Where The Right Answer Is a Question

Hats off to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. This exactly captures the reaction it is striving to evoke from its visitors, young and old alike.

The Exploratorium goes where flat-footed edu-tainment cannot tread. It's a collection of brilliantly crafted exhibits designed not just to educate but to spark a sense of wonder and stir curiosity within. Each display has been purposely made to compel its audience to physically interact with it, to engage in the sort of playful experimentation that yields rewarding results and engages the participant in a willing game of detective work to figure out what's going on.

As the street banner suggests, it is particularly well suited for helping youngsters learn. The setting encourages them to be absolutely fearless in their pursuit of knowledge. Any self-consciousness they might have about the limits of what they know, or of making mistakes or worst of all failing - the collection of forces that might otherwise hold them back and rob them of an enriching experience - melt instantly away the moment they step inside the Exploratorium.

You could also say that a hallmark of an good account planner is to work in a similar way. We didn't have a child-like capacity for play in mind, we were thinking rather about the role to stimulate further investigation. To deepen the inquiry in a meaningful way that advanced understanding of the challenge at hand, through iterative probing that gets quickly to the heart of the matter.

There are many situations in the communications or consumer behavior worlds in which a question being evoked as a response to a stimulus - or as the effect of an interaction - would be a vast improvement to what it elicits today.

Inspiration to do better, fluttering in the breeze on Gough street above the heads of commuters making their way wearily to work.

A Straight Line That's A Curve? Hyperbolic But True.

It sounds either impossible or something which only lives in the realm of the fantastical, such as that distant and murky realm of Quantum Mechanics in which matter can purportedly exist in two places at the same time.

OFD has found that however impossible problems appear to be or daunting challenges might seem, progress and solutions can often come in a surprisingly simple way: from seeing things from a different perspective.

We sought this ourselves recently, and did what we compel our clients to do on occasion: step away from the problem - and the office - and go seek some inspiration where it matters. For the nature of our problem, we went to The Exploratorium, a brilliant laboratory of ideas which encourages interactivity and literal hands-on learning.

How can something straight fit into a curve?

It was one of the provocative riddles we encountered on an entertaining and thoroughly inspiring field trip.

The answer was simple, with a new perspective. A line rotated in the right plane makes a hyperbolic curve. The hands-on exhibit allowed the viewer to manipulate a steel rod literally through a curve in a piece of plexiglass. The visual evidence was irrefutable yet mind-bending nonetheless.

The Value in Mistakes, Part III

This may not be the last dispatch on the matter of mistakes. The issue seems to be everywhere, confirming a point we made at Fallon’s Trendpoint blog back on Valentine’s Day in 2007 (be cautious what one seeks for one may find it everywhere.

Arden’s book is not new (2006) but we venture to say is a timely read, whatever people are dealing with. The perspectives it offers up are short and pithy, so much so that their wisdoms can be missed, over-looked in the brevity of expression. It’s worth lingering on them.





















We all need a dose of inspiration from time to time and this slim book is just the thing. It provides a healthy shot of provocation, and challenges the reader not to follow the conventional path, however reassuring and familiar is might feel.

A worthy addition to anyone’s modest library. It’s not a book you read from cover to cover. It’s value comes from dipping – and being pleasantly surprised at how germane the lessons fit the times.