Pod Blogging Group

How Do We Prepare Kids for Jobs We Can't Imagine Yet? Teach Imagination - Education - GOOD

2011-10-13T16:40:00.000-07:00

Imagination is the only thing that will prepare our kids for what is coming down the road.

How Do We Prepare Kids for Jobs We Can't Imagine Yet? Teach Imagination - Education - GOOD:

'via Blog this'

Take a video tour of UMD’s prize-winning Solar Decathlon house | Grist

2011-10-07T17:39:00.000-07:00

Great example of restorative 'blue' design.

Take a video tour of UMD’s prize-winning Solar Decathlon house | Grist:

'via Blog this'

Organic Agriculture Benefits Revealed In New Long-Term Study From Rodale Institute

2011-10-07T16:04:00.000-07:00

No guff.

Organic Agriculture Benefits Revealed In New Long-Term Study From Rodale Institute:

'via Blog this'

KW40 | Satcon to supply 40 MW of Prism Platforms for Starwood PV project in Ontario - SolarServer

2011-10-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

KW40 | Satcon to supply 40 MW of Prism Platforms for Starwood PV project in Ontario - SolarServer:

'via Blog this'

The Green Living Guy - Green Living News,Green Living,Green Living Books - Pod Generating Group At Sault Sainte Marie Green Days

2011-10-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

The Green Living Guy - Green Living News,Green Living,Green Living Books - Pod Generating Group At Sault Sainte Marie Green Days:

'via Blog this'

Tax Plan to Turn Old Buildings ‘Green’ Finds Favor - NYTimes.com

2011-09-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

Tax Plan to Turn Old Buildings ‘Green’ Finds Favor - NYTimes.com:

'via Blog this'

Making Food Seriously Local - NYTimes.com

2011-09-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

Build and test. Build and test. Great story on the evolution of urban food production in London.

Making Food Seriously Local - NYTimes.com:

'via Blog this'

Pod Challenge – Imagining Sustainable Urbanism for Northern Climates :: Pod Generating Group

2011-09-15T22:07:00.000-07:00

I am looking forward to this event that we've coordinated for our first community visioning charrette. Sault Ste. Marie will never be the same.

Pod Challenge – Imagining Sustainable Urbanism for Northern Climates :: Pod Generating Group:

'via Blog this'

Behold the Gorgeous Solar Farms of Le Mées, France - Environment - GOOD

2011-05-31T17:32:00.000-07:00

Gorgeous. As it says in the article, Frank Gehry meets renewable energy infrastructure. Energizing communities and the arts.

Behold the Gorgeous Solar Farms of Le Mées, France - Environment - GOOD

SpaceX

2011-05-07T19:58:00.000-07:00

Enabling technology for space-based solar power. The only form of renewable power generation that will replace fossil-fuels at scale.

YouTube - SpaceX | Commercial Crew

Repurposing Abandoned Schools

2011-05-06T21:28:00.000-07:00

One intriguing approach to de-urbanization and abandonment of older structures. Solving both the food desert issue, as well as expanding opportunity and increasing the availability of fresh vegetables to urban dwellers. Fantastic.

Repurposing Abandoned Schools Project Winner: A Farm to Table Urban Food Center - Education - GOOD

Fresh Look

2011-04-21T19:48:00.000-07:00

Interesting whitepaper by John Mankins on Space Solar Power (SSP) from mid-nineties. Good thorough review of the issues with a primary focus on technology with some financial analyses, and falls between the NASA Solar Power Satellite (SPS) studies of the late seventies, and the more recent NSSO studies of the Space-base Solar Power (SBSP) concept. Notice the subtle (yet unnecessary) evolution of the acronyms associated with this idea.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/1997-Mankins-FreshLookAtSpaceSolarPower.pdf

Utilities of the Future?

2011-02-14T11:49:00.000-08:00

This is a fascinating article on who will send us a bill for our 'other' commodities in the future. Cellular, cable, telephone, power and gas. All in one. Interesting idea. One to test drive. There certainly seems to be a great deal of room for economies of scale on the billing side.

