Categories
China Consumer Behavior Economics Trend Watching

China, Socialism & Consumer Behavior: Super-rich in growing passion for investment

Demand for art, watches, rare wines, vintage cars and other offbeat investments expanded in 2010 as the world’s super-rich rebounded from the financial crisis, according the latest World Wealth Report […]

Categories
Design Economics Innovation

Watch Rebecca Henderson’s “Getting Unstuck: How to Promote More Sustainable Practices in Our Organizations” talk at MIT Sloan School of Management

All that’s required to achieve sustainability, says Rebecca Henderson, is to clean up your current operations and/or rethink the business. “That’s easy,” she says — with a smile. Henderson has spent much of her career trying to help firms embrace and survive such transformations. She and her colleagues have analyzed why businesses get stuck in their ways, and how they can break free to act boldly around the challenge and opportunity of sustainability […]

Categories
Design Innovation Inspiration

Watch Tim Brown’s “Innovation Through Design Thinking” talk at MIT Sloan School of Management

Not so long ago, Tim Brown recounts, designers belonged to a “priesthood.” Given an assignment, a designer would disappear into a back room, “bring the result out under a black sheet and present it to the client.” Brown and his colleagues at IDEO, the company that brought us the first Apple Macintosh mouse, couldn’t have traveled farther from this notion […]

Categories
Design Information Technology Innovation Software Trend Watching

Watch Jonathan Harris’ “the Web’s secret stories” talk at TED

Jonathan Harris wants to make sense of the emotional world of the Web. With deep compassion for the human condition, his projects troll the Internet to find out what we’re all feeling and looking for […]

Categories
Design

Watch Daniel Libeskind’s “17 words of architectural inspiration” talk at TED

Daniel Libeskind builds on very big ideas. Here, he shares 17 words that underlie his vision for architecture — raw, risky, emotional, radical — and that offer inspiration for any bold creative pursuit […]

Categories
Consumer Behavior Economics Trend Watching

Watch Dan Ariely’s “Are we in control of our own decisions?” talk at TED

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counter-intuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we’re not as rational as we think when we make decisions […]

Categories
China

Living in China: “Feeling tired” biggest complaint of Shanghai office workers

Feeling tired is the top complaint of local office workers, followed by worries over their jobs and emotional problems, according to an online survey. Covering 405 employees aged between 25 and 40 in Shanghai earning over 5,000 yuan (US$731) a month, the survey is the first in the city to study office workers’ lives and barriers to their satisfaction, said the organizers, consultant Nielsen Company (Shanghai) Ltd and the local branch of Cerebos, producer of BRAND’S health products […]

Categories
Design Innovation Inspiration

Don Norman’s “The three ways that good design makes you happy” talk at TED

In this talk from 2003, design critic Don Norman turns his incisive eye toward beauty, fun, pleasure and emotion, as he looks at design that makes people happy […]