(Credit: Learning by Connecting)"The difference between the optimist and the pessimist is that the pessimist has more facts," said Jean-Paul Betbèze, Chief Economist and Head of Economic Research Department, Crédit Agricole S.A., in a panel at the Millken Institute's Global Conference 2008 in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago. True as this may be, his statement stood in sharp contrast to the overall vibe of the event: Yes, we can, was the prevailing sentiment, and the overwhelming majority of attendees would probably have outed themselves as fervent optimists, despite an abundance of fact-featuring PowerPoint slides supporting each of the panel discussions (I've never seen so many pie charts in my whole life). In fact, the gathered crowd was comprised of optimists with lots of money to spend on the world's most pressing problems (poverty; terrorism; population; resources; energy; environment; human rights; social justice; etc.) and may well have the power and means to solve most of them if they wanted to. Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and micro-lending pioneer, pointed out: "We wanted to go to the moon, and we went to the moon. If we really wanted to end poverty, we would have ended it a long time ago."
After listening to him and some other brilliant minds, I felt over-inspired and under-accomplished, ready to change the world or at least my life. It was indeed a humbling experience. And yet, it stunned me to realize that many members of
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(Credit: Todayandtomorrow)These seem to be apocalyptic times for designers. If you happen to be a member of this threatened species, you better look for another calling. We had just put Pillippe Starck's "Design is dead" fatalism to bed, and then I read Peter Merholz's essay from 2007: "Stop designing products!"
What sounds like another shocker initially, however, turns out to be a milder riff on an old and well-known theme that Merholz himself has been promoting for two years now: "Experience is the product -- and the only thing users care about:"
"When you start with the idea of making a thing, you're artificially limiting what you can deliver. The reason that many of these exemplar's forward-thinking product design succeed is explicitly because they don't design products. Products are realized only as necessary artifacts to address customer needs. What Flickr, Kodak, Apple, and Target all realize is that the experience is the product we deliver, and the only thing that our customers care about."
I guess what Merholz wants to point out is that while many brands may think they're all about the experience, their thinking is still centered on the eventual "thing." You could counter that, of course, and contend that it's a question of how you define this "thing." "It" could be an amalgam of both the physical form and its history and meaning. Whatever your approach (the experience as the Holy Grail or a broader definition of "thing") the
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(Credit: Men's Vogue)The 1972 New York subway map is back! Massimo Vignelli, the man behind this graphic design classic, was asked by Men's Vogue to update his legendary map for the magazine's May issue, reflecting more than 30 years' worth of changes.
When it was first released in 1972, the map was both beloved and hated for its high level of abstraction and artistic freedom (the 50th Street and Broadway stop, for example, was east of 8th Avenue instead of west). Some New Yorkers remarked that the map succeeded in its obvious intention to make it easy for tourists to get lost.
To placate the critics, later versions by other designers added neighborhood names, landmarks, and green parks, and in 1998, the map started including bus and ferry routes. Even on his retro-map, however, Vignelli remains a purist: "On purpose we rejected any visual reference to nature or landmarks."
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"In the past two weeks, I had the opportunity to attend two very interesting conferences. The first one was Fortune's Brainstorm Green, followed by the Milken Institute's Global Conference. Both of these conferences attract the who's who in the financial and business world. What struck me at both events was the rallying cry that innovation is key in solving many of the world's problems. I continued to hear that change is needed for people to think and behave differently.
(Credit: Time Inc.)The Fortune conference featured the usual suspects who have championed the environment long before it became a cause célèbre. One surprise twist was the number of investors in attendance. I met more financiers who had funds to invest in sustainability-related areas than I thought possible. There were also a large number of CEOs in attendance. Their interest in sustainability largely stemmed from the pressures they felt from their employees and customers. Will there finally be new green products and services that will meet the increasing demand? Will they be adopted by a larger segment of the population? It's clear that there is enough money ready to be spent and corporations ready to commit to finally make a significant impact in green innovation.
From a personal perspective, the best part of the conference was a short speech delivered by a
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Fifteen years ago yesterday, the World Wide Web became official and was put into the public domain. In honor of that fact, one of our colleagues at frog (thanks Ben Tomassetti!) brought in a birthday cake for it today:
(Credit: Cary Gibaldi)This blog post at SiliconValley.com from yesterday sums up the situation nicely:
... Read moreIt could easily have gone differently. Fifteen years ago, the management of the CERN physics lab in Geneva could have decided that this World Wide Web thing that researcher Tim Berners-Lee was working on might have some proprietary value down the road and put it under lock, key and license. But they didn't. Fifteen years ago today, they put it into the public domain and changed history. Of the many Web milestones we celebrate, that makes this one special.
