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Posted by hipstomp | 6 Feb 2008
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Comments (1)
"Hire naive misfits who argue with you; encourage failure; avoid letting client input limit your vision; and fully commit to risky ventures." It sounds like crappy advice for someone running a design firm, but these are tactics proposed by Robert I. Sutton, Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford, in an article titled "Creating a firm culture that supports innovative design."
Cultivating an environment in which there is a swift and easy exchange of ideas is an important part of the design process in many firms, both large and small. What may not be so obvious are strategies to foster optimal functioning and creative thinking in such an environment.
(Incidentally Sutton's also got a great article/blog entry, co-written with Guy Kawasaki, called "Is Your Future Boss an Asshole?")
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Comments
I wish more people would adopt a mentality like this in general, not just in design culture and the workplace. When directors surround themselves by brown-nosing, submissive drones, how could they possibly expect innovation? It's the same in politics, in business, and in approaching a lot of the major world issues we face like climate change and poverty. When people face confrontation, people can re-evaluate how to approach something. I work as an editor at a design college, Art Center and I know that my work is always made better by people who challenge me, even when it's hard to make changes. The college is actually hosting an event that puts Sutton's ideas in more of a a global context. It's called The Global Dialgues. It's taking place in Barcelona in March and there will be conversations there between disparate and original thinkers from all over the globe trying to address problems in business, climate change, geopolitics and the like. It sounds like something very much atuned to the Robert Sutton's ideas about the workplace environment. You can get info about the event at its blog, http://blog.globaldialogues.eu/ or at
http://www.artcenter.edu/dialogues