By Clay Dillow Posted 04.20.2011 at 1:07 pm 


Self-Healing Materials Materials like self-healing paint and self-healing polymers could soon make a range of goods more resilient, and in some cases safer. Jeffrey Simms Photography via Flickr

Self-healing materials are a thing of the future, but certainly not a distant future. For instance, NASA plans to wrap airliners in a self-healing skin within the next 20 years, and things like flexible, self-healing concrete have already been demonstrated, albeit only in the lab. Now researchers at Case Western Reserve University, along with partners in the U.S. and Switzerland, have demonstrated self-healing polymers that rejuvenate themselves after just a minute under UV light.

The key was finding polymers that are really small that can be coaxed into pretending like they’re really big through molecular interactions. Assembled under a mechanism known as supramolecular assembly, these self-healing polymers are composed of small molecules assembled into long, polymer-like chains using metal ions as a kind of “molecular glue” (normal polymers consist of very long chain-like molecules composed of thousands of atoms held together by stronger molecular bonds).

 

Held together by the metal ion glue, the new polymers--dubbed "metallo-supramolecular polymers”--behave in many ways just like normal polymers. But under intense ultraviolet light that molecular glue comes undone, allowing the material to flow like a liquid and fill in a scratch or tear. Remove the UV source, and the polymer glue sets again, re-chaining the polymer and creating a solid coating once again.

Initial tests showed that the researchers could scratch a polymer coated surface in the same place again and again, and it would repeatedly “heal” in the presence of UV light, leaving behind no evidence of the damage. See for yourself below.

 

[Eurekalert]

Wish my scrapped knee skin could heal that fast.Such technologies could be used in building contruction too. The applications are many and it encourages green living, though am not too sure if commercial auto industries would actually like the idea. For now, I certainly hope medical science could come up with a similar cream that heals scrapped skin due to sports...

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Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City Investment and Development Co., Ltd (SSTEC) will be developing the first eco-business park of its kind in China, in Tianjin Eco-City’s Start-Up Area.

 

 

 

The Tianjin Eco-City is a landmark bilateral project between China and Singapore, located in the Binhai New Area, the focal point for the acceleration of growth in the Bohai Rim, China’s powerhouse for business, science, technology and culture in the 21st century.

 

With its strategic location, the Tianjin Eco-City is poised to realize its vision to be a centre of excellence for eco-activities and businesses that will involve companies that provide services in green financing, energy efficiency consultancy and eco-solutions.

 

Tianjin Eco-City, will also be an oasis of quality eco-homes and a prestigious address for high-value added services such as education, healthcare and urban solutions.

 

The Eco-Business Park, will occupy approximately 30 hectares of land and is expected to be the base for global eco-businesses in Tianjin and serve Northern China’s growing need for clean technologies and sustainable urban solutions.

 

 

SSTEC expects the business park to create over 15,000 white collar jobs which will attracts new residents and generate more economic spin-offs.

 

 

 

TianJin Eco city marks a new era in the way which people will live. Am looking forward to more interesting concepts while I get the feeling that most of it are based on an mainly 'expansive' ideas. Regardless, what I really like is that they utilise solar and wind energies and pay emphasis on harmonious living. Will have to see the final output when the entire project is totally completed by 2020. The first phase will be completed in 2 years time occupying 3 sq km. The whole project occupies 30 sq km and will house some 350 000 inhabitants.

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Samsung's Smart TV - changing the face of social media

 

When I saw this in person, the immediate reaction  was that social media is empowering individuals to support their own broadcasts into the living rooms of the masses. This is a very powerful leverage. With virtual platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and the likes entering the living rooms of households, the power of broadcasting channels will not be strictly confined to just professional broadcasters. Cottage industries may sprung up as a result. The face of media broadcasting will change to a more diversified environment. While this promotes better transparency in the news media, there is a real risk that such technology may be abused.

Regardless, the Samsung SmartTV will definitely blur the boundary between traditionalTV broadcasting & home-made programmes.Social media will get into homes big. The changed user interface allows multi-way communication and sharing of data, ideas and thoughts will promote active participation on a far larger scale. It widens coverage and greatly lowers various costs across the board.

However there are two main downpoints:

1.Due to the lack of memory, no downloading of content from browser is allowed.So your computer is still useful at this point.

2.One cannot chat while using the social TV feature, but you are allowed to use GoogleChat for talking. while watching the TV.

Fortunately, the dual view mode that allows one to watch channels while doing social media. It's social TV allows the user to communicate wth friends and family without having to look for their computers.This is especially convenient as many people have developed the habit of watching TV while multitasking on their mobiles. Great tool to multitask especially during commercial breaks. The 3D function will also bring ideas and conversations alive. Price point at this juncture is still high. But rest assured that it will be lowered in the near future like most electronics do.

Great product!

 

 

 

 

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Singapore budget - Design pamplet form.

Find this year's Singapore Budget bears a unique presentation.There seems to be an overall design emphasis. Am wondering who did the infographics. But I'll let the pictures do the talking.

