This talk by John McWhorter is another of my favorites from TED 2013. It's elegant, witty, informative, intelligent, entertaining, persuasive. This is so because McWhorter only gives one talk here. Allow me to say more about what I mean by that.
Something which I've noticed lately is the communicative power of extremely simple (almost "non-designed") text slides like those used by McWhorter in this talk. As a speaker, when you employ projected imagery to help communicate the points of your lecture, you increase the risk of distracting your audience from the content delivered by your own voice. What I mean is that if the image you project doesn't exactly follow the words you speak, or easily relate to them, all of a sudden you're asking your audience to process two streams of loosely connected information. That's a difficult task and a big ask, because you're essentially asking your audience to process and understand two talks in parallel.
1DR -— how does this happen?
I am guilty of this transgression. I find that the probability of inflicting this harm on your audience increases when you choose imagery not of your own creation, be it a stock photo or an image that's almost to your point, but not quite. Unsolicited advice: if the image you project isn't the thing you're talking about, choose a different image. Or forgo the image altogether. Better to take McWhorter's path and employ very simple slides with very carefully selected letters and words... just a few. And those words should match those coming out of your mouth, so that the visuals reinforce what you're saying, instead of competing with it.
This doesn't apply to talks whose entire point is to show visual content, of course. With those, let it all run free in maximum technicolor glory.
To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, comedy writing and car design are two
things you don’t see people doing in public. So here’s a video peek at
Seinfeld’s private creative process—and that of Michael Mauer and Mitja
Borkert, both design leaders at Porsche. When it comes to revving up
your own creative process, they’re inspiring studies.
How do these three creative masters do what they do? Let’s watch and see what we can learn:
Seinfeld, Mauer, and Borkert are all extremely thoughtful about their
craft and dedicated to constantly raising the bar for what “good” looks
like. These videos are master classes in creativity, with five
important takeaways:
Insist on Great Fundamentals.
All three know the power of getting the creative rocket pointed in the
right direction. For car designs, Borkert declares “...the proportions
are the crucial beginning of any project.” The same holds true for
jokes, where Seinfeld says “I like the first line to be funny right
away.” They don’t spend energy making a lousy shape attractive, or a bad
joke funny. It’s about having the right architecture from the start.
Seinfeld even talks about his comedy writing in structural terms, saying
“...I’m looking for the connective tissue that gives me that really
tight, smooth link, like a jigsaw puzzle.” The creative process for both
great cars and great jokes starts with great fundamentals.
Obsess Over Details.
All three focus on the kinds of details—from minute surface transitions
on a windshield to nuances of syllables in a string of words—that none
of us civilians ever notice. Except that we do, because when it comes to
great things, it’s the overall experience we remember, and that
experience is shaped by myriad details whose sum is greater than the
parts. Details such as the fun index of a string of words like “chimps
in the dirt playing with sticks”. Details such as the depth of an air
outlet. At the seven minute mark you can hear Mauer questioning a
surface transition on the back bumper of the Panamera. As a layperson, I
couldn’t see anything amiss, but you know it was a big deal for them.
Details matter.
Pack the Right Tools. For
creativity to effect change in the world, it requires expression.
Seinfeld’s tools are yellow legal pads and blue Bic pens. The Porsche
equipment used by Mauer and Borkert costs quite a bit more, but they
have it all at hand, too. Having the right tools nearby deftly
eliminates the procrastinator’s excuse of “I could be creative if only I
had the right pen.” Pack your tools, get going, and create!
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Creativity is hard work. Edison’s observations about 1% inspiration and
99% perspiration are true. It can be tempting to take the path of least
resistance. But when faced with thorny challenges, gritty optimism is
the wellspring for creativity and magic solutions. Interestingly, both
Seinfeld and Mauer found it a challenge to resolve their respective tale
and tail. For Seinfeld, it required hard work to uncover the
breakthrough Pop Tarts line, “...they can’t go stale because they were
never fresh”. For Mauer, the right shape for the Porsche station wagon
was terra incognita: “...the rear of it is certainly the greatest
challenge—we never had that kind of car at Porsche before.” Designers
made piles of sketches, stared at clay models, and iterated often to
come up with that beautiful 3D Porsche signature effect. Whether it’s a
car or a joke, lathering, rinsing, and repeating—over and over—is what
transforms good into great.
Master Your Creative Domain (But Then Forget About It).
Notice how fluid the creative process feels for Seinfeld and the
Porsche designers. A creative process isn’t something you learn in a day
and use forever, and it isn’t a set of simple steps you read out of a
manual. It takes years to develop, and the more you use it, the more
your confidence grows. Drawing, surfing, playing the piano—it’s true for
all creative endeavors. At some point you move beyond rote process so
that it all becomes your natural way of being, what you were put on
earth to do. Then you can create like the masters Seinfeld and Mauer and
Borkert, with great confidence, joy, energy, and total engagement in
the task at hand. First you master the art, then your own process, then
you forget all that and just do it.
There’s a universal
creative process we all share—but as many permutations of it exist as
there are people on the planet. The point is to be conscious of your own
process, and to always be evolving it. Now, I’ll never write a joke
like Seinfeld or profile a headlamp like Mauer, but I can learn from the
specifics of their creative approach in order to improve my own. In the
details of another person’s creative process are the universals we can
all learn from.
There's some amazing design work happening at GM these days. Though I have not driven either model (they're not on the market yet), I'm really impressed by the design work done on two new GM models, the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette and the 2014 Cadillac CTS.
Each car manages to capture the essence of its respective marque while also breaking new ground aeshtetically. These designs feel very confident and bold, and everything from the overall proportions to very small details in the interiors really work and cohere nicely. I can't wait to see future variants of these two hit the market over the next few years—here's hoping they'll ship a CTS-V Wagon!
Great designs like these don't happen by accident. And it's not just about having great designers at work, either. For things like this to happen, the entire business system needs to be well, firing on all cylinders. Culture and organizational dynamics are key to making great stuff happen. You can tell a lot about the fitness of a system based on what it produces, and these two cars provide some substantial evidence that GM knows how to generate, develop, and execute good ideas once again. And that's pretty gnarly in my world.
Have you ever held a wooden surfboard? What a revelation. In my humble opinion they are some of the most beautiful objects around
Paul Jensen is a master craftsman who, among other things, creates truly gorgeous surfboards out of wood. He also does the occasional van conversion, transforming the inside of a Sprinter van from this:
... to this format, fully fettled for far-flung adventuring:
In this photo blog, Paul documents almost every build step and design decision of this conversion. As a builder, I love to see someone else's creative process tick. It's pretty amazing to see how Paul takes a bunch of rather humble materials and transforms them into a bespoke interior for this Sprinter, in turn transforming it into an adventuremobile. I want one!
We can learn a lot about good prototyping process from Paul. One of my principles for innovating is "anything can be prototyped, and you can prototype with anything". Speaking of prototyping with anything, Paul used 1/8" thick plywood to create this quick mockup of the interior of the Sprinter van:
Each square represents one square foot in the actual van, making this prototype a very effective way for Paul to check his initial plans, improve his design ideas, and communicate them to his client. The little plywood dude there helps everyone translate the scale model to reality. It's also a fast and cheap medium to work in, so even if his initial design direction took them down the wrong road, there's not much ego to be lost in chucking the whole thing and starting over. Much, much easier than going from drawings directly to the van and only then realizing that your client thought that "left" meant behind the driver and now the sink is on the wrong side.
