This special issue of the Journal of Business Strategy, edited by Vijay Kumar of the Institute of Design, brings together experts from many fields to discuss how design innovation can be successfully practiced through adopting formalized design processes. The papers come from innovators in fields as diverse as healthcare, digital products, software, telecommunications, space planning, web services, city planning, and education.

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Bruce Nussbaum poses the question in his BusinessWeek blog, and suggests that if "the vigor now infusing design appears to be coming from outside the field from non-designers... it may very well be just fine that non-designers take design to the next level. But probably not."

ID hosts Buckminster Fuller: The Design Science Exhibit, a hands-on, all-ages introduction to the geometric and natural forms underlying Fuller's work. Fuller taught in the 1940s while working on prototypes of his famous geodesic dome.

ID's self-published collection of interviews with design and innovation thought-leaders, including Bill Buxton, Valerie Casey, Rob Forbes, Clement Mok and several more. 64 pages, fully illustrated. Download an excerpt here; to purchase a full copy for $19.95 plus shipping, visit IIT's secure payment site. Download article (PDF , 4.55MB)

Visiting professor Tom MacTavish gives a hallway video interview about the new LiveScribe smart-pen, at the 2008 IxDA Conference in Vancouver.

The authors of "C.P. Snow's Two Cultures Are Emerging" cite the Institute of Design as "reportedly having found a way to bridge the chasm between business and design."

An in-depth profile of design-thinking guru David Kelley (IDEO and Stanford d.school) by Linda Tischler in Fast Company also quotes Patrick Whitney and ID. (see page 3)

Jeremy Alexis debates Cranbrook's Scott Clinker in this joint interview from Interactions Magazine and IDSA's Innovation Magazine. Full text via Cranbrook at http://www.cranbrookdesign.com/index.php/topics/more/design_versus_innovation_the_cranbrook_iit_debate/.

The New Idiom student newsletter gets a facelift: see http://thenewidiom.com/

Bruce Nussbaum blogs an open letter to President-elect Obama arguing for a council of advisors on design and innovation. He recommends ID dean Patrick Whitney, among others.

Video of presentations from the 2008 Institute of Design Design Research Conference.

Adjunct professor John Paul Kusz of the Center for Sustainable Enterprise at IIT's Stuart School of Business, will speak at the 13th annual Sustainable Innovation conference in Malmo, Sweden on October 27-28.

A Fast Company magazine profile of John Maeda ("The Double Vision of John Maeda"), in his new role as president of RISD, mentions ID (in a not entirely flattering light) asbeing, along with Stanford, one of the schools with "strategy-driven and market-obsessed approaches," against which Maeda's RISD program contrasts.

Vijay will present on "Design Strategies Reshaping the Innovation Landscape" at the 33rd annual DMI Conference -- "REMIX" -- in Ogunquit, Maine on October 8.

Elizabeth Dickinson of Metropolis Magazine blogs about the 2008 Design Research Conference, and in particular Don Norman's presentation on "sociable design."

Attendees' photos from the 2008 Design Research Conference are on Flickr.com, tagged "drc2008".

Jon Kolko of frog design reviews the 2008 Design Research Conference on the company's blog, in "Empathy and humanity at the IIT Design Research conference in Chicago."

Patrick Whitney and Larry Keeley are included in Fast Company Magazine's second annual list of "Masters of Design" (scroll down page)

ID welcomes three new full-time faculty for the 2008-2009 academic year:

Tom MacTavish, Visiting Associate Professor, was for the past nine years director of Motorola Labs’ Center for Human Interaction Research. He previoiusly led the Human Interface Technology Center based in Atlanta (GA) for NCR Corporation, and served as Director of Engineering for NCR’s Wireless Communications and Networking engineering group. His interests span the range of activities in Human-Computer Interaction research and development, including strategy formulation, user and technology research, concept development, and product implementation. His courses this fall will include Interface Design, Interactive Media and a workshop related to these topics.

Anijo Mathew, Assistant Professor, has a B.Arch. from Birla Institute of Technology in India, and an MDesS from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is currently working on a PhD at the Open University in UK exploring the intersection of computing and design. his research interests include interactive (computer mediated) spaces, immersive/responsive environments, environmental behavior, and HCI in the design process. His classes this fall will include a workshop about interactive environments and a B session seminar about related content. His research looks at various methods and design mechanisms for the process of design; and the­ semantic appropriation of architecture (place) as enabled by new technologies.

Martin Thaler, Visiting Associate Professor, holds an MFA from the Royal College of Art, London, and a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. For the past 12 years he has led multidisciplinary teams at the IDEO Chicago office for companies in the consumer electronics, medical, and furniture industries. He has been a regular member of the ID part-time faculty for many years, co-teaching the product design Research & Demo course. In addition, this fall he will teach an advanced product design workshop, and co-teach the product design Foundation course.

At the same time, ID bids a fond farewell to full-time faculty members Greg Prygrocki and Chris Conley. Professor Prygrocki will ease into retirement while continuing work on the Thinkering Spaces initiative with the MacArthur Foundation; Professor Conley, on sabbatical for the 2008-09 year, will continue to teach on a part-time basis while working on a book about innovation and expanding his work with companies and foundations.

Charles Bezerra (PhD '00) and Motorola have won the 2008 IDEA/Brazil Award for MotoID – an application for Motorola cellular telephones enabling users to obtain information about music playing around the handset, identifying the name of the song, the artist and showing the album cover, when this is available. IDEA/Brazil is a partnership between the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and Objeto Brasil - an NGO dedicated to the promotion of Brazilian design - and is is the first international "feeder competition" of the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA). Charles is quoted in BusinessWeek.com's coverage of the awards ceremony. Download article (PDF , 22.74KB)

Gabe Biller and Kristy Scovel's (MDes '08) instructional video on design ethnography garners attention in the human-factors blogosphere, including Designing for Humans
toddwarfel.com
Dori's Moblog
Insights Qualitativos 2.0
and a ton more.