The CERN directors took some convincing. "The difficult part was explaining to them the true nature of what the Web was going to be," Berners-Lee's colleague Robert Cailliau told the BBC. "We had to convince them that this was going to take off and it was a really big thing. And therefore CERN couldn't hold on to it and the best thing to do was to give it away. We had toyed with
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One may wonder whether this fixation on the main competitor shows (over-)confidence or the lack thereof. In any case, it is a bold and unprecedented move towards leading and preempting conversations about the competitor in the blogosphere. And what might easily be derided as a lame attempt to be cutting-edge, actually works. That is because the blog has a genuine voice and Miller isn't sneaky about its ownership. In fact, just the opposite: A prominent statement on the blog's homepage proudly reveals whose blog this is. Moreover, the Brew Blog introduces an element of "horse race" drama known from political campaigning into the battle of the brands. The blog doesn't have to go negative -- it suffices to leak news or to pre- or re-frame the competitor's strategic moves. Consumers may find this new playing-field refreshing and enjoyable.
So are we going to see the emergence of a whole new category of corporate blogs? Adversarial or "adver-blogs," devoted solely to deconstructing the adversary's PR machine? "Good brajavascript:addParagraphTags(document.blogForm.body)
tagsnds always have one big enemy," the saying goes, so why not bolster one's bravado by fighting ... Read more
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(Credit: Ravi Chhatpar)
This high-end designer boutique in a trendy part of Seoul sells these bags at higher than Louis Vuitton's full prices, which is not nearly as hilarious as Louis Vuitton's unique methods in fighting back counterfeiters these days. Just look at this fake set-up of a fake bag seller that sells real bags during a recent exhibit launch party in New York. (via Notcot)
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(Credit: Le Timbre)After reading and talking so much recently about the concept of "democratic exclusivity" (first coined by Ed Cotton on the Influx Insights blog and then promoted by the relentless Piers Fawkes), I was delighted to finally experience it myself when I was strolling the streets of Paris last week. I spent a day (a micro-vacation!) in the not-so-touristy 6th district around Metro Vavin in Montparnasse (in fact, I rarely left it, which was a much more satisfying experience than zig-zagging from the left to the right bank all the time as I used to) and discovered "Le Timbre," (French for "the stamp"), a true micro-restaurant in the size of, yep, a stamp. Literally squeezed into a hole-in-the-wall, this place has a total of 12 tables and 24 tightly packed seats, and one is forced by proximity to engage accidental dining partners.
Space is not the only thing that's micro about "Le Stamp:" The fixed price menu is very limited with only two or three choices of every course. The chef is from Manchester, UK, but the food is French and excellent. Reservations are competitive but democratic: As with the Momofuku Ko restaurant in New York, status doesn't matter for landing one of the few tables; everyone can make a reservation, even on short notice. Nonetheless, the dining experience is exclusive -- the night I was there, the waiting line of people exceeded the number of guests still working on their meals, which struck me as
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- Two Indian companies made the top 20: Tata is #6 and Reliance came in at #19.
- General Motors made it on the list (for "products"), thanks to "concept cars like the electric Chevrolet Volt and the Detroit auto maker's renewed focus on design."
- For the first time, a Wall Street firm made the top 25: Goldman Sachs (for "processes & business models").
- Nintendo, a game maker, is at #7.
- Microsoft maintained its place among the top five.
- Sony, despite all the talk about a need for reinvigoration, is still among the top 10.
- Facebook came in at #25 (for "customer experience" -- seems ironic given the customer turmoil following the Beacon disaster...).
- There are only nine European companies among the top 50, three of which are German car makers: Audi, BMW, Daimler.
Bruce Nussbaum provides some interesting commentary, identifying the companies that have fallen most sharply in this ranking since 2006:
- Starbucks: 2006- #9; 2007- #14; 2008- #32
- Intel 2006- #17; 2007- #19; 2008- #48
- Cisco 2006- #28; 2007- #25; 2008- #35
- Dell: 2006- #14; 2007- #22; 2008- #46
- Virgin 2006- #11; 2007- #18; 2008- #28
The question of course is: Does innovation matter? In other words, does it have
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In honor of Earth Day, let's look at a once-commonplace feature that has almost entirely disappeared from today's consumer electronics. To illustrate my point, here's a picture from my gadget archive, a perfectly ordinary Sony radio Walkman of mid-90's vintage:
(Credit: Adam Richardson)
(Credit: Adam Richardson)
(Credit: Adam Richardson)What does this have to do with Earth Day? A couple of things:
1. Screws facilitate repairability
Screws allow easy disassembly without potential for breaking housing parts. Without disassembly, easy repair or replacement of internal parts is more difficult, and pretty much impossible for the everyday user. What do you think that does to the likelihood the product will get repaired, or parts of it re-used for another product?
(Nerd note: Most CE devices today are either snapped together (and snaps are purposefully hard to take apart without breaking), or are fastened with a process known as ultrasonic welding. Essentially the plastic parts are vibrated together at very high speed causing the plastic at the edges to melt and fuse together, making a very strong bond. This also makes them impossible to get into, kind of like that clear plastic "blister" packaging that a lot of small products come in where you have
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