The park was definitely lacking a level of details in the execution of the themed areas. The budget was too tight it seems. It was nowhere more apparent than on Main Street USA and the Disney castle. The buildings were smaller than in other Disney parks and didn’t have enough details; some looked as cheap as in second class parks.

However, the excitement of the crowd was visible. That along with the Disney train similar to the one of Disney Tokyo and the soundtrack at the entrance gate was enough to put me into the ‘Disney’ mood.

There were a minimum of attractions in Hong Kong Disneyland. I thought it would not be enough to entertain me for a whole day but their choice was actually quite good. The attractions were also slightly adapted to feature more Disney characters and to compensate the lack of classical rides such as Pinocchio.  It was very interesting to see how this Disney Park relies more than any others on symbolism, sometimes only materialized by very simple blocks of concrete. It is a very risky game though, and even if I think they managed to make this park work for now, they should be careful to invest enough if they want to preserve the ‘magic’ of their brand.

Three new massive sections were also under construction and will surely help raise the overall level of the park. Here is a picture from the Tarzan’s tree house of what I think will be the Grizzly trail.

Hong Kong Disneyland is the only one to tolerate natural intrusions in its landscape but I think that seeing the mounts behind the castle works quite well.

I loved the space mountain, the queue was very basic but it’s the first time I tried a revamped version of the ride. The soundtrack adds more to the experience than in any other rides, adding even maybe a little of derision to the theme of space invasion from the 60s. The tempo of the ride and of its special effects is absolutely perfect.

Tomorrowland

This was the advantage of having many Indian visitors to the park, good Indian vegetarian food! I also understood why they decided to build a second park in Shanghai. This one seems to be targeting people from Hong Kong, but also people from Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and other countries in the region. I guess that the one in Shanghai will target visitors from mainland China.

Adventureland

The jungle river cruise

Tarzan's tree house

“It’s a small world” has been relatively heavily adapted. As I mentioned earlier, they added many Disney characters in the ride, I guess to compensate the size of the park, and maybe even to ‘educate’ the audience. But I can’t stop wondering if it is not also because Disney characters have now succeeded to invade our “small world”. New sections have also been added I think, like the rainforest one, the general feeling is more oriented towards nature and environmental awareness.

This picture is a little blurry but I like it because it shows the many digital cameras. I know that Hong Kong Disneyland did not provide initially enough picture opportunities to the local audience, but they seem to have done a good job at improving that part. I don’t know why, but they put forward characters from Toy Story, Stitch and other more recent films here, probably the conclusion of some clever customer segmentation and marketing studies.

If you want to read more about the subject, check out my other posts on theme parks or my analysis on the heterotopia of Walt Disney World.

The “Better city, better life” official theme of the Shanghai World Fair was an excellent choice. It encapsulated all that needs to be addressed nowadays: sustainability, globalisation, urbanisation, fairness between the poor and the rich. The right questions were asked. However, the states and corporations present at the expo showed how unconvincing their answers were. Their self-interest and reliance on established industries lead them to the most desperate and risible rhetoric, see my previous posts for some examples.

The solution to all our problems is technology according to the participants of the Expo. Yet, and as far as I know, none of the big pavilions had an absolute zero impact on the environment. Instead, a splash of energetically very demanding presentations explained to the audience that some symbolic features of the buildings were sustainable, a non-sense.

Throughout my visit, oil companies, car manufacturers, heavy industries told me that their technology will bring soon a solution to the challenges that the world is facing. And the only role of the national pavilions was to repeat the absurd solutions that their biggest industries had to sell. How lower a national self-esteem could be?

The best place to experience these contradictions was in the area of the Expo devoted to industries. There, I was being told that I will have a better life thanks to bigger boats, more oil and concept GM cars; Answers that were totally inadequate and only increased my feeling of insecurity. To be fair, there were some good intentions and ideas at the Expo, and technology is surely part of the solution. But they were squeezed in an absurd vision serving national and supranational short-term interests.