 

[A] Front Page

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Grow and share. A nice front page from the Ministty of Finance.

 

[B] the map of the budget

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Opening up the pamplet, the bright infographics clearly illustrates the various benefits that different income groups would receive. The poorer ones get to paid out more. But I feel that this is only a temporary solution. What could be far more permanent is the supply of good jobs.

 

 

[C[ Other benefits

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The back of the folded pamplet highlights the other benefits -- ranging from providing for the elderly to needy and onwards to enhancing skills and professional upgrading. Mostly targetting towards the lower income group which is most effected by the global economic downturn.

 

 

[D] Lower income group


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Find this a little hard to swallow when you know how much a typical 3 room flat costs these days: anywhere around US$ 250,000 and up. With a monthly family income of only about US$1500, the government aims at slashing thier tax contribution and adding in training subsidies.

 

 

[E] The middle class...

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A tyical middle class family is illustrated as having a US$4500 per month income, with financial assistence for education.Wondering where is the upper class but I doubt they need any help at all

 

[Enlarge details of the budget map]

 

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enjoy the singapore budget 2011...looks like change has come.. Combating global inflation isn't going to stop here. I expect bubble burst in the property sector, with a new round of economic woes unless we make some proper leeway. Cheers for now. - Karen Fu

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Was following Bruce Nussbaum's Design Thinking Is A Failed Experiment.
And the first thing that came to my mind was that it is jingle. A lot appears to be in the grey. His book is going to be out next year and I have the feeling he wants to get some feedback.
Personally a great many questions come to my mind:
Can we actually learn to be creative by following certain behaviours? Yes. But can we imitate them? NO. Why? Because I think creativity involves originality. If you imitate behaviours,  you may get a display of 'ideas' but you'll miss the essence.
Design thinking is linked to creativity. As in any good thought processes, creativity is part of the quotient. We may try to measure them but in reality part of it is intrinsic and abstract. We cannot measure a person's creativity as in the form of a formula. In my opinion, it doesn't work. A creative person is so because it is his/her habit to observe in a curious, inspired, positive and inquisitive way -- in a way that is intelligent, astute, wise and even playful. Always acquiring knowledge in an apt and diversified, non dogmatic and open mind. So is design thinking a failed experiment? I doubt it. It can be if only it is used in a silly way which any form of thinking would end up to be anyway.
Nussbaum appears to try to audit creativity. But measuring it makes it resembles that of another form of test. And tests do not exactly measure one's ability due to a set form of criterias. It may serve as a guide but the guide can never be really wise to use as an absolute measure. It sounds like an subjective ranking system which I feel could be demeaning.
Design thinking is often seen as a failure perhaps of the quality of the research. Design methods do not solve big problems because of the nature of knowledge used. People in hard core sciences often see design methodologies and solutions in an inferior way as it solves 'soft problems'. Problems that seem to look 'less intelligent' and even 'cheap'. Its a brand image that the design profession needs to smartly change.All problems could be big or small. There is nothing wrong or less intelligent to solve 'small problems', but I often feel the image of the design profession is always short of being 'intellectual' somewhat.
Personally, I see true creativity when someone is able to structure their thoughts and mould it according to different scenarios of problems very aptly and efficiently. They invent systems. The most creative is able to make do with what is given and set forth. Such a person can not only solve aesthetic issues in the arts form, but can also solve a large variety of other problems in other fields like economics, social, and even life problems. I never see creativity in solely in its art or arts form. Its not a complete perspective of what creative means. It cheapens it. Design is about everything under the sky and beyond. If we need to tackle a problem, we need to know in an all rounded way. If we need to become effective problem solvers, and earn credibility; we must show our intelligence in holding substance in able to answer problems in many areas.
Can't type anymore. Unknowingly its already 2:27am !! Will stop here for now. -  Karen Fu

Design Thinking Is A Failed Experiment. So What's Next? | Co.Design

Bruce Nussbaum, one of Design Thinking's biggest advocates, is moving on to something new. Here, he begins defining "Creative Quotient."

The decade of Design Thinking is ending and I, for one, am moving on to another conceptual framework: Creative Intelligence, or CQ. I am writing a book about Creative Intelligence, due out from HarperCollins in fall 2012, and I hope to have a conversation with the Fast Company audience on this blog about how we should teach, measure, and use CQ.

Why am I, who at Business Week was one of Design Thinking’s major advocates, moving on to a new conceptual framework? Simple. Design Thinking has given the design profession and society at large all the benefits it has to offer and is beginning to ossify and actually do harm. Helen Walters, my wonderful colleague at Business Week, lays out many of the pros and cons of Design Thinking in her post on her blog.

Design consultancies hoped that a process trick would produce change.

I would add that the construction and framing of Design Thinking itself has become a key issue. Design Thinking originally offered the world of big business--which is defined by a culture of process efficiency--a whole new process that promised to deliver creativity. By packaging creativity within a process format, designers were able to expand their engagement, impact, and sales inside the corporate world. Companies were comfortable and welcoming to Design Thinking because it was packaged as a process.

