R Sloan Design Experiences » teach

Tom Ford And The Vindication Of American Glamour

R Sloan Design — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 06:31:00 +0000

THOUGHTS: Forever young…embrace it.

The essence of that All American brand is glitter, shimmer, lamé and glam.

We’ve been trained to think of high American style as something inferior to what is proposed in Europe (with Paris as the motherlode of a historic ideal of chic.) I mean what is American chic next to the the legends of that mad bad 70′s YSL clique , haughty and arch in vintage 40′s platforms and fox stoles at dawn on the cobbled streets of the Rue Royale? Which American could hope to compete with the 1000 acre country estate extravaganzas put together by the English gentry? Who can top the mythology of fox hunts and inherited Old Masters and gardens by Dechene?

In fact we’ve been programmed to reason that the essence of American style is the opposite of all that “heritage”. Sportswear is the code Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein and Micheal Kors have ridden to the scale of retail empires. That American look has triumphed because it is so clean, so casual and democratic. But glamourous on the European scale? Not at all, except for Ralph and his formal aspect is heavy with all that Anglophilic crypto-gentry chic.

But recently I’ve been thinking , maybe there is another more entrenched corollary of American style and it is that thing called ” glamorous” . That is the glamour of Hollywood…of Las Vegas (think Sharon Stone in Scorcese’s “Casino”)…the glamour of the ultimate upward mobility of Wallis Simpson…Madonna in Miami circa The Sex Book…Oprah as the veritable Empress of Chicago. In other words it is the idea of the Rich American Woman, all nouveau and unashamed about it.

The essence of that All American brand is glitter, shimmer, lamé and glam. It is the glam ideal tricking down to upper middle class American ladies done up for the evening. Those 50′s and 60′s wives, trophy and otherwise, of New Jersey orthodentists and Arizona corporate lawyers dreaming fitfully of Babe Paley and the Bouvier sisters, dreaming that they could look and slink and shimmer like that. It is an American style that is about scale and paillettes and sequins and shine like Doris Day at a 60′s Oscar ceremony, an incandescent platinum blonde in a silver lamé pant suit. And who’s to say that after 60 years, that Rich American Woman glamour has not become a heritage of its own?

It is the myth therefore of Tom Ford’s grandmother who in his 2002 monograph he described as the nexus of his very first idea of fashion ” To me as a little kid , she was like a wonderful cartoon. We lived in Texas, a very typical middle class life. When she would come over in her newest Cadillac with some new outfit on, she brought something powerful into our lives…She was bigger than life in every sense, both physically and her presence: everything was big and loud. She wore whatever was the trendiest thing of the moment. When bellbottoms came in , she had them first. She had the biggest, widest. Platforms were in? She had the highest. At one point her closet were a sea of identical Lucite shoes with flowers in the heels. Jewelry-big and flashy. She was not subtle”

Sounds familiar? For all the accusations that Tom Ford’s two collections to date have reeked a suspiciously heavy vintage store odor, maybe its because subconsciously Mr Ford is designing his grandmother’s ultimate wardrobe.

If that’s not an avant-garde tack, maybe its instinctively brilliant. That angle could be the foundation of a new brand empire that is the very vindication of All American glamour in a way no-one has quite figured out until now. As the only emerging luxury label of note in the post-recession market, Tom Ford’s decision to set the taste clock back, far far away from the frenzy of social media and internet instant gratification might have wrecked the last nerves of the blog chattering class (of which TI is a card carrying member) but its also opened up another possibility.

If you think about it, no existing luxury brand is this walk-in closet ready for a seven figure mansion in a gated community. It is a perfect Houston socialite on a private jet vision. The Tom Ford label is so plastic-surgery-recovery-at-the-Beverly-Hills-Hotel, so Judith Krantz’s Scruples, so deeply Hollywood Wives that you want to kick yourself for not thinking this up yourself. I love that despite the mannered diction Tom Ford frequently employs, he is not marketing Anglophilia. He is marketing a kind of lost Americana, the kind only seen anymore in the Robb Report.

