spinning my wheels

I’ve been so frustrated working on my thesis. Last week after class, I came home and sat down to read a blog CPH127 that is devoted to an “open dialogue around the profound understanding of design, leadership and innovation.” Why? because I was encouraged to promote my own blog by provoking a dialog by poking fun of firms who are using design and design thinking to solve business problems that are identified and unidentified. How? Many of these firms are using the same jargon in their mission statements. They all talk about “strategy,” “innovation,” and “creativity” and I was encouraged to point this out in more explicit terms then I am doing here.

Honestly, I was hoping to find a way out of poking fun. This is not to say that under the right circumstances I wouldn’t poke fun. Last semester I made my leave-behind a book about shameless self-promotion and used celebrities, current and former, as the butt of my joke. But here it did not seem kosher. (For your viewing pleasure, and my chance to promote myself… pdf).

Last week I wasn’t so sure about the whole thing. I didn’t, and still don’t to some extent, feel comfortable with designers running around saying they can fix business problems when many of them have little or no background in business except for the companies that they run (which is no small feat). But there are movements out there to change this. See NextD.

In the end my explorations brought me back to my original point, which was that I was interested in creating a business model. Right now in my head it is an animated website.

Wish me luck.