Anyone can dream up great ideas, but an idea is nothing until it's realized, be it as a website, a physical product, an app, or a user interface.
Jens Martin Skibsted
The sun doesn't always shine; the wind doesn't always blow. This is why, if we want to rely on renewables, we need intelligent systems that integrate and coordinate different sources of energy at scale so that when one is scarce or unavailable, the others can automatically compensate.
Design has long gone from tinkering and sketching of auteurs in isolation to a powerful catalyzer of growth.
Design is a powerful factor in communication between disciplines and stakeholders and can transform knowledge into creative, human-oriented solutions that can promote companies' and countries' competitive ability and foster innovation and growth.
Cities are complex and contain just about any thing or concept ever invented by humans. How the city is built, its topography, and how close you live to your work and a grocery store affects your mobility.
The road to energy efficiency is, in theory, a sustainability sweepstake. More efficiency means that less fuel is required to generate a given amount of energy, which in turn means lower costs for the provider and cheaper prices for the customers.
A company's ethical behavior is ultimately triggered by some sense of caring. And care is a sense of closeness to someone or something. A company must bring value to whom or what it is close to.
Even if we accepted the health implications of pollution and the impact on global warming, from a simple space management perspective, mobility will eventually collapse in cities that give priority to the car.
How people move around their city is a big deal. It affects productivity, security, health, and global warming, among other things.
The nature of design is to synthesize disparate perspectives and create a richer end product through collaboration and iteration.
I've seen many of those brand collaborations where, basically, the only point is sticking on a Gucci sticker. That degrades good brands.
Urban mobility is a massive global challenge. The world needs people to use multiple forms of transport - a mix of biking, walking, and other low-energy forms of transportation.
I don't think that artificial intelligence means doomsday, and I think many new jobs will be created, too. However, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that these new types of jobs will favor low-income demographics. We need to address the needs of those who will be left out of the new job market.
It is widely accepted and understood that consumer decisions are as much influenced by emotional attachments to a product or service as by factors like price and performance. So why is it that when it comes to most aspects of human transportation, the world still seems to believe people are rational machines?
Bundling finance, energy solutions, water solutions, traffic infrastructure, and all general urban infrastructures is too much of an ask for most developing cities.
Effective altruism is a philosophy and social movement which tries to work out the most effective ways to improve the world. Effective altruists - conform to old-school utilitarian principles - consider all causes and actions, and then act in the way that they believe brings about the greatest positive impact.
Our houses, shops, and factories waste gigantic amounts of energy, often in the form of excess heat. How do we slash this waste? The answer is fairly simple: with a smart thermal water grid.
We inadvertently keep oppressing Africans when we label them by an approximated color - and even when we confuse a specific socio-cultural group such as the Afro-Americans with Africans.
Immigrants are not the main threat to the industrialized world's workforce: robots are - or, rather, artificially intelligent robots are.
The industrialized countries that came to dominate post-slavery have caused the climate to change.
Design negotiates between technology, policy, systems, and users.
People are not going to change because an activist goes around shouting.
Industrial design is a superficial practice. You use your approach regardless of the project because there is no time for a deep understanding of a single product.
Who needs Russian gas if we could get all the heat we need from our own surplus? Who needs Middle Eastern oil, when we can integrate limitless renewable sources in our smart grids?
Cities are important because that's where the majority of the world's population lives and an even bigger share of the global economy resides.
Time hygiene is about finding more time for ourselves: to think, to do what we like.
Leisure activities such as contemplation, going for a stroll or a bike ride boost our overall health, wellbeing, and creativity.
Just imagine how many more cyclists could help save our cities and prevent further global warming by adopting electric bikes, if they received strategic and financial support similar to electric car drivers.
Urban planning and design are helping us to shift from a car-centric system to a bike-centric one by making bicycles and bicycle infrastructure superior in functionality and attractiveness.
Airships could be part of the answer to Africa's infrastructure woes - if the financial challenges are overcome.
The advantage of using airships in remote areas with little road infrastructure to support development is clear. Airships could ensure the delivery of humanitarian supplies to remote communities.
The cost of building large airships can be prohibitive. The entry barrier is considerable and could be a show-stopper for large-scale projects.
Curbing pollution and global warming takes a global cooperative mindset. Development aid needs to be rethought in this context.
The challenge of pollution and global warming is no longer the science, or the rate of innovation, but the rate of implementation: We have the clean solutions; now let's bundle them and install them.
Major global institutions need to harvest clean tech knowledge wherever it can be found and integrate it into their major export systems.
Regardless of our political stance, we cannot afford to perpetuate the Western car-centric model.
Consumers do not want a perceived cheap car; they want a car to flaunt. A car is as much about status and identity as it is about transport.
If intelligent robots are our competitors and, to some extent, cerebrally alike - enough for us to discuss their ethical standing - why would they be above the law? Should they not contribute to our societies, too? And why would they be exempt from taxes?
I do think we need to at least register artificial intelligence units to be able to monitor and control them. Because we want to control them and not vice versa.
Humankind has mainly evolved in Africa, and we only left Africa very, very late in our evolutionary path. This means that there is very little genetic diversity among those who left Africa and very much genetic diversity among those who stayed.
I believe we need to lay race theories to rest: Democracy - and identity - is difficult enough without 'scientific' obfuscation.
A true democracy starts by separating state and bad science.
National diplomacy strategies are usually focused on promoting one's interests against others' interests. By emphasizing the global 'we' rather than the national 'I' in the climate change debate, COP 21 proved to be a case in point for a change of lenses.
Neoliberalism became the leading economic ideology in the U.S. and in the U.K. during Ronald Reagan's and Margaret Thatcher's mandates. In this way, the leaders of the free world offered a viable solution to the economic crisis at the time: competition, deregulation, outsourcing, to name a few buzz words that have since become common place.
The debate on climate change has been tainted by its excessive concern with individual and national interests, short-termism, and lack of solidarity in face of global threats.
Looking at the numbers, the transatlantic slave trade matches the Holocaust in horror - maybe even without counting subsidiary effects like internal strife and deaths inflected on the continent, death during transport, death during ownership, collapse of African economies, and such.
A structured design approach can heighten the hit rate in the fuzzy front end of innovation processes in public and private sectors.
Design has become a universal medium for expressing ideas, raising fundamental questions, and addressing social challenges.
Being design-led means designers take ideas from the abstract to the concrete, from potential to real value.
Obviously, not all migration relates to global warming, but the correlation is higher than most would think.