Of course Mr Ford probably couldn’t care less about a vindication of his tastes. He’s said as much and you have to admire the guys’ blunt honesty and of course, long term vision. Oddly enough this vision of a new chapter of luxury has always been in Ford’s head, even back in 2002. The final words on his intent has to be his from that Tom Ford book. Back then Ford said, ” I still completely believe in luxury. I think it’ll become even more important- rich people building fake environments so they can pretend the world is still a certain way. That is the future, building yourself into these artificial worlds. On that level , money is no object”

That was prophecy.

How Design Can Get Kids On the Path to Tech Careers

R Sloan Design — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 04:26:00 +0000

THOUGHTS: Being a parent of a child starting kindergarten, I have found myself re-examining my education. Moreover, I have mentally relived those experiences and attempted to remember how they either enlightened or cast a shadow on my regards for the education ‘system’ as a starting point for my line of thinking around education, public or private, and how best to serve my child’s.

To say the least, it has been an interesting process and mind shift that has occurred around the education in the formative years…

by Trung Le

A conversation with Dr. Stephanie Pace Marshall, the founder of a new type of science and math academy.

“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it… And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world… nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.” –Hannah Arendt

Her name comes up in almost any discussion about transforming education: Dr. Stephanie Pace Marshall. Dr. Marshall is the founding president (1986-2007) and president emeritus of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA), an internationally renowned, publicly funded residential high school (10th to 12th grade) that emphasizes a curriculum in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Dr. Marshall’s first mandate in developing the concept for this decidedly new learning experience was: “Let’s not call it a school but rather a ‘center for inquiry and imagination.’” When IMSA’s funding was in jeopardy, Dr. Marshall legendarily brought her students to the Illinois state capitol and set up classes in the rotunda. There they conducted physics and chemistry experiments, spoke Japanese and Russian, staged a scene from a Shakespearean play, and met with legislators. IMSA’s funding agreement was rectified. With STEM education a U.S. priority and increasingly seen as the means to competing with developing giants like China and India, I asked Dr. Marshall about the opportunities and challenges we face in advancing STEM learning.

How can the entanglement of design and education move the unmovable object — i.e. the established, staid institution of education?

I love this question, because it seeks to get at the core of design and its role in helping to co-create an educational system worthy of our children. I would amend it slightly however, to ask: ‘How can design both enter into and perturb a new conversation about education so the system becomes disturbed enough to begin living into their desired future now?’

“Design enables us to redefine who and how we now want to be.”

I am not a credentialed designer, but as a leader I have always been mindful of the power of design to evoke changes in perception, attitudes, experiences, and behaviors by helping to change the relationships, patterns, and shape of the system. For me, designers are storytellers. They speak a patterned and relational language, and they use it to create environments and experiences that change the system’s neural network and the traditional dynamics of who and how we move, think, and behave, within a particular place. Design invites us to navigate a new narrative, to alter the map and landscape we have traditionally traveled, and to be different and belong differently to a place. Design enables us to reclaim spaces and behaviors that may not have been accessible before and redefine who and how we now want to be.

Design enables us to encode our stories and create our maps. It makes our covenants visible, and it illuminates our beliefs and values. And when this happens, when design enables our children’s, teachers’, and system’s inventive genius to flourish, education will change.

Sometimes there are moments in human history that seem to beckon awakenings. They perturb us to reevaluate our beliefs, assumptions, and reigning cultural stories. They challenge us to synthesize and integrate seemingly disparate forms of knowledge into new relationships, new patterns, and new theories. They invite us to invent new language, new rules, and new structures. They call us to create and live into new stories of possibility. The ancient Greeks called this time kairos, the “right moment.” It is a time when reality embraces possibility.

What were the key ideas and goals behind creating a learning community like IMSA?

