Sitting in meetings, couldn’t help wondering –what we are here for? To shift more stuff, with the communications plasters of premium design and graphical brand concepts? Or can we consultants learn to apply design & management processes so that companies can leapfrog to newer business models that are more innovative by nature? Looking out the hotel window over a view of Shanghai Gotham City, it’s easy to forget at what cost this incredible view comes. And what will our skylines be like in 2050, 3050?
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Who we are
Imaginary Life is brand, design & communications consultancy. At Imaginary Life, we see brands as partnership platforms...
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You’ve heard it before but I just want to remind you: The global communications grid is having more impact on how we live than the railway and electrical grids ever did. What we fail to remember, in all the clutter of the Internet, is that it is no older than a newborn baby. It’s like Detroit out there, I heard someone say, and even Google can’t sort through that kind of mess. The baby has dirty diapers on but that is also set to change with the emergence of an evolved mobile network- where every everyday life transaction is Internet-enhanced. Where no amount of censorship can stop the emergence of a technology-enhanced IRL (real life). It’s the “Internet of Things” that Chinese companies are working on, today, while the floundering US/UK lead West try to impose new invisible borders of control, more fitting to the Great Chinese Firewall than that of democratic nations.
Technological possibilities are growing far faster and smarter than our businesses or systems of control. But if we navigate this complexity with a “Scandinavian” reframing of our global context to serve humanity, there are literally endless possibilities to do good business – for good (sic). Call it “Folkhemmet” 4G, or Corporate social integration. Call it what you will but “branding” doesn’t make the cut.
Often when we are invited into a company’s back room vaults to work on a project, be it brand or design strategy or a trend report, we find inefficiencies under the carpet that seem to not be recognised. The sink is blocked, yet top down strategies seem to just be pouring in more internal propaganda without fixing the structures and processes to fulfill those promises. Some positions even seem to be to evangelise these messages in the company, as if a strategy is repeated enough it must come true. Everyone lower in the organization seems to understand the problem, but only have a forum to speak in corridors, lunch tables and after-work bars rather than boardrooms. And this is not to mention the money being spent on macro level structures, data and insights, market surveys, and IT systems. No one dares to mention there is an elephant in the room- being lead by an Emperor with no clothes. The likelihood of the problem being addresses increases as the pyramid is flattened. The solution, in essence, is incredibly simple. As Lao Tse said: the door is there, use it. For this reason Imaginary Life has a confidentiality agreement when we come to interview people in the client’s organization. Our direct client has to agree- we will perform interviews and synthesize the material without hanging anyone out to dry. We state this clearly at the beginning of a project and to all our interviewees. And when we do, we find, they have so much invaluable insights to offer us; freely, honestly, and without fear of retribution. What ambitious CEO wouldn’t want to get his hands on that?
We are working on a total integration process that we call the Power of X with our friends at Boy’s Don’t Cry. On the highest level, its a cross-disciplinary approach that everyone talks about, but its also a fractal model that can be easily understood and used for every meeting to extract the specialized knowledge and needs of each attendee user, that is fast to facilitate and synthesize into the overall process. It’s about asking the right questions at the right time, and reinterpreting those questions as the project becomes more informed with time. We have started to use this process on ourselves, together with our network partners such as Storylab, and are developing it even further into a user manual.
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In China, when you are sick, they don’t add poison to kill to cure. They work with fine-tuning your energy, and give you herbal teas to flush out the poison. Working acupuncture style means you don’t amputate a leg in order to walk.
Acupuncture change management means you don’t need to add an army to an army, or add mountains of white papers to growing mountains of power points. You just have to create a few of the correct tools to drive forward your business vision, across silos in the company. And have a few knowledgable enterprise engineers to facilitate the process. Sounds like what most companies are doing right? But usually there work is based on a static business model, rather than one equipped for change. One that is dynamic by nature and designed to design change. Integrating every company silo for business focused results. We see this process in place in parts of a company, product development and logistics of product to market, for example. But rarely are these efficient models taken through to communications as a value generator. We take resources, make stuff and push it out to landfills. With the profit in between coming from volumes or premium profit margins. Take, make, waste.
The non-cyclical farming approach eventually runs out of land. Companies farm onions, that takes nutrients from the soil, and then instead of farming apples the next year, they move onto to new pastures to farm more onions. But these apples are sweet, and hard to find. The sweetest innovation spot of all is what we call a “service dominant logic for business”, applied with an “acupuncture change management” approach. Well, more later. For now, Shanghai is calling.
We are here in China with (Sino) Swedish Design House presenting Imaginary Life. It’s really an honour to be here, and the hospitality we are shown is amazing. We landed in Shanghai a few days earlier to get acclimatised and explore the local cuisine. We work to eat and there is plenty of opportunity to do that here! After a couple of days we had already learnt how to negotiate our way in the basic everyday life situations in broken Chinese. Asking taxi drivers where to go, ordering food and drinks, and of course bargaining down the prices down on the market.
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When we were first invited to present “Sweden design for better business” to Chinese companies and government officials, it seemed an unlikely task. How can we to tell them what to do? The population of Sweden is less than the city we are in now. Rendering meaningless sales lines like: “We have worked with Sweden’s biggest bank, petrol company, etc.” But it’s not a colonial “know it all” attitude that we come here with. And in our case, not even a “business as usual” offering: It’s a strong belief that only collaboration and teamwork with a vision of serving human needs can design a prosperous future for us all. If we can combine this approach and process with the Great Power and Common Sense of Chinese industry- anything is possible.
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Elizabeth Redmond is a 23-year-old inventor and entrepreneur whose POWERleap flooring converts human energy into ready to use on-site energy. She envisions its use in urban settings: city sidewalks, dance clubs, airport terminals, fitness clubs, campuses, office lobbies; in short, anywhere that lots of people walk. We LIKE!
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LIVE Singapore! provides people with access to a range of useful real-time information about their city by developing an open platform for the collection, elaboration and distribution of real-time data that reflect urban activity. Giving people visual and tangible access to real-time information about their city enables them to take their decisions more in sync with their environment, with what is actually happening around them.
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A trailer for a documentary about Mark Hogancamp, who suffered brain damage after a horrendous street attack by five thugs. After coming out of a nine day coma with his memory wiped clean he made a meticulous new world for himself – Marwencol – using action figures, miniature sets and an old camera.
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