In February of this year a the inter-disciplinary research group Strongly Sustainable Business Model was created in the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) at OCAD University. The group aims at developing tools and methods that help small and medium size organizations make decision that lead to more sustainable organizations economically, environmentally and socially. More details on the group can be found here. The group meets monthly and the June meeting of the SSBMG is taking place on Tuesday June 12 at 4:30 pm at sLab.
Posts Tagged ‘collaboration’
Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group
Tuesday, June 12th, 2012Design with Dialogue – Bodystorming
Saturday, March 20th, 2010Design with Dialogue (DwD) is a community of practitioners of facilitation and collaboration methods that meets monthly at the Strategic Innovation Lab at OCAD. DwD members were recently involved in facilitating collaborative design events at ChangeCamp and the XCLINIC‘s XCAMP.
DwD is inviting all who are interested in designing user experiences to a special session (additional to the monthly DwD meeting) welcoming Dennis Schleicher, Director of User Experience for Sears, to Toronto Tuesday, March 23 from 7-9 pm at OCAD’s sLab, room 600.
Dennis’ workshop will provide an introduction to the practice of Bodystorming as a method for engaging people in simulating experiences and processes by designing them through joint acting and improvisation of envisioned situations. Dennis has written about three forms of Bodystorming on his noteworthy blog site Tibetan Tailor. Guess which one he will do, and come prepared to play!
Attendance is free but you have to register here.
Season’s Greetings
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
Happy Holidays to All
As we wind down an eventful year and look forward to the upcoming holidays, it is time to celebrate the most important elements of our humanity: The warmth of being with family and friends, generosity and compassion with our fellow humans near and far, reflection on what’s important in our lives, a mind set of reconciliation rather than conflict, and of appreciation of our blessings.
The Manara team would like to express its gratitude to all friends, customers, partners, colleagues, and competitors for their support, advice, business, wisdom, and the challenges that kept us on our tows and made us a better team.
We wish you all and yours a Merry Christmas, happy and safe holidays and a New Year full of peace, health, and prosperity.
Season Finale – Designing with Dialogue
Monday, December 7th, 2009Leadership in the co-creation of positive change in our organizations and communities facilitated by conversations for meaningful action.
Designing with Dialogue (DwD) is a Toronto community of practitioners that gathers monthly to convene dialogue as a practice in social designing for the purposes of engaging the organizations, projects, and civic communities to which we’re committed.
Manara has been participating regularly in DwD sessions as we see the facilitation methods and tools discussed by this practitioners community as a significant component in the wider spectrum of collaborative design tools required for organizational change.
December’s session will be held the second Wednesday, December 11 from 7:00 – 9:00 PM at the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab) of OCAD. We are reserving this session to meet as a core group of committed participants interested in taking the DwD community to the next stage of its evolution towards serving the community at large. The December session, as an exception, will be dedicated to continuing the work we started in November for envisioning the plans and agenda for 2010.
From January 2010 on, we will meet the second Wednesday of every month at the Strategic Innovation Lab, OCAD, Toronto.
The Business Model Generation
Thursday, October 1st, 2009After months of hard labor, several writer blocks, and many inspirations co-authors Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur have completed their book Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers. It was released hot off the press September 30, 2009.
The book provides an excellent overview of business models, both existing and emergent. It includes the Business Model Canvas tool, which has been put to the test already in a variety of situations with excellent results. Business Model Generation also stands out among similar business books in the care and effort invested in its design under the creative auspices of Alan Smith of The Movement.
Adding to the many interesting aspects of this book is the story of its writing. 470 practitioners from 45 countries collaborated with the co-authors on its content through a wiki-type collaborative environment called the Business Model Innovation Hub. [Full disclosure: I am one of the 470 contributors – No material interest in sales though]. The authors released chunks of their book as they were writing them and hub participants engaged in review, critique and contributions to those chunks. Even designs were put in front of the hub members. On the day of its release there were already 1000 copies pre-purchased in 55 countries!
The result is an outstanding book that is definitely worth reading. The story of the book making is worth telling on its own. We were hoping it could be told at the Fifth Business Innovation Factory conference held next week in providence, RI. Timing problems prevented securing one of the slots for story telling. We’re still hoping to be able to tell this remarkable story on the sidelines of BIF-5 and in other venues.
You can see a 72-page PDF preview of the book here. If you are interested in getting your copy, you’d be well advised to purchase it from the authors site here where the book will be available for limited time at the affordable price of $36. After that the book will be sold through Amazon with an anticipated price of $70.
Congratulations to Alex and Yves on their achievement. We are proud to have participated in this interesting and creative undertaking.