Designers w/o Borders September 30, 2009
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in Business, Companies of the future, Design Thinking, Entrepreneurship, Globalisation, Innovation, Thought leadership.Tags: Design, Ideafarms, India, Indo-Dutch collaboration, Industrial Design, Industrial Designers, Innovation, International Design, New Business Models, Sunil Malhotra, Sustainability
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World Trade Centre, Rotterdam, 25th September 2009. Indo-Dutch collaboration summit focused on Industrial Design. Hmmm … (Design Crossover).
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- A view of the audience
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- That’s me on the right!
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- Raijmakers & Oberdorf
Why they invited me to speak is still somewhat of a mystery considering I dropped off the Industrial Design radar towards the end of the last millennium. I guess it could’ve been because my company, Ideafarms, has been able to maintain a growing relationship between India and Europe over the last 8 years through projects and partnerships with Dutch and German corporations.
I’ve never been a champion of networking – I’ve actually often criticised some of my friends for using networking to get ahead – but am quite overwhelmed having been in the midst of some of the most ‘conscious’ designers of today. Jeroen 
Raijmakers of Philips and Jos Oberdorf of NPK Design are inspiring to say the least. I’m grateful to Ruchita Puri for the opportunity to meet them at the event.
From whatever was presented, it looks like good design can be really good business. There’s a case to be made out for a design collaboration without borders. Couple of good reasons here …
1. European design reflects high quality, the idiom being minimalistic and functional. Whereas India’s design sensibilities are more embellished. Their combination will raise the aesthetic appeal without compromising design values.
2. Pure economic tenets come into play when we see the sheer number of people both on the supply side (design talent is plenty in India) and the demand side (India is emerging as one of the largest markets). Leveraging the ‘great Indian talent pool’ is an opportunity.
3. The life sensibilities of India’s cultural make-up have always been in the mould of sustainability, something the world has woken up to only recently. Add to this the rich craft-based traditions and you have a universal design paradigm that’s as powerful as Buddhism.
Jump into this conversation folks. You don’t want to be left out. Really!
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Innovation 101: People vs. Money January 3, 2009
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in Culture, Global Economy, Innovation, Innovation 101, Leadership, Thought leadership, Wisdom of the leaders.Tags: Brad Bird, Design, global meltdown, Innovation, Innovation 101, Pixar, Thought leadership, Walt Disney, wisdom
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In some earlier Innovation 101 posts, I tried to introduce my take on concepts like inversion, people focus, creative thinking, etc. I have also suggested that we consider turning things over on their heads. Here’s another provocation …
People don’t make money. Money just gets made. Of course we don’t agree because we think money is the piece of coloured paper with somebody’s picture on it that gives us the power to buy things. In that sense, and we may actually be right, the printing guys at the government treasury approved presses are the ones that actually ‘make’ money. I’ve actually wondered what they do with the rejected material. They should sell them discounted to employees! (more…)
Innovation 101: Going forward into the past December 23, 2008
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in Business, Design, Everything 2.0, Innovation, Innovation 101, Learning.Tags: Business, Design, Innovation, Innovation 101, Innovation and Idea Management, Knowledge Creation, Next Practices, Retrofuturism, wisdom
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One of the most striking examples I’ve seen of retrofuturist design is the present version Volkswagen Beetle. It simply ‘brings the emotional ‘iconic user connect’ back into our evolving cultural and aesthetic sensiblities using current state of technology’.
Many argue that the comeback version of the VW Beetle is ’quasi plagiarism and that it insults the intelligence of the consumer’ or that it is merely a fad. And that one should not dilute the idea of ’serious innovation’ by resorting to gimmicks like these.
- Image via Wikipedia
There’s no argument. But I couldn’t agree less with such a contention. (more…)
Innovation 101: Executive Dashboards 2.0 August 23, 2008
Posted by Sunil Malhotra in Business, Design, Everything 2.0, Innovation, Web 2.0.Tags: Business Intelligence, Dashboard, Design, Executive Dashboards 2.0, Information Dashboard Design, Innovation, Innovation 101, Mashup, Web 2.0
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Welcome to my trinary era. Call it binary 2.0. I have a reason to do so and a good one at that. Because I plan to write a book titled Web 2.0 101 which will discuss the new thinking required to innovate – even to survive – in post-Industrial times.
Take for example the Executive Dashboard. When I transpose Web 2.0 philosophies coupled with FoS, it makes all our BI companies look Jurassic. I’m not 
talking about creating snazzy animated callouts or jazzing up interactions. I’m talking about individualization and making the technology pieces completely invisible.
Shown here is a fine example of a customizable, desktop dashboard from Serence, that epitomizes Web 2.0 dashboard design. No more static fuel-gauge graphics that confuse the user more than providing the quick overview s\he’s looking for.
So what’s this whole fuss all about? Pabini Gabriel-Petit’s excellent book review of Stephen Few’s Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data underlines the direction -
… while today’s business intelligence (BI) software vendors have developed technologies that can gather data from disparate sources, transform data into more usable forms, store huge repositories of data in high-performance databases, and present data in the form of reports, “we have made little progress in using that information effectively.”
One part of the problem is in accurately visualizing ‘what’ needs to be presented and the remaining parts are in understanding ‘how’ each business user needs to see information, critical to the role s\he’s performing in an organisation, so that decision responses are timely.
The aspect of innovation I’m touching upon requires that we bring a width of knowledge – user psychology, state of technology, business understanding, data visualization – and ‘right’-brain thinking (pun is intentional) into the equation rather than the Industrial R&D mindsets and processes.
Innovation is perhaps the best example of a mashup.
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