In his book, Jay Winter explained how the Paris World Fair of 1937 was a desperate invocation of the illuminations of technology to prevent another war. Reality was not long to impose itself. Let’s hope that history will give us more time to resolve our incapacity to face limited resources on earth.

These buildings are huge and cold. Partly because they will need to accommodate a huge number of visitors, but still, I don’t think they incarnate the ‘better city, better life’ theme of the Expo at all. Except maybe few green credentials, which seem to me like drops of water compared to the massive use of electricity in the Expo, how would life be better in these massive buildings? The Chinese pavilion looks like it is overlooking the crowd outside. The Theme pavilion feels like an unfriendly fortress.

See my other posts on the Shanghai World Expo.

• Contrary to the widespread belief, brainstorms are more about giving sense to old ideas than discovering new ones.
• Every model is based on assumptions. Paradigms and stereotypes are more abstract models that don’t necessary come with explicit assumptions, which narrows down creativity.
• Creativity is about changing perception. Innovation is about changing things.
• Techniques for workshops:
  • Choose a random organisation having nothing to do with your industry. What is the probability it takes over your business in 10 years? Explain SWOT.
  • Speak about your job without using the most commonly used words to describe it.
  • A paradox is when reality doesn’t follow the model. A new model must then be applied. An ambiguity is when reality can be represented by several models; it is far more common. Creativity is about building new conceptual ‘boxes’ inspired by ambiguities.

Luc de Brabandère is ‘corporate philosopher’ and director at BCG, check out his books here.

I collaborated with him to prepare the photographs and Polaroids, you can find the details here.

I hope it conveys the message and the exciting mission of the Philosophy and Management association.

The conference room of PICNIC 2009

The presentation by Gentry Underwood at PICNIC 2009 was useful because it gave some hopes that employee engagement could truly be improved using the intranet. The key is to stay focus on the practical objectives of the employees and the core priorities of the organisation. It is illusionary to believe that employees will really share their thoughts on the intranet just for the sake of the organisation, and for colleagues that they never met. It is insulting the intelligence of employees to believe that they would participate in internal forums thinking they are taking part in a democratic process. I see the knowledge sharing system developed by IDEO as one that acknowledges that employees have personal ambitions and are all well aware of the competitive environment they are working in. If writing something on the intranet has no implication for my career, why would I do it? If reading the intranet doesn’t help me in my personal goals, why would I bother? In an intranet platform that IDEO developed for its own internal use, employees can create their personal pages on which they can list all the projects they worked on and why. When a new project is about to start in the company, the manager can search on the intranet for employees that are potentially either the best suited or motivated for the project. The intranet becomes a tool truly improving the efficiency of the organisation, employing the best people for each task, and an effective way for employees to influence their career within the organisation. It is furthermore much more motivating and efficient to put in touch people having complementary expertise than to ask them to write down their knowledge on an intranet document. Writing down documentation is long and boring, why would I do it for the benefits of people I don’t know? The approach requires obviously much more than the creation of a new intranet website, it changes the way the organisation operates. Intranet tools need for this reason to be adapted for the goals and culture of each organisation. It seems to me an essential step if one truly wants to motive his collaborators with practical opportunities. An Intranet based on a wishful but only superficially executed democratic model becomes a dangerous daydreaming which demobilizes people because it doesn’t offer them any realistic mean to prevail.

Another illustration of wishful thinking are intranet websites that encourage employees to post their brilliant ideas for the company, and how often they end up being broken for years because no one ever use them. If a politician or an entrepreneur has an idea, he will exploit it in order to obtain more power or revenues. What could an employee hope to get in exchange of his ideas? Nosco developed a software called Ideas Exchange in which participants not only share ideas, but can also invest virtual shares in ideas from others. Not only it makes the process more exciting, it also helps identifying good ideas, the ones considered as being the best investments by the employees themselves. If coupled with the right incentives, such as real life returns on investments or opportunities to participate in the direction of the projects, the system could also lead to a higher level of engagement.

