Monthly Archives: February 2008

Translating disruptive innovation

A new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art called “Design and the Elastic Mind” opens Feb. 24th. The exhibit explores how minds have adapted to the massive, often disruptive, changes occurring in science and technology in recent decades, changes that have challenged the dimensions of “time, space, matter, and individuality,” and the role design plays in translating these developments into something consumable.

I like this quote from the exhibit summary:

One of design’s most fundamental tasks is to stand between revolutions and life, and to help people deal with change. Designers have coped with these displacements by contributing thoughtful concepts that can provide guidance and ease as science and technology evolve… [The exhibit] focuses on designers’ ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and social mores, changes that will demand or reflect major adjustments in human behavior, and convert them into objects and systems that people understand and use… to translate disruptive innovation.

That’s such an insightful way to put it.