Here’s a thought experiment: try to imagine what it would have been like to create Google before the era of the Internet and open standards. You would probably have had to pay millions of dollars to create the necessary software on a proprietary operating system. The effort would have required a huge team of people taking many years. Since Google is a search engine, it most likely would have been given to the phone company to design and run. If you were using X.25, the international networking standard (the Internet equivalent of its time), you would have been charged for each packet of information that you sent or received, in a network in which each network operator had a bilateral agreement with every other network operator. This total project probably would have taken a decade, cost a billion dollars, and not have worked very well.

In fact, the actual cost of building and launching the first Google server was probably only thousands of dollars using standard PC components, mostly open-source software as the base, and connecting to the Stanford University network, which immediately made the service available, at no additional cost, to everyone else on the Internet.

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We’ve noted before that The New York Times is basically the New York Yankees of infographics and interactive design—with more money, more talent, and more resources than any other news outlet in the world. And unlike the New York Yankees, that talent hasn’t been sitting around for ten years, doing nothing but getting paid. No, the Timesinteractive team has been creating path-breaking experiments in infographics and interaction design. All of which are now collected in its terrific new Innovation Portfolio…

An emphasis to be made is that the hacker ethic is not only about computer scientists, or about geeks and nerds, but it is a wider cultural transformation in the sense of the number and kind of people that might fit the definition. The hacker ethic can effectively be taken out of the technological sphere. So, in context, if this is a Network Society and this is its culture, what is the role of hacker ethic in today’s economy and today’s crisis? Beyond economic development we need a broader sense of development. And it is likely that this new ethic can be part of the solution, of this broader sense of development. Fundamental challenges nowadays: Clean: Climate change, being radical innovation the way to go forward; Care: Welfare society 2.0, as inequality increases and more people are unattended; Culture: Multicultural life, how to cope with the increasing cultural crossroads that globalization is creating. How can innovation turn challenges into opportunities? How can hacker ethic help in creating innovation-based solutions? Hackers can help to discover cleaner energy sources, biohackers will eventually help in creating a healthier society (being DNA the open source of life), cultural hackers can help in creating new and more meanings in multicultural life. …

… Arquitectura y nueva economía… Arquitectura y defensa y preservación de LO Común… Arquitecturas y la generación de una nueva sociedad civil… Arquitectura y nuevas ideas sobre la propiedad de lo Común…

Son ítems que van a ser, a partir de ahora, reflexiones recurrentes en el blog, tratando de fijar un sistemas de acciones, ideas, movimientos, relaciones, narrativas y ejemplos distintos de y para lo arquitectónico. El aspecto principal de la discusión en torno a la arquitectura sostenible debe dar prioridad a sus procesos de gestión, sostenible y colectiva, antes que a los productos finales, que siempre serán una verbigracia y ejemplo de ese proceso. Y la principal tarea ahora es la de tratar de gestionar en los servicios y productos arquitectónicos emergentes, y desde contextos económicos distintos a los actuales, la condición germinal de los parámetros que tienen que ver con la idea general/universal acerca de los comportamientos humanos. Esto es,

1. La defensa y preservación de LO COMUN LC

2. Generación de una nueva SOCIEDAD CIVIL SC

3. Generar un proceso de INNOVACIÓN social y técnica IST

4. Contribuir a defender social y técnicamente unos nuevos modos de vivir, de pensar, producir y trabajar SOSTENIBLES NMS

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… Cuando unos agentes sociales están en red, se tiende a hablar el lenguaje que habla la mayoria, de forma que un lenguaje dado, el español por ejemplo, es hablado por el 80% de la población española mientras que solo un 20% habla catalán, gallego, euskera, bable o caló. De la misma forma cuando uno tiene que decidirse sobre qué sistema operativo usa en su ordenador decidirá muy posiblemente (y salvo que medie un deseo apostólico) usar aquel que usa la mayoría para poder comunicarse con más gente más fácilmente.

Un problema interesante es si este efecto-red tiene consecuencias relevantes. Parecería que supone la oportunidad de establecer un estándar que arruina a los otros pero esto no es necesariamnete cierto pues, a falta de una artificial propiedad intelectual, siempre puede surgir una innovación trivial o una nueva manera de hacer las cosas que despalce a la anterior y que, empujada por la fuerza del propio efecto-red la entronice como nuevo estádar. Esta capacidad de contagio que se da en las redes es buena para la innovación y sería desgraciadamente hadicapada si se estableciera cualquier tipo de propiedad intelectual.

Si aceptamos en consecuencia que la propiedad intelectual puede no ser buena nos percatamos inmediatamente de que en el caso de los bienes intangibles en lugar de una Tragedia del Procomún podemos encontranos en medio de unaComedia del Procomún: la aparente sobreexplotación no tiene costes sociales, sino beneficios sociales.

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A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business by Harmut Esslinger (Jossey-Bass, June 29, 2009). Hartmut Esslinger is the founder of frog design, a leading global innovation firm. He is also one of the most respected designers and business consultants in the world, having spent forty years helping build the world’s most recognizable brands, such as Sony, Louis Vuitton, Lufthansa, Disney, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, Microsoft, and Apple. Most consider him one of the key catalysts of the design revolution. His book shows how he and his firm build creative design into the framework of an organization’s competitive strategy and gives the reader a step-by-step overview of the innovation process. Esslinger reveals how to arrive at a design that reflects an intense human experience that will connect strongly with consumers.

Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean by Roberto Verganti (Harvard Business School Press, August 3, 2009). Roberto Verganti is Professor of Management at Innovationat Politecnico di Milano and the founder of Project Science, a consulting institute that advises global corporations on the management of strategic innovation. Roberto authored the popular article “Innovating Through Design,” published in the Harvard Business ReviewDecember 2006 issue.