Who Are the Utilities of the Future? : Greentech Media

Also, I am test driving the new Google Chrome based blogger button. Simplifies posting a blog from relatively painful to almost too easy. Another amazing innovation in the integration of our digital universe into the browser from our friends at Google.

Maintaining Life Support

2008-06-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me this morning that the world is entering a new phase of our development. We are just now beginning to face the challenge of how we can maintain life support for our species on this Earth. A planet that we are rapidly transforming to an increasingly hostile environment to our existence. Al Gore's documentary on climate change has done the yeoman service of alerting the world to the issues surrounding climate change. The question has now become, what now? How do we preserve the biosphere for the human race? Without a return to the stone ages.

Proposed solutions to this current crisis are coming from two neatly defined, and somewhat linear-thinking camps:

Conserve -- 'stop the earth, I want to get off' back-to-the-land, organic, zero-consumption conservationists
Innovate -- 'technology will solve all problems' full steam ahead innovators that want to have our expansive lifestyle cake, and eat it too

I have explored the literature of each group, and both offer strong ideas for how we can survive and even thrive as a species. However, from my own life, and experience in building a new home that is both modern technologically but still conserves resources, it is clear that we must find a hybrid solution. Only through harnessing of human ingenuity, with all of humankind acting with unity of a single purpose, will we be able to get where we need to go.

Space development offers a window into a set of solutions that work with the best of both camps. From the earliest government backed efforts in low-earth orbit and the moon, to today's private enterprises in space tourism and exploration, a strong focus on innovation for the preservation of human life and conservation of precious resources for long journeys into space has been necessary. Even now, the technologies that we created for the harsh environments of space are forming the foundation of the our new technology driven set of solutions for the climate crisis. As an example,

Solar photovoltaic cells originally developed for satellites, are now being used in utility-scale applications for generation of electricity,
Hydrogen fuel cells originally developed for the manned moon shots of the 1960s are now being used in advanced zero-emissions automobiles, and
Waste water treatment systems perfected for long-duration space station missions are now available home-owners and businesses to recycle water for irrigation.

Space technologies for telecommunications are also adding to the human experience by allowing us to communicate with each other remotely and reduce our need for long-distance travel. Remote sensing from satellites give our scientists critical information on how we are impacting the environment around us, and model ways to fix the problems.

In the long-term, many of the industrial applications that are now choking the biosphere can be taken off-earth for processing, and consumption by humans back here at home. Mining of resources from asteroids offer vast troves of precious metals such as gold and platinum that could be used to greatly increase the efficiency of electronics and other human technological systems. Power generation in space from photovoltaic power satellites offer the ability to remotely harvest the power of the sun, with no negative atmospheric impact on the planet below.

Lastly, humans work better when working together toward a common goal. Better to move forward than to move backwards. If we start arguing on how to divide up a shrinking pie, I fear we may end up fighting for it, only exacerbating our situation.

In short, space development offers us a solution to the world problems. I intend to pursue these ideas vigorously, both here on earth and in space. For all of mankind.

Space-based Solar Power

2007-10-14T22:53:00.000-07:00

Space power is back in the news.

The Air Force has sponsored an open forum outlining how a viable space power system can be developed by 2015.

According to the officer in charge of the program, Air Force Lt. Col. Michael 'Coyote' Smith from the National Security Space Office (NSSO), they are creating this program to find a solution to their energy challenges in forward operating theaters “This is not the Department of Defense’s job. We do not want to be in the energy business, we don’t want to be a producer of energy,” he said. “We just want to be a customer of a clean energy resource that’s out there.”

This is an area that is right at the centroid of the focus of Pod Generating Group. Space technology for the service of mankind. As the Air Force will be a customer for this power, this technology holds promise for future development of solar power generating facilities in low earth orbit. This is a customer that will pay a premium for their energy, as they are currently paying $600 to $800 per gallon of gasoline in Iraq.

Explainer

2007-09-23T02:32:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to explain recent changes in the blog. I've modified the title to reflect more of what is done here, and in keeping with the Pod philosophy. It is now officially the Pod Blogging Group.

As may be evident from the sporadic nature of my postings, I am not the world's most avid blogger. However, I do have a vision for this particular spot in cyberspace.

As I articulated in the Pod manifest some 10 years ago, Pod groups that are formed must be collective 'groups' of individuals that are of a like mind, and are capable of creating something fundamentally new. Each group needs a center, a defining mission, and a driving individual that can passionately articulate the mission to the team and the rest of the world.

While the Pod Consulting Group has explored a number of different space and satellite technologies over the years, the philosophy has remained the same. Apply space technology to life on earth. This has meant working with music companies to implement conditional access software first used by DirecTV, and finding financing for early-stage satellite companies providing satellite transponder leases to television broadcasting companies in Asia. This has also meant working with NASA on the design of the International Space Station, and explaining to them how they might find commercial uses for it.

Recent work I have done in applying solar power technologies developed for the space program to terrestrial uses has been a particularly good fit for this philosophy. More information on this endeavour may be found at the new Pod Generating Group website.

Stay tuned.

Future

2007-07-15T02:32:00.000-07:00

Well, back to the task at hand. I have been neglectful of my posting duties over the last several months. This has been largely owing to the fact that I've been working on some new initiatives that have been consuming inordinate amounts of my time of late. It is now time that I opened up a little bit.

Each of these initiatives has a thread running back through space and satellite technologies. I am excited to be working on them both, and will be delighted to be sharing some of the highlights over the coming months.

The first has to do with high concentrating photovoltaics ('HCPV'), a technology used extensively in the space program and commercial satellite industry. The technology has come into its own, and is now being contemplated for much wider applications for utility scale applications. I've been impressed by the capability of HCPV with triple junction cells to overcome many of the challenges of straight flat-plate silicon PV arrays.

The second has to do with another emerging satellite application that is the future of mobile entertainment. That is a mobile video broadcast via satellite. Current dedicated operations in Asia and Europe are finding qualified success. I believe that there is a way to integrate satellite with terrestrial in such a way as to improve this consumer service to an extraordinary quality of service.

More to come as these two initiatives mature.

Weak

2007-07-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

After a brief moment of euphoria, I was disappointed to learn that publishing a document from Google Docs does not support the inclusion of the document title of the post. Call me a little surprised, but I would think that Blogger would support this simple feature of an internal 'sister' division.

If you are paying attention over at Google, please fix this as soon as possible. Otherwise, I've got to go back and re-edit all of my ultra-simple posts from Docs.

Sooner than later please. Thanks.

Google

2007-07-15T01:09:00.000-07:00

To whom it may concern, This is a test.

What is next in this crazy software world? I am writing this from inside the Google Docs and Spreadsheets application. MUCH cleaner than the Blogger interface.

Link to my corporate site from here. I just added this pointer to my website, complete with Flyover.

I've just inserted this image, and resized it. Spooky how easy that was. It is an inside shot of our new home, the Dwell Home 2. We will be building this later this year. Many more nice shots available, but this one is kind of groovy. From the original pitch to us from EscherGuneWardena.

From now on I will be posting to my blog from the Docs and Spreadsheets area of Google. It is kind of a lousy name, but its tight integration with all other things Google (including Blogger) is incredible.

As always, more to come

021C

2006-10-27T00:55:00.001-07:00

I am back once again. I've been making some modifications to the blog, and upgrading the back-room software.

Here is a test of the new photo hosting capabilities of Blogger.

Lets see if it works. Here is a very cool concept car that was created by Marc Newson for Ford. Sigh. If only they would actually build these cars.

Here is another version in green with the doors open. I would buy this in a second.

Also, I've added labels to the blog. This should make archiving MUCH easier.

The Balancing Act

2005-08-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

Green, modern and American made.

Is there such a thing? I will be searching to find products that match this profile, for my own use, and for feature in this blog.

I began this blog with an emphasis on how businesses are designed. At the end of the day, it is nice to know that products that come out of companies in the world, are well designed, and meet a higher design criteria.