Now, for those of you busy pivoting your startup's iPhone app to one that actually might make money, putting cabinets in a Sprinter van may seem simultaneously quaint and trivial and even passé, but path dependence is for real. Getting on the wrong design trajectory bites even the biggest and most expensive of endeavors. Earlier in my career I was part of a massive online software project, and via a lack of prototyping we overlooked some key user needs and ended up spending years engineering a platform that was ulitmately a dead end. Careers weren't ruined, but it would have been a lot more fun and profitable to build the right thing in the first place.
Whatever you're working on right now, I want you to build a prototype of it tomorrow. No matter what it is, you can figure out how to make a quick prototype. I know you can. Give yourself and hour to create the prototype, and then spend an hour showing to people. Just build it like you mean it, and listen like you're wrong. It'll be awesome.
This elegant talk by artist and designer Ron Finley was by far the highlight of my experience at TED last week. I find it inspiring on so many levels -- here are a few:
I am inspired by the way Ron Finley went back to first principles to find a solution to the challenges he witnessed in his neighborhood, South Central. In his hometown, the obesity rate is ten times that of more affluent areas located only miles away. Goods and services are popping up to deal with the problems brought on by obesity, but they only really deal with the symptoms, and not the root cause. As Finley says in this talk, "Food is the problem and the solution". Yes, indeed. Having now listened to this talk three times, I can't help but admire the way he looked deeply at the challenge, and with a designer's mind started to build solutions to enable people to change fundamental aspects of their behaviors which lead to illness and further poverty. Dreaming of and planting a Food Forest is nothing if not an act of inspiration.
I am inspired by the design of his talk itself. These days it's relatively easy to mimic the "standard" format of a TED talk: lots of compelling images and words projected up behind the speaker, all there to push the narrative forward. But nailing a talk the way Finley does here is actually very difficult. Notice the way his photos and screen texts correspond exactly to whatever he's trying to communicate at that moment. He avoids the use of inauthentic stock imagery, and the few words projected up on the screen correspond to only those select ideas he wants to have stick with you: PLANT SOME SHIT!
I am inspired by the way he is helping his neighbors to design their own lives. Especially the children. He talks about the importance of manufacturing your own reality, versus robotically accepting the path designed for you by others. As I listened to Finley speak in Long Beach, my mind immediately connected to this amazing statement written by my colleague Tim Brown a few years ago. Beyond immediate impact of helping people marooned in a food desert eat in ways that are building healthier bodies and minds, Finley is enabling those people to create intent in their lives, and act upon it. The act of designing and bringing something wonderful to life, be it a garden, a house, or one's own self, is nothing but the continuous expression of mindful intent.
Above all, I am inspired by Ron Finley himself and his passion for action. As I've written before, my definition of leadership is very simple: it's the act of making something happen which otherwise would not have happened. In my book, Ron Finley's guerrilla, renegade, let's-not-just-talk-let's-do-something-now approach to gardening is the triple distilled essence of leadership, and that's pretty damn inspiring.
A few days ago I came across this wonderful interview of Chris Bangle done by Hugo Becker in June 2012. I did a lot of research prepping for my Revs Program event with Chris, but I unfortunately never saw this one -- I would have done a much better job had I been able to read it. It's really good.
Here's a wonderful passage where Chris talks about his current approach to designing things, and the thinking here has a direct connection to his amazing "the fox is pretty because the fox has a pretty tail" thoughts expressed at Stanford:
The other thing I have am trying to do –– and this I would ask your
readers to consider –– is to look at the world of design-creativity as
an endless stream with many contributors instead of a one-time
phenomenon coming from the pen of some famous-star-designer. The problem
with “the star designer” is that everybody else who is in the execution
process either does their job 100% right or 100% wrong ––like a
machine.
I’m trying to empower the people in my projects; to help them understand
they are all active participants in a seamless creative change process.
To make everyone be engaged and to somehow actually experience a
contributive participation…instead of me the designer saying: “Okay,
here’s the design, I’ve drawn it, now you take it and if you screw it up
God help you”.
I think this is a really powerful set of ideas. It's vitally important that people engaged in the process of designing stuff make some decisions about whether they want to empower or dis-empower the people around them as they make their way through that process.
If my time at IDEO has taught me anything, it's that a creative environment need not be toxic, caustic, or unnecessarily stressful. In fact, the reality is quite the opposite: if you want people to do great work together, just treat them like competent, intelligent, well-intentioned human beings, and then diligently cultivate the elements of dignity, joy, and achievement which generate a satisfying inner worklife. People who are feeling beautiful on the inside do beautiful things out in the world.
My fear for all those people reading Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs is that they assume that being an asshole and exociating people within an inch of their life is the key to achieving greatness as a leader of creative endeavors. To be sure, there's nothing wrong with being demanding and maintaining the highest standards, but when one considers the totality of what one is trying to create in the world, and not just that thing you're working so hard to ship, there's so much more to reckon with: What's the culture you're creating? How will people relate to their families when they go home in the evening? Will people regret any of the things they had to do to meet the standards you established as being non-negotiable? Ultimately, what's the price to be paid for being inhumane along the way? Does the end ever justify the means?
This past November I very fortunate to spend time with Chris Bangleduring his visit to Stanford. I deeply admire the work Chris led at BMW and FIAT; I'm fortunate to drive one of his cars and I spend a lot of spare cycles oggling other ones I see on the street. They're gorgeous, passionate sculptures, and you can't help but feel the strong point of view driving their designs.
He gave a helluva great talk about designing for difference, which you can see in the video below. We talked through myriad topics in our Q&A session after this presentation, but related to the themes I mention above, I'd like to point you to the response Chris gave to my final question, "Speaking about design, where do you want to go?". Chris stood up and said something very profound, starting with an Italian saying he's heard from the farmers in his village:
The fox is pretty because the fox has a pretty tail.
You can hear all of our exchange starting at around the one hour two minute mark. Please listen to all of his statement from that point on -- it's an elegant riposte to the idea that one must be brutal to create things which are beautiful:
We create things which are beautiful by making the
process of creation beautiful for everyone involved. The fox is pretty
because the fox has a pretty tail.
Last week I attended the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco. It's like the CES of food, with over 1,300 exhibitors from 35 countries showing 80,000 products to over 17,000 attendees. If that sounds like a recipe for something big and overwhelming, well, you'd be right -- after seven hours walking the floor (even with two espressos and a bunch of bacon chocolate in me), I was ready to cry uncle. But don't get me wrong -- it was really a cool experience!
Thing is, I am not a fancy food aficionado, nor am I an expert on anything concerning the food industry. To be sure, my employer IDEO does significant work across the domains of food, nutrition, beverages, water, and wellness, but I'm not directly involved with much of that work. So why did I take a valuable weekend day to attend this show? Well, the answer is twofold. First, I wanted to gain more empathy for my colleagues who care very deeply about this stuff; I want to really understand their passion for food.
Second, immersing yourself in new places, situations and experiences is how you become and stay an innovative soul. I'm a strong believer in taking a stroll through pastures far flung from those one naturally gravitates to. It's not hard to convince me to attend gatherings focused on networks of things, robotics, software, or Porsches. But, if I only ever pay attention to those types of events, my ability to see patterns or make breakthrough associations across unconnected worlds will diminish over time. If creativity is about making connections between seemingly unrelated things, then living in a bubble (or even a handful of bubbles) becomes a limiting factor on the heights your imagination can reach. If you're engaged in the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life, you owe it to yourself to expose your brain to an ever more diverse set of inputs and experiences.
How? I always think of a point made by -- I think by Buckminster Fuller, I'm not really sure? -- which in essence said that, to enlarge one's scope of awareness, one should always buy the magazine located in the upper right corner of a newstand. Doing so ensures that you are always exploring an area you don't know anything about. In 2013 terms, I think this means following random (but interesting) folks on Twitter, letting your eyes run wild on Instagram, and going to things like the Fancy Food Show. If you only follow people you know and like on Twitter, how will you ever hear about anything that doesn't make sense to your current worldview?
