metacool

My whole new mind...

You Are 30% Left Brained, 70% Right Brained

The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet. The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way. If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art. Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Are You Right or Left Brained?

Hmmm... as I experienced when taking the PSAT, the SAT, the GRE, and the GMAT, as well as anything I've ever done involving the IRS, I could have answered most of the questions both ways.  But I'll take it.  70/30.  80/20 would have been more memorable, but that's probably a right brain kind of statement.  Mostly.

Thanks to Virginia Postrel for the pointer to the survey

Innovation, Growth, and Getting to Where You Want to Go

My IDEO colleague Ryan Jacoby and I recently published a piece in the Design Management Review titled Innovation, Growth, and Getting to Where You Want to Go.

Please give it a read and let me know what you think, or leave a comment below.

Some good no asshole coverage

The San Francisco Chronicle published a nice interview with my colleague Bob Sutton about his new book The No Asshole Rule.  I have a little blurb in the article about why it's so important to filter out jerks when you're trying to encourage innovative behavior.

I love Bob's book and I think the coverage it's receiving is great -- I hope that it pushes the world a little closer to a state of affairs where the pursuit of happiness in the workplace is not only encouraged, but is the norm.  My only worry stems from the power of Google; will my descendants forever associate a web search on my name with the term "asshole"?  I hope not.  English is just so damn boring when it comes to swear words for the nether regions.  If that association is going to be a sticky one, I'd much rather it be with something like the Spanish gilipollas or -- even more mellifluous to these ears -- the Italian cafone.

On a side note not even tangentially tied to cafones, I must apologize for two trends on metacool as of late.  All of us on the staff of metacool are dedicated to writing thoughts about the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life.  But as of late we (I) haven't been posting that much, and what I have posted has usually been a pointer to something else rather than some (semi) original thinking.  Why?  Well, I'm not one to spend a lot of energy fabricating excuses, but I've been hella busy innovating.  Deep in structuring some prototypes and figuring out where to go with them.  Also, I'm busy getting the next version of Creating Infectious Action cranked up for the Spring Quarter at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design.  I'm looking forward to teaching it with a rather awesome group of individuals.  More on that to come.  One change is that it'll probably be called "CIA-KGB" for short, instead of just "CIA".  So drop me a line and help me out with name brainstorming by letting me of any good verbs that start with a "K".

But creativity is endless. so expect a surge of posts (oh boy, has that word has been ruined forever, or what?) in the next few weeks as all this goo gels in my head.

Designing for Contagion

I was fortunate to be interviewed by Chris Shipley as part of the Guidewire Group's Leadership Forum.  The topic was "Finding customer zero - identifying the root of contagious behavior in emerging markets".  I really enjoyed the session, because the conference itself was small enough where we could all fit in a room and see and hear each other, so very naturally our onstage interview quickly became an audience-wide discussion.  Based on work that's been happening at IDEO and at the Stanford d.school, I suggested a simple (but not simplistic, hopefully) model for designing for contagion:

1. Begin with Desire:  create an offering that will bring value to people's lives by starting your process with a focus on their needs.  Not on your killer technology.  Not on your brilliant business model.
2. Weave Sticky Stories: design all of your messages to be stories that are genetically engineered, if you will, to be as sticky and contagious as possible.  (more on this in a second)
3. Design a System to Spread: it's not enough to have a great offering with an amazing story.  You've got to consciously design a system which is uniquely optimized to spread the story about your specific offering.

As you might expect from a crowd heavy with Web 2.0 thinkers, we quickly got into issues of co-creation and open innovation.  I only wish we could have spent another hour or two on the topic.

I had an easier time than usual talking through Point Two above because I had an easy out: the next speaker in the lineup was Professor Chip Heath from Stanford's Graduate School of business.  Chip and his brother Dan are about to launch a book called Made to Stick.  It's all about Point Two, so all I had to say was "wait until tomorrow, and listen to Chip".  Made to Stick is a perfect companion to two other books which are about designing systems to spread:  Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Seth Godin's Unleashing the Ideavirus.  And like those two books, I think Made to Stick is going to be a Big Deal.  You can read an excerpt from Dan and Chip's book here.

What makes Points 1-3 work is a human-centered design process.  Genuine, authentic stories about offerings that help people get real jobs done in their daily lives are what work.  You get there via design thinking, by putting people at the center of everything you do.  To that end, Chip recently joined my company as an IDEO Fellow.  He joins our existing Fellows Barry Katz and Bob Sutton.  They all lend their specific areas of deep expertise to our design process, and I'm very excited to see what happens with Chip in the mix.

By the way, Dan and Chip will be on the NBC Today Show tomorrow, January 3.  They're scheduled to go on during the 7:30 - 8 AM time slot.  A great chance to hear about making stories sticky.  They've got a good blog going, too.

Update:  here's the Today Show video with Chip & Dan

Roads to Innovation at Stanford

I'll be part of a panel discussion at the Roads to Innovation conference at Stanford this coming weekend.  All the panels are stocked with really interesting people.  Given my penchant for unabashed gearhead gnarlyness, I'm a little disappointed that Mario Almondo from Ferrari won't be joining my panel as was previously scheduled.  But he just got one helluva promotion at work, so I can see why he's not schlepping out to California for the conference.

