ID Strategy Conference 2007

Nicholas Negroponte

Does good design have to be innovative?
Creativity comes from differences. The best design strategy for almost anything is to explore differences.

— Nicholas Negroponte, Founder and Chairman, One Laptop Per Child

 

Paola Antonelli

Does good design have to be innovative?
Absoluntely not!  There is a whole tradition of great designers humbly improving and perfecting objects that already existed. So much of Scandinavian 20th century design was based on it, and Castiglioni used to teach a whole class on the redesign of pre-existing objects. It takes a pretty self-assured designer to do that, though.

— Paola Antonelli, Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art

 

Bob Baxley

Does good design have to be innovative?
Design and innovation are related but independent activities. In fact, the current focus for innovation über alles is ultimately damaging to great design because it biases both the designer and the client to try to fix things that aren't broken. In many cases, the best design solution results from an emphasis on craft and detail, not on the untethered quest to simply do something different.

— Bob Baxley, Designer, Author, Making the Web Work

 

Noreen Morioka

Does good design have to be innovative?
Stupidly. The Creatives have created a pile of shit called "strategy voodoo". It’s about making a Powerpoint deck that is filled with information that is an affirmation of the client's job. It’s a boilerplate of common sense that's used over and over. Facts that we already know. With a price tag of $50,000 - $100,000.

“Vision without execution is pure hallucination.” — Thomas Edison

Real Design Strategy takes what we already know then provides a calculated plan of targeted success meters and a variety of executions. It’s scary and bold. Usually, the client who hires the Creative either celebrates great success or gets their head chopped off.

For the Creatives it's about doing what we do best: shaping culture and advancing new ways of thinking.

Take a risk...do your job...quit wasting time and money...quit talking...do work that makes a difference.

— Noreen Morioka, Adams Morioka

 

Stefan Sagmeister

Does good design have to be innovative?
Innovation is overrated. It seems to me the West's love with the New is a consequence of our love of critical thinking, the individual joy of tearing things down and the building them up again from scratch. I have the impression the East is more content looking at existing things and see how they can be - ever so slightly - improved.

— Stefan Sagmeister, Sagmeister, Inc.

 

Keith Yamashita

Does good design have to be innovative?
Tough question. I wish we thought more about these things.

I’ll start first by defining a few terms -- “innovative” in my view is something that challenges the status quo to create new value. In that sense, it favors new mindsets, new approaches, and new methods.

My belief is that design — the noun — doesn’t necessarily have to be innovative to be good. There is plenty of design that because of its beauty and aesthetic doesn’t challenge the status quo, yet is highly effective.

Designing — the verb, the act of problem-solving —  in my view is more dependent on innovating. The act of courageous, brave, simple problem-solving does require that we often challenge what exists to create something of better value.

— Keith Yamashita, Co-founder and Principal, Stone Yamashita Partners

 

William J. Mitchell

Does good design have to be innovative?
No, of course good design doesn't have to be innovative. The Parthenon wasn't -- it was a refined, elegant, impeccably worked out, perfectly judged reworking of an already very familiar form and function. It all depends upon whether the circumstances of the project call for innovation. Good design can be good (without necessarily being innovative) because it's sensitive, because it's refined, because it's refreshingly crude and gutsy, because it's culturally resonant, because it's amusing, because it perfectly fits a context, because it's subversive, because it irritates fools . . . and on and on. Innovation can be very important, and I tend to go for it myself, but we shouldn't be fundamentalists about it.

— William J. Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences at MIT