Parsons is teaming up with the Stevens Institute of Technology to provide solar-powered Habitat for Humanity housing for residents of the low-income Deanwood neighborhood of Ward 7 in Washington, D.C.

The design consists of two modules that unite to form a functioning solar duplex. Each module is sustainable on its own, but they achieve peak efficiency when joined together. Module One will be assembled in Deanwood, and Module Two will be displayed on the National Mall for Solar Decathlon 2011. After the competition, the two modules will be connected to form a duplex that can house two families.

According to Parsons, "the duplex's primary power is generated using hybrid photovoltaic thermal cells, which produce electric energy and collect thermal energy to boost overall efficiency."

The dean of Parsons, Joel Towers, tells me that the Solar Decathlon projects involves dozens of classes in architecture, urban planning, design and technology.

The new story lies in the BRICs--China, India and Brazil. Last year Greater China (including Taiwan) was 46 out of 50 in the survey. This year it is tied with Japan. Lenovo, BYD, Haier, China Mobile and HTC are on the list.

For the past three decades, the Chicago school of economics has propagated the theory of efficient, rational markets that divorced financial and economic activity from their social and political context. Wall Street recruits out of Ivy League schools went through year-long training rituals that taught them the belief that markets were always efficient, rational and correct; markets were the most important guide to society; and that they, as individuals, were the Best and the Brightest who deserved all the rewards that markets could bring.

What the Chicago school and Wall Street forgot was the very real social and political context of markets. Average people accept markets only when they believe them to be fair, transparent and open so anyone, not just the Best and the Brightest. Benefits from markets should accrue to anyone who participates. For Wall Street, the social context is even more specific--people believe banks and financial markets exist to promote economic growth and national wealth for everyone, not just insiders, not just a few.

The Great Recession, the Tea Party political movement, surging inequality and the revelation to middle class Americans that they have suffered through not one but two Lost Decades of income, have killed financialization as a working economic paradigm.

The SEC is accusing Goldman Sachs of breaking both rules of social context:

1- rigging the market by selling a synthetic financial instrument designed secretly to fail and fall in price by a big hedge fund manager so he could profit by shorting the market;

2- creating a financial instrument that had no actual connection to the real economy and no economic value except to profit one secret Goldman investor at the expense of other Goldman investors.

If you listen intently to the conversations now going on in business, in economics and in government, you hear the word "social" a lot. Not the ideological "socialism" that Tea Party and Republican ideologues throw around but "social" as in "society." The term "social business" is becoming popular because it includes both the social media platform and the social context of economic activity, including markets. The terms "behavioral economics" and "social economics" are rising in frequency because they replace the theory of market rationality and efficiency with the reality of human social interaction.

George Soros calls this social context for markets and economy "reflexivity" and he's just started an Institute for New Economic Thinking in London to research it.

The top design schools, for their part, need to understand the huge shift in economic and business thinking taking place post-recession and seize the moment to move outside their comfort zones. Max Weber belongs to everyone.

I just read Jeff Jarvis this morning on the iPad and he totally agrees and goes further, saying that it is perfect for the mainstream media giants and Apple who are into controlling content and selling it. In fact, Jarvis says it's a throwback to another era before the net was democratized and we all got the tools to make our own content. "The iPad is retograde," he says on his blog. "It turns us all back into an audience again."

Now I don't mind being an audience from time to time. I read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo on Kindle. I watch Damages on cable. I see Avatar in 3D in the movies. But I don't need another expensive screen to do that. I also love to create online with blogging, tweeting, connecting, mixing, collaborating. Until Apple upgrades and opens up the iPad, I won't be able to do the generative thing on that screen.

So.....

Mike's Second Law of Booms and Busts says that jobs that tend to recover in the bust also tend to lead the boom. So, looking at the stats that are being published now on new job growth, what does Mike see? The latest batch of stats from Washington show a surge of jobs in the broad categories of "internet publishing and search," "computer systems design," and "wireless."

Mike is interpreting these numbers to mean that a broadly-defined media boom will lead the US economy for the years ahead. By "media," he includes health-care related apps (Future Well), mobile payments via cell phones, and all Facebook-Google-Apple platform stuff.

I would also include education, which is undergoing a massive de-massing and switch to social media platforms. When you add the University of Phoenix and IDEO together (they've partnered), you get massive change. And I would add government as well. Yep, a big chunk of business now being picked up by the innovation consultancies such as IDEO is federal government business. This will boom as states and cities join the revolution.

Very cool analysis by Mike--who is forming his own media company called Visible Economy--to play his hunch. Hear that VCs?

