"One thing
I’ve learned is that it is important to surround yourself with the kind
of people you aspire to be. If you hang around with deadbeats and
pessimists, you’ll end up with a negative view of the world."

– Tom Kelley

Tip O’Neill pointed out that "all politics is local."  To some extent, innovation is also a local phenomenon.

Living in a place as innovation-friendly as Silicon Valley or the U.S. as a whole, it’s easy to overlook the important role that society, government, and culture play in creating a supportive stage for innovators to do their thing.

In this insightful post titled Public Floggings, Joi Ito uses the Horie/Life Door drama unfolding in Tokyo to show us how easy it is to discourage innovation at the societal level.

As I make my way through this world of ours — as Indiana Jones said, it’s not the years, it’s the mileage — I’m less and less convinced that anchoring on any single thing is the best way to make progress.  Sure, focus is to be cherished, but it’s energy that needs to be focused, not the target.  In other words, don’t mistake a narrow field of vision (or a small target) for a focused point of view.

Simplicity should be cherished, but simplistic approaches must be shunned.

I’m still wrestling with the ideas I just threw out above, but John Maeda’s post Do Both gave me a big push forward.  In it he says:

Is it cheaper to improve a product’s reliability and functionality? Or is it cheaper to improve a product’s desirability? Considering the marginal costs of additional research and development, combined with production, testing, assurance, and so forth, the answer is fairly clear. Investing in advertising is a cost-effective way to increase the profit for an existing product. If the campaign is any good of course.

What determines "good"? Is it the copy? Is it the visuals? Is it the celebrity that has been chosen to be the head cheerleader? Seems like there are tons of subjective variables to consider that will ultimately define success or failure… Do both.

Do both.  Do everything needed, no more, no less.  With focused energy.  I think that’s a good recipe for innovation.

My friend Jim Matheson, who is a superlative pilot in addition to being a great thinker (and doer) when it comes to anything related to the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life, wrote an intriguing blog post about the joy that flying brings to his life.  Given a day job doesn’t provide timely feedback for any of his big decisions, flying a plane is anything but; every action has an immediate feedback loop, and he derives great satisfaction from managing those feedback loops in order to stay in on top of the plane.

Of course, it’s about much more than flying.  On the subject of designing business ventures, Jim makes the following point:

… how do you create intermediate feedback
loops in activities that are inherently not given to them so that you
can gain better insights into the distant future outcome of an current
activity and make mid-point course corrections which can ensure
ultimate success? And in situations where there
is much more immediate feedback, how do you make better initial input
decisions by gaining critical information a priori or perhaps utilize
simulated training so that the feedback seems less mercurial and
ultimate outcomes less surprising?

Two fantastic questions.  It’s something absolutely critical when it comes to creating ventures in situations of uncertainy — designing things so that you get adequate feedback so that you know what’s going on when you need to know what’s going on, but not so much that it all seems like noise.

"Confront the difficult when it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts."

– Tao Te Ching

This series of photos arrived in my inbox via a friend of a friend.  They were taken somewhere in Thailand.

They show us how important it is to start the innovation process by going out into the field.  If we sit at our desks, or only seek inspiration in situations, people, and aspects of the world familiar to us, we miss out.  We miss out on witnessing the challenges that real people encounter in the course of their daily lives.

Such as trying to transport a toddler when all you have is a motorcycle and sidecar.

It’s easy to be judgmental when viewing this photo.  I know I was — "How could he do this to that kid?", I thought.  But design thinking is about empathy.  Put yourself in his place and imagine how his morning is going.  What did he eat?  Where is he going?  How is he feeling?  Does he do this each morning?  Is this a temporary arrangement?  Is it really as unsafe as it looks?  Is money a limiting factor?  If so, how?  Did he think this arrangement up or does someone else do it, too?  Is there a market for something better?

Judgment is the opposite of compassion, and by deferring judgment, one starts the process of innovation.

Yawn, croak, stretch.  Well, it’s Monday morning and now that all of that is over, it’s time again to start thinking about the art and science of making cool stuff.  Here are some good reads that caught my attention and blew out the holiday cobwebs this morning:

Success Code for CEO’s: get a design
Yet another article about the Institute of Design from the IndiaTimes.  This one features an extensive conversation with Robert Sutton, who is a core member of the d.school.  Robert and I will be teaching a d.school course at Stanford later this year.

Creativity’s Economic — and Sexual — Edge
The always entertaining Dan Pink is writing a column called The Trend Desk, and this week’s edition takes us on a whirlwind tour of mating behavior, BRIC, portion control, and sudoku mania.

Design: The New Corporate Marketing Strategy
This article by Ted Mininni ties a nice bow around a bunch of concepts involving a user-centric approach to marketing.  You need to register for the article, but it’s free and worth your time.

Happy reading, and see you around the pages of metacool this week.

This week, the world lost a great innovator, Keith Duckworth.

An engineer by training, Duckworth was one half of the vaunted firm Cosworth, designers of the paradigm-shifting DFV, which changed the face of motor racing and brought home 155 race victories.  Funded as a venture by Ford, the DFV acted as a modular platform around which indepdendent designers could, for the first time, create Formula 1 cars which could compete with factory efforts from the like of Ferrari. 

Duckworth was one of those fantastic engineers who, by embracing the realities of the business context they operate within, turn mere ideas into market-dominating innovations.

Here’s an article about the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (a.k.a. "the d.school) from the India Times.

Though it quickly ventures off into a discussion about more traditional approaches to design education, I like the article because of what it represents:  it’s very much an example of Thomas Friedman’s belief that ever-increasing flatness will, and it’s also about the emergence of Dan Pink’s view that R-directed thinking will be what enables one makes a good living in the 21st century.

Most of all, it affirms my belief that the d.school isn’t so much a place as a state of mind.