Diversity in the workforce, robots, "suspicious" skilled workers, cautious innovation, environmental concerns, customer-focus, genomes, crossing boundaries, time-out from technology, business synergies - there all here in Fast Company's 2003 outlook. Idea Fest.

 
Hiatus for the holidays - posts will be spotty for the next couple weeks.
Season's greetings everyone, thanks for visiting, and best wishes for 2003!

 
As part of a "What's Selling in America" series, Fast Company takes a look at the wildly successful, innovative-meets-common-sense approach of Amoeba Music in San Francisco. Amoeba has simultaneously shunned the obligatory smallness of independent record shops and the flash-in-the-pan superstar grandeur of major retail music chains to create an environment that is both enjoyable for its shoppers and profitable for its owners.

 
2002 Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year's major events and hottest trends based on more than 55 billion searches conducted over the past year by Google users from around the world. Whether you are tracking the global progression of the "Las Ketchup" craze or finding out who really is the queen of the Internet, the 2002 Year-End Zeitgeist enables you to look at the past year through the collective eyes of the world on the Internet.

A feast of Google trivia that I'm sure only scratches the surface of trends info they have. Thanks for the link, Dre.

 
Of all the great scientists, Charles Darwin was the least obviously brilliant. He was not at all mathematical, he mastered no foreign languages, and the concepts that he originated and developed are easily graspable by someone of quite moderate intelligence. We know we could never have been Newton or Einstein; but to have been Darwin might have been within our capabilities. Did not T. H. Huxley, a man to all appearances much more brilliant than Darwin, exclaim on reading The Origin of Species, "How stupid of me not to have thought of it!"

A quick book review of a new Darwin biography.

 
Before Theodore Seuss Geisel found fame as a children's book author, the primary outlet for his creative efforts was magazines. His first steady job after he left Oxford was as a cartoonist for Judge, a New York City publication. In 1927 one of these cartoons opened the way to a more profitable career, as well as greater public exposure, as an advertising illustrator. This fortuitous cartoon depicts a medieval knight in his bed, facing an dragon who had invaded his room, and lamenting, "Darn it all, another dragon. And just after I'd sprayed the whole castle with Flit" (a well-known brand of bug spray).

(via Cup of Java)

 
I'm in the middle of reading Eric Schlosser's best-selling book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal and there is an intriguing chapter about flavour that has piqued my interest. It's common knowledge that much of our food is enhanced with chemical or man-mixed "natural flavor" elements to enhance certain flavours, but the process by which this is achieved and the magnitude and secrecy of the industry that engineers these tastes is considerably less known. Schlosser does a great job of presenting this subject and, as with other issues raised in FFN, he does it with exceptional objectivity. Here is an Atlantic Monthly article that he wrote in 2001 (and is included almost verbatim in the book) - Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good.

 
Beauty - or at least novelty - can be found in the unlikeliest of things. Like ketchup and mustard packages, for instance. The Condiment Packet Museum.

I like the curator's response to FAQ #6, "You have way too much time on your hands":
Actually, that's not a question.  I only spend a few minutes a day on the site, and those cumulative minutes are way more productive (in my opinion) than, say, watching prime time TV.  At least I created something.  It's amazing how often I get this comment.

 
Here's another list of (mostly) inventions. To coincide with their 85th anniversary Forbes has published a special section chronicling 85 Innovations. For history buffs mostly.

 
Just in time for the time of year when every list is a best-of list, Time has published its selections for Best Inventions 2002. It's quite a collection. Here's a sample:

Earth Simulator
In 1997 a team of Japanese engineers dared to imagine a computer so powerful that it could keep track of everything in the world at once — steaming rain forests in Bolivia, factories in Mexico belching smoke, the jet stream, the Gulf Stream, the works. What's more, they dared to build it. On March 11, 2002, when they turned it on, the engineers did something no mere mortal had ever done before: they created the Earth.

Date Rape Drug Spotter
Singles bars have never been risk free, but so-called date-rape drugs give you one more reason to be cautious. After a friend was attacked by a man who may have spiked her drink, Francisco Guerra developed a cardboard drink coaster that can identify two of the most popular date-rape drugs: gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and ketamine. Just place a drop of liquid on the coaster, and rub it in with your finger. If the spot turns blue, toss that cocktail. Fifteen million of these coasters have already been distributed; look for them at 7-Elevens around Christmastime.

Phone Tooth
Tired of having to wear a cell phone on your belt wherever you go? In the future, you may not have to. Two British researchers have developed a prototype "phone tooth" that can be embedded in a molar and receive cell-phone calls. The signals are translated into vibrations that travel from the tooth to your skull to your inner ear—where only you can hear them. Great for giving instructions to spies and NFL quarterbacks. Not so great for the rest of us, because while our teeth may talk to us, we can't talk back to them.

