I recently saw this slideshow from the founder of Foodspotting, Alexa Andrzejewski, and thought it combined nicely user experience design and entrepreneurship–two topics very dear to me.

What I like most about this presentation is how it focuses on coming up with a vision and then validating the experience — rather than a business model. A business model is still important but it’s just not the central piece — the experience and how one interacts with the product is what everything else, including the business model, revolve around. I also like how the presentation points out the value of creating complete iterations of the product over time — instead of a developing the bottom layer of a wedding cake in phase 1, develop a cupcake — a complete end-result with frosting and a cherry on top. Then, develop a more robust phase 2, followed by phase 3 and so on. These are classic truths of successful entrepreneurship described in pictures rather than numbers. Love it!

With money such a part of our survival experience in modern society, how can we change the control it has on our behavior –so people make decisions that are optimal for humanity as a whole?

Most recent public spectacle:

Rajat Gupta, former head of McKinsey

Business is definitely not a gentleman’s game and rife with true locker room antics. Which other business men of stature will be caught with their pants down? Can’t wait to see…

Here is my submission:

Approach business with unconditional love. Many business decisions are acts of selfishness. Conducting business that looks past the self happens when one heals personal trauma and feels positive vibration in the body; life choices become bigger than one’s pocketbook and how decisions affect the greater world is critical. Imagine financial reform guided by love or a criteria to lead national initiatives a combination of motherhood and financial savvy. I am a strategy consultant and yoga teacher.

We work within the human condition. Our basic instincts and desires while living in society do not change that much from generation to generation — how we express them certainly does and the tools and technologies we have available advance.

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the social capital markets conference, SoCap 2010, in San Francisco, CA. Pretty exciting meeting — a lot of people really committed to putting their efforts behind projects/companies/organizations focused on helping humanity.

Part of me thinks there is some ego involved. Frankly, it feels good to help other people — so for overall quality of life, the social enterprise sector is a good thing to be a part of.

These videos from Panahpur, a UK organization with a history as a charitable trust now focusing on impact investing, describe well the holistic intention behind social capital — the pressing need for Generation Y to do good; yes as a backlash to the greed inherent yet socially supported by Generation X and the Baby Boomers. The pendulum is swinging.

I don’t know from Kevin Burgess on Vimeo.

• One conversation at a time
• Go for quality
• Be visual
• Build on the ideas of others
• Stay focused on topic
• Defer judgment

These statements are found written across white board walls in the Clark Center’s Brainstorming Room at Stanford University.Talking about an innovative bio-design course, this article further describes the room:

“All four walls double as floor-to-ceiling white boards where team members can jot down notes and diagram ideas gleaned from their research. A cabinet contains low-tech items that can be used to make rough product mock-ups, unexpected things including sparkly purple pipe cleaners, Play Dough, and even life-sized plastic replicas of a human spinal cord and a leg. For more advanced prototypes they can move next door to the Prototyping Studio to work with glass beakers, drills, cutting forceps, a furnace, and microscopes.”

I love the description of this room; encouraging collaboration, the use of bodies and hands to play with materials, and helping thoughts evolve into visceral experience. Let’s all think with our hands and bodies! Let’s find the opportunity in the un-said, but in the felt; in the electricity of interaction and engagement.

At times, I think it’s one and at other times, the other.

I came across SEED Media Group’s logo and the description of its creation:

Designed by Stefan Sagmeister, our logo reflects society through the lens of science. The logo takes its inspiration from nature’s phyllotaxis structure, a Fibonacci-derived algorithm present in a multitude of settings, from the face of a sunflower to the alternating leaves on a plant to the architecture of highways. Depending on its context, the logo adapts and changes color to reflect its cultural surroundings. Our logo brings “Science is Culture” to life.

This logo, and the inspiration behind it, represent to me several things (1) art in the form of logo design (2) a corporate identity that is infused with meaning (3) the consideration of work as art by intertwining corporate purpose with artful expression.

May we all consider our work, whether in a business, philanthropic, or political context, as art.

Comes the anguished cry

Wake, wake, great Siva,

Our body grows weary

Of its law-fixed path,

Give us new form.

Sing our destruction,

That we gain new life

Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Poet