Author Archives: Venessa Miemis
Here are a few recurring themes that have been popping up on my radar.(click to enlarge)Enjoy this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group!Venessa Miemis is a Media Studies graduate student at the New School in NYC, exploring what happens at the intersection of technology, culture, and communication. Connect with her at www.emergentbydesign.com and on Twitter @venessamiemis.
If you’re a businessperson or someone interested in understanding how to facilitate innovation, you’ve probably heard of “design thinking” by now. Coined by IDEO’s David Kelley, the term refers to a set of principles, from mindset to process, that can be applied to solve complex problems. I’ve seen articles lately ranging from those that highlight its potential, [Design Thinking for Social Innovation, How does design thinking give companies a competitive advantage?] to those that warn of it’s impending failure as a practice [Why Design Thinking Won't Save You , The Coming Boom and Bust of Design Thinking]. I’ve been eager to enter into the conversation, especially because some of the arguments around the topic don’t make sense to me and I wanted to know why. Change by Design, written by IDEO’s CEO Tim Brown, was on my winter reading list anyway, so I decided to finish it before bringing in … Continue reading
by Venessa MiemisI read an article the other day on John Merrow’s blog, titled ‘Technology in Schools: Problems & Possibilities.’ In it, he outlines three fears he has concerning the implementation of emerging media technologies into education:The digital divide (gap between people with access to technology and those without)Schools will resist innovation and become irrelevantSchools will not use technologies in a strategic wayI spend a lot of time thinking about social technologies and the role they’re playing in our lives now and into the future, and I feel that though John’s fears are justified, they may prove to be unfounded as time progresses. Here’s why:Fear #1: The Digital DivideI agree that access to technology may be an issue (for now), but the barrier is continuing to drop. Frame it in terms of Moore’s Law or Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns, but either way, the rate at which technologies become more … Continue reading
