On the outskirts of some of the world’s largest cities exists an informal way of life. It’s unlike any other. To most, these spaces are defined as slums, shantytowns, or favelas. The list of stigmatized words associated with these settlements is never ending. Regardless of their delineation, the sheer mention of their existence conjures up an endless sea of negative associations—rampant crime, dismal infrastructure, impoverished communities, filth, and a severe lack of education. Yet the reality is not as simple as all that. While our assumptions are not wholly dishonest, they are wildly deceptive.

Heliopolis, the largest favela in Sao Paulo, grew out of a need for proximity to the amenities that the city had to offer. When this informal settlement was first established in the 1940s, the demand for it was low, thus the population was much smaller and much more spread out than it is today. Over time, as Sao Paulo expanded so did the desire to be situated within its reach. But housing within the urban area was not affordable to a large number of low-income residents. So they settled down on un-owned and non-delineated land areas, like Heliopolis. Today, the densely lined streets of this three-quarter square-mile favela, is home to roughly 100,000 inhabitants.

When we first see Heliopolis, all of the stereotypes we could imagine about an informal settlement are at play—the tin roofs are rusting, the streets are sprawling and unorganized, brick buildings are crumbling, and crime is rampant. There is no denying that these characteristics are a reality. What surprises us, however, is that an average home within the perimeter of Heliopolis costs $100,000 USD. As a matter of fact, one of the most prestigious hospitals in Sao Paulo sits along the edge of Heliopolis. Read more…

As Neil Harbisson lifted a red sock up to the end of the narrow, black device extending from the back of his head, a note sounded. After a moment he set down the red sock and reached for a blue sock, this one playing a different note as he brought it to the sensor suspended over his forehead. Repeating the gesture several times, new notes sounded for each different sock - he was playing a “color concert”. Although Harbisson cannot see colors, the device attached to his head, known as an eyeborg, allows him to perceive them through the frequencies they emit, including many which are not perceptible to normal human eyes. The performance was a fitting end to the 2013 PSFK Conference, a day of talks, panels, and presentations centering on the latest in technology, design, and brand innovation.

Neil Harbisson performs a concert using his eyeborg and different colored socks.

Much of last week’s PSFK conference, which took place April 12^th at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan, centered on the connections between humans and technology, and how advances in technology are changing how we relate to the world. Other major topics of the day were strategies for successful branding, and several plans to reshape New York City for the better in the coming years.

Harbisson, who in addition to his concert was also the day’s first speaker, explored the possibility of augmenting human senses with technology, similar to how he has done. He believes that, in a way, we are all handicapped in that our natural five senses do not allow us to perceive the full range of inputs from around us. Through the use of technology, our range of perception can be expanded and our awareness increased. His group, the Cyborg Foundation, works to help people augment their senses through technology, as well as advocating on behalf of cyborgs like himself.

Douglas Rushkoff discusses the phenomenon of “present shock.”

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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…

Photo: Lisa Anderson

Last month, Public Interest Design named me as one of the top 100 people re-imagining the world. As honored as I am – and please do put me on all your lists! - I couldn’t help but think that “top” lists are exactly the opposite of innovation. Herewith, the top 11 reasons to ignore all those lists that you’re not on.

11. Lists are issued by the kind of people who are always talking. Innovation comes from those at the fringes who don’t have time to write lists. Do you think Alexander Graham Bell was worrying about other scientists’ ideas when he invented the telephone—or was he following his hunch that one might be able to hear sound over a wire?

10. Lists describe the world in generalities. Innovation comes from attending to detail. Apple engineers optically scanned people’s ear cavities, built 100 mockups of the Apple EarPod, and then asked more than 600 people to jump up and down, run, shake their heads—all with the intention to create the recently introduced earplug that stays in the ear in all in extreme heat and extreme cold. Can you put that process in a list item?

