Let's say you want to create the best design school in the world. Period. 

What would your mission look like? Try this:

• Prepare future innovators to be breakthrough thinkers & doers
• Use design thinking to inspire multidiciplinary teams
• Foster radical collaboration between students, faculty and industry
• Tackle big projects and use prototyping to discover new solutions

Now, keep this note in the napkin you wrote it on and you are set to go. The question is, what would people expect your work will be from now on? To come up with the post-Jobs "iSomething" or the 21st century Eames Lounge Chair?

None of that. 

More in line with what you were thinking, is a crowdsourcing project in Kenya that will enable people to locate clean sources of water using mobile phones. Or a low-cost tripod irrigation pump designed for Burma that sold 5.000 units in the first six months. Or, start a hackathon to create tangible prototyping tools to assist activists and change in Egypt. 

This is what the "d.school Institute of Design at Stanford" does. It pools students from public policy, computer science, medicine, engineering - whatever discipline really - and connects them  with nonprofit experts, to offer a learning experience outside a traditional classroom and a curriculum which "pushes design to improve lives", featuring courses with names like "Designing Liberation Techniques" or "Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability".

Apparently, students compete for limited seats in the hope that this new experience will lead them outside the confines of a boring career in academia or traditional and conservative business. NextDrop was such a case, a new social enterprise venture which earned a $375.000 grant from the Knight Foundation to refine a system which uses mobile phones to crowdsource an alert system in underdeveloped cities with a severe problem of constant water delivery in homes.

Read more about the d-school in this article, but two questions really come up out of this:

a. Most of the social innovation work seem to be inspired by seeking novel solutions targeted to the under-developing world. One would assume that the significant economic problems that most of us now face in Europe and the US, should lead to the adoption of  the social innovation paradigm to solve more of our immediate issues.

b. Europe seems to be standing on the sidelines of this current surge of interest among students for social innovation. Most of the work and the talent is tapped by US institutions - like Stanford - and much less so by European ones (with the notable exceptions of the Said Business School and INSEAD). Now, this obviously needs to change, if we wish to offer a new perspective to our people, especially in a continent which seems to be severely threatened by recession and a bleak future.

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via ferrari.com

The participants are asked to create a pure hypercar with technology and materials from the latest generation, a car with an extreme architecture, while functional under every aspect. The contest runs until July 2011. The jury, under the presidency of Luca di Montezemolo, will award an internship at Ferrari's Centro Stile, lead by Flavio Manzoni, to the first and second placed participants as well as monetary prizes.

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I know you wouldn't care less for a Royal Wedding, but any event that is bound to attract international attention is an interesting playground for social media watchers. So, here is what is going on.

See the full gallery on Posterous

[UPDATE]

So, they kissed (they would, wouldn't they?) 
Anyway, now that is all over, here is what I cherry-picked so far.

• paidContent reports that the BBC experienced some "technical issues" from the surge of traffic to its live coverage webpage. Apparently, YouTube (streaming BBC's channel) did not have any problems. Various sources claim that Twitter held very well. It seems the days of the failwhale are behind now.
• According to Mashable, the event has broken the record of concurrent viewers on Livestream channel, topping 300.000 viewers, while Akamai reports that it has broken wider livestreaming records, surpassing the World Cup 2010 peak.
• A Telegraph post mentions that 1mill people were updating on Facebook producing 74 mentions per second, while Twitter witnessed 67 mentions of "royal wedding' per second. By the way, the Telegraph partnered with Color app to allow realtime sharing of eye-witness photos of the event. The best of them will be showcased in the newspaper.
• The #royalwedding hashtag was probably more popular than the official #rw2011, maybe because few people knew there was an official hashtag.
• Probably not up to the minute numbers crunched by Webtrends, mentioned in USA Today, show that the US has shown an intense interest in the event, being responsible for 65% of all the social media buzz around the wedding during the past month, while the UK was responsible for 20% only. Obviously, a population weight is in order here. Read the Webtrends blogpost here with more numbers (posted before the wedding) and an infographic here.
• A Guardian interactive visualization of Twitter made by data specialists Infomous looks very impressive.

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This is a text cloud visualization using the Tagxedo creator. The text is taken out of the 18th January press release of the EU Council (ECOFIN) meeting minutes found here. The meeting was supposed to come up with solutions about the euro crisis. Apart from bureaucratic jargon, couldn't find any hints in the word cloud, hence the..whale.

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See original post here.

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via bigwindowlabs.com

Thanks to a tweet by Dominic Campbell, I came across a great idea, Big Window Labs. An organization setup by Clay Johnson, formerly of Blue State Digital (yes, the Obama campaign agency) and Sunlight Foundation.

The company aims to help entrepreneurs setup novel type of businesses, "...disruptive in what's core to Washington, DC: Politics, Media and Government" and with "the desire to make money by having great values". And that is the differentiating factor from the Silicon Valley creed, from which Big Window Labs distances itself. I pick two of those values put forward: "Great People, Great People, Great People" and "You can make money and be ethical and not be ashamed of either." 

