Archive for November 24th, 2007
ACCD’s Global Dialogues: "Disruptive Thinking". March 6-7, Barcelona.
“Disruptive Thinking will feature conversations with a wide range of radical thinkers and provocateurs from all fields and disciplines – including artists, designers, scientists, executives, architects and entrepreneurs (…) speakers will be paired with influential members of the media who will interview them on their perceptions, accomplishments and ideas for the future”.
ACCD’s Global Dialogues Website.
“The inaugural event will take place in Barcelona, which Art Center has identified as the gateway to its developing presence in Europe. Art Center has recently entered a long-term formal agreement with ESADE Business School, which has been ranked by the Wall Street Journal as the #1 international business school for two consecutive years”.
Art Center College of Design Announces the Art Center Global Dialogues.
Even though I will be traveling three times to Europe in the next few months and that two of those trips will take me to Barcelona, unfortunately, I won’t be there in March to attend ACCD’s “Global Dialogues”. In any case, I will be adding this one to my map of innovation events when making updates for 2008.
http://artcenter.edu/dialogues/index.php
A couple of years ago, Jennifer Merritt and Louis Lavelle published “Tomorrow’s Business School? It Might Be A Design School” on BusinessWeek. Their article talked about leading management schools in the United States embracing designers’ creative thinking and problem finding+solving techniques, thus enabling MBA students to develop the kind of skills needed to innovate on their executive jobs.
That article was of interest to me as I had actually experienced the reverse thought process: after completing my product design studies in Barcelona, I felt a strong need to further develop my education by getting a business degree. Eventually, I earned a postgraduate business degree in Ireland and an MBA in international marketing and finance in Chicago.
At the time, it was pretty clear in my mind that designers needed basic business skills and an understanding of the markets to be able to perform at their best. This means innovating by being able to couple a designer’s ‘user-centered mindset’ with a businessperson’s ‘customer focused’ and ‘results oriented’ approach. Interestingly enough, this past summer Jessie Scanlon wrote an article on the fact that more designers are reaching the executive ranks, while questioning if they have business know-how and leadership skills to succeed on a management job.
About ten years have already gone by since I started to work as a strategy manager for a Fortune 500 corporation in the fast paced high-tech business. Early on that job, I realized that business strategists need the equivalent of a designer’s creative toolbox uncovering options and iterating concepts. Interestingly enough, entrepreneurship takes an artist’s passion and pride, as well as being able to make sense out of change and uncertainty, plus believing that ‘one individual can make a difference’ and that success actually relies on ‘multi-disciplinary teamwork’.
Last month, I had posted another article on that subject: Frog Design’s push for bringing designers early into the innovation process. Frog happens to be a leading industrial design firm which has expanded into strategic consulting. Bryan Gardiner’s “Birth of a Gadget: Inside the Industrial Design Process” features Frog’s work by means of a quick case study which starts with the following picture:
ESADE and Art Center have initiated a synergistic collaboration between business and design, reflecting quite a few of the insights shared in this post. If you happen to be able to attend their conference on Disruptive Thinking, I would really appreciate your comments and/or emails on this event.
J. de Francisco 
Chicago, IL. 24 November 07 
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“The Top 10″ at the time of uploading this article: [1] Design Concepts: Future Car. [2] HP’s Innovation Recipe: “IPO”, The Innovation Program Office. [3] Project Ergofuturo: ErgoTrans (1991 Product Concept). [4] $200 Mobile Computing + 2.0 Apps: Getting Ready For Prime Time. [5] “Visual Futurist: The Art & Life Of Syd Mead”. [6] Transforming Your Old Laptop Into An “Internet Communicator” (2). [7] Innovative Mobile Phones: Objects Of Desire. [8] Ideagora, a Marketplace for Minds. [9] Free Web 2.0 Meeting Tools: Vyew, Yugma, Dimdim, Zoho. [10] The Top 10 Best R&D Companies In The World.
