Innovators Guide

Let Ugly Live

I have found that some people who believe in 'design thinking' have an inordinate craving for order and control. They want a solution that puts everything into slots were they can find it later. Unfortunately, the law of unintended consequences bites them every time. Thinking ugly is not just about avoiding pretty. It's about opening yourself up to the possibility of new values.

UGLY: How Unorthodox Thinking Will Save Design, by Tad Toulis - Core77. 2008-Oct-30

Truth and beauty are good things, right? Not necessarily. Design's traditional preference on establishing 'order' has had the consequence of driving a collateral and unchecked pursuit of beauty. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, of course, and as such is subject to the vagaries of cultural bias and popular opinion. By degrees this pursuit of beauty has gradually been replaced with the much more predictable and less admirable accomplishment of achieving 'pretty'. And while consumer culture, planned obsolesce and design culture in general have benefited soundly from the creation, production and documentation of pretty things—the pursuit of pretty hasn't pushed the discipline of design into the tighter, less comfortable and ultimately more rigorous inquiries that outside forces (sustainability for example) are aligning to demand of us. How might product designers better position the discipline to take on the hairy problems of sustainability, economic uncertainty, global competition and the like? Well, one thing is for certain, simply co-opting present patterns of consumption into activities and services linked to conservation won't get us there. That path might work if the world population of 6.5 billion was to stay fixed, but with an additional 3 billion consumers arriving to the party by 2050 we'll need to find more expedient (read: more creative) solutions. ...

Don't rely on what you can anticipate; believe in the creative power of experimentation.

Good Time to Work on a Wild Idea

If you need investor capital, it's a terrible time to start a company. But if you are investing your time, it'll may never be cheaper!

Paul Graham: Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy, 2008-Oct

As a founder, you're buying stock with work: the reason Larry and Sergey are so rich is not so much that they've done work worth tens of billions of dollars, but that they were the first investors in Google. And like any investor you should buy when times are bad.

Find Something Different to Read

Innovators are always under pressure to find new connections, new combinations. If you can't get out of the house, travel and explore, it can be difficult. Unless you get a fresh book. ... Some really surprising suggestions here:

Gdnss blog: Inspired Reading, 2008-Oct-11, from Goodness Graphic Design

I’m very excited to kick-off our new Goodness blog with this little project. I asked a group of outstanding graphic designers the following question…

Please recommend a book that you have found particularly inspiring or meaningful to your development as a creative person?

The one restriction: Please no books on graphic design.

I had a feeling that these artists would lead me to some new favorites. I enjoy following up on cross-referenced suggestions that lurk about in a lot of pop-culture. Watch almost any Scorsese film, and you’ll catch little snippets of his favorite movies. I found out about The Jazz Singer from Goodfellas. This sort of thing happens all the time once you keep an eye out for it. If you really connect with the source, you’ll probably really appreciate what they like too.

The responses I received form an all-together unexpected and intriguing reading list. One that should keep me busy for the next year or so. Also fascinating are the personal statements reflecting why their books are so meaningful to them.

Merlin Mann Buckles Down

A reminder that WHAT we do matters more than HOW we do it. Seriously.

43 Folders: Time, Attention, and Creative Work, 2008-Sep-10, by Merlin Mann:

If the work that really matters to you involves understanding a relationship between a handful of seemingly unrelated things and then figuring out the best way to portray, magnify, or resolve those relationships, then you’re already doing creative work. Any time you make a connection between two or more axes that hadn’t occurred to you 10 minutes ago, yes, you’ve done something creative. Seriously. This does not require your wearing a beret.

But, then — and this is really important — if you want to actually make something out of all that insight, and if you have the will and desire to polish and improve the execution of all the things you produce, then we’ll have a lot to talk about.

Project Voyeurism

It's very motivating to look around and see how much else is getting done.

Behance: Tip: 10 Realizations For Productivity & Making Ideas Happen.

5. A degree of voyeurism and transparency keeps us engaged.
Twitter and other online “activity feeds” prove that the future of communication is passive as well as active. Being able to tune in and search everything that happens around you is more valuable than getting emails or holding “status posting” meetings.