9. Lists are limited. The best idea is sometimes number 1,203. In 1946, frustrated with leaky cloth diapers, Marion O’Brien Donovan—in a desperate last resort—cut up the shower curtain in her bathroom and sewed a diaper to prevent leaks. Many iterations later, she patented the first reusable diaper cover made from nylon parachute cloth. The “boater,” as she called it, was the precursor to today’s disposable diaper. What if Donovan had stopped at iteration ten? Would we still be leaking?

8. Lists confirm what we already know. Innovation thrives on examining what we think we know in a new way. DuPont chemist Stephanie Kwolek invented Kevlar, a fiber used in bullet-resistant vests, when experimenting with polymers to develop lightweight, heat-resistant fibers. In 1965, while she was trying to dissolve one of the polymers, her solution had a consistency like water rather than the typical consistency of molasses. Where her colleagues saw a failure, Kwolek saw an opportunity—and spent several days trying to convince her colleagues that the “failed” solution could be spun into a fiber that was strong, stiff, and yet lightweight. What if Kwolek dismissed her hunch on the first day? Read more…

Image courtesy Vitra Design Museum Archive.

“Design cannot transform a little brown, dark life into a large brightly colored one. Only the person living can do that.” This sentiment was often quoted during the symposium, “George Nelson: Design for Living, American Mid-Century Design and Its Legacy Today,” held recently at Yale School of Architecture. The event revisited the vast and influential career of designer George Nelson who was trained at Yale College (1928) and the Yale School of Fine Arts (1931). In collaboration with the opening of the exhibition, “George Nelson: Architect, Writer, Designer, Teacher,” the symposium brought Nelson’s work to a new generation of students. Today, as we may take for granted America’s legacy of “mid-century modern” design, this exhibition reinforces the innovation and energy that embodied Nelson’s era.

Image courtesy Vitra Design Museum Archive.

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The European Design Leadership Board recently made 21 proposals to promote design, signalling  that the European Commission may be, finally, aware of the issues at stake.

A small book, published earlier this month in Helsinki by European Commission, presents a study by international experts in innovation. Design for Growth and Prosperity details the recommendations of the European Leadership Board. Its objective is to promote the role of design in all the innovation policies conducted in Europe. The 21 proposals are presented to turn design into a key discipline in public strategies for economic development. Although these are quite general, the proposals have the merit of increasing the awareness of institutions involved in the subject. As it turns out, there is an answer to the profound industrial and economic transformations that Western companies are undergoing: It is called innovation.

Unfortunately the role of design education  is barely mentioned in this volume. I wish it had made note of the need for increased enrolment in schools of design. For instance, Helsinki’s Aalto University counts 17,000 engineers and only 2,000 designers. And so when industry is constantly losing ground in its contribution to Europe’s GDP, we must ask: how many designers and how many engineers should we be training for tomorrow? In France, no previous government has cared about the number of designers that we need to train. Yet this question is key if we want to transform our industry, help it move from product to service, place sustainable development at the center of all industrial problems, and make sure that economic development is at the service of people, not just profits.

I am, however, hopeful that the French Ministry of Higher Education will make design a priority. And maybe the recently established Ministry of Productive Recovery will enact it.

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A couple of weeks ago we received news that Lance Hosey, a former director with William McDonough + Partners and author of a new book, The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design (Island Press), had been named chief sustainability officer at RTKL, the global architecture, planning, and design firm. We wondered: what is a chief sustainability officer? So we reached out to Hosey, who was travelling in Asia, and asked him about his new job, the future of sustainable architecture, and his first impressions of China.

Martin C. Pedersen: You were just named chief sustainability officer for RTKL. What does that mean exactly?

Lance Hosey: I’m RTKL’s first CSO, a position we defined to signal the strategic importance of sustainability. Last year, market watcher Ellen Weinreb put out a study on the emergence of this role in a variety of industries (“CSO Back Story”). The first CSO appointed to a publically traded company was at DuPont just eight years ago, and there still are fewer than 30. So this is a nascent position in business, and there is little consistency in how it’s defined, but it demonstrates the evolution of sustainability from an ad hoc practice adopted informally among project managers to a more strategic policy among senior management. I believe I’m just the second CSO in a large architecture firm, and my role at RTKL is to help develop ways to stimulate more innovation in all of our work.

