The Google challenge

In his announcements this week, Google CEO Larry Page remarked:

“Almost every time we’ve done something crazy, we’ve made progress,” he said. “Not every time but a lot of the time. Now we’ve become kind of emboldened. I say we’re at 1% of what’s possible.”

via Google CEO on innovation: ‘We’re at 1% of what’s possible’ - Computerworld

This is Google. Think back to the world pre-Google. People who think this constitutes 1% are the kind of people who innovate the way Google does.

Google’s significant challenge is not in its maps and music categories but the challenge to companies and non-profits who create their own learning disabilities with beliefs other than the 1% perspective.

The R&D Imperative

Every organization would be wise to have a budgeted R&D function. It's a strategic decision to define what percent of the total budget should go to the development of new offerings and processes. The only organizations that will thrive moving forward are those that continuously renew themselves. This requires being more present to markets and the people engaged in this work.

Pollution Negative Design

Using a new type of tile that converts the chemicals in pollution into less toxic substances, the Torre de Especialidades is fighting the city’s bad air–and looking good in the process. Plenty of green buildings cut down on pollution with design features that minimize their energy usage. A tower under construction at a Mexico City hospital, on the other hand, actually eats pollution in the air that surrounds it. The Torre de Especialidades is shielded with a facade of Prosolve370e, a new type of tile whose special shape and chemical coating can help neutralize the chemicals that compose smog: and not just a small amount of them, but the equivalent produced by 8,750 cars driving by each day.

The tile is the first product by Berlin-based design firm Elegant Embellishments, whose co-founder Allison Dring explained to me via email, just exactly how a 100-meter-long tile screen can suck up serious amounts of smog.

via 1 | This Beautiful Mexico City Building Eats The City’s Smog | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation

Why couldn’t buildings, as in this case beautiful buildings, be designed not just to not emit pollution or sit neutrally in high urban pollution zones, but actually break down pollutants into useful substances?

It’s ingenious, perhaps suggesting new building policies that incentivize pollution eating design.

The Magic Of Reframe

Tina Seelig in Fast Company Magazine has a great piece on reframing problems. Any shift in the parallax of our perspective reveals new possibilities. Two examples.

At the Stanford d.school, students are taught how to empathize with very different types of people, so that they can design products and experiences that match their specific needs. When you empathize, you are, essentially, changing your frame of reference by shifting your perspective to that of the other person. Instead of looking at a problem from your own point of view, you look at it from the point of view of your user. For example, if you are designing anything, from a lunch box to a lunar landing module, you soon discover that different people have very diverse desires and requirements. Students are taught how to uncover these needs by observing, listening, and interviewing and then pulling their insights together to paint a detailed picture from each user’s point of view.

Another valuable way to open the frame when you are solving a problem is to ask questions that start with “why.” In his need-finding class, Michael Barry uses the following example: If I asked you to build a bridge for me, you could go off and build a bridge. Or you could come back to me with another question: “Why do you need a bridge?” I would likely tell you that i need a bridge to get to the other side of a river. Aha! This response opens up the frame of possible solutions. There are clearly many ways to get across a river besides using a bridge. You could dig a tunnel, take a ferry, paddle a canoe, use a zip line, or fly a hot-air balloon, to name a few.

via How Reframing A Problem Unlocks Innovation | Co.Design: business + innovation + design

The Power Of Positive Deviance

Positive deviance is the interesting phenomenon where people in an organization or community innovate and improvise what no one else is doing, even though everyone has the same scope of resources, opportunities, and constraints. Every community and organization has positive deviants emerging at the edges of norms to create new possibilities that surprise the imagination of the norm.

We see positive deviants in every context. We see students in struggling educational systems succeeding. We see people starting new initiatives and enterprises in communities that are stuck.

Creating a new future means identifying these outlier examples, studying their uniqueness and magic, and spreading this learning to scale into new positive norms. This creates the kind of optimism that inspires others to translate their unique successes into ordinary applications more broadly. It is the reality in every livings system that change happens at the edges, where we least expect them.