John Maeda – Design Partner at venture capital firm KPCB – recently published the second and 2016 edition of his #DesignInTech Report. I shared his first one almost exactly a year ago. His core thesis is that we are heading towards a world where technology, business, and design become closely integrated – in school, in business, and so on. Throughout the report he looks at the increasing impact that design and designers are having within the startup ecosystem. Here are a few verbatim bullet points: - Design isn’t just about beauty; it’s about market relevance and meaningful results. - 36% of the top 25 funded startups are co-founded by designers, up from 20% in 2015. - The general word “design” will come to mean less as we will start to qualify the specific kind of design we mean. - Currently design education lags the technology industry’s needs for data-oriented, coding enabled graduates with business acumen. - We must consciously invest in education to develop a more hybrid perspective on creativity in the 21st century: Technology x Business x Design. - President Obama’s signing of ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) into law in 2015 is a positive sign: by turning STEM into STEAM (adding Art) in K-12 education as a US priority. As somebody who studied design (architecture), business, and computer science (briefly, before switching to architecture), I probably have a bit of a biased view here. But to the extent that I can be objective, I really see this as the future. I am a big supporter of the transformation from STEM to STEAM. Below is a quote that Maeda uses to end his report, which I will also use to end this post:
“Engineers are efficient problem solvers. Business people think short term. Designer want things to be elegant and beautiful. All three need to create collaboration and harmony, and honor the value each other brings. There needs to be a new kind of ‘multi-dimensional’ approach to design that is yet to be invented.” –Linda Holliday
This Tuesday evening at 630pm, WORKSHOP – which is a design studio, gallery, and retail shop located in Yorkville, Toronto – will be hosting a panel discussion titled: What is Smart Now?
On the panel will be a building scientist, a computer scientist, and two architects. The moderator will be Larry Wayne Richards, who is Creative Director of WORKSHOP and the former dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. He was dean when I was completing my undergraduate degree and is one of my favorite people in the world of Toronto architecture.
Here’s a bit more on the panel:
For more than half a century, visionaries and companies such as Monsanto, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and Samsung have promoted the concept of technologically smart homes with highly integrated, interactive systems. However few of these homes have actually been realized, leaving us to wonder why.
Meanwhile, architects, builders, and home owners have become aware of the advantages of being smart in terms of energy efficiency and sustainability, from using common sense to selectively employing high-tech.
This morning I woke up to a tweet from somebody asking me why–despite my obvious love of cities and real estate–do I seem more influenced by venture capitalists on my blog. He wondered if it was because of a lack of public/online real estate thought leaders.
I responded by saying yes; that’s part of the reason. I honestly can’t think of one real estate developer that hosts a personal and regular blog. (If you know of any, please pass them along.) Whereas I can’t think of a major VC who doesn’t blog.
Sure there are other real estate professionals who blog, but a lot of those sites just feel like giant lead generation tools and those aren’t enjoyable to read. I’m trying not to create that kind of blog. The trust of readers is more important to me than trying to promote my businesses.
But the other reason I often cite venture capitalists and “tech” centric topics is because I believe in cross pollinating industries. I don’t believe the world operates neatly under silos and neither should our minds and businesses. I’ve also argued many times before that with software eating the world, nobody should be ignoring technology.
At the same time, the consumer web feels to me like this profound social force changing the way people live and interact with each, which, if you think about it, is what cities have always been about. And so I see all kinds of interesting overlaps.