The Spring 07 issue of Ambidextrous Magazine was damn interesting. In addition to the snippet mentioned below, it also had a couple of great pieces from Bill Cockayne. The first was called “A Primer for Budding Futurists.” (not available online)

The second was an article about the development of the Aeron chair from Herman Miller (should I do a disclaimer here? Both my cheeks are well supported in one of these wonderful chairs as I type). You can read the full article online (PDF), but I’ve summarised the relevant extracts:

For Herman Miller Inc (HMI), design is a way to solve problems…..a long standing philosophy of the company is to particularly focus on the future. If you could thoroughly understand a problem, in the context of now and the future, it would take the competition years to figure out the design and replicate it.

HMI often employs leading thinkers whose outside expertise can provide insight into the issues relevant for designing for the edge of tomorrow.

One particularly influential foray was a multi-million dollar research project on the future of aging in the 1980s. It combined the fields of gerontology, architecture, public policy and the field of aging. The study then focussed on the issues of long-term sitting for these populations.

This is very similar to the Futures programmes that we run at Innovaro, where we draw upon a diverse group of experts from adjacent sectors to map out future business opportunities.