With credentials and philosophy like this, no wonder that Big Window Labs puts forward a great concept akin to the best of social entrepreneurship mentality: Merge the values and innovative thinking of the non-profit world with invaluable entrepreneurial acumen, to create sustainable social businesses. 

 

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via good.is

Inspired by a documentary film and a Swedish couple, architects came up with some impressive designs for a new retreat somewhere in rural Sweden by the name Treehotel (http://www.treehotel.se). And yes, the hotel is operational since July. The "Mirrorcube" shown in the picture is "a mirrored aluminium cube, reflecting the surrounding trees but coated with infrared film to make it visible to birds". Have a look at the rest of the designs also. It's worth it!

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via guardian.co.uk

According to a Guardian article, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) funded by Google UK, has produced a report on the economic value of the internet on the UK economy, estimating that it accounts for 7,2% of the 2009 GDP or £100 billion. The impressive thing is that this brings the internet ahead of traditional sectors like construction, transportation and utilities.

The report also performs cross-country comparisons among most OECD countries ranking them according to a composite "BCG-Intensity index" in which Greece comes last among 28 countries in terms of the overall economic significance of the internet.

The BCG-Intensity Index looks at three measures:

• Enablement: Looks at infrastructure and access, where Greece is 25th in the list.
• Expenditure: Looks at how much consumers and businesses spend in e-commerce and online advertising, where Greece is last in the table.
• Engagement: Looks at how actively businesses, governments and consumers embrace the internet, where Greece also comes last.

Now, this is obviously a worrying picture but with some useful implications for policy since it obviously shows that the economy cannot capitalize even on the existing infrastructure which is in itself lagging.
It means that our national priority should be on the "adoption" front, creating a more conducive environment for internet businesses and a continued effort to convince companies that the internet presents a whole new territory of business activity. And naturally we still need to do much more towards increasing penetration and usage among people.

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I have been thinking recently about my ailing country, Greece and that Holy Grail of Hope, a rather loosely defined concept named "innovation", which could miraculously solve all our problems, turn us into the silicon valley of Europe and generate instant growth.

Innovation seems to be at the mind of our government's wishful thinking and at the hearts of wannabe startups. However, "Research indicates that "fast followers" - that's imitators or copiers to you and me - get the best advantage. Too often there is a first mover disadvantage: the market is not fully developed, the offer is not fully formed, development costs are disproportionately high, risks are higher....the list goes on." (from freshbusinessthinking)

Insights into the perceptions of the concept of innovation, would surely come up with keywords like “new”, “original”, “unique” and so on. But innovation is not something that creates a bump on your head when you sit under a tree, an apocalyptic vision of a religious kind, or a thick-rimmed spectacled whiz kid rewiring stuff in his garage. This is a misleading notion that can guide the minds and efforts of able people and valuable resources into the wrong direction.

What prompted this post was reading a few articles sparked by Oded Shenkar’s Copycats book  (which I haven’t read yet), who believes that “imitation is at least as important as innovation if you really want to grow efficiently and make a profit.”
A very good Boston Globe article probably sums it all in the title: “Innovation is overrated. It's time to appreciate the power of the copycat”, from where I quote:

“…where innovation brings new things into the world, imitation spreads them; where innovators break the old mold, imitators perfect the new one; and while innovators can win big, imitators often win bigger. Indeed, what looks like innovation is often actually artful imitation..” 

Imitation can take the form of shameless plain stealing but this is not really what creates sustainable wealth. Imitation at its best is learning from others, adapting their ideas to suit a particular market or need and building on where others have stopped. “Creative Imitation” is an art in itself and a forgotten one, since innovation came into fashion.

Apparently, Shenkar traces the historical roots of our modern love for innovation to the Romantic Age and points to the fact that, until then, imitation was the dominant paradigm, one on which even the Roman Empire thrived on; even Adam Smith believed that imitation should be granted “the status of a creative art”.

The premise on which the merits of imitation rest are simple and should really be commonsensical. After all, this is how kids learn, and how humanity evolves. Shenkar believes that the best imitators in business include Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Ryanair, Samsung, and Apple.

Imitation of course does not mean to copy your competitors. It does mean that you should get inspired by other sectors, other models and markets. It is quite probable that someone in another market has already found a sound answer, devised a new process, bundled a new service. Your –difficult - job is to recognize it and then transplant it into your particular business case. This task takes a lot of talent and is not something we should discredit so easily.

In another post on the same subject, Venkatesh Rao notes:

“In business, the benefits of imitation are obvious. Somebody else comes up with an idea, pays the capital costs, goes through the painful process of discovering a market and working out operating processes. Then boom, you come in and steal the playbook and build a much bigger, and better business than the original innovator. The original innovator is probably married to its idea, while you can benefit from 20/20 hindsight, unclouded by emotional bonds.”

Venkat also picks some interesting stats from the book:

• The costs of imitation are 60-75% the costs of innovation (yes, imitation does have costs)
• Pioneers who create new markets generally end up with around 7% of the markets they create. The copycats get the rest. 
• 98.7% of the value of innovations goes to the imitators - this is not surprising as imitators grow the market (cited at a series of articles here)

Now, another interesting angle on the subject is the success story of Groupon, posted in a Social Entrepreneurship blog.

