Since I first began teaching the Harvard Case El Bulli: A Taste of Innovation in all my MBA New Products & Services classes, it has become my students’ favorite case because the lessons can be applied to large companies.  The case has also inspired my own new business venture, Inventours, that brings senior level execs to meet with best-in-class innovators in product design, food, technology, architecture, fashion, sustainability and hospitality, in their workplaces, to see their work, hear their philosophies, and understand how physical and mental environments can impact creativity and collaboration. Here are some key “take aways” companies like.

Leaders with a vision and working philosophy, clearly understood and shared by the entire organization, create more productive working environments. Chef Ferran Adria is a leader. He leads by making his values and working philosophy well known and embraced by his entire team. This includes never copying others; surprising and delighting customers by evoking emotions, childhood memories, irony, wonder, and analogies; engaging all the senses, if possible, with each dish; breaking the rules and not being constrained by what has been done before. Firms that work most productively and cohesively fully understand the values and mission of their companies. They know what is and isn’t consistent. They don’t waste time guessing what the objectives really are and working on products and services that don’t fit.

It’s critical to allow and allocate time to innovate and do things well. El Bulli closed for six months each year, to allow the core group of “inventors” to scan the globe for new ingredients, food combinations, cooking equipment, techniques, and presentations.  While large companies cannot shut down for months, Google has a 20% time rule and 3M has a 15% rule that allow employees to devote time to projects they’re passionate about, that may have nothing to do with their jobs. It helps to sanction employees taking a step back to view their own business and the company’s other businesses from a distance, to explore hypotheses, and new business ideas. Firms, whose employees are caught up in day-to-day firefighting, are much less likely to think into the future and be really innovative. Read more…

The installation at the SCI-Arc Gallery in Los Angeles by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) represents an evolution of architectural methodologies related to self-supporting, curved surface geometries. The show combines parametric design (algorithmic form generation) with research by Frei Otto, Felix Candela, and Heinz Isler among others from the generation that preceded Hadid. By integrating form-finding methods, Hadid and her team expand upon Frei Otto’s material explorations and create double curved surfaces through interactive and intuitive computational simulations.

Photo by Karim Attoui, Courtesy of SCI-Arc

Initially the installation was realized with fabric as a form-finding device, using intuitive digital tools such as GPU accelerated particle spring simulation and subdivision surfaces. The physical prototype created at SCI-Arc consists of fiberglass and resin shell structures with wood framing along the finished edge. Originally there were to be five shells but only two of them were completed with fiberglass and two other structures were sketched out with wood framing to give viewers an idea of how the forms fit together.

Photo by Karim Attoui, Courtesy of SCI-Arc

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Since its establishment in 1996, Design Workshop at Parsons The New School of Design has been providing pro bono architectural and construction services to nonprofit organizations, allowing their graduate architecture students to design and meet community needs, through projects ranging from rooftop gardens to recreational grounds for children. This summer, the program has teamed up with New York City’s Parks & Recreation to transform a 19^th Century landmark.

Tucked away in Washington Heights is one of the oldest surviving structures, the High Bridge, a landmark noted for its historical significance. Since its construction in 1848, the High Bridge has been used as an aqueduct, bringing fresh water to the city as the main source of water inflow. The bridge was eventually closed in the 1970s due to rock-throwing from above and the reservoir that once accompanied the historical aqueduct was replaced with the Highbridge Park Pool. Designed by Aymar Embury II during the Robert Moses era, the Highbridge Pool complex was one of the eleven pools built as a part of the Works Progress Administration’s attempt to create jobs during the Great Depression. Once completed in 1936, it became open for public use, serving the local community. Read more…

I’m trying to remember, did I ever think about things like public design, civic planning, or product innovation in the eighth grade?  I’ll be honest, the eighth grade wasn’t all that long ago. I know that in language arts we mapped sentences; we learned about Julius Caesar’s murderous frenemies in Latin class. But the real-world work of designers—isolating problems, then drafting, tweaking and prototyping solutions—I don’t remember that being part of our curriculum. Lately, however, design practice, with its inherent capacity for invention, community engagement and change, is finding new relevance in K-12 classrooms.

Young designers are encouraged by institutions to participate in solving social and environmental problems. The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and Ford Motor Co. Fund, for instance announced, just last week, the winners of their Community Design Competition.  The competition challenged students to locate opportunities for improvement within their communities, and then brainstorm solutions.  Open to schools in Miami, Chicago, San Antonio and San Diego, the competition is part of the Smithsonian and Cooper-Hewitt’s ongoing promotion of design as valuable, educative practice for young people.  The entries attest to the creativity, enthusiasm, and thoughtfulness with which the students approached their communities’ needs.

First-place glory and $5,000 was awarded to the Henry Ford Academy: Alameda School of Art + Design in San Antonio. The 9^th-grade students designed a backpack specifically tailored to the needs of the homeless, inspired by their neighbors at the Haven 4 Hope Transition Shelter only a block from their school.

