Thinking Design by Lars Rosengren

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The other day, Hartmut Esslinger’s book “A fine line” finally dropped in my mailbox. Its green cover with subtle Wega inspired dots instantly makes you want to break open the book and eagerly rush through the pages. I will not review his book yet, as I still have a few chapters to finish, except to say, it is a refreshingly personal and frank book, with many thoughtful ideas.

One underlying theme that runs through the book, has particularly caught my curiosity and that is the element of risk.

Now, we all know that setting up a business, involves an element of risk, which in return tends to generate profit.

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However, today, many large organisations have come develop an excessive risk averseness, as financial markets and internal company politics generally favours little change and low risk.

Innovation is vital for business growth, but inherently involves risk.

“Business needs creativity like humans need oxygen…”
(Hartmut Esslinger – “A fine line”)

Given the reluctance to embrace risk, large organisations have come to develop a toxic climate for innovation.

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With little corporate innovation, very little organic growth is achieved. Investors have to rely on other sources of growth, such as acquisitions, process improvement, rebranding etc.

Although, it does have significant impact on business results to increase profitability on past innovations, a company that does not also invest in innovation, will soon dilute the long term value of the company. This should cause great concerns to investors and be reflected in market prices, but on the contrary, such action is usually praised by the market.

Looking towards the future, how will we view the real meaning of risk? Its a complex topic, with many aspects to consider. I welcome thoughts and ideas form anyone who embraces or avoids risk your daily life.

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IDEO’s open source human centered design toolkit is a good source of inspiration. It will be a help for NGOs and social entrepreneurs to design and implement innovative, customer-centric solutions to specific design challenges for global communities in need via three simple steps: Hear, Create, Deliver.

Found an interesting visualisation tool at neoformix today. It allows you to visualise the relationship between different twitter search terms, in the form of a Venn diagram.

When Tim Brown was the the V&A last month, he mentioned the book “I miss by pencil” by Martin Bone and Kara Johnson of IDEO, which caught my attention. Although, I have just ordered the book and not yet had a chance to read it, this is how the book is described on the I miss my pencil website.

“The book attempts to communicate what designers sometimes think and talk about during the design process through the execution of 12 design explorations. Well at least that’s the official reason. Unofficially, we wanted an excuse to play around with our own notions of what design had become to us; ultimately, we wanted to pretend we were students again. The book allowed us to escape the realities and constraints of our day-to-day and find new avenues of creativity. It was also a way for us to engage in some inspiring conversations with people we’d always wanted to talk to.”

Also, there is a good interview with Kara Johnson on the Innovation podcast of Business Week

If you are interested in the book, you may find it here.

(image courtesy of Core 77)