(via IdeaFlow)

 
Rolling Stone: You've made it clear that you're not thrilled with music today.

Joni Mitchell: You've got all these assorted divas, like these sappy, romantic singers. They are not tender like Nat "King" Cole -- they are overwrought. And it's very flashy, but it's soulless. You look into the eyes of these people, and you know they are looking at themselves in the mirror. There is nothing to them but their own image. There's just nothing...

 
Eclectic curiosity indeed. Best new magazine - Maisonneuve.

 
You hear a lot about why creativity is so vital in business today -- for inspiring breakthrough innovations, accomplishing more with limited resources, and stimulating employees' deep-seated talents and motivations in a highly uncertain world. But what about when a company's product is creativity itself? That's the question James Citrin looks at in a Business 2.0 article entitled Making Creativity Work. He examines the balance between individual creative talent and necessary organizational characteristics in organizations where the product is creativity, such as ad agencies like Goodby Silverstein & Partners and interactive entertainment developers like Electronic Arts.

There is a fundamental need to balance two things that are often in conflict: the need to nurture artistic talent, and the day-to-day requirements of instilling sound, disciplined management processes. Leaders of creative enterprises must foster the right environment to fuel a hothouse for ideas while making sure the trains run on time and on budget. There are three distinct ways to make this happen: understand how creative talent thinks; nurture and reward this talent; and structure the organization to leverage your assets while maintaining appropriate development processes and financial controls.

(via Don the Idea Guy)

 
What's Creativity & Who's Creative? This is a half-hour TV program (realplayer) and transcript of a discussion on the topic of creativity with such experts as writer Stephen Cannell, professor of psychology Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, pianist and music historian Dr. Robert Freeman, entrepreneur John Kao, and inventor Ray Kurzweil. Here are some excerpts:

Well, I think it's important to recognize that the popular image of Archimedes jumping out of the bathtub, or of someone with a lightbulb popping up over his head, is just a part of an overall grammar, you might say, or of a series of events that constitutes the creative process. If you look at creativity as moving from the existing to the preferred, there's a whole lot of preparation prior to that lightbulb and a whole lot of work that needs to follow on after that. And the lightbulb doesn't appear over the head of only one person, necessarily, although the process clearly can occur between the ears of a creative person--which in some respects, we all are. Creativity also pops up in the space between people, and also within organizations--within society, if you will.

...you can write books in several different ways. Some involve structure and having a plan, and some are about the play and the joy and the discovery. And I think that says something about the creative process, too: it's not just one way of thinking, it's multiple. In a sense, intelligence is made up of diverse ways of thinking that come together. There's the tension in setting up a goal, which may be a part of this process--a picture of the future, with all the uncertainty attached to trying something, failing, experimenting and failing. To be certain of your goal and at the same time uncertain how to achieve it can be very difficult.

It's "Yes, and" versus "Yes, but"--which is what you get in great jazz, where talented people work together. When you're playing in a jazz group, if somebody offers you an idea you've got to go with it, and add to it. You don't exercise judgment on the front end or you'll never get to something truly sweet.

(via Cultural Canaries)

 
Fly-O-Rama! - a Popular Science article about science's quest to understand the incredible flying abilities of winged insects.

Though engineers figured out decades ago how to build airplanes that cross oceans, the aerodynamics of insects continue to baffle them. The way an airplane generates lift can be accounted for by a straightforward concept: The air streaming over the top of the wings exerts less pressure than the air below, and that imbalance keeps the wings aloft. But insects, though equipped with barely a brain to speak of, make complex maneuvers far beyond an airplane's capabilities. They turn quicker than any fighter jet and land upside-down on ceilings. "These animals can move perfectly sideways, they can move backward and forward, they can rotate in place....Every time we do an experiment, we wonder how the hell do these little sesame-seed-size nervous systems do this?"

 
The Wall Street Journal's long-running Creative Leaders advertising camapaign has featured many of the ad industry's giant; 100 people who have raised the creative bar in a challenging corner of business. The ads talk about each person's individual and professional philosophies, their dreams, their successes and their mentors. Some great quotes.

(via Cup of Java)

 
Appalled by the 'banality' of Canada's cities, the country's top architects want to radically re-create our 15 biggest urban centres. The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and its president, Ottawa architect Ron Keenberg, say it's time for Canadian cities to reshape themselves into "world-famous" cities. Mr. Keenberg and a group of prominent Canadian architects will approach the federal government in the coming months to develop a national architectural policy.

A Revolution for Canada's Cities

 
Groovy Swedish radio: Sveriges Radio P3. A great selection of tunes here.