What did I learn at the Fancy Food Show? I'm not sure yet, to be honest. I did experience some, ahem, interesting branding choices, such as a breakfast cereal called Holy Crap. Aside from those unexpected jolts to my sense of right and wrong and good taste in the universe ("...I wonder how they came up with that?" was a common refrain in my brain), I didn't have an earth-shattering moment. Yet. And that's the point. It may be a year, five years down the road where some synapses fire and what I saw last week makes a difference. That's what living at the intersection is all about.
So, what next for this year? I'm planning to have several wilder kinesthetic experiences this year, such as a rally driving school, because I think they're even stickier than a purely intellectual experience, and so have a greater chance of really knocking your hat in the creek, innovation-wise. In that same vein, I'd really like to run a Zero One Odysseys adventure sometime soon. And I'll also be trying to attend some technology conferences I've never been to, and I'm going to visit a couple of places I've never been before. Who knows what I'll learn!
How will you try living at the intersection this year?
At one point in David Kelley's interview with Charlie Rose, Rose states that the process of going through life has a way of squeezing the creativity out of people. A depressing thought. But if we take it as true, how then do we make sure that the opposite happens? How might we ensure that everyone -- especially kids and teens -- has creativity infused into their existence? I've been pondering that question the past few days since that interview aired.
On a whim this morning I searched YouTube for the following video, which dates back to 1987:
As a saxophone-obsessed teenager, I must have watched my VHS tape of this Michael Brecker performance over 1,000 times. In 1987 I had the good fortune to be part of the 8 O'Clock Jazz Band at Farview High School in Boulder, led by Steve Christopher, or "Mr. C" as we all called him. We met at 8am each and every morning, which was just awesome -- what I would give now to be able to start each day with a creative hour of music making with group of folks who could swing some Basie or rock out on a Maynard Ferguson tune, too! Between jazz band practice and time at home, I was probably playing 2-3 hours a day. Much of my time at home was spent playing with and learning from Michael Brecker's solo album, which was a wicked mix of digital and analog technology, all brought together with his special blend of superior jazz chops and funky see, funky do. The tune Original Rays was my favorite, and my bandmate Rudresh Mahanthappa and I gave Mr. C more than a few grey hairs as we endeavored to emulate the feel, the emotion, and the total commitment to craft captured by the performance above.
If you've not been able to watch the entire video, please at least forward to the 5:45 mark and listen to Mike Stern's brilliant guitar solo. ROCK & ROLL. He totally wigs out, man! Incredible.
Infusing creativity: I learned so much from being in 8 O'Clock with Mr. C. Practical things, like how to work with a creative team of people toward a shared goal and how to stand up in front of hundreds of people and do your unique, personal thing. It also gave me the creative confidence to formulate a strong personal point of view and to create on top of that; I can think of of few better ways to prepare for life as a designer than to learn how to do jazz improvisation under pressure in front of a live audience. On a more intangible level, my hours blowing a horn gave me a deep appreciation for the more ethereal aspects of a life well-lied, such as beauty, elegance, and joy.
Most important of all, I was able to six years of daily reaching a state of flow. When everything is going right in the creative act, you feel a sense of transcendent joy and power and mastery. It's simply so awesome to experience as an individual, and in my opinion, it's even better when done as a team. Just look at the body language of Brecker and Stern in that video above -- there's extremely deep communication going on between then without a spoken word shared, and they take deep delight in helping each other get up to the top of that peak, and beyond.
From the standpoint of pure talent, I was never going to be a Michael Brecker-caliber saxophone player, no more than I will ever be as good a driver as Juan Manuel Fangio. But the beautify of pursuing flow is that it gives you a chance to experience exactly what the greats like Brecker and Fangio experienced, even if the outside world doesn't quite rate your output at the same level.
No matter: to be a person confident in one's creativity, what matters is what's going on between your ears. Do you know how great it feels to be in flow, and do you want to keep getting back there? Because that's all there is. If we want to help kids and teenagers feel like all that creative juice in them is brimming with excitement, energy, and a passion to create, we need to help them find ways to wallow around in the marvellous experience of reaching flow via creative expression. And let them go as deep as they want for as long as they want, whatever it may be. If they can remember how that feels, wherever they go in life, they'll be able to live a creative one.
I'm very happy to be interviewing Chris Bangle onstage next week as part of an Open Garage series event at the Stanford Revs Program. Our discussion will focus on the topic of "Designing for Difference in a World of Sameness". I have nothing but respect for what Chris did at Fiat, BMW, Mini and beyond. He knows what it means to believe passionately in a set of ideas, and to bring forth change to create something new in the world as an embodiment of those ideas.
The car I drive is a sculpture created by Chris and team, so you can imagine how stoked (and honored) I am to be having this discussion with him.
I'd love to hear what kinds of questions you'd like me to ask Chris -- please leave a comment below with your ideas, and I'll use them as input and inspiration for our talk. Thank you!
I hesitate to write this blog post, because I'm the prowl for a lightly used Cannondale Hooligan 3 -- in matte black, natch! (don't buy my bike, dude!) The Hooligan is still in production, but the 2012 version only comes in a shade of green which, while really wild, doesn't quite have the aesthetic brilliance of the bike above, in my humble opinion.
The Hooligan is all about Principle 19, Have a point of view. The Hooligan is a BMX bike fore adults, a ride for clowning around while you're commuting across town. It's not trying to win the Tour de France, it's not something you'd wear spandex on, and there's nary a spring nor an ounce of carbon fiber to be found.
What it is about is nimbleness and an extrovert aesthetic. It's polarizing to be sure, but I have a soft spot for eccentric aesthetics, and so the Hooligan's point of view is aimed exactly at people like me.
I wrote about the Faraday bike project a few months ago. It's a blast to ride, and provides a nicely integrated experience. It's a great design.
I'm happy to announce that Faraday Bikes is now a company, and is also on Kickstarter. So if you're interested in having your own Faraday, please check it out!
“I think subconsciously people are remarkably discerning. I think that they can sense care. One of the concerns was that there would somehow be, inherent with mass production and industrialisation, a godlessness and a lack of care. I think it’s a wonderful view that care was important – but I think you can make a one-off and not care and you can make a million of something and care. Whether you really care or not is not driven by how many of the products you’re going to make.”
I had a deep emotional response while watching this video about the DeltaWing project.
If you've ever struggled to bring something new and innovative to life, you know what everyone in this video is going through. What they've accomplished is immensely impressive.
Toward the end of the video, Dr. Don Panoz is wearing a shirt with the following aphorism emblazoned on its back:
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
Amen, Dr. Panoz. Amen. I think myself very lucky to be part of the team at IDEO, and there are very few teams or organizations I would consider signing up to belong to, but the DeltaWing project is certainly one of them. I once again tip my hat to Ben Bowlby and everyone there who has worked so hard to make a clever vision into a stunning reality.
Innovating is tough. Talking about it is easy. Doing it to the hilt and creating a true gamechanger is beyond hard. Respect.
"Don’t divide the world into 'creative' and 'non-creative'. Let people realize they are naturally creative ... When people regain that confidence, magic happens."
- David Kelley
Earlier this year at the TED conference I had the wonderful experience of watching my teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend David Kelley give the talk above. It's about building confidence in one's ability to be creative. It's also about empathy, courage, leadership, and choosing to strive to live the life you want to live.
I hope you enjoy listening to David's thoughts on creative confidence as much as I did.
Here's a great look at the Jeep Mighty FC concept car, as told by its designers. Though this director's commentary doesn't illuminate much of the actual design process which led to the creation of the Might FC, it does a wonderful job of showing us the importance of identifying and holding a strong point of view as you make your way through that process.
In particular, I like this quote from Mark Allen, the lead designer:
Although we work for a very, very large corporation, and you'd think there would be board meetings and all this stuff, really it's a few guys just saying, "I want to build this because it's cool." To have that kind of flexibility in our corporation is great. I've got great support to do this, and the vehicles come out very, very pure in thought. They're not watered down through a bunch of meetings and decisions. There's really never any regrets when we get it done.
Not only is it critical to establish a solid point of view, it is essential to trust the people who hold that vision to do the right thing. A team of talented designers can create a compelling concept car like the Mighty FC. An extremelky well-structured and led product development organization like Apple can take the vision of talented designers all the way to market.
I love this design. I hope they find a way to make it -- it would be such a boon to the Jeep marque.
Ferdinand Alexander Porsche, a designer who shaped many beautiful products, passed away yesterday. He is pictured above astride one the truly iconic designs of the 20th century, the Porsche 911. His Porsche, his design.
As an aside, how cool would it be to pose for a photo on a product of your own imagination? Pretty cool, I think.
To my eyes, the Porsche 911 is an object I never tire of. Particularly in its early incarnations, there's a very clean and pure design aesthetic at work. I also love the later 911's, with their shapely hips and bulging flares and scoops and spoilers, but the original design offers something different: formal, modern minimalism very much in keeping with the work of Dieter Rams from the same period, yet still connected to the flowing, ur-Porsche shapes and surfaces penned by the great Erwin Kommenda in the 1930's. In many ways that link between the streamlining period of car design and the very rational approach of the 1960's drives my abiding love of the 911 aesthetic: it is emotional in the right places, technical in the rest, and the combination just feels the way a sports car should: emotive, efficient, compact, agile.
I often think about cars I would want to have parked in my living room as sculptural objects, and an early 911 is at the fore, along with a Citroen DS, a Fiat 500, or a Saab 92. They all have their genesis in a certain time period, which probably says more about me than it does about them. But what I do think we can learn from all of these, and from Ferdinand Porsche and the 911 in particular, is the paramount importance of having a crisp point of view. Product experiences that are remarkable to use, to behold, to feel, are always the result of talented people who not only know what they're shooting for, but know what good looks like. If you want to have a thriving business concern, focus on creating great offerings first by hiring the best talent you can find an letting them run.
As an engineer, I can't help but admire the 911 from a dynamic standpoint. Here is a classic example of an approach which works in practice but not in theory. Who would have thought that this rear-engined architecture would go on to win everywhere from Le Mans to Daytona to Pikes Peak? The inherent maneuverability and traction advantages of the 911, when put to good use, provide a textbook case of strategy being the art of making the most of what you have that other's don't. A 911 is not a normal car, does not drive like one, and therefore can win in ways different from the mainstream. For a more visceral perspective on that thought, please see my other blog.
Back to the man. For me, the lesson I take from his story is that we must all strive to design our own lives. He was lucky enough to be born into a successful family which was also a company. On the other hand, imagine being born as Ferdinand Porsche, with a genius grandfather who defined many aspects of the automobile, and a successful industrialist father, who created a startup and navigated it to become a world-class brand. That would be a tough legacy to live up to. For some, that would be too much weight to carry. I think for Ferdinand Alexander, the key was that he was honest enough to say that he would be an industrial designer, and not an engineer like his father and grandfather. By doing so, he was able to express a deep congruence between his own dreams and the path of the firm, which resulted in the 911. When those two diverged, he expressed the entrepreneurial instincts which I believe all great designers carry, and founded his eponymous design firm, which went on to create many lust-worthy products.
So at the end of the day, whenever I see a 911, I'll think of the individual behind its shape, whose most worthy design was perhaps the arc of his own life.
The term "concept car" is used in many industries today to refer to a prototype that's meant to test a marketing concept. Obviously the origin of the term is in the auto industry. Under the guidance of design maestro Harley Earl, General Motors refined the art of the concept car in the 1950's, using one-off prototypes to test and showcase styling "trends" or upcoming technical innovations. A concept car is something for which the user experience has been fully fleshed out, but the supporting technical detailing may or may not be there, and certainly all the layers that make up a whole product -- sales, marketing, support, service -- are nonexistent. A concept car is usually built as a one-off or in extremely low volumes. These days if you were to bring a model -- working or not -- of a future personal computer to a tradeshow or demo opportunity, you might refer to it as a "concept car".
Last week Jeep released a concept car called the Mighty FC Concept. As you can see, it's very gnarly:
If you're the kind of person who dreams of parking a VW DOKA TriStar Syncro in your garage, as I write this you're probably creating an online petition to convince the powers that be at Jeep to put the Mighty FC into production. For everyone else, please allow me to explain why this particular Jeep concept car has created a ton of buzz out among the forward-control cognoscenti, to wit:
Historical Reference: the Mighty FC pays homage to the original Forward-Control Jeep, which was actually put into production in the 1950's. That particular design was done by the famous American designers Brooks Stevens. So the Mighty FC plays to nostalgia, but also is an "in" statement for a certain crowd.
Functional Elegance: I haven't explained forward-control yet: it's when you take a truck chassis where the driver and steering wheel sit behind the front wheels, and via some mechanical contortions, you arrange the new seating position to be above or beyond the front wheels. The iconic VW Bus is a forward-control job, too. Functionally speaking, forward control is an elegant packaging solution because it moves human cargo to the periphery of the vehicle, opening up the rest for other stuff you'd want to haul around. However, the functional deficit is that said human cargo now becomes the first on the scene of the accident, if you get my drift. Given modern engineering techniques, materials, air bags, and structural know-how, I have to believe that the Mighty FC could be made relatively crash-worthy.
Pure Macho Gnarlyness: while the Mighty FC is by Jeep after Jeep, I'd argue that its proportions and stance are actually those of the formidable Land Rover Forward Control. The British surely know how to make a handsome military vehicle. Unlike the Land Rover FC, the original Jeep forward-control had the surface detailing and proportions of a plant-eater: gentle, bucolic, easy going. Its trans-Atlantic second cousin, however, is big and bold and looks much mightier. And that's what the marketplace wants: to look tough and mighty. That green paint, those crazy portal axles, them big knobby tires, the two spot lights nestled up around that winch, those orange tow hooks, that bottle opener behind the driver's door handle -- this thing just looks killer. It's like, visceral, man.
So Jeep is going to build it, right? Who knows. Actually, probably not. I doubt that the business case for the Mighty FC would work out, and it's not clear there's actually a market for an off-road capable pickup -- it would likely appeal to that small segment of the auto-buying public which fancies vehicles such as the Citroen Mehari, BMW M Coupe, and Cadillac CTS-V wagon... eccentric cars, all, but memorable ones, too. To market it would be really great for Jeep's brand.
And therein lies my beef with concept cars in general. If you have a great idea, and if you believe in it, should you concept car it? I'd say no. If you aren't sure about it, there are other ways to gain confidence in its validity beyond showing your concept in public. And, if its such a great idea, why show all of your competitors what you're working on? Why tell them that you've had a great insight? And why alert the marketplace to an upcoming innovation? A couple of decades ago, Apple used to show lots of "concept cars" of future computing devices, and to what end? Very few of them shipped, and those that did were either met with disappointment -- because the reality couldn't compete with the concept -- or they drove down sales of existing product, which is not the best way to get the most out of your brand.