Change By Design: How Design Thinking Tranforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown (HarperBusiness, September 29, 2009). Tim Brown is the CEO of IDEO. According to Stanford professor and author Bob Sutton, “Tim Brown has written the definitive book on design thinking. Brown’s wit, experience, and compelling stories create a delightful journey. His masterpiece captures the emotions, mindset, and methods required for designing everything from a product, to an experience, to a strategy in entirely different ways.”

The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage by Roger Martin (Harvard Business School Press, November 9, 2009). Roger Martin is dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and a professor of strategic management at the school. He has written widely on the intersection of design and business. You can download a free PDF of his Rotman Journal article here.

Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value, edited by Thomas Lockwood (Allworth Press, 3rd edition, November 10, 2009). Thomas Lockwood is president of the Design Management Institute (DMI), as well as being the publisher of DMI’s Design Management Review and Design Management Journal. This book is an anthology of essays, intriguing case studies, and practical advice from industry experts. It’s organized into three sections which focus on the use of design for innovation and brand-building, the emerging role of service design, and the design of meaningful customer experiences.

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About 18 months ago, the journal R&D Management called for paperson open innovation. This month, the journal has published the resulting special issue, edited by Ellen Enkel, Oliver Gassman and Henry Chesbrough…

ut if you dig a little deeper, what’s more impressive is that almost all of the articles are about Open Innovation. This means there’s a depth of open innovation research and researchers (at least in Germany) producing open innovation research good enough for a good journal like R&D Management…

Having articles about open innovation seem unremarkable. However, if you look at the previous R&D Management special issue in June 2006, five of the nine articles were clearly about user innovation with only passing mention (if at all) of open innovation as generally defined…

Design Thinking can be used to:

• Drive strategy
  • Designers can visualize the future, they can show what it can look like.
  • No one knows how to act on strategy from Powerpoint or Excel, etc.
  • Example: HBO used design to envision the future of media distribution
• Create new markets
  • Design can help create new value.
  • Example: Shimano used design to create a new form of biking, bikes, and messaging
• Create new offerings
  • Example: Microjet (sub million dollar jet) is more safe and reliable than propeller planes and relies on a simplified pilot and maintenance experience to work
• Create new business models
  • Design has a large impact on the shift from products to services
  • Build relationships with people vs. selling them products
  • This shifts cost models, revenue models, etc.
• New application for technology
• New ways of connecting to customers
• Develop new partner relationships
  • Example: Kraft’s redesign of their supplier partner process created and additional 50 million dollar difference with one supplier alone

So what is Design Thinking?

• It’s a human-centered approach to innovation.
• Being human-centered is unique to design, Designers think about people first, then the business second. The opposite is true for most companies.
• In the traditional Venn diagram of People (desirable), Business (viable) & Technical (feasible), design thinking solves the problem from the People perspective
• Design thinking is supported by a rich set of tools, processes, roles, and environments. Designers work like craftsmen. They know when to use the right tool at the right time.
• There are 3 important phases for design thinking: Inspiration, Ideation, Implementation

El informe La oportunidad del Software Libre: capacidades, derechos e innovación despliega ante lector una serie de principios claros y contundentes a favor del software libre:

1. representa una opción tecnológica de calidad que impulsa la innovación
2. crea tejido industrial y asegura la libre competencia
3. fomenta el escrutinio público y optimiza el gasto informático
4. garantiza la igualdad de oportunidades de los proveedores y la seguridad de la información
5. ensancha las libertades en la sociedad de la información favoreciendo la cultura abierta

Pasen y lean. Y si quieren copien, modifiquen y redistribuyan este documento.

Worldchanging: Bright Green: Using LEGO to Envision a Better Society

Last monday, July 6th, the UK-based National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) organised RebootBritain, a public event where social entrepreneurs, activists, policy-makers and social thinkers had a chance to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing Britain today. As part of this discussion, organisers invited participants to make their own idea of what would help to reboot Britain … in Lego blocks.

Why? The idea is that building with the hands prompts different ways of thinking … ideas emerge … the process gives a voice to the regular delegates at this grand event with big-name speakers … and everyone is drawn to view each others’ interesting, clever, pretty models.

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Catalyst Design

Assuming the role of the designer is not neutral, how do you engage a community, open up new possibilities and influence behavior without imposing an external point of view? Participatory Design has been an accepted practice for some time now. When applied to communities, it implies a change in roles between the designer and the user, as Ezio Manzini observes: “Social innovation in the age of networks is a process of change where new ideas are generated by actors directly involved in the problem to be solved.” While participatory design can be used as a technique within a standard UCD process, social media technologies are allowing it to play a more transformative role…

Artículo de Jonathan Bays, Tony Goland y Joe Newsum en McKinsey Quaterly.

Prizes used to spark innovation are on the rise. Philanthropists—as well as players in the public and private sectors—must understand how to use them in the most effective way.

From Free Software to “Do it yourself” Biology. Conferencia con Chris Kelty y Sebastián Muriel

El Software Libre ha transformado el diálogo político y de la innovación a lo largo de los últimos 15 años. Esta presentación explica cómo las prácticas de diseño de Software Libre se han adaptado para ser aplicadas a un amplio espectro de actividades periféricas, desde libros de texto hasta una nueva generación de proyectos de “biología abierta”. Chris Kelty es Profesor de Estudios de la Información en la UCLA, EEUU; Sebastián Muriel es Director de Red.es.
5 de mayo de 2009