Convergence

The Designers Accord: An industrywide coalition to promote sustainability

The topic of sustainable or green design is of increasing urgency to companies involved in product development. Last year, it reached a tipping point in public interest and concern over global climate change, fueled by massive media interest.

Companies that fail to address it risk legislative punishment, as well as negative brand and sales consequences. But green also provides a huge market opportunity: recent surveys have indicated that key customer segments are willing to pay more for greener products.

Lots of companies at this year's Consumer Electronics Show were touting green design and environmental thinking, though as my colleague … Read more

Design (thinker) hubris?

In an article for In These Times magazine, Alix Rule injects some fresh thinking into the realm of "design thinking," which has traditionally been mainly affiliated with parties like Bruce Nussbaum, associate editor of BusinessWeek, and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (also known as the d-school). Rule is skeptical about design thinkers' self-acclaimed world-changing mandate: "As we look beyond housing solutions to urban poverty, good design is enjoying a second coming as the cure for what ails us." She feels that designers overburden themselves with these universal goals, and she asks for realism … Read more

RenGen: a generation of cultural consumers?

Isn't it interesting how trends are made? "One of the things I like about trends is that they seem so easy -- Blue is the color of 2008! GenY likes health food!" observes Stacey Gillar. Coupling the disparate ("Chic Trash"), pushing an already extreme concept to the extreme ("Radical Transparency"), or simply announcing the advent of something "new" ("Nouvelle Vague," "Nouveau Niche," etc.) are some of the flourishing categories. Or you simply repackage an old concept.

"RenGen," short for Renaissance Generation and the title of … Read more

Net users are becoming their own reputation managers

With everyone becoming a producer in the YouTube age, self-branding ("The Brand Called You") has evolved from a fancy to a necessity.

Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame have shrunk to 5 seconds of microfame, and in the contained public arena of social networks, amateur paparazzi--thanks to the viral nature of social media--have the power to grant celebrity status. That, in a nutshell, is the thesis of Clive Thompson's poignant piece for Wired on the rise of "microcelebrities."

As Facebook walls make personal communications open to the rest of your trusted network, even your … Read more

doof: Converging gaming and social networking

Doof, says company spokesman Devang Chouhan, is all about "playing games and meeting people" -- in other words: fun. The UK-based "social gaming" start-up aims to mesh aspects of multi-layer online gaming with social networking, providing a highly personalized and visually rich user experience based on the Flex technology.

Liad Shababo, founder of doof, explains: "When we came up with the idea for doof we quickly realised there was nothing like it in the market, and there was a real hunger among social networkers for something new. We have spent months working to perfect the … Read more

In between years: Trends and snippets

Soccer and innovation: I blogged about " what Ronaldinho and FC Barcelona can teach you about innovation" before "el cl?sico" on Sunday, and, well, there was a certain risk that my bold claim would backfire. Madrid slammed Barca in its own backyard 1-0, and while I'm flattered that my favorite Fox soccer analyst Bobby McMahon is linking to my post, his comment still stings a little...

Monarchy 2.0: Queen Elizabeth has launched a new channel on YouTube--the Royal Channel--that will broadcast her traditional Christmas address, at 7 a.m. PST Tuesday. According to … Read more

What Ronaldinho and soccer can teach you about innovation

It's been a lackluster soccer season so far, especially in my favorite league, the Spanish Primera Division. The performances of the two top teams, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona (Barca), have been inconsistent, and while both have displayed some exceptional skills in their best matches, the passion, the surprise, and the big drama, all of which crucial elements of soccer's unique appeal, have been largely missing.

There is hope that this will change on Sunday when the two archrivals battle each other for the first time this season, in the derby of derbies, "El Cl?sico," … Read more

Trends 2008: The end of marketing?

Robert Stephens, founder and chief inspector of The Geek Squad, contends that " Marketing is a tax you pay for being unremarkable." Does marketing smell bad? Or is it perhaps even dead? There have been a number of articles recently that question the marketer's ability to make sense of his/her somewhat wishy-washy role. BusinessWeek reveled in the "short life of the CMO," and McKinsey Quarterly provided some stats that reveal how much today's marketing executives are grappling with the new social media environment, arguing that "many chief marketers still have narrowly defined roles … Read more

Trends 2008: Will 3D printing finally go mainstream?

Everyone wants to be a designer. That's the value proposition of JuJups.com, a new online service claiming it will allow consumers to design their own personalized and customized 3D content. 3D printing, as the underlying technology is called, is a form of rapid prototyping that builds up three-dimensional objects by "printing" successive layers of materials (polymer, cells, sugar, etc.) on top of each other.

As a recent Wired story points out, 3D-printing technology has been around for a while, mostly used by professional design firms and design-intensive businesses such as automakers, handset makers, and aerospace companies. … Read more

Digital Economy Factbook, 2007 edition

Just in time for reading on airplane trips or long car rides to relatives' houses for the holidays, the Progress and Freedom Foundation has published its ninth edition of the Digital Economy Factbook. It's chock full of interesting stats and trends, well worth downloading a copy if you make use of such info.