But perhaps the biggest reason not to show concept cars you don't ever intend to produce is that you disappoint your biggest fans, those net promoters who would do anything for, and tell anyone anything positive about, your brand. These are the folks who write blog posts like "I Am So Excited About The Jeep Mighty FC Concept I Think I Might Die", or who spend hours photoshopping your PR photos to show the rest of us what a four-door or full-van version might look like, or who write headlines in national newspapers asking "Has jeep created the most interesting concept of 2012?". Do you really want to excite these folks, only to disappoint them over the longer term? My gut says no. Product brands aren't like perennially losing baseball teams whose fans have no alternative to their hometown monopolistic losers. Instead, it's pretty easy to switch when you stop meeting my expectations. Better to surprise and delight me with a real product I never anticipated, than to tease me with vaporware that we both know you'll never ship.
The whole point of having a strong point of view is to ship something remarkable. And the reason we're here is to ship. If you do have that strong point of view, believe in it first, and commit yourself to shipping. Then -- and only then -- show off your concept car.
The fellow in the photo above is John Stevens, a self-taught civil engineer who made a huge contribution to the development of the Panama Canal over a hundred years ago. I've been learning about him through the pages of David McCullough's amazing work The Path Between the Seas, which is the story of how the Panama Canal came to be. From political intrigue which brings down governments to financial engineering that would make even a Goldman VP blush to the hard-headed bravery of entrepreneurial engineers like Stevens, this book has it all. It's the ultimate start up fable. It was recommended to me by my friend and colleague Bob Sutton, who is a big fan of the book, too:
This is a great story of how creativity happens at a really big scale. It is messy. Things go wrong. People get hurt. But they also triumph and do astounding things. I also like this book because it is the antidote to those who believe that great innovations all come from start-ups and little companies (although there are some wild examples of entrepreneurship in the story -- especially the French guy who designs Panama's revolution -- including a new flag and declaration of independence as I recall -- from his suite in the Waldorf Astoria in New York, and successfully sells the idea to Teddy Roosevelt ). As my Stanford colleague Jim Adams points out, the Panama Canal, the Pyramids, and putting a man on moon are just a few examples of great human innovations that were led by governments.
For all you interested in the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life, this is a mandatory read. It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking up a copy -- you won't regret it.
Anyway, back to John Stevens. Anyone tasked with leading teams of creative people on a quest -- where you know what you are going after, but you have no idea how you're going to get there -- needs to study Stevens. A railroad man who trailblazed many a path through the mountains of the American West, Stevens instinctively knew how to get on with things, and how to inspire every one else to do their best. In a very Dave Packard kind of way, the guy knew the value of literally getting in the trenches to so that he could know -- really know -- what was happening out in the world. Where his failed predecessors in the saga of the canal ruled from the dry and safe roost of a remote office, upon his arrival in Panama, Stevens made a huge difference to the morale and direction of the entire enterprise simply by pulling on some big rubber boots and walking up and down the line of excavations, all the while chomping on a cigar. This guy is a role model for all us trying to make a dent in the universe.
McCullough includes some choice quotes from Stevens, many of which come from some books he authored later in life, which I am planning to read after I finish Path Between the Seas. Here are some of my favorites, with some color commentary:
"With great respect to supermen, it has probably been my misfortune, but I have never chanced to meet any of them."
As you might expect from someone with the discipline to put in the amount of study to become a self-taught engineer, Stevens was a believer in the simple value of hard work. I have to believe that if Stevens were to be alive today in order to meet Roger Penske, he would deeply admire Penske's aphorism, "Effort equals results". I also like this quote because it says something about the nature of talent, that it's not just about being born with something, but being willing to develop your talent, to gain the kind of experience that only comes with mileage.
"There are three diseases in Panama. They are yellow fever, malaria, and cold feet; and the greatest of these is cold feet."
I love that line. I'd wager that more organizations die of cold feet than from the burns that come with trying and failing. For anyone who has ever engaged with getting an organization to change, it's cold feet that you're fighting.
"You won't get fired if you do something, you will if you don't do anything. Do something if it is wrong, for you can correct that, but there is no way to correct nothing."
In fact, I like his formulation a lot more than mine: there is no way to correct nothing, so do something.
"Coming up with ideas is interesting and indefinable, isn't it? The brain is a funny thing. An idea often emerges in the shower, or during a walk. Your brain has been ticking away and the idea just bubbles up. Occasionally you feel, 'God, I've gone dry.' It's like writers' block. Shortly before the launch of a new car, when I've used all my existing ideas, I think, 'Now what?' But running the car produces new ideas as you understand what you've created."
The Delta Wing. It looks like a rocket, but it's a car. It also represents a fundamental, albeit still potential, paradigm shift in our conception of what a racing car can be. I love the way it looks, and am even more excited about what it represents.
For students of the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life, the key question isn't "will it win?", but "how did it come to be?". Hopefully someday someone will write a book on the story of the Delta Wing. For now there's Wikipedia and this good Popular Mechanics article for those of you interested in the backstory on this amazing car.
Because I don't know enough yet about the how on this one, let's focus on the what. If the Delta Wing were a movie and you were the director, here are the characters you'd ask central casting to deliver to your set to weave a compelling tale of daring innovation:
The Ace Technologist: Ben Bowlby is the technical mastermind behind the Delta Wing and the leader of a spectacularly talented and experienced design team. I admire the elegance of his design vision, and the way in which he went back to first principles in order to reach for a new outcome. The Delta Wing effectively performs as well as cars having double the horsepower. That kind of elegant efficiency is what we need in the world today. Efficiency is sexy, a notion that some wayward manufacturers would do well to rediscover.
The Visionary Entrepreneurs: two business-savvy racers were instrumental in making the Delta Wing happen. Chip Ganassi provided financial backing for the first prototype of the Delta Wing, which was not accepted by the racing series it was designed for (see The Enlightened Incubator entry below). Duncan Dayton then took the ball and ran with it, recasting the Delta Wing as a Le Mans competitor, and practising some magic to build a coalition capable of developing, building, testing, and ultimately running a competitive new racecar design -- quite a task. Dayton epitomizes the truest sense of entrepreneurship: making things happen by making the smartest use of the resources you have at hand. Dr. Don Panoz, an entrepreneur's entrepreneur, and Scott Atherton also played pivotal roles in the genesis of the Delta Wing. And last but not least, kudos to Nissan for having the guts to engage with this endeavor as a motor supplier and sponsor. Their commitment to innovating makes me want that GT-R even more.
A Team of Artists Who Ship: The Delta Wing is built by the heroes at All American Racers (AAR). AAR is hallowed ground in the racing world, as place where heroes like Dan Gurney and Phil Remington still walk the halls. Over its long history, AAR has proven to be one of the most innovative institutions based on US soil. I don't know about you, but the idea that the master maker Phil Remington had a hand in the creation of the Delta Wing, well, it sends shivers down my spine.
The Enlightened Incubator: you can't run a race car without a sanctioning body to hold the race. At the annual 24 Hours of Le Mans race, there are 55 positions available for race cars to compete. Early on in the Delta Wing venture, Duncan Dayton and company secured the 56th place on the grid from the sanctioning body for Le Mans, the Automobile Clube de l'Quest. While the Delta Wing won't be contesting the Le Mans race for points, it will be an integral part of the racing field, and will live out of the "56th garage" at the Le Mans circuit. This idea of the 56th garage being available represents highly enlightened thinking when it comes to the art and science of innovation. I've written before here on the vital importance of designating a place for the people in your organization to fail. And while I hope the Delta Wing has a successful race at Le Mans, no matter what happens they will have learned a substantial amount, and the cause of innovation will be served. Next year's car will be that much better due to the enlightened incubation of Garage 56.
