I’ve had it. I’ve had it with unsubstantiated hyperbole. I’ve had it with hackneyed metaphors. I’ve had it with shallow sound bites. I crave meaty insights, not the intellectual twinkies served up in lieu of.
This means no more Bruce Nussbaum. No more Tom Peters. No more anything related to IDEO. And certainly no more Apple examples.
For instance, here’s a fresh bite from Bruce: “Innovation, creativity, design — whatever you want to call it — is the new Six Sigma.â€
Claiming something is the new something else is about as insightful as claiming something is dead. What exactly does this really mean? Does this mean that innovation is all about consistent manufacturing quality? Does this mean that creativity is the new management fad? Does it mean that design is now table-stakes? Does this mean that innovation, creativity, design are no long enough to maintain a competitive advantage?
Why not just say what you mean? Perhaps because you don’t mean anything. Perhaps because you don’t know what you mean. Or perhaps because what you mean is neither interesting nor insightful nor even true. As a result you hide behind the obfuscation of a clumsy yet common metaphor–sort of like hiding the taste of rotting meat with even hotter curry.
Check out some of the folks on my blogroll, folks like Niti Bahn, Presentation Zen, Black Sheep and Bubblegeneration, folks who shun the twinkies.
Ha-ha, I nearly fell out of my chair when Tom peters jumped on the design band wagon, and was teaching designers how to be designers!
Suddenly everybody from china to europe, us and russia realises the power of design. My answer to these fellows going on about it, would be to take a multi-disciplinary Industrial Design course.
Here’s my rant:
http://designsojourn.blogspot.com/2005/12/everybody-is-talking-about-design.html
Peters is just an example of the kind of superficial power-point-quotable punditry I’m growing to reject. I understand his credibility in business circles isn’t exactly what we in design have been led to believe.
I think insights are what we need–not sound bites.
The soundbites phenomena, covered humbly by moi, here http://www.nitibhan.com/perspective/2005/09/books_as_snacks.html is not just in design. Its a coalescing of decreasing ‘readership’ and literacy, increasing ADD due to TV, movies and news catering to that soundbite style – almost a vicious cycle, one could say – and a sense of increasing lack of awareness of the wider world we live in. Almost, one could say, a dumbing down. The factors that are frustrating you, are in your area of interest, but in fact, imho, I’m seeing it everywhere. Witness the big ad on BW’s blog pages that urge you “Don’t Read” I think they are for audiovox or some such thing – ok, I just checked they are gone now, but still, all of these are pointing towards a ‘plugged’ in audience. Therefore it seems that the writers are responding to this change by trying to adapt to the sensationalist style that is perceived to work. The interesting thing to observe would be whether is location specific or worldwide.
I definitely agree. FoxNews has made a mint on exploiting this. I supposed I expect more from us. We (designers that is) are supposed to look beneath the surface and tease out the root causasl connections.
But we only human afterall, and isn’t it just easier to adopt some dramatic pre-fabbed opinion than to actually think for one’s self?
I do however hope that some of what’s happening in media (check out bubblegeneration for how big media is disintegrating) and some of what’s happening on the net these days (people make loose but wide connections with each other–as you mentioned in perspectives) will help counter act some of the dumbing down. Problem with is, how many people will really have access to these new conversations?