I am very interested in how goals can be achieved with high quality, focused and engaged participants. Games whether psychological, narrative or social are fascinating examples of this. Games are structured activities where a participant or participants pursue a goal or outcome. Doing great work is fun and can be gamelike. Some of the best start-up moments or breakthroughs I have →…read more
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Sorry to any nihilists in the audience about the cheap paraphrasing of Nietzsche. Robert Cialdini is a power house in the sociology world for his publications and highly digestible books on persuasion and influence. He is now using his understanding of psychology to manipulate people into saving energy and he is doing it with a new start up called Opower. The idea →…read more Commercial space is designed for dedicated functions and proscribed roles and behavior codes as consumer or commercial actor (greeter/barista/ guard etc.). Starbucks recognized the need for a social space and focused on making a comfortable 3rd place away from work and home. Here is a Comedy shot on location secretly inside IKEA, it is called IKEA Heights. It is funny because →…read more Shocker folks, the i-pad will grow in popularity, but won't change cultural institutions, values or belief systems much. Gene testing and diagnostics will change cultural institutions, values and belief systems. These are some old gene chips to the left. I used to help run a project that played around with these. A firm called Counsyl is releasing a new chip →…read more Checklists are not sexy, but their results are. I just finished the Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. I am sold and you should be as well. Checklists save lives, make money and make life less stressful. Outperformance seems to be associated with repeat process and efficient group communication. Checklists allow for managing individual and team processes for better outcomes. The book gives →…read more
Leapfrog delivers financial products to the bottom of the pyramid. Disclosure, Andy used to work in the same office I did in New York. I think and hope he is onto something big. Being able to believe, act and live long term are some of the keys to sustained development. Insurance allows for more →…read more Bling a word which may have been created as early as the 50's or 60's could be described as "the sound a diamond makes when sunlight hits it." In the oughties this evocative term, bling described the social display of wealth among young urban youth or Donald Trump. The thesis being that by adorning oneself with the trappings of material wealth, →…read more Checklists, processes, communication, clean water, infrastructure. Not sexy, but the plumbing of functioning society that makes it all happen. Check lists are coming back into vogue. When that plumbing fails society can fail. Maps are infrastructure and vital for co-ordinated efforts. When disaster hits MapAction Helps out with live updated maps for relief. This resource will become ever more important with crowdsourcing. Co-ordinating →…read more Architecture for humanity is helping get volunteers for the 2010 New York Homeless Survey. They still need volunteers in the Bronx and Staten Island. Here are the results of previous surveys. most of the homeless live in Manhattan and on the subways. For those really interested in understanding homelessness: Here is an anthropology paper with a little story about drug dealers and homeless →…read more Product, toy, creative tool, cultural icon and study in continuous business evolution. Here is the evolution of the Crayola spectrum courtesy of Weather Sealed.
There are couple of stories here from business evolution, cultural mood and product evolution. The math geek in me is fascinated to know if product bifurcation approximates the Feigenbaum constant. Crayola's color count doubles every 28 years. From →…read more |
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Creative Commons; 2010 Designing Better Futures - rights of Attribution Required |
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