Professionals to Get the Job Done: at the track, the Delta Wing will be run by the storied Highcroft Racing team. Though most of the focus in racing is on the driver, it is actually one of the ultimate team sports, especially in the kind of endurance racing the Delta Wing is designed for. Ideas are one thing, executing against them is quite another. It takes a village.
A Brave Protagonist: and then there's the human in the hot seat, Marino Franchitti. Race drivers are only as good as their last race -- it's an incredibly competitive sport, and there's a line of drivers out the door waiting to take over your spot. That's why I admire Marino Franchitti's willingness to take on the reputational and career risk of driving not just a new car, but a new paradigm. Unfortunately, the world of racing does not operate by the rule of Silicon Valley, and failures are not celebrated as points of learning. On the other hand, someone had to pilot the Wright Flyer, and now Orville's name is one for the ages. Hats off to Marino, and here's to him showing us how fast this thing can really go, WFO. He has guts.
One Sexy Beast: from an aesthetic standpoint, I think the Delta Wing rocks. It looks wicked - why be beautiful when you could be interesting? Of course, I've been accused of having a rather unmainstream view of car aesthetics (here, here, and here, for example), but I call 'em like I see 'em. This thing grabs your attention, and keeps it. I believe a whole generation of 8-year-old kids are going to fall in love with automobiles because of the Delta Wing. And here's a suggestion to the fine folks at Polyphony and Nissan: create a digital version of the Delta Wing and let the rest of us drive it virutally in Gran Turismo 5. It'll do wonders for the Nissan brand, and it will create a pull effect on the conservative world of racing: we really want to see you professionals race the cars we love driving online.
To sum it up, if you're going to shift a paradigm, you could do worse than to try and do it with a really sexy beast like this one, but you'd better have the entire innovation ecosystem in place, too. Enjoy the photos and videos below.
If you google "design thinking process", you'll be presented with a series of diagrams or lists or steps which, in a linear fashion, purport to represent the way a good designer works. They'll often look something like this:
Understand
Observe
Ideate
Prototype
Test
... and cycle back to Step 1
We're all familiar with cooking manuals, and this one feels not unlike a good recipe for chocolate chip cookies... first this, then that, and then do this. Easy, safe, predictable, comfortable.
Except, that's not the way designing really happens. There is no six-step process to design nirvana. It doesn't exist. Over the years I've tolerated and communicated this linear portrayal of the design process because it's an easy way to explain the gist of things to folks not familiar with the art and science of bringing new stuff to life. The secret is that, when you're designing, it feels like all of these at once. So I used to draw this linear process up on a wall, and then wave my hands in the air and say something like "But really, it's a big furball... when you're really doing it, you're bouncing all over the place and the steps don't matter."
I think we can do better than that. And now I know how.
A wise colleague recently corrected me on all of this. "Prototyping isn't a step in the process," he said. "It is the process."
Exactly. Designers are always prototyping, whether it's moving things around in their imagination, building a reverse income statement in Excel, or hacking something out of wood using a sidewalk as sandpaper. The notion that a designer waits until it's "prototyping time" to start messing around with stuff is just wrong. Prototyping starts when the design process begins, and it never stops. We build to understand. We observe for generative insight but we also observe to gather data regarding the hack we just whipped up ten minutes ago. We ideate with our gut and our hands as much as with our brains.
We prototype all the time. We must prototype all the time. Prototyping is the process.
The great entrepreneur, marker, artist, and businessman Sergio Scaglietti passed away on Sunday.
Via his intuition-driven design process, Scaglietti created some of the most visual stunning cars of all time, such as the Ferrari 250 GTO pictured above. In the humble opinion of this writer, he also brought to life the most gorgeous and lust-worthy designs ever marketed by Ferrari, which is really saying something. His creations took a Modenese vernacular sculptural aesthetic and made it the international standard for all things red, loud, curvy, and fast.
A few of my colleagues at IDEO spent the summer collaborating with Rock Lobster to build our vision of what the utility bike of the future should be. This was done as part of the Oregon Manifest. What they created, in my humble opinion, is simply magical... and it goes by the name of Faraday:
Don't you just want to jump on it and ride away?
It's an electric bike. There's a motor mounted in the front hub, super high-tech batteries are mounted inside the top tubes, and it's all controlled via a small throttle control. How does it feel to ride? Beautiful. We engineered proprietary firmware and software which seamlessly integrates the push from the motor with the push you're getting from your feet.
If you're interested in voting for the best in show, you can do so here (and I wouldn't mind if you voted for Faraday!).
Here's what the judges had to say:
There is something profoundly elegant about this bike. I experienced it as a flawless design execution. While the idea of a front rack is not novel, the modular plug-in platform is brilliant. The prototyping and thought that went into deciding upon a frame geometry that would work well with front cargo appears to be accurate from my own experience. Having spent a bit of time working on improvements to existing electric assist integrations, I have great respect for the innovations and design execution for this facet to the bike. I have no doubt that the work that went into the design and fabrication of the electric side alone was easily equal to the rest of the bike. -- Ross Evans
Contrasting with the other entries, the Faraday is a bicycle with two wheels, and it may be the better for it. It is an attractive machine that strikes a good balance between striking looks and understated aesthetics. Off all three entrants, this one probably is the most useful to most riders, as it’s easy to ride, easy to park, and easy to store at home. -- Jan Heine
This bike struck a chord with me almost immediately, my first thoughts were that this is a very well thought out bike and it is definitely my favorite of the three. Visually I love the traditional lines and the striking integrated racking system actually added to the appeal. Again we have the right type of drivetrain and braking systems, and the very smart addition of electric assist! What got me most though is what’s missing… a big, ugly, heavy battery that seems to be on every other electric assisted bike I’ve seen. Other savvy well thought out features continued to impress upon closer inspection. I really felt the data collection sensors to help determine just how much help you get from the motor was a very cool touch. -- Jeff Menown
My top pick of the three—and not just because it’s the sexiest and most conceptually successful. For me, the most important criteria are that the bike be practical, versatile, elegant, thoughtful, well-engineered, and, most important, a dynamic, real-world performance vehicle. And the Faraday is all of these things, despite its being one of those newfangled e-bikes, which run counter to my Puritanical belief that a bicycle’s engine is by definition its human. Otherwise, it’s a motorcycle, right? Well, dammit, this isn’t a motorcycle. It’s a brilliant update of the French porteur with a little lightning up its butt, and I love it. And a long-distance high five to those Californians for the clever name and great logo. -- Jeremy Spencer
As I write this, I have to admit that my eyes are welling up a bit with tears, so proud am I of the amazing IDEO and Rock Lobster folks who cranked on this project. What you see here is the result of many late nights and long weekends; since I live near our office, over the past few months I popped by most weekends and looked in the window of our shop and they were always there. I have a bunch of innovation principles listed along the right side of this blog. But words are wind, and it just so damn affirming and inspiring to see people really live them and go beyond them.
Earlier this evening I came across an intriguing interview with racer, metal sculptor, designer, and archmaster of doing Shinya Kimura. Here's an excerpt, with Kimura's thoughts italicized:
What were your early influences?
The shapes and designs of Italian sports car like Lamborghini Miura and bugs.
Have you ever had another job?
No
What are your favourite and least favourite parts of a bike build?
I love to see the hazy idea of mine actually becomes materialized, that is the most favourite part of a bike build. Least favourite part is...polishing!
What are his hopes for himself and Chabott?
Keep creating whatever I like.
What are his regrets?
No regrets at all!!
