MaRS

Two ways of thinking: Darwin and Da Vinci

Charles Darwin, despite his momentous effect on the world of biology, was not a trained biologist. His knowledge of geology was what allowed him to think deeply about how things change over time. His intellectual curiosity brought him out of his field of study and onto the deck of a ship that travelled the world in search of the new. Upon his return, it was his collaboration with zoologist John Gould that allowed him to propose his revolutionary theory of natural selection.

“One thing we know about creativity,” says Marc Tucker, Head of the Washington-based National Center on Education and the Economy, “is that it typically occurs when people who have mastered two or more quite different fields use the framework in one to think afresh in the other.” Group-think is the enemy of innovation.

Are you watching TED?

Your inbox is about to become a lot fuller. The TED2010 conference just wrapped up in Long Beach, California, wowing audiences with a wide range of ideas. As always, the talks will be available online, in easy-to-forward bite-sized chunks.

The first video became available just last week (Feb. 15): an incredible tour of Microsoft’s new “augmented-reality” mapping software by programmer Blaise Aguera y Arcas.

The tour of the new features in Microsoft’s Bing Maps focused on the three dimensional street view, similar to GoogleMaps’ high-profile imagery. “We see this 3D environment as a canvas on which all sorts of applications can play out,” says Arcas. Like Google, Microsoft has been trolling the cities of the continent filming streets not only from the roof of a car, but also with a “back-pack camera”.

A fight for a piece of the booming cupcake industry?

Sugar and spice and everything nice might describe cupcakes themselves, but the exploding cupcake industry is anything but.  Just in time for holiday baking madness, the New York Times profiles cutthroat cupcake entrepreneurs, who won’t even disclose their profitability for fear of giving an edge to rival enterprises.

Just how big is the cupcake business?  One market research firm foresees a 20% increase in US cupcake sales over the next five years.  Here in Canada, food and beverage processing is the country’s third-largest industry, with bakeries representing the largest sub-sector.

At Design Thinkers 2009, a very eclectic audience including myself were asked to consider and reevaluate our impressions of what graphic design is.  We were asked to revisit the steps we take towards being “creative” and “innovative”.

This was — and is — no simple feat.