Well designed businesses would create well designed products.

I've been able to find only the fewest that meet these criteria, but let me start with the first.

The Sustainable line of t-shirts from American Apparel. They are well made (here in LA), soft organic cotton, and are the definition of modern for me.

This company has several great things going for it. Local sweatshop free production. Green product lines. Clean design. Not so sure about the owner's love of porno however... but I'm willing to forgive him this one weak spot.

Looks Good Flies Good

2005-07-05T15:19:00.000-07:00

Some years ago, I was working at McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach. I worked on the MD-11 program. We also had several programs going with the C-17, the A-12 and a new fighter called the YF-23 Black Widow. This prototype was flying off against a competitor's product at Lockheed Martin, the YF-22 Raptor.

Here is the Black Widow. Beautiful yes?

Here is the Raptor. Ugly yes?

What happened during the competition has become a matter of public record. The Lockheed Martin design won, and is now finally coming into active service after some 14 years.

It was a mystery to me as to why the Raptor came out on top. The scuttlebutt at the time was that it was more of a pilot's airplane because of its thrust vectoring system. The Raptor did not meet the 'stated' stealth requirements of the Air Force's Request for Proposal, but it did meet the deeply held belief within the AF that their aircraft must be great dogfighters. I get that that is a good thing, to meet the unspoken requirements of your customer .. but there is something else that has always chapped my hide.

The Raptor is an UGLY airplane. The Black Widow is a BEAUTIFUL airplane. There is another old Air Force phrase that captures this human-machine interaction. "If it looks good, it flys good". There is something deep down within us that allows our animal brains to see and understand that something looks right and will work well.

This is something that can't be explained, but is important to the design process. Sadly, you know it when you see it.

There is universal beauty in objects that 'look good'.

More to come on this thought.

Death of the Cool

2005-07-05T15:10:00.000-07:00

I live in Silver Lake. Its the coolest place on Earth. Or so I am told.

There was a great article in the Los Angeles Times a couple of weeks ago, that has declared that hip is no longer ummm... hip.

I don't know about that, but I can say that I've been living the coolest place on Earth for the last ten years, and I have yet to have much of it rub off on me.

I agreed with some of the fundamentals of the article, which were that some areas of hipness have reached ridiculous heights (note expensive jeans.)

I have over the last several years examined exactly what I was buying for a few simple parameters.

American made
Green
Modern

Also, sturdy and long-lasting... but these don't fall in.

I've been shocked at how difficult it is to find things that are all three of these things. For example, I wear Levi's 501. Used to be American made, but now are not. Not particularly green, but do qualify as modern... in the Beat generation sense of the word.

Regardless. Cool is not what it used to be. I will be posting on some of these cultural issues on another blog. Tentatively entitled "Feed the Bird". Look for it.

The Radial Organization

2005-06-12T18:29:00.000-07:00

Organizations used to be vertical. Then they were matrixed. Now they are radial.

I've been working of late with several very rapidly growing startups in the technology of entertainment area. Most are small enough to be struggling with organizational issues. It has been an education for me to hear their desired organizational map (particularly if the employees come out of large organizations) and how it does not synch with the actual dynamics of the organization.

Most companies will lay their 'structure' out in the classical top-down model detailed below. A CEO to interface with the outside world, and perhaps a separate President or COO in charge of operations, with a VP or CXO in charge of various vertical buckets.

While this form works well in support of extraordinarily large firms of ye olde times (read the industrial and information ages), it seem that this is very ill suited to the way that companies operate today.

By observation, I've most seen the following structure playing out in reality. The CEO is the centroid of a radial organization. The 'center of gravity' of the organization is most driven by the CEO, with orbiting expertise in a number of areas. The smaller the organization, the more multiple 'hat wearing' goes on in the organization, but the basic structure holds.

When Chris Conley at IIT described a New Type of Professional, I believe he was referring to the individual that could operate in the orbit of this type of organization. They have a need for more multi-disciplinary focus, and a sense of for both the mechanical operation of business and a fluid sense of each of the expertises that are requisite to execute in each business area.