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How many words does it take to change the world? This question underpins my work at the University of Kansas School of Journalism and Mass Communications, where I teach courses on sustainability, diversity, and environmental communications, and likely makes some of my more conventional colleagues squirm.  Tasked with bringing the newsroom into the classroom, I entered into the school directly from work as a professional environmental journalist. Despite the environment’s connection to every challenge we face, increasing environmental awareness is an uphill battle because our natural world regularly slips from public consciousness. The way to make the information relevant, I learned, was to make it personal.

I believe that our voices matter—and that we should own our voices rather than trying to present ourselves as dispassionate and unbiased. Our worldviews are revealed in the stories we pitch, the subjects we choose to interview, the questions we pose, the quotes we include—and the ones we leave out. This is, in part, what makes some of my colleagues squirm and this is, in part, why I herald the rise of participatory media.

I use the term “participatory,” rather than “social” because that is truly what it is. Read more…

The site at Santo, near Léogâne, Haiti.

We are three among six students and one professor from the University of Minnesota Architecture School working in Haiti on the Santo Community Development Project, under the auspices of Architecture for Humanity. Our assignment is to aid in the design and creation of an urban infrastructure that will support a settlement at Santo, near Léogâne, comprised of a village, schools, health facilities, recreation and community spaces as well as opportunities for commercial development.  This project is a collaborative effort between Architecture for Humanity (AFH), Habitat for Humanity (HFH), and the local community currently living on or near the Santo site.  AFH’s relief efforts in Haiti have a broad range of influence, including support for reconstruction efforts, building capacity in the Haitian construction industry, and working closely with local community leaders to develop a better built environment in Haiti. 

The team: (from left) TJ Olson (AFH), Brent Suski, Amanda Pederson and Emerson Stepp (UMN).

Léogâne is a coastal town in the Ouest  Department  of Haiti, about 18 miles from Port-au-Prince, and at the epicenter of the January 12, 2010 earthquake.  According to the United Nations’ assessment of the area, nearly every concrete structure was destroyed, and some 30,000 people died. One year later, a large portion of the population is still living in ad hoc structures, ranging from tents to temporary-shelters (T-shelters in NGO speak). Read more…

The 100 Mile Challenge, by students from the Maryland Institute College of Art and the University of Washington.

The student exhibits at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair stand out by default. On a floor filled with big-name businesses, emerging designers, and suppliers, you can tell the school teams not by the signage, but by the extremely enthusiastic young talent waiting to tell you exactly how this idea came about, or how they built that. Eight Schools exhibits were selected to be part of ICFF 2011: Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)/ University of Washington, Rhode Island School of Design, Pratt, Philadelphia University/Sane Jose State University/University of Lincoln, University of Oregon, and The University of Tokyo. In addition, Metropolis’s booth this year was designed by students from Parsons The New School for Design.

The most idealistic exhibit, certainly, was the 100 Mile Challenge, a joint effort by students from Baltimore’s MICA Environmental Design department and students from the industrial design program at the University of Washington in Seattle. Read more…

After my conversation with Denise Guerin, president of the Interior Design Education Council (IDEC), I took a closer look at the IDEA-Line, to learn how the program helps practitioners navigate to graduate programs.

A training session at the 2011 IDEC conference.

A trend is clearly in the making. Practitioners are starting to teach interior design or elect to go back to school to hone their skills. But many have a hard time figuring out which graduate program best fits their needs. And no one knows what to expect when reentering academia. Enter the IDEA-Line, a resource for practitioners looking for graduate programs in North America. It also encourages practitioners to talk to advisers and students about the challenges of going back to school, and identify the rewards and pitfalls of teaching in a design school. Read more…

We are among six students and one professor, from the University of Minnesota Architecture School working in Haiti on the Collège Mixte LaConcorde Orphanage project, under the auspices of Architecture for Humanity (AFH), to design a school and orphanage complex from site-work to construction documents in Carrefour, Haiti.  AFH’s relief efforts here are currently being operated out of the Petion-Ville based Rebuilding Center, where they support reconstruction efforts through coordination and collaboration with other NGO’s, education and training for Haitian masons and other building trades, and directing the design and construction of primary and secondary schools. We are privileged to work with AFH in Haiti on a number of projects over the course of our six week stay, having the opportunity to support and serve the reconstruction needs of the Haitian people.

In the city of Carrefour there’s a small orphanage and school that symbolize Haitian resilience and perseverance, despite the devastating earthquake that occurred more than a year ago. Over the last two weeks, our team has visited LaConcorde Orphanage and School twice: first, an initial site visit to understand the client’s programming needs, and later to present our schematic design. From the moment we met our clients, the director Frantz Bastien and his mother, Mama Bastien, their dedication to the children was apparent. Read more…

Closing credits from the film “Panels of Change.”

Green media maven Simran Sethi is teaching students to be storytellers by training them to install solar arrays and then Tweet about it. Her course—Green Reporting, Green Building, Green Justice—was offered last semester through the University of Kansas’s William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Over spring break she brought the class to the Bay Area where they pitched in at the non-profit Grid Alternatives, which provides solar installations to low-income families. They also visited with other green-focused groups, including the offices of my own employer, William McDonough + Partners, where they tweeted madly about Cradle to Cradle design.   Read more…