Marty Neumeier the president of Neutron and author of such books as The Brand Gap and Zag has written a nice article for DMI as a preview of his upcoming book The Designful Company.

Marty polled top executives to find out the wicked problems that their organizations face.

The results are as follows:

2008 Survey of Wicked Problems*
(Sponsored by Neutron and Stanford University)
1. Balancing long-term goals with short-term demands
2. Predicting returns on innovative concepts
3. Innovating at the increasing speed of change
4. Winning the war for world-class talent
5. Combining profitability with social responsibility
6. Protecting margins in a commoditizing industry
7. Multiplying success by collaborating across silos
8. Finding unclaimed yet profitable market space
9. Addressing the challenge of eco-sustainability
10. Aligning strategy with customer experience
*A wicked problem is a puzzle so persistent, pervasive, and slippery
that it can seem insoluble.

In his article Marty advocates for business folks who live and breath the language of design. Not necessarily surrounding themselves with and hiring designers but embodying the process and thinking that is involved with design. He also mentions that the rise of eco-sustainability as an issue that will only gain in prominence and that it will provide many opportunities for innovation creating products and services for guilt free affluence of the mass market.

I’ve been following Worldchanging for about 2 years ever since GK had a conversation with Jamais Cascio over at NextD.

I love the work they do over at Worldchanging just because they are very solution orientated. They present their work in a very non biased way and express it well showing working examples of sustainable design all over the world. Alex Steffen spoke briefly about the new book: Worldchanging : A User’s Guide for the 21st Century. It was great to see the turnout and know that we can easily be change agents for a better future. One of Alex’s main points is to try and create a world where the incumbents can’t survive doing business in a backwards and careless way. We need to put the pressure as consumers and as entrepreneurs to shift the market focus to a new green future.

Anyway if you go back to my Inconvienent Truth Post you can see some steps to make a difference right now! Don’t forget to buy the book

As a side note, I’ll be fixing my side links shortly to give you some more useful links like before. (those aren’t my real friends )

And I’ll leave you a few photos from my evening at Workspace:

I’d like to believe despite my constant ramblings that I am not an ideologue. Regardless if you believe this to be true or not, global warming is a real concern. If you are not really aware of the issues I strongly encourage you to watch An Inconvenient Truth on opening weekend:

May 24 - New York and Los Angeles
June 2 - Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington D.C.
June 9 - Atlanta, Detroit, Houston, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Denver, Sacramento, St. Louis, San Diego, Miami, Baltimore, Portland
June 16 - in theaters everywhere

If there is enough buzz generated by this film dialogue may finally begin on this serious issue. Global warming is not a myth no matter how hard the lobbyists argue against it.

I value individualism and wouldn’t care if you didn’t care but our apathy is affecting everyone. All I want personally is awareness so our governments will feel our pressure and the public will not accept environmental issues being put to the back of the agenda list in favour for more economically viable futures. Such is what just happened in Canada’s most recent budget announcement which makes no mention of any environmental concessions save for a monthly transit tax credit.

Yes we will all have more money in our pocket but at what cost? Being rich in a non-existent world won’t matter.

Trailer of An Inconvenient Truth

And now the Take away … No more excuses about not knowing what to do (taken from climatecrisis):

9 things to do

Want to do something to help stop global warming? Here are 9 simple things you can do and how much carbon dioxide you’ll save doing them.

1. Change a light - Replacing one light bulb with a compact florescent light bulb will save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

2. Drive less - Walk, bike, carpool or take mass transit more often. You’ll save one pound of carbon dioxide for every mile you don’t drive

3. Recycle more - You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year by recycling just half of your household waste.

4. Check your tires - Keeping your tires inflated properly can improve gas milage by more than 3% Every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere!

5. Use less hot water - It takes a lot of energy to heat water. Use less hot water by installing a low flow showerhead (350 pounds of C02 saved per year) and washing your clothes in cold or warm water (500 pounds saved per year).

6. Avoid products with a lot of packaging - You can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you cut down your garbage by 10%.

7. Adjust your thermostat - Moving your thermostat just 2 degrees down in the winter and up 2 degrees in summer, You could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year with this simple adjustment.

8. Plant a tree - A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime

9. Turn off electronic devices - Simply turning off your television, DVD player, stereo, and computer when you’re not using them will save you thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

I chose the short list so it wouldn’t be off-putting but if you are interested Treehugger has a list of their own, complete with dramatic title: 25 Ways to Save the Planet

Again this isn’t me trying to feel good by ordering you to do things. It’s me being obsessively worried what will happen if we do not. And if you think these things don’t make a difference well you don’t know economics very well. Individual decisions = aggregated results, our current capitalist marketplace. If a group of people decide not to buy Nike because of their use of sweat shops it will affect Nike’s bottom line. Less money = concern (this is how you affect companies).

In this situation if we consume less than there will be a shift in the marketplace to support this type of lifestyle. Which in turn will (hopefully) breed more green innovation. That’s why it’s important for the government to support these efforts in tax credits or other concessions for less consumption, whether it be a hybrid vehicle or consuming less electricity. It doesn’t make the most sense economically, at first at least, but when more markets emphasize green solutions it will become a social norm.

This is my hope and my dream.