Thanks to Walter Derzko for inviting me to join yesterday’s 2020 Media Futures Workshop at the s-Lab (Strategic Innovation Lab) at OCAD. Suzanne Stein and Greg Van Alstyne did a great job of moderating and facilitating a fairly free wheeling group of thinkers.
It looks like I was the only one using twitter during the workshop or maybe I had the wrong tag? Here are a few thoughts that emerged that could each be turned into a blog post:
- We think about discontinuity as a threat but the new global success stories will have discontinuity at the heart of a new approach. Are the incremental gains achieved through “baby steps” and the “go slow”, “fast follower” practices of Canadian business enough to maintain Canada’s position in the world moving forward? At the moment many are quick to heap praise on the stability of our financial sector. I remember a few observers noting that growth in Nova Scotia was not effected by the global downturn. Hmmm. When achieving global success requires embracing discontinuity, what design approaches should we advocate and adopt?
- How do digital connections qualify/disqualify people for precious face to face time? Many of us have now experienced the little thrill of having connected with someone online via twitter or a blog exchange and then met them in real life. As we become more connected, how will the productivity of our face to face time be impacted. Is it a sign of disrespect if you have not bothered to “google” someone before attending a scheduled meeting with them?
- Does copyright transform into “identity right”? Copyright was established to protect the investment and intellectual property of creators for a reasonable time period. Online is “busting through to reality” (pick up Jesse Schell’s talk on the Future of Gaming at the 10:56mark). Is the final produced piece of art or software code the point where we need these protections? When our life stream is “sensed” and iterative design is key to progress, do we need an entirely different set of rights to ensure that individuals have the ability to profit from the digital footprints that they cast off or in other words, how they direct their lives?
- We must integrate consumers into design & production. This generalizes to “crowd sourcing” or making sure that we make corporate decisions, not based upon the smartest person sitting at the table at that moment, but based upon having the smartest thinking anywhere available at the table for the moment of the decision. It is the kind of motive behind the idea for a Seedling Prediction Market that initially drew me into MDes’ (i.e. Masters of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation) orbit. This is not really a question for 2020. I think it is a question that we need to be answering right now to maintain Ontario/Canada’s position in the world.
- So some “Crowd Building” related design thinking …