MCP: What did you find attractive about the position?

LH: With a thousand people in a dozen offices on three continents and millions of square feet under construction every year, RTKL represents enormous leverage on the marketplace and a powerful platform to promote change. With even modest improvements in the performance of our projects, we can have a significant positive impact on the built environment. We plan to take full advantage of this position by martialing RTKL’s considerable talent, opportunities, and resources in new directions. Architects don’t necessarily think of size as an advantage, but with hundreds of people exploring new ideas, the potential rate of innovation can be astounding.

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Exterior of Brightcove’s new Global Headquarters in Boston’s Innovation District,
Photo courtesy of CBT Architects; © Mark Flannery

Cities everywhere are entering a new era of unprecedented collaboration as well as competition. If they are to thrive, they need to be great places. Knowing this, local governments are working with architects, urban thinkers, technology mavens, and other key players in the private sector to design and construct sustainable buildings and districts as platforms for the future. A synergistic symphony of urban design and development is commencing, harnessing creativity, lowering economic barriers, and generating productive energy with healthy, inspiring environments. Cities, much like states in the past, are now becoming the laboratory for innovation and change.

A new initiative, Cities as a Lab, is under development by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), with a full rollout planned for 2013. The project grew from the realization that policy experimentation and implementation has migrated downward from states to regions and municipalities that have become the powerhouses of democracy and experimentation. Our cities project aims to demonstrate through research findings, case studies, partnerships, and potential demonstration projects the power and importance of urban areas in a fully functioning polity. The melding of innovative design with the increasing power of technological solutions will be a key feature of this program.

The WarRoom inside Brightcove’s office in Boston.
Photo courtesy of Elkus Manfredi Architects; © Jasper Sanidad

For this program to work, we must tap into the talents of technology startups and innovation companies that have become the new post-industrial districts of the knowledge economy. At the forefront of this change is Boston’s new Innovation District boasting some 100 firms and 3,000 new jobs. The district hosts the largest start-up accelerator and competition in the world; its Innovation Center offers a supportive environment for entrepreneurs. The city’s once stagnating waterfront is rapidly becoming an economic powerhouse, a place to be, with livable mixed-use infrastructure, micro housing, restaurants, and cultural venues to attract a high-energy workforce.

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In our turbulent socio-economic climate an impressive number of remarkable opportunities are awaiting design schools. Like society and business, design schools face a time of innovation challenges.

In many countries design schools have already instituted forward thinking changes during the past decade. But this evolution is just starting. Today design schools are laying the groundwork to become “centers of innovation” aimed at serving the financial front and, more importantly, society.

As places of creation, design schools have legitimately trained creative individuals comfortable with representation through the drawing of products, spaces, and life scenarios. In this context students knew that what was asked of them did not necessarily need to be understood at once because it involved a creation, a transgression of reality whose inherent nature does not always coincide with popular notions of what designers can do.

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Not long ago, establishing quality procedures was at the core of a company’s managerial dynamics. Few could escape quality circles, ISO standards, or implementing processes that advocated the “right way” of getting things done in order to improve efficiency. Everything was about streamlining practices to improve productivity and quality as well as about uniting the members of the company around the idea of the proper way to work and provide service. Through such efforts companies would gain competitiveness and margin points and they would take the lead over others.

Quality management is a powerful management tool. It gathers the staff around a clear and virtuous purpose: doing better what we were already doing well. It reassures customers, who, informed about the company’s virtue, trust it. This system works, if all competitors live in a similar context, facing the same constraints.

But the arrival of “emerging markets,” with lower production costs, has shattered all the management reflexes born from quality processes. In this context the idea of doing better what the company already does well is useless: their competitors from Asia, India, and elsewhere have changed the game.

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