• Find Out What People Want By Taking It Away From Them: Is the customer the master or the slave?
• Tracking one’s sex life.: A very taboo subject. How do people manage their sex calendars? Can it be online as all the rest? Probably…
• Microsoft Office Labs vision 2019: the digital world interwoven with reality, and more human. But what if the opposite happens? If reality gets interwoven with digital world, and less human?
• Our life will finally look like the 70′s sci-fi movies!

Some online reflections:

• http://laurentledoux.blogactiv.eu/2009/02/16/should-we-hope-for-obama-to-be-a-machiavellian-leader/, a good article to understand what Machiavellian and smart leadership mean, part of a series on leadership.
• http://www.philosophybites.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=435413, explanation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s notion of Bad Faith. Something that really makes you think about how you live your life.
• Nice way to visualize how the credit crisis happened:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

But how to find solutions to problems such as the economy slow down, spreading illnesses, climate change? This is where creativity techniques can be used effectively, techniques which facilitate the emergence of creative solutions. Everybody agrees that today’s challenges cannot be resolved by tempered actions. They require innovation and radical change. Here are some creative techniques that have been applied during the forum.

Restating the problem

Resolving a problem is often about taking it at the right angle. A technique to find this angle is problem reformulation. To take a very simple example, ‘how do we stop children for making noise’ takes a very different shape if it is stated ‘how do we help children wait patiently’. Here are some reformulations proposed by the facilitator of the debate ‘Is emissions trading the carbon solution?’:

o   In the middle of this economical crisis, can carbon market still be the answer to tackle climate change?

o   How can we all, and people around the world, make sense of this very complicated issue?

o   Can we save ourselves from ourselves?

o   How do we encourage the cooperation of all nations to bring down carbon emissions?

o   What sort of financial incentives will attract all countries to get involved, and entrepreneurs to get involved?

o   What sort of technologies offers promises?

o   How do we persuade to innovate on behalf of a low carbon economy?

Each of those reformulations has very different answers. It is important not only to find creative solutions to a problem, but also to creatively reformulate the problem. Problems can even become opportunities using such techniques.

Notice that the facilitator revealed his personal belief that carbon trading was the solution, before even starting the debate. This narrows down considerably creative reformulations. It is a shame that the World Economic Forum and the World Social Forum cannot collaborate at least on some brainstorms. Creativity usually happens when confronting different personalities and ideas. It is understandable that not everyone agrees on a solution, but this should not stop us working together at understanding creative options.

Brainstorm

The brainstorm was animated by Maria Bartiromo (somehow related to Citigroup by the way). The goal was to understand how global economic deterioration happened. People where split in 20 tables, and had 30 minutes to debate the causes. Then, the results were shared and commented. It is a brainstorm in the sense that no idea or opinion was discarded and that everyone could express his opinion whatever his position. However, a proper brainstorm includes a second phase during which the ideas are listed and categorized. This brainstorm didn’t do anything else than letting its participants expressing their views, without any serious attempt to synthesis them. The job is thus half done and it looks more like a executive survey than really an initiative committed to encourage further action. But still, nice event, and leaders can always continue the discussions at their expensive social networking parties.

Idea labs

The forum also organized “Idea Labs“, new sessions designed in collaboration with universities, where ideas, trends and concepts are presented by intellectual and entrepreneurs. This encourages communication between experts, creativity on how technologies could be combined and intellectual cross pollination: trying to apply a concept, technique or solution from one field to another, even if remotely related. The Idea Labs seemed however very small compare to the other activities of the forum. They were apparently not very interactive either. They could have been followed by an exchange of ideas from world leaders of different backgrounds, so that momentum could be built. Right now, it looks like everyone is speaking to his own audience of experts, basically selling his technology. It looks more like lobbying than really trying to apply an expertise to creative debates.

Michael Cima on using electronics to improve health care management, earlier in the illness treatments.