The idea of a residential secondary institution for students talented in mathematics and science was proposed by Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman. This was in the fall of 1983 and his vision was a response to the perceived national crisis in developing STEM talent. But as we know, the crisis persists. The achievement level of U.S. students on internationally benchmarked standardized tests in science and mathematics remain dismal and the needs of our nation’s most talented youth remain unfulfilled. Traditional models for educating academically talented students in STEM (Advance Placement courses) have not been able to nurture our next generation of STEM researchers, innovators, leaders, and inventors.

[Dr. Marshall talks to a student in a science class.]

From inception, IMSA sought not only to develop decidedly different scientific minds, but also to develop a decidedly different residential learning community — one that was nurturing and innovative, and one that instilled a sense of stewardship, and an obligation to give back. As a dynamic teaching and learning laboratory, IMSA continues to evolve, yet the roots of our founding ideas and goals remain. Here’s what they were and still are. The ‘IMSA idea’ means:

1. A collaborative partnership between diverse stakeholders — education, science, research, technology, innovation, business, and government.

2. Serving as a catalyst and laboratory to stimulate excellence in STEM teaching and learning.

3. Multi-dimensional admission criteria for identifying STEM talent and potential beyond a standardized test score.

4. An innovative, advanced and “uniquely challenging” curriculum designed by IMSA faculty that integrates the habits of mind of science and mathematics with those of the arts and humanities. Advanced placement (AP) would not be the content or driver of the curriculum.

5. Personalized learning opportunities both on and off campus for independent study, research and mentorships.

6. Formal interaction with some of the great minds of our time.

7. Developing deep disciplinary and interdisciplinary expertise and integrative ways of knowing and experiencing the interdisciplinary nature of science by solving complex multidisciplinary problems.

8. Learning experiences designed using current research on the learning sciences and how we learn.

9. Commitment to treat each student as if he or she is capable of significantly influencing life on the planet.

10. Embodies the following programmatic commitments: distributed expertise with students and teachers serving as co-learners and collaborators; fostering integrative habits of mind; designing competency-driven, inquiry-based, problem-centered, and integrative curriculum; experiential and technology embedded instruction; student-driven inquiry and research; flexible time structures to align with and support curricular and instructional goals and the commitment to share our learning, practices, processes, materials and models with educators and schools in Illinois and beyond.

Why did you feel so strongly about not calling IMSA a “school”?

It was very clear to me that whenever you say the word ‘school,’ it conjures up mental images and models of our experiences and behavior in a place — and accompanying that ‘place model’ is a kaleidoscope of memories and emotions about how that place looked and worked — how we felt in it, what was rewarded, celebrated and expected, and who we were supposed to be as learners in that place. Unfortunately, many of these mental models of how we should learn in school are completely at odds with how real learning happens and how it’s demonstrated in the real world. False proxies for learning often erode our children’s vibrant intellectual and creative potentials because they diminish the excitement of real learning and discovery. Everyone knows that finishing a course and a textbook does not mean achievement. Listening to a lecture does not mean understanding. Getting a high score on a high-stakes standardized test does not mean proficiency. Credentialing does not mean competency. Our children know it, too, yet it persists.

From IMSA’s inception, I knew that if we called IMSA a school, I would spend most of my time explaining what we were not instead of what we were. I would be telling people what we didn’t do rather than what we did do.

Years ago, a wise colleague told me to be careful because what you call it becomes what it is. This was a powerful caveat — calling ourselves an academy and a ‘teaching and learning laboratory for imagination and inquiry’ stimulates questions that enable us to have the conversations we want to have. All transformation begins in language. I did not want IMSA to be confined within a school story because that narrative would have been far too small for our imagination. You simply cannot create new maps from old stories.

[Images courtesy Illinois Math and Science Academy]

What is Strategic Thinking?

R Sloan Design — Thu, 26 May 2011 06:55:00 +0000

THOUGHTS: As a reminder…
by Center for Applied Research

Strategic thinking focuses on finding and developing unique opportunities to create value by enabling a provocative and creative dialogue among people who can affect a company’s direction. It is the input to strategic planning—good strategic thinking uncovers potential opportunities for creating value and challenges assumptions about a company’s value proposition, so that when the plan is created, it targets these opportunities. Strategic thinking is a way of understanding the fundamental drivers of a business and rigorously (and playfully) challenging conventional thinking about them, in conversation with others.

