Microsoft’s chief humanising officer [The Economist]
Does Robert Scoble, a celebrity blogger on Microsoft’s payroll, herald the death of traditional public relations? Read full story
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the UX research and design consultancy
Experientia
Technology gets the creative bug [BBC]
The hi-tech and the arts worlds have for some time danced around each other and offered creative and technical help when required. Read full story
Wolves in shops’ clothing [Fortune]
“Lifestyle centres” make big-box retailers look and feel like small-town shops. How can entrepreneurs compete? Read full story
Institute without Boundaries
Change the world. Go to website
Sottsass’s ‘Architecture for People’ [Metropolis Magazine]
> Ettore Sottsass — one of the post-war architects who literally invented the idea of Italian Design — is today eighty-seven years old: a true éminence grise. Recently, I talked to the designer/writer and cultural provocateur at the Barry Friedman…
Social entrepreneurs and Davos [BBC]
“Davos diary: This is not about money” by Jim Fruchterman, President, The Benetech Initiative. Read full story
Eternal optimist [Metropolis Magazine]
Architect William McDonough has witnessed China’s rapid modernisation and sees hope for sustainable development. He is working to bring his cradle-to-cradle protocol to China, where old buildings are being demolished as quickly as new ones are constructed. Read full story
Experience experiment [Fast Company]
Sporting Puma sneakers and a downtown hipster haircut or two, a team from the design firm Imagination USA shuffles into a fourth-floor loft in New York’s SoHo district. They’re met by David Polinchock, who offers Blow Pops and ushers…
The good company [The Economist]
Corporate social responsibility as the tribute that capitalism pays to virtue. Read full story
Microsoft Project Seeks ‘A PC in Every Village’ [Seattle Post – Intelligencer]
Microsoft Corp.’s research unit is turning to social scientists in a new effort to understand the long-term possibilities for computer technology in developing countries. A Microsoft Research lab, to be inaugurated tomorrow in Bangalore, India, plans to employ anthropologists, ethnographers…
E-culture advisory
“Digital media have not only made in-roads in the way visual artists, musicians, designers, film makers and other cultural practitioners work – they have created a new context”. Michiel Schwarz’s insightful Dutch policy paper on “e-culture”, that has just…
Creative Capital conference
Culture and creativity are the latest “buzzwords” in the debate on innovation strategies for the knowledge economy. But what is the cultural dimension of the knowledge economy? And what does this imply for the public domain? These were the central…
Is America losing its edge [Foreign Affairs]
The long-standing pre-eminence of US technology and innovation worldwide may now face a challenge, as the changing face of the global marketplace takes its toll. As US trade and development has expanded overseas, partner nations have taken advantage of…
Corporate anthropology: dissecting consumer appetites [NPR]
NPR’s Eric Weiner reports on the emerging field of corporate anthropology, where researchers dissect consumer appetites and help engineers build user-friendly products. Listen
Museum mania in China
The Chinese government intends to build 1,000 new museums across the country by 2015. A scary piece by Elizabeth Casale in The Platform, an e-zine on cultural policy, says that China’s “place-based cultural strategy” is leading to a glut of…
The Persuaders [PBS]
Now and then you find something truly interesting on the field of marketing and communications, like this in-depth web site on the future of the field developed by America’s top investigative journalism public TV programme Frontline. Go to website
Art fuses with urbanity in an aesthetically pure redesign of the Modern [New York Times]
The Museum of Modern Art is back. And just in time. The city has grown up since the Modern shut its doors to build its new home two and a half years ago. The hole left by the twin towers.…
Design, key factor for success [Philips]
Speech by Dr. Stefano Marzano, CEO & Chief Creative Director of Philips Design at the German Marketing Association Conference in Hamburg. Read the full speech
2015, a special feature [BBC]
2015 – Where will we be? is the title of a special feature on development issues around the world by the BBC World Trust. Go to the BBC’s 2015 website
Interview with Genevieve Bell, cultural anthropologist at Intel
Genevieve Bell, a cultural anthropologist at Intel, has fundamentally changed the way we think about design, technology and culture. Through research and observation, Bell brought to our awareness how concepts of ‘home’, ‘family’ and ‘individual’ vary from one culture to…