Remember, if you can, back to 1989--the Mac was big and came in only one color--putty. Interestingly, one of the two concepts Smart did for Apple had a built-in camera. The iPad, of course, does not have a camera.

The 12-man, multi-disciplinary team went through the ritual of innovation--they observed and empathized with the local culture, collaborated among themselves and with their partners, brainstormed to generate new options, iterated a few and chose the best one. In the end, that best option was to get on a horse. The team mounted up to show respect to the culture, establish their social position as warriors, and effectively transport their high tech GPS and laser sights across the mountains and desert to call in air support and achieve their goal of victory in battle.

The Special Forces have a very high CQ--Creativity Quotient. Another way of putting it is that they have a high DI--Design Intelligence. Teams know how to go into unknown, changing, dangerous cultural spaces, do fast ethnography, brainstorm, collaborate, iterate options, choose the most valid solution for the situation and execute. They would never call it Design Thinking, but that is what it is. They learn it in training, through education. It is no accident that this paradigm of "as if..." organization and behavior is spreading not only through militaries around the world, but through the smartest global corporations as well.

So it is time for individuals and organizations to ask themselves--what is our CQ? Just as IQ and EQ has proven to be measures of specific capabilities, the capacity for creativity is increasingly the core to building value in these uncertain and treacherous times. And just as IQ and EQ scores can be raised significantly for anyone by teaching and training, so too can CQ be bolstered for individuals and organizations. When Rotman's DesignWorks holds a workshop, it raises the CQ of the participants. Ditto for IDEO, ZIBA, Continuum or Jump.

At a recent symposium on the Future of Design at Stanford University, a group of design/innovation practioners and educators (including myself) came up with the concept of Design Intelligence/ Creativity Quotient. We hope it takes Design Thinking and the conversation around innovation to the next level. The concept really came home to me when Bill Burnett, the Executive Director of the Stanford University Design Program, said he wanted to add an additional screening measure to the SATs and GREs that students submit for admission to the school. “We measure math, verbal and writing capabilities, why not creativity?” Why not indeed.

Just as important, Design Intelligence requires the creation of a serious, self-conscious culture of criticism that puts the ideas of design and innovation through a visible process of vetting. Where are the failures? What can we learn from them? What are the assumed values of the design/innovation process? For decades, design and business focussed on mass consumption, without much discussion in public on its value to economic growth, sustainability, etc. Now there is focus on post-consumerism and multiple bottom lines without much public discussion either. What does post-consumerism mean to India or Africa? A platform for Crit is needed, in print and online. Where should it be situated? Who should participate?

The other road ahead lies in business culture--corporations and B-Schools. The notion of CQ circumvents the business culture's allergy to the word "design," and unpacks the methodologies of Design Thinking to make them more accessible. Knowing that Special Forces teams--and sports teams--have high Creative Intelligence Quotients and use the same methodologies as in Design Thinking, should encourage business culture to promote their adoption and B-Schools to teach them. Right now, B-Schools teach the rituals of reliability, leadership, strategy, choice and efficiency. They also need to be teaching another set of rituals--of validity, cultural empathy, generation, collaboration and experimentation--the rituals of creativity. The notion of "CQ" captures this.

Now let me wrap up my longest blog item ever by taking it to the next level. In a previous item, I suggested the need for a post-Liberal Arts paradigm, calling it Innovation Arts. The concept of Creative Intelligence or Design Intelligence is part of that discussion. In a world of rising and falling nations and generations, of spreading social media technologies and mass urbanization, where every institution is in transition--and everyone in these institutions is struggling to find a new way--a pedagogy that focusses on making and doing, learning through exploring, is required. An Innovation Arts form of education is uniquely "American," in that it fits right in with Dewey's emphasis on practice and pragmatics.

The notion of CQ, Creative Intelligence, returns the US to its roots as a tinkering, making, innovative, future-minded society. It's what we all need to have and what we all need to be learning.

The symposium is being held at The New School from 10-5:30PM, Tishman Auditorium 66 West 12th Street, off 6th Avenue">

Scent is a new frontier of design and this all-day symposium will show you why. We all know the power of scent, but somehow it is rarely acknowledged in the marketplace (except for perfume) or in design theory. In fact, Americans are told every day to lead scent-free lives. What a waste. Scent is powerful and primitive--it hits us in our limbic systems before we have time to think about it.

Five different design groups were commissioned to devise a scent. Just a warning here--a scent is not a perfume. They will all gather this Friday. A documentary film by Jane Nisselson will be released on March 26 as well.

