TANSTAAFL DesignShops

Practicing Anticipatory Design
Paying To Play

MG Taylor has produced a number of Invitational DesignShop events over the years. In 2001, we will be producing a series of these focusing on high profile, systemic issues that our society is facing. The new “brand” for these events will play off of the TANSTAAFL theme - an issue that runs through every content area of every event.

This page will introduce the TANSTAAFL DesignShop concept and act as a gateway to the various events now under design. Each of these is password protected and are assessable to their respective Sponsor and support Teams. These are just my raw notes. The MG Taylor site will host our project management process and the official participant/sponsor sites.

The participant site will be up on the MG Taylor web site by April. The four MG Taylor sponsored DesignShops events for 2001 focus on the Internet (May 3 - 10), The knowledge worker workforce (July 10 - 12), nanotechnology (September 11- 13) and Health Care (November 13 -15).

At present, the intention is to hold these events at the Palo Alto knOwhere Store. In the future, it can be expected that TANSTAAFL DesignShop events will be held in other locations employing our RDS. Given certain subscription scenarios and knOwhere circumstances, a variety of alternatives have to be staged.

MG Taylor is making a corporate commitment - a STRATEGIC commitment - to making these events successful. We will do them no matter the subscription. We will do them well. We will keep doing them until they are a recognized and highly attended, successful part of our culture. Therefore, the way we do each one will be designed based on the specific circumstances of time, attendance and the subsequent process and economic challenges.

There are a number of underlying themes that feed in and out of these events.

The essence of the TANSTAAFL DesignShop process is anticipatory design - AND, understanding the price associated with action or non-action. Most organizations - no matter their size - have barely enough resources to keep up with the changes specific to their immediate market environment let alone the entire world in which they function. The drive to be competitive and to satisfy customers continually narrows an organizations focus (The Innovator’s Dilemma). Further, organizations tend to get trapped in their own world view. Weak signals are missed because they fall off the radar screen. Even large and successful organizations find it increasingly difficult to keep up with change. Time, and personal bandwidth becomes the critical resource - not corporate recourses.

In addition to the considerable risks associated with any enterprise, there are risks greater than those normal to any specific competitive space or field of activity. These are issues that are systemic to the system in which the work is being done. They make up the environment of the work. Time and again these generate unexpected consequences. How is it, for example, that “suddenly” a professor at Stanford University cannot afford to live in Palo Alto. That “suddenly” there is an energy crises in California?

In any enterprise be it a club, a business, a field of endeavor, a nation or a planet, there are commons issues that have to be addressed by everyone. Even competitors have to create, together, the rules of engagement that makes their competition healthy and productive - not destructive. This is true even in war.

In our American society, today, the “Tragedy of the Commons” is the biggest problem we face and we, as a society, have few ways to deal with it. The commons issue, of course, is a global issue and there exists no means - that all consider legitimate - to address it. Neutral space is required. A process is required.

Invitational DesignShop events are an effective environment for individuals and organizations to accomplish the following:

Perform Weak Signal Research and anticipatory design.

Diagnose, in collaboration with peers, and solve industry specific problems and societal issues too complex for any one organization.

Prepare for Managing the commons.

Develop collaborative and co-design skills.

Build networks.

Refresh their personal perspective and world view.

The value that can be created in three days overwhelms the cost and the scarcity of time that rules the life of so many of us. Three days of personal time and $3,000 is a small prices to pay. Whole new paradigms can be explored, a myriad of solidly engineered alternatives accomplished, personal and organizationally specific implementation plans can be crafted.

This year’s TANSTAAFL DesignShop events signal MG Taylor’s completion of it’s own start up cycle and refocus on the mission that created it. To us, it is a celebration and a new beginning.

 

Matt Taylor
Boulder, CO
December 5, 2000

SolutionBox voice of this document:
INSIGHT • POLICY • PROGRAM


Posted: December 5, 2000

Revised: February 13, 2001
• 20001205.582393.mt • 20010106.783729. mt • 20010204.875420.mt •
• 20010213.342987.mt • 20010225.234591.mt •

Copyright© Matt Taylor, 2000, 2001

Search For:
Match:  Any word All words Exact phrase
Sound-alike matching
Dated:
From: ,
To: ,
Within: 
Show:   results   summaries
Sort by: