Estee Chaikin

A Social Solution, Without Going the Nonprofit Route

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/business/smallbusiness/05sbiz.html

Hats off to Jocelyn Wyatt in her “Design and Reach’ blog for highlighting ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Businesswoman by Kay S. Hymowitz. Kay describes the coming of age of America as a Design Society. I feel it is certainly a reflection of how younger generations will enter the professional world in favor of shaping a design society rather than an information society as the abundance of communication outlets are scrambling and almost frying the wires.

Here is my favourite exerpt: ‘The boundary between technology and design has increasingly blurred. For the post-digital design generation, more efficient computer chips and improvements in circuitry and plastics often are more essential to an object’s aesthetics than are color and decorative detail. Design, in Apple founder Jobs’s well-known formulation, is “how it works.” Apple’s MP3 player—the sleek iPod, designed by a team headed by the Briton Jonathan Ive—embodies the contemporary marriage of design and technology. Like the artists of the Bauhaus school, Jobs wanted his company to “stand at the intersection between technology and the arts”—and so it did. Every appliance maker is now racing to do for the toaster or radio what Apple did for the computer and MP3 player.’

You can find the full blog entryhere

Zipingpu bridge in the Sichuan Province, China

www.leifmichelsen.com

As we grow up an mature, we tend to forgot about our kid at heart. It’s important that we engage in play at any age. What type of play am I talking about? Getting a group of people together to play board games, sports, to have a contest or competition,  be energetic, be silly, let go. As summer approaches, it is important to unleash your inner kid.

I am positive that if we rethink the way we played, more people would feel an ‘awakening.’ This awakening would help inspire the way you may think of your professional career, personal goals for the future, etc.

Go on and play!

This post is a tribute to a talented friend and inspiring entrepreneur Lili Larratea. Lili created Play Rethink, an Eco-Design game for all ages. It’s another way to engage in meaningful play and a good way to unleash your creative juices.