Bruce Nussbaum blogs about why a deep recession can be a great opportunity for innovation. With a nod to IDEO’s Tim Brown, Nussbaum suggest we’ll see big changes in consumer behavior, pointing to a potential shift from spending to saving through such initiatives as Bank of America’s Keep the Change.

Read the article here.

MAKE magazine highlights the Global Chain Reaction fun, with editors spotting their publication’s cameo in IDEO’s 20-minute, three-continent video vignette. To watch the full clip of the Rube Goldberg contraption, visit IDEO Labs.

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Tagged under “ambition,” Gizmodo marvels at IDEO Labs’ Global Chain Reaction. Blogger Adam Frucci writes, “Sure, we’ve seen a number of fun Rube Goldberg devices in our day, but none with the scale and ambition of this one made by IDEO.” For the video of the contraption, visit IDEO Labs.

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Entrepreneur Tomohisha Miyauchi asks IDEO’s Bill Moggridge about being a successful international business player in a competitive environment. Follow Miyauchi’s journey through Star Alliance and CNBC.

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Ford’s SmartGauge with EcoGuide gives hybrid owners a more-connected, fuel-efficient driving experience by coaching them on how to optimize performance of the 2010 Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrids. IDEO and Smart Design collaborated with Ford on the project, and brainstorming sessions with the IDEO team led to more than 100 ideas about information to display.

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IDEO was honored with three Spark! Awards: a silver award for “The Protons,” and bronze awards for both “Sustainable Living Coffin” and the My Book II for Western Digital. “The Protons” and “Sustainable Living Coffin” are from a series of concepts called Designs On—. Visit the Designs On— website here.


Read more about the 2008 Spark! Award winners here.

James Moed, a Business Factors strategist at IDEO in London, explains how successful organizations navigate a downtown. Seeing a recession as an opportunity can lead to smart new initiatives.

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Ideas are a dime a dozen, while getting new services to market is a rare commodity. IDEO’s Mark Jones and Fran Samalionis explain their strategies for execution.

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Increasingly, consumers see the mobile phone as a key part of their daily entertainment. IDEO’s Duane Bray talks about how to deliver great media and entertainment experiences on the hand-held device. Click here for more information about the event.

IDEO partner and practice lead Fred Dust will be kicking off the Community Design Center of Pittsburgh’s 2008/2009 Design Excellence Lecture Series. Fred’s presentation, “Tales of the City: New Public Collaborations,” focuses on how the practice of small “d” design and radical collaboration with clients and consumers allows for new methods for public process and some surprising new solutions to thinking about a city.

In Jocelyn Wyatt’s blog entry from Social Capital Markets 2008, she writes about her pleasant surprise in hearing speakers respond to the need for systems, as well as products, to be designed.

Read the article here.

In the October issue of the Harvard Business Review, Diego Rodriguez, a partner at IDEO, talks about dealing with the “lone inventor myth.” In the article “Creativity and the Role of the Leader,” Diego asks readers to consider the examples of InnoCentive, Mozilla, and Wikipedia. “All are contexts that bring in lots of contributors,” he explains. “And the fundamental structure of such networked organizations is not centralized and top-down.” For more on Diego’s thinking and to access the full article, click here.

Join IDEO’s Valerie Casey on October 21 at DesignPhiladelphia‘s conference, Creating the Conditions for Change. The event is part of National Design Week, October 16–22.

October 23–24, IDEO will be joining a long list of global industry leaders and MIT faculty at MIT’s conference on systems thinking, to be held October 23–24 on the school’s campus. The event tackles some of the issues around using a systems approach to solving complex problems, such as sustainability and the environment, product design and technology strategy.

Join IDEO speakers October 13–15 at SoCap08, an event designed to bring together leading social entrepreneurs and investors from around the world. From October 13 to 15, creative thinkers will discuss their efforts to accelerate the flow of capital to good in the form of business, investing, and philanthropy.

, 2008

Ted Howes, global business lead in the sustainability domain for IDEO, helps kick off the Design Program’s centennial lecture series at University of California at Davis with his talk “The Power of Design: Energy and Sustainability” on October 15.

For more information on the even, click here.

The New York Times recently wrote about design thinking. Reporter Janet Rae-Dupree interviewed IDEO’s Tim Brown, and in his blog, Tim keeps the conversation going. Tim writes about the gray line between the traditional role of design and the more strategic contribution that design thinking can make. Join the discussion.