Last session before party!

Scott Smith ( Changeist)

On “Human Foresight”. Basically all commonplace – or maybe I'm too tired (and he says “have your eyes open and think about what your're seeing”). “Modal Fluency”, “Massively Parallel Emotion”, “Information Vertigo” are all nice terms, though.

Bill Cockayne (Stanford, Change research)

On “Foresight to Innovation: Roles”, on things that are 1-2 product cycles ahead – not a futurist and not doing futurology, he says. Showing a great graphic he calls the “ambiguity curve” – 1) Prepare, 2) Sense, 3) Form, 4) Analyze, 5) Integrate, 6) Develop, 7) Ship – 1-2 is foresight, 3-4 is research, 5-6 is design. Has a very well reflected model of the roles in foresight and what commonly happens in small teams /big companies with people taking these roles. Hope the slides get posted.

Francesco Cara (Nokia)

Francesco -a local guy- has a gorgeous title – ‘Design Strategist' does sound cool. Talking on “A staged approach to innovation”, inspired by Jean Piaget, his genetic epistemology, structuralism, constructivism and the concept of empirical/reflective abstraction. Identified 3 stages in the development of mobile ecosystems: device-centric, content-centric, network-centric, with many new actors becoming much more important, like media companies, network operators etc.

Showing map-like visualizations of device capabilities (connectability/calling capabilites/personalization capabilities/..) Explaining current metaphores for accessing the internet on mobile devices:

“Enabled”

“Specialised door” (Blackberry)

“Multi-Channel” (Sony-Ericsson)

“Desktop” (Apple)

“Dynamic Portal (HTC)

And Nokia likes to combine. What could new metaphores be about, helping us to structure the way we work with online tools on mobile handsets? “We are at one of these key moments where a new interaction metaphore could change things dramatically”. “Innovation is fresh thinking that creates value”.

Bill Cockayne's summary of LIFT08

Broader range of professions – not just a bunch of kids anymore. Talks were about complex issues, and they were optimistic. The world is complex, and getting much more so – but it's ok and we'll deal with it. Definitely an event that is on “european turf”. Now Laurent's last words :)

I'll do my own summary these days, got a lot to think about. Many many many thanks to the Lift08 team so far!