subject: frog Shanghai Move to 3.0 [print this page] frog Shanghai Move to 3.0 frog Shanghai Move to 3.0
To celebrate our new digs, frog Shanghai held our new office opening party with more than 300 guests mingled on our rooftop. Before the opening party, we had an exclusive event hosted by Chief Creative Office Mark Rolston, to share his perspective on the "future of digital and how innovation works" with our clients, cheap coach handbagsbusiness partners, and media.
The first 150 guests to trickle in got a "lucky frog" at our reception. Our friends from IDEO, dContinuum, Case da Abitare, Global Entrepreneur, Modern Weekly, Shanghai Creative Promotion Industry, as well as many industry friends came out to our rooftop party. Between drinks and veggie barbeque, everyone danced to WONGTON and Adrian L., our DJ's for the night. We also set up a silk screening t-shirt booth and photo booth to share snapshots of our last 3.5 years life in Asia.
Ying Zhang, General Manager also gave a speech about our studio growth and office move. In the middle of the speech, the fireworks suddenly came out which surprised everyone in the party. Avoiding any complaints from the neighbors, we skipped down to T-bar for the after party. Hope you'll be able to join us for the next big event!
It would appear that we've arrived: design has emerged as the discrete discipline of problem solving and cultural change, and the designerly ability described by Nigel Cross in 1995 as "a distinct form of intelligence" is now considered with some degree of respect in disciplines such as the sciences or the liberal gucci handbags arts.
That's good, as a disciplinary acceptance of design work would imply that:
- Designers could spend less time justifying what we do and why we do it, and more time actually doing it
- Designers could work alongside and with other disciplines, rather than working instead of other disciplines (or being excluded by other disciplines)
- Designers could begin to further differentiate and structure nuances of specialty, allowing for a more impactful depth of practice and a larger degree of impact
- A larger "we" could benefit from a broader view of problems and opportunities, approaching issues from a multiplicity of perspectives simultaneously
Yet these statements aren't necessary true, and as I traveled between three significantly different groups of thinkers at three different conferences, I interpreted a few trends as an indication of some of the largest "next steps" we face in achieving the above. I've summarized a few of these here.
The chteau in the wooded, castle-dotted countryside north of Paris is owned by Cap Gemini. The event is the i7 Summit, calling together experts and influencers in technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, and society on the dawn of open innovation and in the aftermath of the greatest economic rethink since the Great Depression'.
With a 40 year history embedded in innovation, frog attended. Not just to inspire and be inspired, but also as the facilitators of business ideationcheap coach handbags sessions leveraging our frogTHINK method. The breadth of the topics and diversity of participants meant that these sessions served as a sort of mental yoga, stretching us in unaccustomed ways. Instead of our usual one to two day frogTHINK sessions, these were power burst one-hour sessions - meaning the results were high-level and in need of deep refinement. Yet the discussions were lively and bright minds bounced ideas.
