Hasta La Ideas

For my second TEDx Boston 2011 Adventure, I attended a day-long workshop at IDEO in Cambridge, MA. The theme for the day was, “What are innovative ways to harness & celebrate the delights of OUR local culture?”

IDEO divided the crowd of professors, students, CEOs and assorted luminaries into three different groups to focus on the various aspects of innovation for urban life. The groups were introduced to the basic concepts of design thinking, as well as to IDEO’s strategies for brainstorming and prototyping.

For the first third of the day, we combed through piles of photographs of Boston and Cambridge, searching for tidbits of inspiration about social culture in the cities. We tagged anything interesting with sticky notes and announced our ideas to the group for a quick discussion. Some noteworthy photos included examples of urban resourcefulness (i.e. sidewalk gardens and street art).

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