Here's a great interview with Roger Martin, Dean of Rotman.

He provides a very crisp definition of what design thinking is about.  Design thinking is about creating better things, while traditional analytic thinking is about choosing between things.  We need both, but surely the world would be in a better place if there was a bit more design thinking in play out there.  Which is why we now have places like Rotman and the d.school and the entire design thinking movement.

By the way, if you don't read Rotman magazine, you should.  And if you haven't read Martin's book The Opposable Mind, go out an grab a copy today!

This past weekend I watched some fantastic racing at Road Atlanta courtesy of the American Le Mans series.  Audis were dicing with Peugeots, Ferraris with Porsches, Porsches with Acuras, and Corvettes with Aston Martins, among other marques.  All of it awesome, technology-centric racing put on by the American Le Mans Series (ALMS).

What made this particular running of Petit Le Mans unique was the debut of something called the Green Challenge.  An innovative behavioral incentive program developed jointly by the ALMS, the US Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Society of Automotive Engineers, the Green Challenge allows racing teams to score points for sheer speed and for energy usage and carbon footprint.  Teams are evaluated on the total greenhouse gas life cycle of the fuel type they use in the race, which could be cellulosic ethanol, bio-diesel, and ethanol/petroleum blend, or a hybrid internal combustion/electric source.  For the gearheads among you, the following formulas are used to evaluate Green Challenge performance:

• Performance Energy Coefficient (the amount of energy used):  [total normalized fuel consumption during race] \ [1,000,000]
• Greenhouse Gas Coefficient (the amount of greenhouse gases emitted): 3 * [ (upstream C02) + (downstream C02)]
• Petroleum Fuels Displaced: Y * [ (upstream petroleum energy) + (downstream petroleum energy)]

As a general rule, competition is good for spurring on innovation.  From high-minded endeavors such as the X PRIZE, to the (very scary) technological leaps seen during WWII, high stakes seem to breed a combination of focus and access to resources which help support innovative behavior.  In the parlance of Ways to Grow, competition helps set the context for revolutionary innovative outcomes.  To that end, here’s what Margo Oge, Director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality at the EPA, has to say:

Automobile racing spurs innovation in safety, performance, and now, we are happy to say, clean technologies.  Racing is the ultimate test track.

Amen.

I admire this high-minded, innovative approach on the part of the American Le Man Series.  Rather than take a pessimistic, let’s do less-bad approach to racing — which would have gone in the direction of greatly restricting fuel consumption, which is terrible for competition — they chose to pursue an optimistic, pro-fecundity and consumption approach to being green.  As Bill McDonough has shown us, we can make a paradigm shift to a system where inputs and outputs flow in ways that enable consumption without harming our environment, rather than assume that all consumption must trigger an increase in entropy. This initiative is only the tip of the iceberg, but it is a fantastic start.  I tip my hat to the leadership of ALMS.

And the title of this post?  It refers to an article I wrote for NZZ Folio a year ago, called  Who will be the next millionaire?  My point then was that we need to find ways to go green while going red, which is my code for maintaining our ability to enjoy things that are sexy, fast, and cool.  I still believe this is true, and that we are in the early days of making green tech and clean tech sexy.  This is one of the reasons behind my new blog Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness — it’s an exploration of what makes red red.

For those of you who didn’t catch the race, here’s the last lap.  Allan McNish is a hero, a pure racer.  Here is a drive worthy of the great Nuvolari.  Very inspirational stuff:

If I knew then what I know now, and if the Acumen Fund had existed then, I would have applied to be an Acumen Fellow.

If you are someone — or know someone — who is able and interested in making a change in the world, please tell them about this program. 

Seth Godin posted some interesting thoughts earlier this week in a post called ‘Where to’ might not be as important as ‘how loud’.  Here’s an excerpt:

In marketing (and thus, in life) it might be a lot more important to
know, "How are you going to do the next thing?" or "How are you going
to do your vacation?"

Direction is drilled into us. Picking the right direction is
critical. If you don’t know the right direction, sit tight until you
figure it out.

The hyperactive have trouble with this advice. So they flit like a
hummingbird, dashing this way and that, trying this tactic or that
strategy until something works big, then they run with it.

What we’re seeing, again and again, is that both of these strategies rarely work…

The alternative is to do your best to pick a direction (hopefully an
unusual one, hopefully one you have resources to complete, hopefully
one you can do authentically and hopefully one you enjoy) and then do
it. Loudly. With patience and passion. (Loud doesn’t mean boorish. Loud
means proud and joyful and with confidence.)

This feels similar to what I said the other week about the benefits of startegy over strategy (and I’m happy to thinking anything remotely close to Seth).  What do you think?  Should I keep pursuing this startegy thing here at metacool?  Is it of interest?  Is it cool?  Please give me some feedback with a comment below or drop me an email.

Thanks.