Paul Fairchild on Stem cells researches

Transparency

Creativity is about sharing ideas, not being scared of expressing them, and not being scared of having them being challenged either. The more knowledge is available and debates are transparent, the more it is possible for everyone to play a constructive role in the process. All the presentations of Davos are on YouTube.

The 2009 World Economic Forum used creativity techniques that can facilitate the emergence of new solutions. But most of them were half executed. Davos has the choice to be either simply a forum where everyone can express his views and then go back home, or to be a true international facilitator, a leading event for those wanting to resolve the global challenges we face.

What is your opinion? What could be done in terms of creativity to resolve today’s global challenges? Has Davos any role to play in this process?

A model of London

The New London Architecture, at the Building centre, is an initiative that seeks to highlight the level of development either planned or currently underway in London.  ”Digital Cities, London’s future” was their latest exhibition. It highlights some of the resources and technologies which designers can use in the development of the city and explores areas of debate that arise alongside the opportunities of this new digital world.

The exhibition was packed with fascinating glimpses of the future.

Oxford Circus is one of the busiest spaces in London. It is negotiated by over 43,000 people and 2000 vehicles per hour (I like this use of ‘negotiated’). Any pedestrian having been there on a Saturday know it is a nightmare. People, barricades, cars, Tube entrances, everything stops you going where you want.  The solution of Atkins? Give back the freedom to move. This ambitious statement is in my opinion an excellent example of what experience design is about, brilliantly illustrated by Designhive. Some nice simulations from Aedas( I believe) were also demonstrating that a road can be shared in some cases by cars and pedestrians, without delimitations. Which is unconventional but at the same time very interesting to analyze.

Crown fountain in Chicago

There was also a presentation by UrbanBuzz on how media screens can be used in public spaces as a medium for communication. They took among other the example of the Crown fountain in Chicago, a video sculpture designed by the Catalan artist Jaume Plensa. Their point is that there are no clear guidelines on who can install big screens on the public space and how. “We will hold workshops to bring artists, planners and local policy makers together to debate and discuss the issues. We need to understand how screen technology can be implemented and to establish potential funding models.” I still wonder if the relative absence of rules and studies doesn’t benefit more to refreshing artistic approaches. Are there any mature media escaping the monopoly of advertisement?

The RUDI annual publication available for free at the exhibition is its perfect continuum, with inspiring articles in between urban design and digital technologies. Two disciplines I predict to be more and more interwoven as the Internet of Things is slowly emerging along with context aware technologies such as mobile geo-location.

The building centre has five galleries. I was much impressed by the way they were curated. I’m not sure if this is on purpose, but things were displayed in such a simple and unusual way. Some galleries looked like an architecture fair, with stands, one per company, showcasing materials, power point presentations and videos. Except that no sales representatives were there, only a desk at the end of a corridor representing all the featured fabricants.  The atmosphere was strange but I felt it was working pretty well. I could concentrate easily on what I saw. Next to those spaces were pictures of ambitious new buildings and various innovations. I liked this poster showing how much space a same number of people can take if they are driving cars, bicycles, if they are in a bus or simply walking. How things could be explained clearer than that? Here is the making-of video.

Room To Breathe

Those are just few examples of how urban design could be revolutionized in the coming years. What do you think could be the most exciting urban innovation of the future?

1. Smart Stitch, because we are all professionals on the go. Mobility is key in the global economy.

2. Sony’s new model customer, challenging the leading position of Apple’s iBuy.

3.       Tarvu.com, it is so easy to join, even more than Facebook!

It’s So Easy To Join. from Torvakian on Vimeo.

No, seriously, it is interesting to see that more and more online projects replicate, and criticise, the messages delivered on the Internet. Because of its novelty, the Internet has been immunized for quite a long time from parodies. It is disturbing in a way because it’s sometimes hard to distinguish the reality from the joke. It is good, it challenges the perception of the Internet, and reiterate some social criticisms.