A simple test I administer (in my own mind) as a predictor of success for these radial organizations, is the CEO's comfort with the triad of business software in addition to their own business. If the CEO is equally adept at manipulating prose in the Word document format, numbers in the Excel document format, and finally the presentation in the PowerPoint format, I generally get a good feeling.

Also, communication and harmonization is equally critical to success. Each of these vertical owners communicates with the CEO on a constant basis. If the CEO can commuicate direction and enable forward movement of the organziation, I also get a good feeling.

Radial is the way things are today. We've just not adapted our charting procedures for the reality. Next business plan I write will be structured in this way.

Moving Bodies in LA

2005-06-08T12:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, I've done it now. I took the subway in LA. I know many of you are thinking it can't be done. But when we weren't looking they built one... and its pretty darn spiffy.

So spiffy in fact, that I stopped on my way home through Union Station, and I bought a monthly pass (see below.) Nice design throughout the MTA system.

I came home from Pasadena to Silver Lake. It took 1 hour and 45 minutes. A little longer than the 17 minute drive, but still completely a great experience.

I walked home from the subway station past shops I didn't know existed. I bought flowers for my wife. I walked past my barber. I saw a shoe repair shop (that I felt like I might need if I kept on walking home from the subway station every day.) Its a completely different perspective on LA.

LA is an ugly town. This viewpoint is informed by your view from the roads and highways. From a train, LA actually has a distinctive beauty... One that I have not experienced before.

I will be travelling this way more in the future... I am just trying to optimise my travel times a little bit, by hitting my connections a little more accurately.

Reminds me of my younger years in Toronto and Montreal.

Green Modern

2005-06-02T12:27:00.000-07:00

This is our home. Or at least it will be. Soon.

This is a rendering created by our brilliant architects, Frank Escher and Ravi Gunewardena, and their brilliant staff.

It is an experiment. We are exploring the challenges of building a green home that is also modern. We expect to finish construction in the early part of next year.

Claudia and I are honoured to be working with Dwell magazine on this project. They call our house "Dwell Home 2". It is part of a series of homes that they are sponsoring to explore modernism for real people (my description of their philosophy.)

They produce a wonderful magazine, and have provided great 'thought leadership' in the area of how we will live in the future. I've been reading these guys since their launch several years ago.

I will be writing more on this project as it advances over the next several months.

Two Monkeys and a Tiger

2005-05-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

I've got some friends (and loved ones) that started a little company. They've called it Two Monkeys and a Tiger, after the their birth signs in the Chinese zodiac.

It is a microcosm of the interdisciplinary approach to business success.

These three Carol Kono, Claudia Plasencia (the monkeys) and Ann Enkoji (the tiger) started this little venture to produce photo cards with pictures of loved ones for your wallet or for display on your desk at work.

Beautifully executed. Beautiful to look at, with minimal adornment. When one is looking at photos of loved ones, there is little need to add frames or other geegaws.

They also did a smart line of T-shirts last fall. Pro-California. Well designed. Well executed. Sold well.

Each of the three has a distinct skill set that they put to work on launching their product. They are completely virtual, and work together today via the professional network that they built up through having worked together in the past.

Carol the designer, Claudia the production manager and Ann the sales and business developer. Three cogs in a well oiled machine.

I look forward to seeing more from these three 'animals' in the future.

Hell for Stout

2005-05-24T14:15:00.000-07:00

I drive a SAAB. Or I should say, I used to drive a SAAB.

My wife now drives our SAAB 95 Wagon. We had a baby a couple of years ago, and it made sense to have her drive it. I feel much safer with her and our son in the SAAB than I would in any other car.

Why do I feel that way?

The SAAB brand seems to exude a design attribute we used to call 'hell for stout'. I am not sure of the origins of this term, but it means what it sounds like.

I used to drive an older SAAB. A 1989 SAAB SPG just like the one pictured below.

