Authenticity has always been an important criterion for premium products. Naturally you would put a higher value on Parmesan cheese made in Parma than if it was made in Detroit.
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In a recent poll we conducted, we found that more than 90% of the respondents wish that Facebook would help them deepen their friendships in the real world—yet only 40% said it has actually done so. That’s a small but important misalignment.
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For the neocraftsman, the process behind their product is what makes it exclusive, meaningful, and ultimately of high value.
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In real life we jump through hoops for friendship. Facebook makes it too easy. So what real life has, and which Facebook doesn’t have, are barriers to building a friendship.
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Just this year, Mark Zuckerberg told an audience at f8, Facebook’s developer conference, that using a fake handle online was an example of a “lack of integrity.” In this new social graph, the use of your real ID online has apparently become an issue of moral uprightness — after all, don’t we all want accountability and reliability for every citizen of the social graph?
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A more interesting question is whether people are using the social Web the way its designers think they are — and should they be allowed to? For social scientists this is a fun phenotypical question: Give humans a tool and watch it engender all sorts of odd behavior.
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For many teachers a totally orderly classroom is now something to be rectified; an iPod Touch is a powerful learning tool, not a forbidden device; good students don’t just do as they’re told — they approach their lessons critically and challenge what they think doesn’t make sense.
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If we’re all sitting around shifting between thoughts, who will do the hard thinking that defines true creativity and come up with the thoughtful approaches we need for everything from corporate strategy to disease management?
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Some look for facts they can use to influence others and chart their own course of thinking, others look for a mood, and still others look for a character with whom they can identify. Through the lens of what people read you can understand what they’re concerned about, what kind of atmosphere makes them feel safe or uncertain, and what kinds of questions they struggle with.
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A snapshot of what we are reading.
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Airport design is becoming less monumental, and more user-driven.
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Mikkel B. Rasmussen argues that corporations are increasingly attracted to cities on the basis of their people and lifestyles.
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Ten years ago, things did not look good for the Danish toy giant LEGO. The company was losing
money fast, and was feeling the pressure from new, digital competitors.
Instead of focusing on the creation of ideas and trying to force them into being, one is better off focusing on understanding the relevant phenomenon in depth. Then it simply becomes a matter of being open to the ideas when they show up — be it in casual conversation, intense data crunching, or, as sometimes in Mozart’s case, on a sleepless night.
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Several years ago, a governmental agency tasked with foreign affairs in Denmark was under siege by the Arab world after it defending the right of Danish cartoonists to publish cartoons depicting Mohammad in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten. They enlisted ReD to help explore how Arabs perceive Danes and Denmark in more depth.
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Between June 2009 and December 2010, a not-for-profit Danish and Egyptian cultural institute approached ReD to work on a project with them. They hoped to understand the value systems of everyday Egyptians through a series of research activities and methods. Regardless of class, age, gender, political leaning, religious affiliation, or geographical location, the project intended to explore dialogue-building among Egyptians based on shared values.
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In the period leading up to the Arab Spring, ReD was tasked with understanding what—if any—shared values Egyptians had across religious, gender, age, and economic differences. Toward the end of our project, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia, and the Arab Spring was soon fueling an uprising in several Middle Eastern countries. Three elements proved key in making our research as fruitful and rich as possible, given the circumstances
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In a conversation with Charlotte Vangsgaard, CGAP’s Gerhard Coetzee discusses how to help the financial sector discover the business potential of low-income customers. To him, the root cause of why financial inclusion is still an issue lies in the minds of the decision makers in the financial sector.
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If everything hinges on a survey or two, you may be missing the individual and sociocultural drivers that reside below the surface.
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To convince consumers to buy and use environmentally friendly alternatives, new products must inspire equally strong desires and aspirations as those they are intended to replace.
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