Please shoot me an email if you're going to be attending and would like to say hi.

Learning to Innovate

BusinessWeek recently published a great piece about the growing trend of using design thinking as a means to teach people how to innovate.  I'm particularly proud that the Mozilla project from the Creating Infectious Action class I co-taught with Bob Sutton is the lead story in the article:

Tech geeks love Mozilla's Firefox browser, which is impervious to most viruses, but mainstream America has yet to embrace it. How does Mozilla move beyond invention (cool browser, neat functions) to an innovation that translates into market success (a Net tool so hot it upends Microsoft's Corp.'s Explorer)? It's a perfect problem for a classroom case study. So last spring, Mozilla's business development team turned to Stanford University. But instead of going to the business school, they headed for the double-wide trailer that housed Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, dubbed the "D-school" on campus. The course was team-taught by Stanford profs and industry professionals. Each student worked in a team that included a B-schooler, a computer science major, and a product designer. And each team used design thinking to shape a business plan for Mozilla.

It made a big difference. A B-school class would have started with a focus on market size and used financial analysis to understand it. This D-school class began with consumers and used ethnography, the latest management tool, to learn about them. Business school students would have developed a single new product to sell. The D-schoolers aimed at creating a prototype with possible features that might appeal to consumers. B-school students would have stopped when they completed the first good product idea. The D-schoolers went back again and again to come up with a panoply of possible winners.

This is a great overview of both the class we taught and the philosophy behind it.  There's a big difference between knowing how to analyze a business situation versus knowing how to create and execute on a business innovation problem.  For more on what we did in the class, here's a post I wrote earlier this year, and best of all is this post by Bob Sutton, which rightfully celebrates the students from the class. 

One thing I'd like to make clear is that I'm not anti-MBA.  Far from it.  I value my management education a great deal, and believe that an MBA provides individuals with very useful set of analytical tools, as well as the ability to thin-slice most business situations.  However, I do think that the typical MBA program is mostly focused on becoming a master of business-as-usual, which is a critical body of knowledge when it comes to running a profitable organization.  One way (and the best way, I believe) to learn how to engage in innovative behavior is to become a master of business-by-design, and that's what we're doing in our Business + Design classes at the Stanford d.school.  Organizations need to know how to do both.  And those organizations need doers and innovators who can bridge the worlds of business-as-usual and business-by-design.

Talking about simplicity, Aston Martin, wa, Muji, TiVo, life, teaching, etc...

I recently had the pleasure of chatting about simplicity, design, business, technology and life with Jason Fried and Matt Linderman of 37Signals, and Professor John Maeda of the MIT Media Lab.

Here's the transcript of our chat.

More Contagious Behavior Marketing

Alice LaPlante of InformationWeek wrote this nifty article which goes deeper on some of the ideas which came up in our Contagious Behavior panel discussion at the AlwaysOn conference: Tracking Down "Infectious Agents"

Pouring Gas, Recognizing Real Users, and Extreme Delegation

If you're interested in hearing a cool discussion about creating contagious behavior, pouring gas on fires, releasing control and the future of marketing, check out this video of the panel discussion I moderated earlier this year with Bob Sutton at the 2006 AlwaysOn conference. Joining us on the panel were:

• Mitchell Baker, CEO of Mozilla
• Perry Klebahn, d.school professor, entrepeneur, and inventor of the modern snow shoe
• Gil Penchina, CEO of Wikia

What an awesome group!  The video image is kind of small, the open Internet comment box can be a bit distracting, but the sound quality is good, and that's what matters.  This insights and thoughts brought up by Mitchell, Perry, and Gil knocked my hat into the creek.  I love marketing innovation. 

For a nice written summary of the panel discussion, see this post on Bob's blog.

Toot toot

I'm always one to endeavor to only toot my horn if I can do so without blowing it.  So this is meant as a quiet toot:  In case you haven't read the August 21 issue of BusinessWeek, check out this tasty blurb on metacool from the front of the magazine. 

Design geek, indeed!

Tales from Design 2.0

I spoke at Design 2.0 last week, and had a lot of fun doing it.  I actually enjoy public speaking, so I had a great time talking about ecosystems and design and business.  Unfortunately, I can't post my slides... more on that in a bit.

Here are two really good summaries of what I talked about, done by two guys who I wish I had known in college -- they would have been great people to supply me with engineering lecture notes for all those fluid mechanics lectures I skipped:

• Nick Baum  (he has great coverage of the entire conference)
• Luke Wroblewski

The reason I can't give you my slides is that they were on my trusty PowerBook, which took a big, freakish fall during the conference.  It stayed alive for 48 hours, only to die a quiet death later in the week.  I think it may still be saved...

But my favorite review of the conference is this one, which points out that the conference highlight was  "... a really nice Ducati desktop background on Diego Rodriguez's Mac."  Gotta love those audiences full of designers.  Got their priorities straight.

