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The theme for the first session was: Design is integral. We need to design not just new products and technologies but also new systems and new expectations.
Saul Kaplan started the summit. He talked about the importance of system level innovation for solving big problems like energy, education, and healthcare. He called for more experimentation and talked about the value of cutting across disciplines to find new solutions. That is what is meant by collaboration in collaborative innovation. For the second half of the definition, Saul defined innovation as a better way to deliver value. That might be a new technology, but not necessarily. Designing a new systems or a new process is perhaps the more critical type of innovation.
The first storyteller, Michael Samuelson, shared his unique story as a man diagnosed with breast cancer. In a highly improbable set of circumstances, he discovered he had a serious tumor, one that many of his doctors dismissed as “probably” a cyst. He emphasized the impact of the highly unexpected and the hubris of certainty. He called on participants not to be practical and not to be realistic; rather he promoted living a life of healthy uncertainty. To put it differently, he asked us to design new expectations for ourselves and our lives.
Saul prefaced the next storyteller by saying that he thought the hot job of the future is going to be a curator, not in the museum sense, but in the ability to sift through tons of information and make sense of it all. Saul introduced Paola Antonelli from the MOMA. She told a story about the importance of having someone to provoke your passions and thoughts and how anger is or can be an important motivator. She gave a few examples of design that violate our expectations (robots that are afraid of people, contraptions that repeat an ex’s annoying habits). She hopes that designers will become a more integral part of problem solving because they can be catalysts for solving important problems.
Ethan Zuckerman was the third storyteller. He showed us an application that turns an iphone into an instrument that can then be shared with otehrs around the world. He showed us that by looking at the worldview of people playing the ocarina, we were in a way to locate people who are “cultural bridges”. Anyone who has lived in a foreign culture understands the importance of finding the people who are culture bridges that help translate culture to newcomers. He observed that people who have been bridged often become bridges themselves and gave the example of the Boyoyo Boys who recorded Graceland with Paul Simon, a production that would not have been possible without a cultural bridge. Finally, Ethan showed us that it’s becoming easier to be a cultural bridge with the onslaught on information (pictures, videos, etc.) from other countries, but it’s not always the complete picture. Getting a mirror of how another country views your own culture is a better tool. For example, Yeeyan translates American media to mandarin for people in China. Translation in the opposite direction hasn’t gone the same way to nearly the same extent- yet. However, Global Voices brings volunteers together to translate media to other languages. In a nutshell, we can use collaboration to design new interactions.
The last storyteller of the session was Jay Rogers of Local Motors. He had a great phrase – “deaf innovators” to encapsulate the faith he has had to have in his vision of building a new car company in America. He talked about the importance of innovation in car design (70% of gas and oil is for transportation, the majority of which is spent on cars and light trucks). He used a great analogy: cars have not come into the slow food generation. Cars today are so complex, and we’ve removed the ability for the average American to get under the hood and understand their cars. You can almost void the warranty by trying to “love your car” or even get to know it better. He told us about a different process for designing and building cars. Building a better car for traditional auto companies is expensive, building a better process is a different approach. Local Motors uses collaborations from 3,600 innovators and tens of thousands of designs as inputs into design. He pointed out that Harley Davidson loans payoff better than General Motors because of the connection the customer has to the purchase; to extent that connection, Local Motors lets you see the process and bonds customers with their cars by engaging them in the process. Local Motors uses mircofactories to build, distribute, and service their cars. It challenges the centralized nature of car manufacturing. The result is that Local Motors makes cars 5x faster with 100x less capital. Rally Fighter is coming out this fall by local motors in smaller batch units- it looks amazing. Local Motors is certainly a designer of a new process for car building.
