YakShaving

Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing you to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows you to solve a larger problem.

Lego Serious Play is design thinking

August 26, 2007

flickr credit: Nathan Wells

I can’t believe I didn’t know about this before, considering Lego has been doing it since the late 90s. The folks at the Lego group are doing some pretty innovative stuff for multiple companies. This is an interesting new case study on multiple levels.

Lego Serious play is a consultative service that the lego team puts on for senior management at companies who are looking to be more innovative, and creative.

If you read the academic paper, The Science of Lego Serious Play, you find that the approach is based on Play, Construction, Imagination, and Identity. It sounds like Serious Play is really a good conduit for most companies wanting a taste of Design Thinking.

Via the Endless innovation blog

Teaming Workshop at the Institute of Design

August 22, 2007

photo credit: servo.

Today, at the Institute of Design, Chris Bernard, Joe Dizney, and David McGaw held a Teaming workshop, that was illuminating and a very welcome start to the school year.

Classes here start on Monday, and everyone is looking to start the year off with good team practices.

We started the workshop with a presentation by Dave, an ID alum, now an associate at McKinsey. He presented a 3 step system to teaming, with suggestions for each step. Align, Commit, and Build. I really liked his notion of invoking pre-selected buzz phrases that communicate a point very well to your peers: to gain alignment: “I’m just not feeling it…” (and holding a kickoff meeting initially); to gain commitment: “I have a request for you… Can you commit..?” and always use a facilitator; to build: give constructive, appropriate, honest feedback often, “May I make a suggestion?“.

Well, I did my part. Consider it evangelized, Dave.

We also spent some time doing prework for the workshop, including taking alternative versions of the Myers Briggs MBTI personality profile, and a neat one called the CPSP (Min Basadur’s Creative problem solving profile) intended for innovation teams. This one is available through the NextD site.

When I took the MBTI, I was an ENTP/ENFP. Teddy was also an ENTP. woot.

When I took the CPSP, I was a “Generator/Conceptualizer”. This is more vague, to me. I inherently think that most people (esp. in a design school) are going to tend towards the Generator/Conceptualizer side. Maybe more b-schoolers might fit into the Implementer/Optimizer categories?

Finally, we spent some time on Stone Yamashita’s model for getting Unstuck when encountered with a team problem. I thought this part of the presentation was particularly helpful.

A few really good takeaways that I had from today that I’m definitely looking forward to use with my innovation teams here at ID and beyond:

  • Having an assigned facilitator or team-meeting leader (NOT a team leader, and yes, there is a difference!) that rotates for each meeting during a project.
  • Have someone role play the customer–every customer! Including the final end user AND the company you might be developing the innovation for.

Thanks to Dave, Chris, and Joe for putting on the ID teaming workshop. It is imperative that innovation teams work together like a highly tuned performance machine, and Chris is at the forefront of thinking about how this can take place more smoothly. I don’t know if he offers his teaming workshop in other companies with innovation efforts, if so, sign him up!

Insanity

August 13, 2007

Shanghai pollution hits male fertility

What is the final incentive that the government needs to create legislation that will prevent pollution at this massive scale?   I am not an agriculture expert, but I wonder if it is already too late to start having more organic food that is pesticide free in the urban areas.

How do you rapidly educate an emerging population that has entirely government controlled media to seek produce and food products that are healthier?
(I guess a better question to ask is, isn’t it in the government’s best interest to ensure that everyone’s food is cleaner and safer in the first place?   Or maybe is that the job of a privatized certification agency?)

Short Cappuccinos

August 13, 2007

Originally uploaded by Michael Sarver

Recently, I’ve garnered a deeper appreciation for the various types of coffee that exist in the world. I can’t say that my days of merely ordering the plain (sludge) coffee– to keep things simple, are completely gone, but suffice it say that I have ventured out into the world of fair trade Ethiopians, and the enchanting Illy cappuccino at the artisan cellar in the merchandise mart.

When I was at Starbucks in PRC, I ordered different types of coffee, mostly because it was one of the rare times that I’d actually go to Starbucks and work (I prefer independent coffee shops here in the US).

I noticed that the coffee they sell in China is so much smaller than the sized they sell here. It’s also the same way in Europe. Do Americans really demand sizes that are so disgustingly large? Gross.

Some research yielded this article about the elusive short cappuccino. I don’t really expect to go to Starbucks much unless I need to and there is nothing else around, but this might be helpful to other people that are also repulsed by the “venti”.