Speaking at Design 2.0

I'll be speaking at Design 2.0 next week on the topic of "Products and their Ecosystems: Understanding the power of context in product innovation"

My second self-indulgent post of the day

metacool turned two earlier this week.  What started as a way to really understand how ideas diffuse across the Web morphed into a place to play (seriously play) with ideas about design and innovation and marketing (which, if done right, are all one and the same) and meet a lot of cool people (no assholes allowed).  Thanks for all the fun and insights, so let's keep on keepin' on.

Internet Fasting

I went cold-turkey on Internet connectivity over the past few weeks, not because I had to get stuff done, but because I had to not get stuff done.  It was good not to be so connected. 

I remember reading a quote somewhere from the great Italian designer Ettore Sottsass that went something like "The problem with computers is that people will stop painting with water colors." 

I love the Internet because of its seemingly infinite potential for engendering connectedness and depth of thought and meaning.  But I suspect that there's a curve of sorts at work here, and as one travels across that curve things start to trend toward the shallow and the trite. 

Happiness helps you innovate

Here's my latest column for BusinessWeek Online.  On happiness.

How does that saying go?  If you look like your column photo, you're too ill to write?

Google Page Rank = 7

The Google PageRank for metacool just flipped up to 7.  Good.

I don't blog in search of ever-increasing numbers of readers.  Far from it.  I care much more about quality conversations, quality ideas, and quality insights.  But, one of the original reasons I started blogging was to get to know -- know by doing --  how  ideas diffuse across the web.  Creating infectious ideas is a fascinating topic, you know?

Reaching seven makes me happy because now I can add another data point to the diffusion curve, and that's the interesting part.  That's all.  Thanks.

feb 27 update: well, it dropped down to 6 today.   Hmmmm... a dynamic metric?  Interesting.

feb 28 update: back up to 7 today. 

Diego, TED. TED, Diego

I'm doing a little bit of guest blogging over at TED Blog. 

Borrowing language from another sphere of my life, my TED stuff represents a market adjacency to my core metacool blogging activites.  Related, and pulling from the same core capabilities, but not addressing the same target segment.

In other words, different subject matter viewed through the same lens of design thinking.

What was I thinking?

My recent column in BusinessWeek Online drove a bunch of feedback my way, most of it very positive. 

Thanks, Mom! 

(just kidding)

While I did get a lot of great feedback, some of it doubted my sincerity.  "Diego, you're the biggest car dude I know, " most of it goes.  "Surely you can't be serious about Saturn?  Don't they suck?  That was all facetious, right?"

My answer is a big, fat "no".  Everything I said in my column was heartfelt.  I really believe in Saturn the brand and in the Saturn Sky.  I think the Saturn Sky is stunning and will provide a wonderful driving experience.  In fact, if Cadillac and Saturn were the two brands of a standalone car company, I'd be first in line to buy stock.

Rust-Proof Branding

I'm happy to say that I'm now writing a column for BusinessWeek Online

Here's my debut:  Saturn's Rust-Proof Brand

Tooting It Without Blowing It...

In other news, metacool appeared in several legitimate (read: print) business publications over the past few months:

• Learning From Blogs, by Virginia Postrel, in Forbes
• The New Instant Companies, by Michael Copeland & Andrew Tilin, in Business 2.0
• More Intelligent Design, by Jena McGregor, in Fast Company

Fast Company's article made me want to pick up the phone and call my mom:  "... Rodriguez's blog is a must-read for anyone who wants to incorporate design thinking into their work."

Beauty, eh?

And the title of this post?  From a book I heartily recommend: Brag!  The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn without Blowing it

Seth Godin at metacool: An Overview

I'm all about creating beautiful user experiences, so for your viewing pleasure and ease of reference, here's an overview of Seth Godin's visit to metacool and our conversation about his new book All Marketers are Liars:

• Design & Authenticity
• Story-Free?
• Emotional Design
• Stuff Seth Digs
• How to Create Good Lies
• About that Title...

meta metacool 24 2004

Some business bloggers (including yours truly) are collecting their top 24 personal blog posts of 2004 over at A Penny For.  So without further ado, here's the metacool Top 24 for 2004:

Design

• Jolie-Laide
• How will it look in a month?
• Do it to the hilt!
• Getting Visceral in Wetsuits
• Laide, no Jolie
• The Bimota Tesi Millenium
• iBag
• When the Prototype Becomes the Product

Innovation

• Soichiro Honda on Enjoyment and Innovation
• Teamwork & Creativity
• Using Option Value to Win the X Prize
• You can prototype with anything
• Iridium, Steve McQueen, and Venture Design

Leadership

• A lesson in avoiding assholes, from Sir Richard Branson
• Cranium Wisdom from Richard Tait
• Vartan Gregorian on Liberty
• Vartan Gregorian on Organizational Leadership
• What if the CEO knew his products?

Marketing

• Sixten Sason, Brand Creator
• Tanks and Chunks
• It's Cool to be Keen
• How Does One Say "Poison Your Brand" in German?
• You'll Find Google's Brand in the Trash
• Subaru is the New Saab