The US already spends far more on healthcare innovation than any other country. But government healthcare R&D has gone into life sciences that haven't paid off (genome) or advanced medical procedures that are extremely expensive and help extremely few people. In terms of longevity, the US lags Europe and Asia.

US healthcare needs platform innovation that uses social media to connect people to the medical system in new, cheaper, more personal and more productive ways. Hello Health is one way to go. It's founder, Dr. Jay Parkinson, has just launched The Future Well, a design consultancy that promises to extend the new social media model for wellbeing across the country.

US healthcare also needs the kind of demassing and decentralization that design and innovation consultants can provide. Memorial Sloan- Kettering (MSK) did workshops with students at the Parsons School for Design to come up with small, inexpensive, neighborhood chemo centers and it just completed the first in Brooklyn.

The Mayo Clinic is innovating broadly in health care.

Clayton Christensen has a great book on The Innovator's Prescription that calls for disruptive innovation in healthcare based on new business models. This is a very important book.

Now that the US has extended healthcare to all its citizens, the next step is to cut costs and improve outcomes and experiences by harnessing the best thinking of designers and innovators. Most of the concepts and tools are already at hand.

Here are my thoughts on where Design/Thinking is going and should be going--and what is needed to get there. They are designed to provoke. Let me know what you think.

Point of View: Designing A Post-Liberal Arts Paradigm—Innovation Arts

The creation of a new belief system—Innovation Arts—to replace the prevailing Liberal Arts paradigm should be the next stage in the evolution of Design/Thinking. A world of constant, cascading change and the failure of existing social organizations requires a shift from the prevailing Liberal Arts paradigm that trains individuals how to make sense of an existing world based on past knowledge and reifying society to a new paradigm that trains people how to build new social systems based on deep knowledge of current cultural rituals and behaviors while embedding action in social, economic and political context. An Innovation Arts paradigm would also form the foundation of a post-Neo-Liberal economic theory that reconnects elites to real business context rather than the quantified financialization of business functions, focuses on value in network relationships and group social behavior and educates people to make rather than consume.

Three Future Directions for the Advancement of Design

1—Develop a mature culture of criticism. If it is to evolve into a mature intellectual system of thought, Design has to create a critical, self-reflexive literature. Design’s public discourse remains aspirational, narrow and secretive. Despite an emphasis on the importance of failure in prototyping and learning, little actual discussion of failure exists. Despite a focus on practice, very little is revealed of what really occurs in consultancy or corporate design practice. The RCA and SVA have just started MFAs in Design Criticism. We need more challenging conversations on both Practice and Theory. And we desperately need a powerful HBR of Design Thinking, anchored in an academic institution. Suggestions? Business or Design School?

2- Build Human Centered Design Tool Kits for Political Policy Makers. Design has focused recently on creating how-to design kits for NGOs to operate at the Bottom-of-the-Pyramid level in Asia and Africa. Building how-to kits for policy-makers at the Top-of-the-Pyramid level in the US, Europe, Latin America and Asia is equally important and challenging. The First World is the new Third World and needs Design Thinking to redesign itself. Design’s venue is expanding from product to experience to systems to policy. Policy is the new edge in Design and it speaks to domestic as well as foreign human needs.

3- The “as if….” perspective of ritual, serious play and the making of the new embodied in the Innovation Arts paradigm is already dominant in much of Generation Y culture. Gen Y has much to teach and much to do. In an effort to understand and activate the Gen Y demographic, Parsons is launching a Gen Y Research Institute. It will focus on deep understandings of Gen Y culture as represented by the global student body at Parsons and provide a public stage and financing for the products and services created by these students. A global collaborative of Gen Y research efforts would be hugely productive.

Obama has already said he wants to double US exports in five years--a very ambitious goal and one no other President has ever prescribed. To achieve that goal, the President will have to push three policies very hard: 1--Turn the US back into a making culture, not just a consuming culture. Innovation is key here and the billions in stimulus funds to promote green tech is a good first step. Bolstering tax incentives for innovation is critical as well.

2--An innovation society needs great universities and public schools that teach creativity, not rote memorization. This requires big money for top universities and a new curriculum for schools.

3-- A global currency realignment, with China's yuan rising against the dollar, is necessary to price US exports competitively. The Great Recession was driven, in part, by huge imbalances in trade between the US and China. To balance that out, China needs to move toward a more consumer-driven economy as the US shifts to exports. A higher yuan gives Chinese consumers more buying power for imports and lifts their standard of living.

