Productivity and Competitiveness
Yesterday I attended the BC Business Council’s “Business 2011” conference as a guest of the Vancouver Economic Development Commission. The keynote was The Honourable Kevin Lynch, Vice-Chair, BMO Financial Group — but better known as a career federal public servant in a variety of important and influential roles — Clerk of the Privy Council, Secretary […]
Business games to boost creative solutions
That’s right, folks. It’s business game time. The Business Playground, by Dave Steward and Mark Simmons, is a book that applies creativity to business problems and decision making. From tips on how to brainstorm to thoughts on creating cultures of creativity and collaboration, the book highlights some of the finer points of design thinking. On […]
design thinking…business thinking
It’s always fun to step back and as some big questions — especially in January. I keep pondering the relationship between design thinking and business thinking. How do they interact? Helen Walters is an engaging writer and speaker. She is the former editor of Innovation and Design at Bloomberg BusinessWeek. I just finished re-reading […]
Monocle design tid-bits…
Fell behind in my Monocle reading…so catching up with the October and November issues. A few tidbits. ETHICAL FASHION Issue 37 – 063 Sophie Grove has written a thought-provoking piece called “Moral Fibres”. Her preface: Unreliable labelling, products made in questionable factories– are luxury brand about to face Foxconn-style scandals? We look at the firms […]
10 Take-aways from the d.studio
Making lists is a wonderfully creative activity. Challenging oneself to generate 3 ideas, 10 ideas or 50 ideas really does help push the envelope and go beyond. So I am challenging myself to articulate 10 important take-aways for me from the undergraduate d.studio class experience: Teaching and Learning is Fun and Energizing: Am reminded how […]
Evaluating design/business learning
Marking. Grading. Evaluating. Asessment. An A. A B+. 77% or 83%? Rubrics. Check-lists. Giving feedback. It is that time across educational institutions where we kick into high gear evaluation mode. Not our favourite time. Although potentially a time of great learning on the part of the whole learning team: the learning designers, the learning facilitators […]
Design-Thinking 101: Discovery
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries – A. A. Milne As a fourth year Commerce & Economics BCOM student at the brink of graduation, learning something original and completely out of the box was the last thing I expected from my final year. Of course, every […]
d.studio week 13: the finale
The d.studio Community of Practice was launched on Wednesday December 1 — just after the 24 students in the d.studio course presented their final projects to their clients. The event was in the Museum of Vancouver. As a side-note it was amazing how many people don’t know where the Museum of Vancouver is — or what […]
Is data the new (s)oil?
By Martina Valkovicova We borrowed (and adjusted a little) the headline from a highly amusing and interesting TED Talks video: The beauty of data visualization by David McCandless. The world nowadays is powered, overwhelmed and saturated with information. We all need it to survive and let’s be honest – we are all hungry for information. […]
d.studio week 12: 3-d design thinking
This week was essentially the last d.studio class of 2010. Evaluations were completed. And each team presented their storyboards for the presentation next week. As I said mid-way through: “Ron and I failed to explain storyboards well enough.” Most of the presentations were indeed that — skeletal presentations of what is to come next week. […]