Will he always be a bike builder or is there something else on the horizon?
I don't categorize myself as a bike builder but I will keep building bikes and creating whatever I have in my mind as long as I live.
This morning I attended a demonstration of a cool new service, and got to meet one of the women behind its creation. It turns out that this new business was launched as part of a Stanford d.school class last Spring, for which I was a judge. But I didn't know about this service until today. Why? Well, in part because at the big demo fair they held as part of this class, where each of the student teams demoed their ideas, I spent too much of my allocated judging time talking with one team, who were unfortunate in that they had a team member who couldn't get out of what I would call "heavy sales" mode. By that I mean, no matter what questions I asked about things like point of view, first-hand experience of the world, prototyping -- all the stuff you care about when engaging in the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life -- he kept on patronizing me with the party line, the premeditated marketing messages they had whipped up beforehand. In other words, he was laying some heavy bullshit on me. Bummer.
And you know what? Bullshit is bullshit. Bullshitters don't ship, and they can't attract intrinsically motivated people to be on their teams in any sustainable, long-term way. Why? Because we all want to be around people with that gleam in their eyes which says "this is going to happen". Life is too short to waste your time working with people who are motivated by extrinsic factors, such as money, status, or grades. It's the intrinsically motivated folks who sweat the small stuff, grok the big picture, and -- dare I say it -- think different.
When I look at the interview transcript above, I see someone who would be hacking on bikes even if there was no money in it. Kimura's voice is that of a person who has pledged their life toward a specific passion. A person who comes up with solutions in his dreams. Who takes their inner desires seriously enough to try and make them reality, rather than repressing them in the name of what the outside world wants them to be. When I interview folks to be part of the team at my employer IDEO, I'm always looking for the sparks of passion which are the mark of someone powered from within. They are easy to see when they're there, and they are equally easy to smell when they is fake. In my experience, having that intrinsic motivation makes all the difference in the end result. Not only is it impossible to fake, but if you try to fake it, you will always sound like a bullshitter, which completely torpedoes the basis of everything you're trying to claim in the first place.
This is all a roundabout way of saying that intrinsic motivation is, in my opinion, a killer input. Meaning that it is one of several key factors which define a space within which talented people can collaborate with other similarly aligned people to make magic happen. I've said previously that trust is a killer app, but it's not an application, it's an input, just like intrinsic motivation. The output is wonderfulness.
And there are more; this is a subject worthy of more study.
“You know the old adage that the customer’s always right? Well, I kind of think that the opposite is true. The customer is rarely right. And that is why you must seize the control of the circumstance and dominate every last detail: to guarantee that they’re going to have a far better time than they ever would have had if they tried to control it themselves.”
You may not like cars, or you may like them as much as I do, but I think we can all agree that the storytelling behind this Audi piece called Eliminating Luck is truly masterful.
I admire the way they've taken a complex subject, a subject associated with myriad statistics and difficult to relate to numbers (how fast does 300 km/hr feel, anyhow?), and turned it into something lyrical and quite beautiful. Effective storytelling is indeed an effective countermeasure when it comes to deconstructing complex situations and communicating their essence in an elegant way.
Stanford's alumni magazine, titled -- you guessed it! -- Stanford Magazine, ran a great story on the d.school a few weeks ago. The article speaks with my teacher/mentor/colleague/friend/hero David Kelley and others about not only the d.school, but on living your life well, and on the notion of achieving creative confidence (here's a secret: those last two items are deeply related).
It's definitely worth your time to read through the article. I really liked this quote from Stanford President John Hennessy:
Creativity represents an important characteristic that we would seek to inculcate in our students, and obviously one that's harder to put a firm framework around. It's unlike teaching some analytical method. Will a bridge stay up? Well, we know what to teach. You teach physics, you teach some mathematics and you can do the analysis.
It's much harder to teach creativity. [It involves] multiple routes, multiple approaches and, obviously, it's virtually impossible to test whether or not you've succeeded. The measure of success is likely to come long after, not unlike many of the other things we try to teach: To prepare students to be educated citizens, to prepare them for dealing with people from diverse and different walks of life. Those are things that play out over a long time, whether or not we've done a good job.
During my time as an undergraduate at Stanford, I was very fortunate to be able to pursue two degrees, obtaining both a bachelor of science in engineering and a bachelor of arts in a multidisciplinary program called Values, Technology, Science and Society [VTSS] (it is now called STS and is one of the biggest programs on campus, though when I was there it was quite small). I spent a lot of time in the library. Though VTSS sounds like something very technical in nature, it was actually an incredibly rich humanities experience, with a focus on topics which, if you've spent any time around this blog, you know that I love. For example, my honors thesis was on the origins and development of the Ferrari aesthetic, looking at how meaning was created in Maranello via the mechanisms of storytelling, racing, and panel beating. My VTSS teachers were an incredible group of people, really inspirational, and they helped me build up my creative confidence in myriad ways. VTSS also gave me a way to take all of the product design classes with David Kelley which I otherwise would not have been able to do had I just pursued my engineering degree alone.
I bring all of this up because I do feel that Professor Kelley helped, in Hennessy's words, to prepare me to be an educated citizen, to prepare me for dealing with people from diverse and different walk of life. If the d.school had been around while I was there, I wouldn't have had to get the two degrees (though I would have anyway, as I'm always "doing both"). For me, as someone who was part of the founding team at the d.school, and who remains extremely passionate and optimistic about its mission and potential in the world -- it is an experiment still in its very early days -- it's very gratifying to see that mission be couched in these terms. Ultimately, we are not teaching folks to be designers, we are helping them realize their potential as citizens and as happy, productive human beings. Awesome.
I'll leave you with this recent d.school video which has students telling it all in their own words:
What if all of the big intitatives -- both public and private -- put into place over the past decade to computerize learning were trumped by a smart, funny, personable guy who, acting largely alone and on a shoestring budget, used a human-centered approach to creating a simple, cost-effective way to reach thousands and thousands of students over the web? And what if it all happened simply because he started teaching kids?
Well, here you go: Salman Khan did all of that, and more. He is a wonderful example of the primacy of doing.
Let's look at some of the innovations brought to market by the Khan Academy. Among others:
free access over the internet
self-paced learning
lecture attendance at home, homework at school
the psychological and emotional safety created by learning in private
helping students achieve true mastery, as opposed to minimum tolerable levels of understanding
liberating "slow" students from the tyrranny of being put on the low achievement track
a more human classroom experience
What do all of these have in common? Well, aside from being truly amazing outcomes for students, teachers, and parents, none of them were captured in a business plan slide deck, nor were they necessarily premediated goals for his venture. In other words, Salman didn't start out with the goal to flip the learning paradigm. He worked his way up to that point by doing something he loved. To push that point even further, Sallman wasn't looking to start a venture at all, just to tutor his cousins more effectively. He designed for them, saw the value he created, and then went from there.
Embracing the primacy of doing, getting started, saying "what the hell, why don't I try this!" is a way to open yourself up to powerful forces of serendipity, luck, and good fortune. In technical terms, doing gives you access to a real option, which is defined as:
the right — but not the obligation — to undertake some business decision; typically the option to make, abandon, expand, or contract a capital investment.
Think about it: if you could create the right to give yourself an expanded range of opportunities in the future, wouldn't you give that gift to yourself? Of course you would. So what Salman teaches us is that we need to act -- we have to act -- because inside of that action is a gift of a better future, both for ourselves and for others. Accessing the gift requires some courage, so tell yourself you can do it, and help your friends and family to embrace their own potential to get out there and make it happen. For me, that's the ultimate lesson of the Khan Academy.
