toy box

Thinking/Designing Out of the Box

I'm doing some research for content for my class next week and visited one of my favorite blogs: The Medici Effect.  I was looking for interesting stories about Innovation - who, what, where, why and how.  Frans Johansson, Author of the Medici Effect, talks about "Intersections" and has a collection of "Intriguing Combinations". 

It was there that I found this video and Frans' well written description of how this video and innovative thinking really illustrates one of the main ideas in The Medici Effect:  If you apply existing concepts in fields where they haven’t been used before it dramatically increases your chances of being innovative.

Credit for the video and concept goes to Front Design, a design firm located in Stockholm, Sweden.

Discovery World

We had an opportunity to visit and work Discovery World in Milwaukee last week.

Discovery World at Pier Wisconsin is a non-profit organization located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on the shores of beautiful Lake Michigan.
Discovery World is committed to educational, cultural, and environmental development.
Our exhibits and programs are designed to inspire exploration and creation, and provide life-long learning for our visitors.

Really interesting and forward-thinking concept for a museum to take on. We're looking forward to reporting more of them in the future.

We-think

We-think:
Innovation by the masses not for the masses.

"If the 20th century marked the rise of mass consumerism, one feature of the 21st century will be the rise of the mass participation economy: innovation by the masses not for the masses. Now innovation and creativity are becoming mass activities, dispersed across society. We-think is an effort to understand this new culture, where these new ways of organizing ourselves have come from and where they might lead. In a participation economy people want not services and goods, delivered to them, but tools so they can take part and places in which they can play, share, debate with others...They could change not just the way that the media, software and entertainment works but also the way we organise education, health care, cities and indeed the political system."