Innoversity Blog

Why prototyping is SO important

One of the things that I am becoming increasingly aware of in my research project is the importance of prototyping, as prototypes serve as excellent boundary spanners, in settings characterized by diversity. Prototypes can activate different forms of knowledge, especially in cross-disciplinary groups, where it can be difficult to combine and exchange knowledge pertaining to different knowledge domains.

It was therefore with great enthusiasm that I read through this Japanese book from 1995 picturing an incredibly funny selection of totally unuseless Japanese inventions. The author has named this phenomenon CHINDOGU, which in Japanese means “unuseless tool” invented to solve everyday problems and needs. The author has turned chindogu into an art form, celebrating the art of the unuseless idea. Or as the book describes: “bizarre and logic-defying gadgets and gizmos, which must work (to be classified as chindogu), but are actually entirely impractical”.

Flipping through the book is amazingly funny, its like watching the Invention Channel on a really good day - but to an innovation affacinado like myself, the book also serves as an important reminder of the need for prototyping, as described above, and especially in documenting the importance of quick and dirty prototyping. Course the interesting thing about these chindogus is, that they seem to be EXCELLENT ideas, when you think about them, and talk about them - each and everyone actually. And it is only when they are prototyped, turned into action, that the inventor (and the rest of us), realize to TOTAL unuselessness of the idea.

So beware, is the idea you are working on right now truly an innovation or is it a CHINDOGU? The only way to find out is to either look in by prototyping.....

The book mentioned here Kenji Kawakami: “The Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions” (1995). There are a few websites on Chindogu, unfortunately they do not seem to have been updated for a long time.

Innovating the Internet: REMIX

This morning I once again attended the Stanford Breakfast Briefing, this time featuring Lawrence Lessig, probably one of the best talks I’ve ever seen. He truly managed to capture his audience with a show packed with thought-provoking points and messages, stressed by images, graphics, amazing video-clips, all resulting in a very vivid  depiction of “How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity”.

What he described was the transition taking place in the internet, where we are moving away from the socalled: ‘Read-Only’ culture, heading towards the ‘Read-Write’ culture, which he also labelled the re-mixing culture, because it very much is about manipulating or altering existing content, and in that process generating new content.

The problem however, according to Lessig, is the way in which this transition is being fought by existing media. Lessig, a laywer himself, points to the problems arising from this war between the Read-Write and the Read-Only, what he labels the copyright war, led by lawyers and big media, and which may end up killing off the Read-Write culture entirely. According to Lessig, we need to recognize that copyright is old-fashioned, and we need to reform the law to prevent our children from being raised as criminals, being the loosers in the proclaimed war on ‘piracy’.

Lessig described the process as a process of ‘copy and change’, which is an important and inherent part of being human, that is how we learn. And we have always been used to using text in this way, as something we could use to make quotes, something that I - as a researcher - make extensive use of. that is part of how I build new theory (if I will eventually succeed in that ,-D). But how come we cannot quite music, images and graphic in the same way?

Lessing presented some fascinating examples of this up-and coming re-mixing culture, which is illegal according to existing copyright law, but which make some powerful statements. For instance the way in which children compose their own AMVs (Anime music videos), by re-mixing music with animation to create both funny and highly impressive new music videos. A trend that started in Japan, but which is now spreading to the rest of the world at an accelerating speed.

• Example of GREAT Anime Music Video: Eye of the Tiger
• Great satiric Political music videos, such as The Blair/Bush Love-affair, Sadam Hussein, Berlusconi etc
• Sim Sadler’s great Bush re-mix (an easy target ;-D)

Make sure you have a look, this is really interesting stuff and none the least good examples of how the Internet is a chaning, being democratized and moving away from just a means for buying and consumption, to instead being a palce for collaration, creation and sharing.

In his battle against the copyright conservatives, a few years back he established the non-profit organisation: Creative Commons, which provide artists with licenses allowing others to make use of the material. A GREAT initiative, and right then and there I therefore decided to see what I can to obtain a CC license for my dissertation, once it is done ;.D. Please visit their website, they have important stuff to convey.....