Transforming the US into a "making" society that exports requires a consistent set of policies from Washington. It means rethinking the decline of manufacturing and making green tech products in the US.

One of the smartest guys I know thinking about creating new social behaviors by changing old rituals is Diego Rodriquez over at the great blog Metacool. He just had an insightful conversation with Michael Mauer, Porsche's head of design about cultivating, not managing, people. Mauer sees himself as a curator of designers and their ideas. He grows creativity. And anyone who has seen the new Porsche 918 Spyder can thank him for this approach to leadership.

Diego has developed his own set of Innovation Principles. Here they are:

1: Experience the world instead of talking about experiencing the world
2: See and hear with the mind of a child
3: Always ask: "How do we want people to feel after they experience this?"
4: Prototype as if you are right. Listen as if you are wrong.
5: Anything can be prototyped. You can prototype with anything.
6: Live life at the intersection
7: Develop a taste for the many flavors of innovation
8: Most new ideas aren't
9: Killing good ideas is a good idea
10: Baby steps often lead to big leaps
11: Everyone needs time to innovate
12: Instead of managing, try cultivating
13: Do everything right, and you'll still fail
14: Failure sucks, but instructs
15: Celebrate errors of commission. Stamp out errors of omission.
16: Grok the gestalt of teams
17. It's not the years, it's the mileage

What do you think?

Here is what Tufte says:

"I will be serving on the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel. This Panel advises The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, whose job is to track and explain $787 billion in recovery stimulus funds:

"The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board was created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 with two goals:
To provide transparency in relation to the use of Recovery-related funds.
To prevent and detect fraud, waste, and mismanagement.
Earl E. Devaney was appointed by President Obama to serve as chairman of the Recovery Board. Twelve Inspectors General from various federal agencies serve with Chairman Devaney. The Board issues quarterly and annual reports to the President and Congress and, if necessary, "flash reports" on matters that require immediate attention. In addition, the Board maintains the Recovery.gov website so the American people can see how Recovery money is being distributed by federal agencies and how the funds are being used by the recipients.

Mission statement: To promote accountability by coordinating and conducting oversight of Recovery funds to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse and to foster transparency on Recovery spending by providing the public with accurate, user-friendly information."

I'm doing this because I like accountability and transparency, and I believe in public service. And it is the complete opposite of everything else I do. Maybe I'll learn something. The practical consequence is that I will probably go to Washington several days each month, in addition to whatever homework and phone meetings are necessary."

We need more designers and design thinkers like Tufte in government.

I learned three things from Tett's columns and book: 1- many, if not most of the important innovations over the past decade took place in the financial services space: 2- the innovations were made possible by technology--faster computers and newer algorithms, but the actual creation of the innovations took place within a new and very specific culture of finance composed of ritual, rites of passage and beliefs. Think Thomas Kuhn's paradigm shift here: from accepting more or less public market regulation to rejecting all regulation and believing that any financial market regulation is bad.

We know that it all ended in financial and economic disaster, with the worst recession since the last depression. The world got THIS close to a complete meltdown because the social context of technological invention messed up. The symposium at Columbia University with Tett will discuss the belief system, patterns of behavior and rules that came together to enable the financial crash. She will use the tools of social anthropology to explain what went wrong with financial innovation and why we need to change the culture of finance, not just the tools of finance, to prevent another catastrophe.

I have been in a nice conversation with Don Norman about what comes first in innovation--technology or culture--and Gillian Tett provides the answer. New technology creates new rituals of behavior, new belief systems and new rites of passage. Technology happens not only within the social context but it creates NEW cultures, new social contexts.

This is why Gen Y culture is so different from Boomer culture. It's not

Gen Y has new rituals. The first adopter of technology behaviors are new rites of passage. And the Learn-Make-Share culture is a new belief system of opportunity and options, compared to the efficiency and choice belief system of Boomers and B-Schools.

Still with me? So in Stanford I'm going to suggest that we look at Design Thinking and Innovation in terms of rituals and beliefs (and serious play) that fit into a new Paradigm that is appropriate to life in beta--our current lives in constant, cascading change.

I'm going to argue that applying the rituals of innovation to our problems in business, health, education, transportation and politics can lead to the most optimum new outcomes.

In terms of business, I will argue that in the 21st century, CEOs and managers need to change the rituals, rites of passage and belief systems in their corporate organizations to boost value creation, revenues and profits. And B-Schools have to adapt as well. In a real sense, the two years at a business school is a rite of passage that teaches rituals and beliefs to the young.

So we need new business bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs.