My good friend, Nate Garvis, has an outstanding post on his blog, Naked Civics. It’s about the disposable coffee cup. This is no ordinary disposable cup, however. Through the use of elegant design, the new cup eliminates the pesky–and petroleum-based–plastic lid. To my mind, the new design is a wonderful example of the importance of seeing…

As I have said before, unlearning is the key to creativity. It is also a theme that David Kelley, the founder of design firm IDEO, emphasizes at the Institute of Design — AKA the d.school — at Stanford University. The following paragraph was taken from Innovation 101: … a lot of time at the d.school…

“Answer a question you wish we’d asked.” This is a question Harvard University now regularly asks its MBA applicants. It’s an insightful question and, if you use it, it may help you unlearn because its open-ended nature embraces the very distinct possibility that you will be exposed to insights and ideas that might never have…

The Saint Ignatius church in Rome was originally designed to include a cupola. For financial reasons, the feature was never built. In moment, sparked by Divine intervention perhaps, Church officials hired Andrea Pozzo to paint a fake dome on the ceiling over the altar. Today, more than 300 years later, many visitors are shocked to…

But let me start off with what is wrong with university education in general. In the universities, we train specialists, hire specialists, and we promote faculty if they are the very best at whatever they do. In order to be the very best, people have to be very deep, which also tends to make people…

The other day I discussed this interesting paradox involving bike helmets and suggested that innovative designers might be able to craft a solution. I'd now like to pose another opportunity to creative designers–design safer country roads. People mistakenly feel safer on country roads even though they are far more dangerous than urban streets. In fact,…

Did you know that in the year after a state mandates its citizens to wear helmets while biking that biking-related deaths for children between the ages of 5 and 15 fall by about 8 death per year. It is a small number but I think most reasonable people would say that it is a positive…

Compare and contrast the two pictures. The picture to the right is a real version of an Apple iPod box and below it is a spoof of the same box if Microsoft were to package the iPod. Apple has mastered the idea of dropping things. If you and your organization haven't, I invite to watch…

Read the following three quotes from Pablo Picasso: "To blossom forth, a work of art must ignore or rather forget all the rules."  "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."  "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like…

The future won’t be either black or white—it will be black and white. In the field of architecture and design, people are often use to choosing between form or function. In the future, as a result of advances in nanotechnology, this age-old debate will become less relevant. As proof, I submit this article discussing a…