Business

The price of oil

I couldn't take my dogs for a run at their usual park this weekend. Why? Because it is an estuary for the San Francisco Bay, and the Bay's water and surrounding coast is coated with a layer of thick fuel oil that leaked out of a container ship that crashed into the Bay Bridge.

Some 58,000 gallons leaked out of the gash in the side of the ship after it inexplicably hit the bridge, the worst oil spill in the region in twenty years. This is the sea-going equivalent of tapping a parking meter with your bumper … Read more

The value of old-fashioned ways in a Web 2.0 world

Today we are in the throes of a slow return to a world of more personal connection between companies and their customers. Web 2.0 is allowing it, and for some people perhaps it is a new concept, but in fact it dates back to the beginning of commerce, to individual barter or the local market and the personal connection between those selling or buying the goods. For a long time we have engineered and marketed and grown our way out of this type of connection, and it is still quite startling when you see it happen in a genuine … Read more

Skateboarding for eco-conscious riders

My colleague Hunter Smith of frog design has used his entrepreneurial spirit to launch a budding start-up based on his two greatest passions: eco-design and skateboarding. Hunter's company, aptly named SuperGreen Boards, employs some of the most advanced eco-friendly technologies for producing custom longboards, slalom, and speedboards.

SuperGreen Boards uses bamboo, which is not only beautiful, strong, and flexible but is also sustainably harvested. Maple wood, known as the gold standard for skateboards because of its strength under the pressure of the rider, takes a minimum of 100 years to mature before it can be used. Bamboo, in comparison, … Read more

Is HoneyShed the end of the future of online advertising?

Call it branded entertainment, advertising-as-content, or just brand-vertising: obviously inspired by TBS' veryfunnyads.com, which according to MediaPost claims more than 73 million views since launching last year, brands and advertisers are teaming up to push the envelope of online advertising even further. Recent example: Publicis Groupe, Droga5, and Digitas have joined forces to quietly launch what they had already announced in May this year--a site dubbed HoneyShed on which advertisers can air brand-specific programming. Clips can be shared by viewers via e-mail or embedded on blogs and other sites. HoneyShed also offers instant e-commerce: "I want it." … Read more

The first Web 2.0 soccer club in the world

After attempts to "crowdsource" the purchase of a soccer club, it was obviously just a matter of time until the concept of crowdsourcing--the act of outsourcing a job or task to a group of people--would be applied to the actual game.

The Israeli team Hapoel Play65 Kiryat Shalom, a shared project of the online backgammon room Play65 and the Israeli social network for sports fans Web2sport, prides itself on being the first Web 2.0 soccer club in the world.

The club has begun experimenting with a wisdom-of-the-fans approach that allows the team's supporters to monitor … Read more

Did the World Design Congress Connect?

Phew, what a busy week it was. Unfortunately, it was busy for me in a way that meant I didn't get to see as much of the World Design Congress as I had hoped. The plan for blogging during it also didn't work out as expected. Tim got to see a lot more than I did, and his post does a masterful job of capturing the highlights and trends.

From my more limited perspective I would tend to agree with the key points of his post. The highlight for me, as I think it was for many, was … Read more

CONNECTING'07: Where do we design from here?

Thousands of representatives from international corporations, design firms, government entities, and institutions of higher education, spanning more than 35 countries around the world, attended the CONNECTING'07 World Design Congress last week in San Francisco, the largest and arguably most influential gathering of industrial designers to date.

Did it live up to its promise? The short answer is: yes and no. There were early warning signs for the "no": The opening ceremony was a long-winded and largely self-congratulatory celebration of the two organizing bodies, ICSID and IDSA. In his opening keynote, ICSID president Peter Zech set the tone … Read more

Blogging the World Design Congress

We'll be blogging from the World Design Congress which is this week in San Francisco. It's bringing together a couple of hundred speakers from the world of design and culture, and should prove to be interesting and inspiring. The event is co-organized by the Industrial Designers Society of America (which collaborates with BusinessWeek on the annual design awards), and ICSID, which is the international body of national design organizations such as IDSA.

From the website:

Two years and twenty two years

Every two years, Icsid holds a Congress in collaboration with a member organization in a host country, … Read more

Open or not - innovation remains a fuzzy concept

The Economist has a special report on innovation in this week's issue, and it's good to see the magazine recognizing "open innovation" as the perhaps most important current trend in this space: "Rapid and disruptive change is now happening across new and old businesses. Innovation ... is becoming both more accessible and more global. This is good news because its democratization releases the untapped ingenuity of people everywhere and that could help solve some of the world's weightiest problems."

The report is an expansive tour de force through the entire innovation landscape, covering a … Read more