First of all, Groupon has sparked off a large number of copycats all over the world, made easier by the fact that there are not many barriers (patents, copyrights etc) to do so. So, earlier this year Groupon had to buy CityDeal the German based clone, in an obvious effort to fence its expansion but also gain a conveniently quick way into the European market (later also bought Japanese Qpod and Russian Darberry among others). According to the post, “…the people behind CityDeal are masters of the art of Europeanizing leading American companies, having built versions of Zappos, Facebook, and an eBay copycat that was eventually acquired by eBay”.  That doesn’t sound like such a bad deal for wealth creation tactics. By the way, BBC also carries a similar story on how "Emerging rivals threaten Facebook's dominance".

Secondly and on a different note, the history goes that Groupon itself, “…spun out of The Point, an activism focused company that was originally trying to leverage the power of groups to achieve specific social goals. When they couldn't make that model work, they did what great entrepreneurs do and started experimenting. They hit group buying and it was off to the races." 
But read the fascinating story told by the CEO and founder Andrew Mason himself. Now, this internal transformation process from a social enterprise to a commercial one, is good innovative thinking in my books.

Nevertheless, if you subscribe to the overall view of innovation vs imitation, it is easy to see what the subject of progress through imitation entails for education, business mentoring or policy and what it also means for small countries like Greece; We need to be exposed to an intelligent mapping of initiatives, ideas, business models from around the world.  We need more story-telling, the first hand experiences of people from other industries and other markets who "have been there before". And we need to focus more on wealth creation.

Otherwise we will forego the business benefits of leapfrogging and spend millions chasing the rainbow of innovation.  

[Photo by Bala K]

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via technologyreview.com

The MIT Technology Review published an article on how some e-commerce startups target emerging markets where we witness an explosive growth of non-browser enabled cell phones and a lack of connected PCs. Interestingly enough, the case mentioned, Slimtrader, is a Seattle based startup which had the wisdom to swim against the current hype around smartphones and instead develop a platform to offer internet shopping via text message. This is obviously a huge market, which up to now was only targeted by non-profits and aid agencies, but obviously has definite potential for a social-enterprise-like approach.
What struck me though is the simple fact that this kind of business potential is what startups from countries like Greece should have tapped into in the first place where the local market has some obvious similarities and also because Greeks know best how to operate within loose administrative structures.
Instead, local startups focus on how to target the overcrowded and congested "western" markets with questionable results. 

Sound business is above all a state of mind ... but you knew that already didn't you?

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via ipaidabribe.com

An amazing project in Bangalore, India from a non-profit organization. You can report a bribe, view bribe reports and see emerging patterns in a visual way. This definitely proves the main point I made the other day in Hamburg, in my presentation about OpenGov during the PEP-NET Summit; and that was the fact that Civil Society 2.0 is the connecting link between egov and edemocracy (see my slidedeck here http://goo.gl/CzwT).>

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via good.is

Musicians dispersed throughout the city while conductor performs from atop a church. Read the GOOD post and watch the video here: http://www.philharmoniker-event.de/

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via readwriteweb.com

There are no "two worlds", the virtual and the physical. There is only one, Your Life. After foursquare which started bridging the two worlds - successfully or not is another matter - the new generation of social networking around your TV viewing habits is next. What is more natural than wanting to share and talk about the programme you are watching with your friends? After all, this is what you do: While you talk with them on the phone, during coffee next morning in the office, at dinner and so on. These kind of applications and networks are promising because they simulate your normal behaviour but extend it to match your online behaviour. After all, whether you like it or not, people spend, say 5 hours each day watching TV and far less than that on the internet.
So, what about radio?

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via pictorymag.com

Another great theme by Pictory - one of my longstanding web favs - on New York City - the "Disneyland for Adults" as I like to call it. Guest designer is Nicholas Felton, yes of Felron Annual Report fame who inspired foursquare stats!

Pictory is lovingly curated by editor/designer/photographer Laura Brunow Miner who has also founded Phoot Camp, an "invite-only creative retreat and photography workshop."

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John Coltrane’s historic recording featuring McCoy Tyner (Piano), Elvin Jones (Drums) and Steve Davis (Bass).

I always imagine these kind of tracks played live, at dusk, on a Greek beach, on a great summer evening.

The next best thing is to listen to it via Quad electrostatic speakers and Audio Research valves (or something of the sort).

The worse thing you can do is to listen to this stuff via your laptop speakers and MP3 …or YouTube for that matter!

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via edit.good.is

“There's a DIY movement going on with more and more people setting up their own events ... you get knitting groups setting up in pubs and cafes, [gardening] groups, people are really engaging with their local community. It's a huge shift in the national culture.” Dan Thompson, Empty Shops Network

"As online shopping, out-of-town malls, and economic recession conspire to keep shoppers away from England's town centers, high streets up and down the country are taking on a snaggle-toothed, downtrodden air. The collapse of major chains like Woolworths and the pressures on independent traders has left many of the United Kingdom's shops standing empty, but increasingly artists, craftsmen, and community types are finding ways to keep these vacant spaces from desertion." Read the full post by GOOD, it's really worth it!

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