There were many successes, but far too many more failures in this endeavor. Why? Companies absorbed the process of Design Thinking all to well, turning it into a linear, gated, by-the-book methodology that delivered, at best, incremental change and innovation. Call it N+1 innovation.

CEOs in particular, took to the process side of Design Thinking, implementing it like Six Sigma and other efficiency-based processes. I had a conversation with IDEO’s Tim Brown at Parsons recently and his analysis is spot on:

Design consultancies that promoted Design Thinking were, in effect, hoping that a process trick would produce significant cultural and organizational change. From the beginning, the process of Design Thinking was a scaffolding for the real deliverable: creativity. But in order to appeal to the business culture of process, it was denuded of the mess, the conflict, failure, emotions, and looping circularity that is part and parcel of the creative process. In a few companies, CEOs and managers accepted that mess along with the process and real innovation took place. In most others, it did not. As practitioners of design thinking in consultancies now acknowledge, the success rate for the process was low, very low.

The success rate for design thinking processes was very low.

Yet, the contributions of Design Thinking to the field of design and to society at large are immense. By formalizing the tacit values and behaviors of design, Design Thinking was able to move designers and the power of design from a focus on artifact and aesthetics within a narrow consumerist marketplace to the much wider social space of systems and society. We face huge forces of disruption, the rise and fall of generations, the spread of social media technologies, the urbanization of the planet, the rise and fall of nations, global warming, and overpopulation. Together these forces are eroding our economic, social, and political systems in a once-in-a-century kind of way. Design Thinking made design system-conscious at a key moment in time.

I don’t think the rise of Humanistic Design would have been possible without Design Thinking. And for all my concerns about it, Humanistic Design is a huge advance in the field and the great work done by the Acumen Fund, Project H, Parsons' students at Memorial Sloan Kettering, Stanford's K-12 initiative, Ideo at the Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente would not have occurred without the advent of Design Thinking. The new programs in Social Innovation at Parsons, School of Visual Arts, Stanford, Columbia, and elsewhere would never have been developed.

But it was creativity that Design Thinking was originally supposed to deliver and it is to creativity that I now turn directly and purposefully. Creativity is an old concept, far older than “design.” But it is an inclusive concept. In my experience, when you say the word “design” to people across a table, they tend to smile politely and think “fashion." Say “design thinking,” and they stop smiling and tend to lean away from you. But say “creativity” and people light up and lean in toward you.

Everyone likes creativity because everyone believes they are, or were, or can be creative. And they are right. The truth is that the best scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, soldiers, CEOs, sports coaches, hockey players, and World of Warcraft players are all creative. That scaffolding of Design Thinking, that collection of behaviors is the heart and sole of creativity. It includes being attuned to the people and culture you are immersed in and having the experience, wisdom, and knowledge to frame the real problem and--most important of all perhaps--the ability to create and enact solutions.

Design Thinking broke design out of its specialized, narrow, and limited base and connected it to more important issues and a wider universe of profit and non-profit organizations. I believe the concept of Creative Intelligence expands that social engagement even further.

Everyone believes they are, or can be, creative. And they are right.

So what is Creative Intelligence, or CQ? Let me start by saying it is a concept in formation and I hope our conversation over the next months will give it a true, deep meaning. Above all, CQ is about abilities. I can call them literacies or fluencies. If you walk into one of Katie Salen's Quest to Learn classes or a business strategy class at the Rotman School of Management, you can see people being taught behaviors that raise their CQ. You can see it in the military, corporations, and sports teams. It is about more than thinking, it is about learning by doing and learning how to do the new in an uncertain, ambiguous, complex space--our lives today.

At this point, I am defining Creative Intelligence as the ability to frame problems in new ways and to make original solutions. You can have a low or high ability to frame and solve problems, but these two capacities are key and they can be learned. I place CQ within the intellectual space of gaming, scenario planning, systems thinking and, of course, design thinking. It is a sociological approach in which creativity emerges from group activity, not a psychological approach of development stages and individual genius.

Let me end by telling you my dream: It’s 2020 and my godchild Zoe is applying to Stanford, Cambridge, and Tsinghua universities. The admissions offices in each of these top schools asks for proof of literacies in math, literature, and creativity. They check her SAT scores, her essays, her IQ, and her CQ.

Now, please join me in a conversation about Creative Intelligence. Where should we go with it? How should we shape and measure it? What kind of stories do you have to illustrate its power? What K-12, college and grad schools are trying to teach it? Where do we go with it? I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments.

[Top image by Kevin Dooley]

Bruce Nussbaum

Bruce Nussbaum

Bruce Nussbaum blogs, tweets and writes on innovation, design thinking and creativity. The former assistant managing editor for Business Week is a Professor of Innovation and ... Read more

Twitter

Got this from @rebang's tweets. Followed the comments by commentors too. What say you? I think its a spin. Will come back to this at another time.

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