I loved it, but it was a little tempermental mechanically. For that reason, my wife didn't seem to love it as much as I did. Hmm.

Driving it was a joy. It felt like a solid chunk of steel riding on rails, even during the most torrential downpour of rain. It had an EXTREMELY low center of gravity that contributed to this sensation. It was a blend of heavy and fast.

One of my favourite features of this car was the sheet metal they wrapped around the frame. It must have been a thicker gauge than is used on more modern cars. When you knocked on it, it had a very solid feel. It really contributed to the sense that the car was built "hell for stout".

Also, this particular model and the brand overall are known for their ability to withstand severe crashes, and leave the occupants of the car unhurt. The SAAB and Volvo below were involved in a head-on collision with no injuries (by the way this was not my car.) The windshield on the SAAB isn't even cracked!

I used to use this term -- "hell for stout" -- when I was working on the International Space Station program. I meant something that was completely over designed, and would never break. It is a product attribute that is rare these days, as computer modelling has allowed design factors to be brought down to very thin margins. Thus, it seems we have too many objects in our lives that are flimsy and insubstantial.

Hell for stout is a design attribute that I look for. Not just in cars.

There is nothing better than an 'thing' that will not let you down when you need it.

New Year's Eve 2001

2005-05-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of my wife Claudia and me at dinner on New Year's Eve, 2001.

We had a wonderful dinner at a local Los Feliz restaurant called Cafe Figaro ... I wanted to test the photo publishing feature of this blog with one of my old faves.

Yes she is beautiful, and yes I am a lucky man.

Space Station

2005-05-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

I am a spacecraft designer.

Fifteen years ago, I was hired on to the Space Station Freedom program in Huntington Beach California. My employer was McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Company, a division of McDonnell Douglas out of St. Louis Missouri ... the manufacturer of the F-15 Eagle, F-18 Hornet, MD-11 passenger jet, and the C-17 cargo aircraft.

When I had hired into the company, I was first on the 'just being certified by the FAA" MD-11 program in Long Beach. The aircraft was a derivative of the venerable Douglas Aircraft DC-10 tri-jet ... which had launched in the late sixties during the boom of uber-large passenger jets. While successful as an airplane, sadly it had driven the company into financial distress, where it was acquired by McDonnell. McDonnell had become rich building Phantom II fighter aircraft during the Vietnam war, and used its cash pile to grow via acquisition.

In 1984, a large portion of the Space Station Freedom program had been 'won' by McDonnell Douglas -- shortly after then President Ronald Reagan had announced it to the world. The program was to take 4 years, and cost roughly $8B. That is flying in 1988. To be clear. That meant that the Space Station should have been orbiting for 2 years by the time I had been hired to work as an engineer on the program. Needless to say, the Space Station (now called the International Space Station) is only partially built (as of 2005), and may never be completely finished.

I could write a doctoral thesis on the political processes that drove the space station program into this unbelievable cost and schedule overrun, but that is not the point of this post.

I want to note a very interesting cultural phenomenon in the culture of design. Open design cultures don't always match the dominant political culture.

Huntington Beach is in Orange County, which is a well know bastion of conservative republicanism. The company had its fair share of evangelical types and former military personnel, sprinkled thinly with besieged democrats. That said, one would expect the culture to be rigid and not open to collaboration or new ideas, given its 'conservative' political bent. Ironically, I found the opposite to be true. This was a formative moment in my professional career, one where I was surrounding with young and highly motivated engineers that believed that we could solve any problem that was put in front of us. The 'design' culture on the space station program completely supported the introduction of fundamentally new ideas. This 'liberal' design culture made it easy to propose solutions that worked (or sometimes didn't) without fear of reproach. To be sure there were a couple of crusty old Apollo engineers that always pushed back using their own variations on the 'look right' test, but by in large they were avid collaborators in the process.

