Endless Innovation

Why Design Now? Conference: Watch the Livestream

This Friday, GE and the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum will be hosting an event in New York City to explore how design thinking can help solve some of the world's greatest challenges, from energy to healthcare. Even if you aren't attending in person, it's still possible to watch a livestream of the event on the Core 77 website from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm EST on October 1.

The day kicks off with introductory remarks from Beth Comstock (the CMO of GE) and Bill Moggridge of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, followed by a keynote from Richard Saul Wurman (founder of the TED Conference). A great lineup of panelists and speakers round out the day. The full agenda for the event is available here.

Try to tune in during the day. I'll be guest-tweeting throughout the event from my Twitter handle (@dominicbasulto) using the hashtag #designnow, so look for new tweets on a regular basis in your Twitter stream! Or send me ideas for questions to ask some of the guest speakers!

Between now and October 1, there are a few things you can do to get ready for the livestream. Check out the Cooper-Hewitt's National Design Triennial: Why Design Now?, pick up the latest copy of Fast Company to check out the 2010 Masters of Design, and spend some time checking some of GE's great new Ecomagination initiatives - like the new GE WattStation developed in partnership with design firm fuseproject.

Russia's First Garage Start-Up

Before leaving for Moscow this summer, I asked people - "What is the one place you'd visit in Moscow that best symbolizes how the city has changed over the past two years?" Time and time again, the answer was "Garazh Dashkina" (literally, "Dasha's Garage") -- more formally known as the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture. "Dasha," of course, is Dasha Zhukova, the 29-year-old girlfriend of Russian billionaire oligarch Roman Abramovich. The Garage, a former bus depot designed by Constructivist architects Shukov and Melnikov in the mid-1920's, has emerged as the most important hub for the contemporary art scene in Moscow and is helping to re-define the "New Russia."

The New Yorker's recent profile of Dasha fascinating -- she's fabulously connected (whenever she isn't sure about a piece of art, she "calls Larry" - as in Larry Gagosian), impossibly wealthy and sophisticated -- yet somewhat of a cipher. Art world insiders are dismissive of her, and she's "bafflingly blank" when it comes to describing her goals and thoughts. At the same time that she's worked to introduce Mark Rothko, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami to the Russian contemporary art public, shes seems more interested in whether or not they'll get IKEA beanbags in time for a new art installation. (They did, and they were great).

What's interesting is how a single start-up - in this case, Dasha's Garage, can give rise to a whole mini-cottage industry of other similar organizations. When I visited Moscow in August, there were at least three other galleries that were buzzing as well, including the Winzavod. Not only that, but the Russian art collector scene seems to have matured as well - instead of riotously overpaying for Western art at auction, there's a greater emphasis on acquiring the good taste of knowing what to buy, and at what price. (The New Yorker hints, in fact, that an even younger Russian - Maria Baibakova - is emerging as the "next Peggy Guggenheim" in Moscow.) Here's hoping that Russia's first garage start-up continues to lead the new wave of creativity and innovation in Moscow.

[Garazh photos via personal iPhone; Dasha Zhukova via The New Yorker]

Where Good Ideas Come From

As Steven Johnson explains in his animated book video for Where Good Ideas Come From, chance truly does favor the connected mind. We're living in the great Age of Connectivity, with the ability to reach out and access ideas from all over the world, nearly instantaneously. So many times, great innovative "hunches" lay dormant in the background, waiting for another missing piece to round out a greater concept. One hunch, combined with another, though, can lead to a breakthrough idea and complete the full vision. The history of innovation, it turns out, can be thought of as a series of collisions between smaller hunches. Over time, these collisions and connections lead to fully-formed concepts.

Looking forward to Steven Johnson's new book on October 5! If it's as thought-provoking as earlier works like Emergence and Everything Bad is Good for You, it's a keeper.

UPDATE: Also check out the Wall Street Journal's feature on Steven Johnson and his new book that appeared in the newspaper's Weekend edition: The Genius of the Tinkerer.

[Via: Core 77]

How to Merchandise an Idea to Others

So much of what makes for a great innovator is not the ability to come up with a great idea -- but, rather, the ability to "merchandise" that great idea to others. How do you convey the essence of your innovation to others so that they immediately recognize the brilliance of that idea? As part of an extensive, 12-page profile for The New Yorker, J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler (pictured above left in untucked Oxford shirt, jeans and Alden wingtips) explains to writer Nick Paumgarten exactly what "merchandising" an idea requires:

"More than once, I asked Drexler to define "merchandising." Sometimes he'd put the question to one of his junior merchants, who had perhaps got some of their definitions from the loudspeaker. "It's telling America what to buy," one told him. "It's about investing in something and then selling it," another said. These seemed to strike him as too prosaic or too crass. They made no mention of the eye or the gut or of the throbbing sensation that comes over you when you see something that you are sure will sell, and sell out. [...]

"A merchant is someone who figures out how to select, how to smell, how to identify, how to feel, how to time, how to buy, how to sell, and how to hopefully have two plus two equal six," Drexler told me. "We buy and sell goods. We buy low and sell higher - that's all we do to make a profit. But I consider a merchant someone who has a certain intuition and instinct, and - very important - knows how to run a business, knows the numbers. Does the merchandise speak to you numerically? There's a rhythm. You see goods as numbers. And the numbers have to work out."

Pure marketing brilliance, from one of the leading merchandisers in the business. And also a reason why Drexler hobnobs with billionaires and celebrities; serves on the board of Apple; and owns property in New York City; in the Hamptons (including the former estate of Andy Warhol in Montauk); in the Bahamas; and in Sun Valley, Idaho.

[image: J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler]