Hasta La Ideas

Chart used by the Friends of the High Line to excite the public and win its support. This projected timeline shows plantings and bird species they will attract to the High Line during the first four years. Image © 2004. Field Operations with Diller Scofidio Renfro. Courtesy the City of New York.

John Emerson writes about the power of visually mapping power as a tactic to effect positive social change. In the article published in Communication Arts, he uses a variety of different examples such as how Friends of the High Line used visuals to raise the funds to save the elevated rail line in Manhattan and transform it into a unique, elevated public park; the effectiveness of Al Gore’s message as designed by Duarte Design; a chart providing the power relationships contained within the civil strife in the Congo or even the process of domestic violence in households. As he says,

What is power? It’s an abstract dynamic, an engine behind the visible world. Power can be found in relationships, in the flow of resources or information, in signs, symbols and ideas or built into the environment. There’s no doubt that visual media has the power to influence an audience, but visual media can also be used to visualize power itself. Visualizing power is a way of interpreting and understanding it. And this understanding can become a basis for challenging it. Design can be used to describe and locate power, to pressure those who hold power, and ultimately to facilitate and generate power by bringing people together.

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The Economist writes about jugaad, referring to an innovative, low-cost way of doing something – as goods and services are provided in India at a fraction of the cost of those in developed countries. From the Tata Nano to the Chinese lithium-ion battery that’s easier to make at less than one third the price, its the domestic conditions of scarce and expensive resources and materials coupled with less than wealthy customers that drive these jugaad innovations.

But its not all high tech or corporate R&D, says the article, as rural innovators are also coming in the limelight with their cost effective, grassroots solutions to everyday challenges,

Anil Gupta, of the Indian Institute of Management, helps run the Honey Bee Network, which encourages grassroots innovation in a number of countries. The projects he has been involved with include a refrigerator built from clay, which uses no electricity yet can help keep vegetables fresh for several days, and a cheap crop-duster in the form of a sprayer mounted on a motorcycle.

Many of these were demonstrated recently at a workshop held to promote Grassroots Innovation Design and Sustainability (GRIDS) in the Indian city of Pune. They hold a very real potential for sustainable solutions, developed as they are under conditions of scarcity, often repurposing or reusing materials, using the minimum of fuel or even recycling energy – for example, figuring out how to charge a cellular phone from the exhaust of a motorcycle. But the problem of funding remains as they’re often under the radar of investors nor have the capacity to raise money. One hopes they’ll find a way to inspire a new approach to product development in these recessionary times, a jugaad solution to conserve the future of our planet.

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Almost over his bout with jet lag, this writer is slowly getting back to normal. But due to some lingering brain haze, let’s just get to the meat and potatoes of the day’s happenings and keep this short and sweet, okay? First up, some sad news from earlier this week when Michelle Kaufmann, one of architecture’s very rapidly-rising stars (and one who knew how to hire good PR people to put together press releases, we might add), announced that she has decided to pull the plug on her firm, Michelle Kaufmann Designs. She cited the economy as the reason (of course), but in particular that one of the factories who was helping create her oft-discussed pre-fab houses went bankrupt. That, on top of people ready to buy her buildings were finding it increasingly more difficult to set up deals with lenders, and it was a perfect storm, driving the firm into a downward spiral that reached it’s sad conclusion this week. Here’s a bit:

“We had gotten lean, and I was sure we were going to survive, but two weeks ago we had a factory partner close, we had a number of projects which were ready for construction that looked like the financing was all set and then the lending fell through and it all happened all at once,” she said. “It is so difficult for a small company without big cash reserves to deal with that all happening at once.”

Adaptive Path have recently put up a project specific microsite sharing the results of their work on “Mobile Literacy:Designing Mobile Technology for Emerging Markets” including video interviews with specific users in rural western India. Also shared is their comprehensive framing of design principles for such a target audience, one that takes their contextual knowledge of communication technology, consumer electronics and literacy into account. Here’s a noteworthy snippet,

Design for Cultural Relevance

Support existing needs, values, networks and experiences.

Cultivate Accurate Mental Models
Design interactions that do not rely on western conventions and metaphors. The system should rely on organization principles, communication methods and iconic representations that are relevant to local experience. Recognize the cultural norms of verbal communication and spatial memory.

Evolve a Known Technological Experience
Create a solution which builds on experience with culturally familiar objects: cars, radios, calculators, televisions and bicycles instead of computers, websites and video games. Explore direct feedback, single-button functions and mechanical clarity.

Emphasize Local Adoption Styles
Create technology and interfaces that can match how people live; India is not discreet or quiet so a solution should be vibrant and expressive of Indian society, culture, religion and way of life. It should also assume the mobile devices are shared and that conversations may involve many people speaking to many, rather than one to one conversations on a personal device.

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How do you kickstart innovation and economic growth when all the world is hurting? You open the door to your larder to the community with a generosity of spirit and sense of openly sharing for the greater good.

Every major corporation in the world has a larder full of Intellectual Property, projects that emerged from the depths of R&D or design that never make it to light for one reason or another. The majority hold on to their patent portfolios seeking to maximize the return on their investment dollars, both in terms of time and money, one day. Then there are those who take that famous Finn, Linus Torvald’s ‘open source’ philosophy to heart.

Nokia has just announced plans to give away all the concepts, IP, designs and ideas that emerged from their R&D but will never make it through their production lines. They see it as a form of CSR or even ‘recycling’:

There is a direct link to corporate responsibility though. Not only does this impact consumers (more ideas developed into products) but it also impacts employees (see the previous note on scientists and developers seeing their ideas come to life) alongside giving more local businesses a helping hand. This initiative can’t be underestimated for its potential impact. It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out over the next three years. We’re hoping to keep tabs on those ideas that get passed out and what happens to them in the next stage of their development cycle.

but its more than simply corporate social responsibility or giving back to your community and roots. For all of us who may have felt the frustration of ‘non disclosure agreements’ or ideas that gathered dust on client’s shelves, its a message of hope that if an idea or concept does not make it to development, it can still see the light of day, somehow, somewhere.

Its also an exercise in social and economic development of an industry sector, since this ‘donation’ of IP will be accompanied by funding and business development support by other players such as Tekes, Technopolis and the local cities themselves. Here’s different snippet for an idea of the kinds of products and services being shared,

The innovations released by Nokia are in areas such as environmental and energy-related solutions, location based services and advertising, near field communication, mobile security, health care applications and future internet services, among others. The objective is to evaluate the thousands of available innovations and select around one hundred to be matched with a company which demonstrates the best ability to exploit them, and which is then granted funding for further development and commercialization.

Imagine turning the whole ‘startup approaches the VC’ concept on its head – demonstrate you’ve got the ability and competence and we’ll not only give you the concept developed with the kind of resources no start up could ever command but there’s funding available as well as business development support. Or to put it another way,

“Speeding up the economy calls for a new degree of openness. We hope that the Nokia Technopolis Innovation Mill sets an example that companies across other sectors will follow. The current economic climate is just right for a critical evaluation of intellectual property portfolios and the release of the innovations that are more suitable for others to exploit,” continued Aho.

Who was it who said that ‘Ideas are free, its what you do with them that counts’ ? I don’t recall, but I do look forward to seeing what happens when idealistic concepts of openness, sharing, community spirit and doing good are manifested so tangibly with the euros to back them.

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