CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE
-
Samsung Needs to Hire Fashionistas for its New Galaxy Gear Watch
It is Fashion Week in NYC and an incredible number of hugely talented fashion creatives are crawling its streets. Samsung needs to hire some of them. Perhaps it is not as bad in real 3D, but the new Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch really seems ugly/clunky to me.
Google Glass has serious value issues with privacy but it looks very cool on the face–thanks to Google hiring a Swedish industrial designer, hooking up with Warby Parker and Sergey hanging out at runway shows with Diane Von Furstenberg. Who are the guys in Seoul hanging out with?
Tech companies moving into “wearable technology” really need to start hiring graduates They have been designing wearable technology for eons–call them clothes, eyeglasses, shoes, hats….Each draps the body, extending and enhancing its capabilities. Clothes frame and reframe identities and personalities. They allow you to try them on and become someone, something else.
Fashion designers know all this already–and have amazing skills at understanding the deep meaning of “wearing” and the true purpose of “technology” in peoples’ lives. They also live in a global world and understand the importance of mining culture, male/female, Chinese/American/boomer/gen y. They are deep into “Making” culture–indeed, unlike other designers, they never left it. They do two collections a year–they create twice a year, year after year. And designers are hugely entrepreneurial, they love to set up their own businesses.
So Samsung and other wearable technology companies, listen up. Hire fashion designers if you want people to actually love your technology. And check out the Fashion Week runway shows now:
http://www.youtube.com/user/mbfashionweek
It’s all about creative intelligence.
-
Is Google Glass Good? Or Evil?
Jan Chipchase is one of my big heroes. In my book, Creative Intelligence, I talk about the need to “mine the existential” in cultures to understand the deeper meaning of people’s lives. Jan has been a pioneer in mining the existential, from China to America and beyond for Frog Design. He has an insightful comment about Google Glass we should all read.
Jan is one of the growing number of “thought leaders” being offered Google Glass to wear and comment on, building knowledge–and political support. Jan turned Google down. He’s worried about Google’s privacy problem–that it continuously violates peoples’ privacy. Here’s the comment.
https://medium.com/hidden-in-plain-sight/5e4089a9a3ac
I presented at Google recently on the five Creative Competencies of Creative Intelligence and began by thanking Google for saving my life. I’ve never been able to tell direction–left and right–and felt that i lived in a constant state of lost. Google Maps changed my life. It had deep existential meaning for me. I was no longer lost.
But, like Jan, I also questioned Google Glass. I put up a slide of a pretty woman wearing the glasses (all the pictures are of good-looking young people), and said it embodied the values of Googles’ Gen Y engineering founders. Great technology that could do cool stuff. They used the “Gift” model of innovation–use tech to invent new things and throw it over the wall to society.
But in this case, society is wary of Google’s intentions and worried about the impact of Google Glass on privacy.Taking data without asking appears to be baked into the deep DNA of Google–from taking content, to taking books to taking emails and other data when taking pictures for Google Maps. All put on Search.
What would Google Glass “take?” I don’t know. And neither does Jan. and neither do you.
Jan has a new book out–Hidden in Plain Site.
http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Plain-Sight-Extraordinary-ebook/dp/B008B0ULDW
It’s really good.
-
I’m Speaking About Creativity And The Vision Industry
This Wednesday, I’ll be talking about Tapping Imagination and Creativity at The Times Center to an audience facing disruptive change in their industry–the vision folks. Google Glass, Warby Parker are transforming all the players in vision, from fashionable eyeglass frame purveyors to medical providers.
The Five Creative Competencies of my book, Creative Intelligence, can provide a path to a better future.
It’s a sold-out audience. Check it out.
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062088424?ie=UTF8%20&tag=harpercollinsus-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0062088424
B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/creative-intelligence-bruce-nussbaum/1112757030?ean=9780062088420&cm_mmc=AFFILIATES-_-Linkshare-_-MdXm68JZJz8-_-10%3a1&r=1&