At this point in the evolution of computers, we had all become 3D designers, as we used Unigraphics to model all of our ideas once they came off the whiteboard. 3D is a very powerful visualization medium, once you can learn to imagine the space. Also, as a 'integrator' of the S1 segment (starboard one), I was responsible for coordinating between the unforgiving demands of strength, thermal, vibration, shuttle integration, materials, electronics, fluids, and user interface analysts with very focused agendas. The liberal design culture of the program was enormously helpful during this process. I believe it allowed us to create the best design possible given the dearth of existing experience in creating space stations of the complexity we were developing.

I am glad to report that the space station structural elements that we had developed with my colleagues at McDonnell Douglas, were launched into space in 2003. Below is a photograph of the S1 segment after it was installed on the space station. In the foreground you can see the Canadian built robotic arm (SSRMS) inch worming its way down the segment.

Once I wrapped up my work on the space station in 1997, I moved in a series of lateral moves towards the entertainment business ... Its a long path, but there was a logic to it. I have had the honour to see a number of unique and completely diametrically opposed business cultures.

Once I found myself in the entertainment industry, I was struck by a counter-intuitive discovery. The industry was deeply DEEPLY conservative. To its core, the people involved in the business are afraid of doing anything out of the mainstream. It was a shock to my system. Here were a group of presumably liberal thinkers with political agendas and ideas to match, but behaved as though they would be fired for having a non-conformal thought. It was strange world indeed.

Needless to say, the organizations that I worked with had even more difficulties in birthing of new technology based distribution platforms for delivery of entertainment. It was left to others to figure out and implement.

It appears that design conservatism is the last bastion of those with the most to lose. Design liberalism is the luxury for those with no consequences for not performing. Put another way, there seems to be a design continuum, where at either end of the spectrum, nothing gets done. In the balance point in the center, there seems to be a space where the right number of new ideas are introduced and real consequences motivate the culture to perform on time.

More on this thought later.

Simple Design

2005-05-19T16:45:00.000-07:00

It is a fundamental idea in business; that simple is better than complex.

In the design of business, as in life, a simple idea can be a powerful force.

Through years of experience with small and large companies, I have come to understand the power of simplicity. I've found that where a business is planned and launched around a simple idea, success is much more easily achieved.

Simple can be difficult to achieve. Something that appears to be simple, may have many layers of interlocking complexities, that are integrated into a simple whole. Perhaps the best illustration of this concept may be the Zippo lighter.

It appears a simple thing. A lighter. But within its simplicity are folded many complexities.

It represents a complex interaction of form and function. The fit in the palm of your hand, the subtly radiused shape, the brushed texture of the case, the ping and snap of the lid, and the lighter fluid and flame smells that comprise one's experience with the lighter, all go well beyond the function of lighting a cigarette. It also carries with it a sense of its own history and role within a war and with the peace that followed. It is often customized with inscriptions representing something about its user.

In the design of a business process, or of a new business, the lure of complexity can be overwhelming. I have myself gone down this road, to discover that I am unable to communicate the core ideas of the business through the layers of complexity that I have created. I have learned over the years to force myself to think and communicate more simply. It is a challenge, but one that has been a critical evolution.

What can the Zippo lighter teach us about designing business? Keep it simple, and you will go a long way.

The Design of Business

2005-05-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

As this blog develops, I will focus exclusively on 'the design of business' Definition of this term will flow from the examples and discussions that I hope to undertake.

It seem intuitive, based on the years of working with early stage and transforming companies, but it is an area that must be discussed in basic principles.

'The design of business' can be thought of as the process of working to solve the 'indeterminant' problems of business through collaboration, iteration, and polyglot points of view.

Culture is critical to success here as well. The slow fade of the corporate cog will not be sufficient. This aspect of organizations must be actively worked and reduced.

More on this thought later.

Glen

Launch

2005-05-06T00:10:00.000-07:00

Gentle readers, I start this log to clarify.

Some years ago, I articulated to a dear friend the desire to work with companies as a 'designer of business'. I look back on the work that I have done with the Pod Consulting Group, I have been doing this all along after all.

I read with some interest that this topic is beginning to reach critical mass in some circles.

There are miles to go before this evolution is complete. Consider this the end of the beginning.

Glen