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Business model design

Systems Thinking

Google’s Dominant-Logic Problem

August 19, 2015

  Google’s Dominant-Logic Problem Google has announced that it will become Alphabet, a conglomerate—that old-fangled complex corporate structure popular in the 1970s. Could the conglomerate structure, as Google is defining Alphabet, represent the boldest and most innovative move yet within the entire class of super-tech companies? Google is not the first company to confront the dominant-logic problem, which can cause successful companies to self-destruct, but it is doing so in Read More

Bodies and Buildings: Paradigms, Anti-Oedipus, and Passive House November 3 2014

November 4, 2014

Last class we did a quick tour of Paradigm Shifts, Deleuze and Guattari, and Passive House vs. LEED. Anti-Oedipus: A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. We looked at Deleuze and Guattari as an exercise in mindset shift – there is nothing like Anti-Oedipus in the hands of a global group of makers who can manufacture their own means of communication and production. It’s freeing to talk of Rhizomes and Assemblages Read More

Bodies and Buildings Class 5: Ebola outbreak, the power to change the rules

October 7, 2014

The past two weeks in class we spent time first paying attention to the Ebola crisis, then trying to map out the system as we understand it. While much of health technology has come to focus on in hospital systems, electronic health records, and chronic disease management, we wanted to see what we could envision for an acute and rapidly growing outbreak. Students presented ideas for what to do about Read More

Better by Measure Class at SVA’s Products of Design

September 13, 2014

Rebecca Silver and I are evolving our Products of Design experiment. From… teaching sustainable design as a silo… to teaching social, civic, and environmental design into startups and entrepreneurship. Manifesto: Better by Measure: Becoming Better by Measure (Class 1, SVA Products of Design 2014) from Rebecca Silver   Syllabus below: Better by Measure  FALL 2014, SVA, PRODUCTS OF DESIGN Shaping new business models to address environmental outcomes, social justice, and Read More

Bodies and Buildings Class 1: Intro to Systems Thinking

September 8, 2014

Have we reached the limits of growth:   Bodies are in trouble right now – despite reaching the peak of productivity the US now leads the world in the rampant growth of chronic diseases that lower life expectancy, and reduce life quality. “People are living longer than projected in 1990 — on average, 10.7 more years for men, and 12.6 more years for women. But for many of them, the Read More

NYC BigApps: For Profit or Non Profit?

June 21, 2014

A strange question started popping up in my classes at SVA PoD, NYU ITP, and in various apps and tech and data competitions: Is my concept best suited to become a company? Or a non profit? Strange, because when I graduated in the 90’s – this question might apply to one’s career path, but it was pretty clear that non profits were for those that wanted to do good, and for Read More

Lean Customer Discovery Needs Design Research

June 10, 2014

When you are in a startup, under the gun, trying to execute – how do you find time for empathy? Lean launchpad simulates entrepreneurship by requiring founders to get out of the building…and into their customer’s world. Teams succeed when they start talking to people, and find the magic in actually validating their hypotheses with customers, potential partners, and even fellow founders who may have tried to pursue the same Read More

LifeCycles and Flows at SVA PoD

November 2, 2013

Teaching Lifecycles and Flows with Rebecca Silver at SVA’s Products of Design – product backstories, systems thinking, life cycle assessment. Or, environmental accounting, taught to design students. With stunning results – Here is Emi Yasaka’s assessment of her REI backback  

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Products of Design: Lifecycle and Flows

September 1, 2013

Happy to be at the inaugural second year for Products of Design at SVA. Following through on a promise many years ago to Allan Chochinov, I’ll be teaching Lifecycle and Flows with Rebecca Silver, and adapting a systems thinking approach to product backstories. Lifecycle and Flows will expose students to the hidden forces behind how consumer objects are made. Systems Thinking, Life Cycle Analysis, and Stakeholder Management Theory will be used as Read More

NYU ITP Bodies and Buildings Class 9

April 15, 2013

The power to transcend paradigms: don’t forget to keep yourself unattached in the arena of paradigms. Preparation for concept development: Now that you  have identified a problem, how will you solve it? Who will your solution address? What levers do you need to pull?      

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