For those of us who make things for a living, we live a daily pardox in that most of our making actually involves subtracting. That gorgeous MacBook Air you covet? It was made subtractively: lots of perfectly good aluminum was machined away to achieve its seductive form. Unfortunately, many of the miraculous fixes surgeons create actually involve taking out living material, and either setting up a workaround using existing components, or placing in a replacement part -- like an artificial hip -- which was probably made subtractively, too. Even a quotidien net-shape process like thermoplastic injection molding requires the creation of complex metal molds, which are also usually made via subtractive processes, all of which are quite laborious and time consuming.
We're on the cusp of a significant shift in manufacturing techniques which has been several decades in the making. As a newly minted engineer back in the early 90's, I started using 3D CAD software to drive stereolithography machines which gave me rough samples of the parts I was designing for ink jet printers. Stereolithography was an early form of "additive" manufacturing, where you build up the thing you desire layer by layer, drip by drip, or atom by atom. Though the parts weren't very functional, they were a great alternative to asking someone to machine out your impossible shape (I was very good then at creating impossible shapes...). What's cool today is that variants of the same ink jet technology I was developing then can now be used to print out... kidneys. Or bikes. And urethras. Or even plastic injection molds. And going forward, potentially just about anything we can dream up. For me, I think this shift in manufacturing paradigm will be driven by three major developments in the art and science of making stuff:
1. Cost-effective production of complex composite forms and structures
Save for their motors and wheels, modern Formula 1 cars are made almost completely out of a variety of composite materials. As you can see from the crash sequence above (which the driver Mark Webber walked away from), composite materials combine light weight with very high strength. The composite tub which Webber sits in stayed intact throughout this accident. He is also wearing an advanced, lightweight helmet made out of composites. And his head is kept attached to his torso by a composite yoke sitting on his shoulders. However, the manufacturing techniques used to create all of these parts are slow and expensive. To date, the use of composite materials in mass consumer offerings has been limited to things like tennis raquets and golf clubs, where the forms and structures were fairly simple and the market was willing to pay a premium for performance. Boeing is about to ship the Dreamliner, whose fuselage and wings are made out of composites. Cost-effective, lightweight composites would be a boon to the automotive world, enabling us to create much more energy efficient cars which maintain or increase levels of active and passive safety over today's metallic structures. The good news here is that several organizations are pioneering manufacturing techniques which radically lower the price of composite structures. Gordon Murray's design firm has created the iStream manufacturing process, which combines steel structures with a fast composite manufacturing techniques to create a cheap, lightweight stucture for vehicles. And McLaren, ever an innovator, is just about to ship its amazing MP4-12C road car, which uses a cost-effective molded carbon fiber tub as its main structural element. Here is a technical analysis of that car, and here is an overview of the state of the art in structural composites by Gordon Murray himself. As more of these manufacturing techniques come into the mainstream, we'll see composites in more and more products. Significantly, these processes also have the potential to significantly reduce the physical footprint required to make things, and they can also skinny down the capital structure required to be a manufacturer. More on that in the next section.
2. Additive manufacturing of technical nutrients
By this title, I refer to the process of building up structures by depositing incremental bits of "man-made" materials until a whole is formed. This is in contrast to traditional manufacturing techniques, where material is slowly stripped away, Michelangelo-like, until the desired form is achieved. For more information on this, rather than attempt to duplicate a wonderful piece of journalism, I'd like to point you to 3D printing: The printed world, an article from The Economist. For both both noobie and expert alike, this article provides a great survey of techniques and applications being developed all over the world. If you're an engineer like me, the prospect of being able to additively manufacturing a titanium spar inside of a fully-formed carbon fiber wing is truly inspiring. On the other hand, if you are a business model hacker like me, you'll also find the following Economist observation pretty mind-blowing:
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of additive manufacturing is that it lowers the cost of entry into the business of making things. Instead of finding the money to set up a factory or asking a mass-producer at home (or in another country) to make something for you, 3D printers will offer a cheaper, less risky route to the market. An entrepreneur could run off one or two samples with a 3D printer to see if his idea works. He could make a few more to see if they sell, and take in design changes that buyers ask for. If things go really well, he could scale up—with conventional mass production or an enormous 3D print run.
This suggests that success in manufacturing will depend less on scale and more on the quality of ideas. Brilliance alone, though, will not be enough. Good ideas can be copied even more rapidly with 3D printing, so battles over intellectual property may become even more intense. It will be easier for imitators as well as innovators to get goods to market fast. Competitive advantages may thus be shorter-lived than ever before. As with past industrial revolutions, the greatest beneficiaries may not be companies but their customers. But whoever gains most, revolution may not be too strong a word.
If you could make world-class titanium parts in your backyard studio, would you? I might. If you are GM, and you can start replacing huge buildings built to house humongous steel panel stamping presses with robotic cells which build up parts additively, would you? I believe the capital efficiencies offered by these new technologies will be irresistable, and will transform the notion of "factory" to be something much smaller, more nimble, and more similar to the low mass organization we've seen develop to support many of the leading Web 2.0 brands. I saw an inkling of this eight years ago, when I visited the Pagani factory in Italy. At that point in time, they were not using additive manufacturing, but they were building all of their parts (save for the engine and some assorted metallic suspension pieces) inhouse using carbon composite manufacturing techniques. Here's what I wrote about that visit:
Located a short drive outside of Bologna, Pagani sits but a stone's throw from the headquarters of Ferrari and Lamborghini -- part of the high performance internal combustion industry cluster that's existed in Emilia-Romagna since the 1920's. The factory is very compact and sits, almost invisible, in a quiet suburban neighborhood. It is divided into three main areas, each sitting side-by-side: a carbon fiber fabrication area with several autoclaves, an assembly area (big enough to fit three cars on jack stands) and an entrance lobby/museum. The design offices sit above the museum, and the entire facility oozes quality and attention to detail, as do the fabulous cars that roll out the front door.
Three tiny buildings creating complete cars. A factory complex so small I drove by it at least five times, finally resorting to begging two mechanics in a garage fixing an old Fiat 500 to point me in the right direction. That's a big revolution in capital structure, and I believe it will signal the birth of many small, leightweight, easier-to-start-up entrepreneurial manufacturing firms. Our industrial landscape may return to looking much like that of over a century ago, with as many exciting mechanical startups flourishing as we now have software startups. By the way, the illustration above is also from -- you guessed it -- Gordon Murray.
3. Additive manufacturing of biological nutrients
Here I refer to the process of building up structures by depositing incremental bits of "natural" materials until a whole is formed. Or it may mean creating a scaffolding out of man-made or biomaterials, and then injecting that scaffolding with living cells so that it can grow to become a liver, or a urethra, or a bladder, or a kidney. Since showing is better than telling, please give yourself 17 minutes to watch the following TED video -- it will blow your mind and may change the way you approach your work:
If you can't spare the time for the entire video, at least forward to the 10 minute mark in the video, and check it out. Amazing. By the way, this type of manufacturing approach will also change the business structures of many of the organ replacement systems we have in place today. Contrast the complex supply chains we've created to harvest viable organs from donors, find a suitable recipient, and then transport and implant the donation. Aside from reducing the human misery and suffering accrued (which cannot be measured in dollars), imagine what happens when Stanford Hospital has an organ printing center in the basement.
This shift in our manufacturing paradigm will be enabled cheap, lightweight structures, built-up physical products, and custom-printed biologic offerings. In summary, this is just my attempt to synthesize for myself what may be happening across these trends. The technological possibilities are fabulous. The business implications are intriguing and even inspiring. The societal implications are simultaneously energizing and troubling. Let's see where things go, and I'd love to hear what you think.
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