Strategic thinking must take into account:

Competencies and Skills: What are the company’s strengths? How can these be used to create a unique competitive advantage? What are the company’s weaknesses that might leave it vulnerable?
Products and Offerings: What is the portfolio of offerings (product, service, price and image bundles) that the company provides to the market? What are the overlaps or white spaces among the offerings? What is the rationale or logic for these offerings? What makes them unique? What are the brands associated with these offerings? How do these brands fit with the company’s image? With each other?
Environment and Industry: What is the overall economic context in which the company competes? What is the regulatory or governmental environment, and how does this impact the company? What is the structure of the industry? Where is this industry headed, and where do we want it to be? What is our position in the industry, and what do we want it to be? How does this industry connect with others, and what are the implications of that for our positioning?
Markets and Customers: Who are the target customers for the offerings? What are their needs? How is the company uniquely suited to meet these particular needs?
Competitors and Substitutes: What is the nature of competition inour industry? What other companies have offerings that could meet the same needs? What are their unique strengths and strategies? How are they similar to or different from us? How might they respond to our strategies? Are there companies not yet in the market who might choose to enter it? What are their strengths and strategies? What market conditions might lead to action on their part?
Suppliers and Buyers: What other companies do we need to work with in order to make and sell our offerings? What is their relative power compared with us? What are their strategies and strengths, and are these aligned with ours? What’s in it for them?

Process Considerations

As important as the content of strategic thinking is the process by which it takes place. Processes are needed to ensure that strategies are:

Aligned: A company’s strategies must fit with its mission, vision, competitive situation and operating strengths.
Goal-oriented: Strategies are the means by which a company sets out to achieve its goals. Effective strategies, then, set clear expected outcomes and make explicit links between these outcomes and the company’s goals.
Fact-based: The best strategies are based on and supported by real data. While strategic thinking by its very nature requires assumptions about the future, these assumptions must be educated guesses, based on facts—for example, actual performance data or results of some kind of pilot test or experiment. The logic behind the strategy must be clear. Effective strategies tell believable stories.
Based on Broad Thinking: Companies that are strategically nimble are able to consider multiple alternatives at once and to consider a range of scenarios in making strategic choices.
Focused: No company can do everything or be all things to all people. Strategy setting involves making choices about what a company will do and—as important—what it will not do. Strategies provide clear guidance about how a company’s activities will be prioritized, and how its limited resources will be deployed.
Agreed upon: Especially in large, complex organizations, successful strategies must gain the support of multiple stakeholders. This often requires a process of developing strategies that is interactive in gathering multiple points of view and in sharing the thinking behind the strategy as it evolves.
Engaging: Strategies that will need to mobilize broad resources must be easily articulated so that they can capture the attention of the people who will be asked to carry them out.
Adaptable: Strategies need to be able to be adjusted to build on learning from experimentation, errors and new information. At the same time, there needs to be some thoughtfulness in these adjustments so that they are responsive without being overly reactive or “knee jerk.”
Implementable: Because effective strategies draw on the particular strengths and skills of an organization, they include explicit considerations of how they will be implemented. Implementable strategies provide clear guidance for decision making in order to shape behavior throughout the company.

Selected Bibliography

Porter, Michael E. Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. New York: The Free Press, 1980.
Porter, Michael E. “What is Strategy?” Harvard Business Review. November/December, 1996, pp. 61 – 78.
DeGeus, Arie. “Planning as Learning.” Harvard Business Review. March/April, 1988, pp. 70 – 78.
Mintzberg, Henry. “Crafting Strategy.” Harvard Business Review. July/August, 1987, pp. 66 – 75.
Vancil, Richard F. “Strategy Formulation in Complex Organizations.” Sloan Management Review. Winter, 1976, pp. 1 – 18.
Eisenhardt, Kathleen. “Speed and Strategic Choice: How Managers Accelerate Decision Making.” California Management Review. Spring, 1990, p. 39.