Global Design New York University: Leading Innovation: Process Is No Substitute

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Leading Innovation: Process Is No Substitute

IDEO's Ryan Jacoby discusses common innovation leadership pitfalls during an Investigatio Scholar-in-Residence lecture at NYU Poly. February 8, 2011.

Leading Innovation: Process Is No Substitute - Ryan Jacoby, IDEO from NYU-Poly.

Abstract: Much of the discussion on innovation has centered on the structures, systems, and tools to instill innovation processes and competencies in organizations. Yet, most such initiatives fail. What gives? Tools and processes are not enough. Innovation is fundamentally a human endeavor, one that must not only be managed, but also led. Luckily these leadership behaviors can be developed. In this talk, Ryan will, through stories, explore common innovation leadership pitfalls and share a model for how to lead innovation.

MISSION

Global warming effects pose new challenges to the architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design communities. The immediate response has been a turn toward a host of energy-saving technologies. What has rarely been addressed, however, is the problem of scale. How can the designer make sure that global solutions do not come at the expense of local traditions, cultures, and environments? By placing human rational, emotional, technological, and social needs at the center of our environmental concerns, we propose a new GLOBAL [Global Local Open Border Architecture and Landscape] design initiative.

We seek a Global yet still Local design that can Open the sociopolitical Borders that all too often separate Architecture from its Landscape. The overreaching aim is to develop a language of design that can create proximity between individual responsibility and the current global environmental crisis. We see environmental problems as a crisis of human alienation from the natural world, and our initiative will explore ways in which design can reformat the unfortunate separation. In our plea for proximity between the individual and the global we will explore, in the words of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a design that is "as close to the beyond as to things near" when we evoke "our power to imagine ourselves elsewhere."