8. beta is evolution. Many small gradual changes. Suddenly they may seem like giant leaps.
9. beta is revolution. Not completely in control. Just like the real world.
10. beta is open. Ready for dialogue. Open for change. Positive for co-creation.
11. beta stands for things that changes. Change with consistancy.
12. beta creates feedback loops for companies, individuals and products.
13. beta is honest. Not superficial.

Please help us to make the list even more complete

Dear all

There hasn’t been much posting from me lately – I don’t know if I should apologise, but fact
is I’ve been busy starting a new venture here in Denmark – A consultancy business in
the intersection of Innovation, Social Software and Leadership.

Jacob – who you
already know as a part of the cabincrew - and I, are much motivated by the learning’s
and sensemaking created here at CPH127.

Thank you
all for being part of that

Our entrance
to problem solving is MUCH formed by the principles discussed as design
processes and Design Thinking

Our venture
– our company – is named Connecta. Of course we also have a weblog, but until
know we are focusing on the Danish marketplace which is the main reason for
writing in Danish.

The company
is framed as a network. We believe very much in new ways of organizing
projects, companies and our daily lifes and are very much inspired by the
principles formed by Ken Thompsen – you can read more about the principles
here.

So, if you
are interested in joint ventures, collaboration, an “office” in Copenhagen or just curious,
please contact me

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.

Oh Oh Oh, can i go? The Carnegie Mellon University School of Design are organizing a Service Design conference on the 8th-10th of September in Pittsburgh called Emergence and are accepting proposals for presentations. Sign up for updates, i will.

We Make Money Not Art (link via Boing Boing) has posted a wide-ranging interview with Peder Burgaard, the Event Manager of Denmark’s Innovation Lab, which organizes the annual NEXT conference on technology and innovation. For the next five months or so, Peder will be interning at the Institute for the Future
(IFTF), a Palo Alto-based non-profit think tank that is mapping the
future for large companies in the Silicon Valley as well as for
governments and companies around the world.

In response to one question from the interviewer about NEXT, Peder
explains how design is becoming an integral part of the product development process:

"The interaction art projects at NEXT are to be seen as an emerging
trend where involvement of artists and designers in the finishing touch
of consumer products will increase. So the gap between pure consumer
development and artist aesthetic expressions will be winding and
eventually join forces. Research studies have shown that more aesthetic
products have a correlated improvement on user interaction. And the
ever increasing demand on technology for ease of use will have artist
leading the way of innovation in the future. Perfect example of this is
the iPod which has a beautiful design and just feels nice and intuitive
to operate."

Check out this podcast; an interview with me about listening and innovation (entitled The Listening Revolutionary).

The whole thing is 25 minutes, but honestly, I haven’t listened to it beyond the first 30 seconds - I start hearing stuff I said that I wish had said differently, or better, or not at all, but the conversation felt good while it was happening, so I’m going to trust that what’s up there now is reasonably interesting and hopefully worth your time.

So i thought i’d put this out to the community… it’s been kindof slow lately here and i thought that to jazz things up readers would comment on some of the areas we’re not covering, or that you would like to see emerge in our conversations… suggestions? comments?

• IBM Research | IBM Innovation | Global Innovation Outlook
  The nature of innovation is changing at a pace unheard of in modern history — it is now increasingly open, collaborative, multi-disciplinary and global. And to reap the benefits of this evolution, an organization’s processes and practices must adapt.
  (tags: innovation leadership hanshenrik research revolution)

• Design Thinking Types
  Design process has seen as a cyclical and iterative process of manipulating visual and technical design ideas. The most important part of the design process is the analysis of the design context, design constraints and generating new design ideas. The use
  (tags: designthinking hanshenrik context)