I’m just occupying a box in a hierarchy

I’m sitting in a fascinating first lecture on organizational behavior, learning about Max Weber. Interesting fellow and characterised the success of institutions through the existence of bureaucracy which he described as having:

1. Hierarchy – things are ordered
2. Rules – strict rules govern each interaction
3. Formal – distinct process exists
4. Rigid- the structure doesn’t change

A famous Max Weber quote as narrated by professor Giesler, “Cemetaries are filled with people who thought they were irreplaceable”. Weber wanted to remove the individual from consideration and only believed in the structure, positions and processes. Since humans were mortal, and would die, the institutions would continue to exist if new people could be brought in to new roles (the box in the hierarchy). Now, the box, and hierarchy becomes important, not the person.

I have to read more about him, seems fascinating.

This semester at ID

So it’s the start of a new semester at the Institute of Design – and I finally was able to register for classes so I thought I’d give all of you a heads up on what’s going to be keeping me very busy this semester.

The first three classes are from the Institute of Design and the last three are classes towards my MBA. I do like how my classes cover different parts of user centered innovation process, from conceptualization of an idea to product pricing to leadership and management.

Product Form – The form of a product is a result of resolving technical conditions, organizing the product for use, and a means for communicating. In this course students examine what technical and social dimensions impact product form and conversely, how product form can be controlled by the designer to improve the product’s performance. Topics include the relationship between a product’s form and corporate identity, visual trends, new materials, manufacturing techniques, semantics, product architecture, ergonomics, specific industries, and others.

New Product Definition- This course introduces students to the professional and theoretical aspects of the product definition process. It covers the process of creating a new product definition in detail, the characteristics of new product definition documents and aspects of organizational structure and dynamics as they relate to developing new product definitions.

Research & Demo -Research and Demo projects are semester long consulting projects with real clients with real problems. I can’t reveal too much detail about this project since it’s still being scoped but I’ll be working with a couple of friends at ID, advising us will be Jeremy Alexis, a professor at ID and our clients are a design consultancy and a very very large aviation company.

Strategic Competitiveness – Understanding of the concept of Strategic Competitiveness (SC), with a command over powerful concepts including strategic positioning, industry clusters, the economic diamond, the corporate value chain, and the global supply chain. The student will apply the appropriate SC concepts through analysis of “real-world” situations.

Organizational behavior – Topics include individual differences in motivation, perception, culture and learning style; group and organizational dynamics; and the impact of organizational structure and culture on behavior.

Managerial economics - The behavior of firms and households and the determination of prices and resource allocation in a market economy. Topics include empirical demand, production and cost functions, monopoly, oligopoly, and pricing practices.
I’ll update this blog during the semester and let you know what I’ve been learning from these classes.

My first Barcamp in Chicago

The last two weekends, I’ve made it to both the SocialDevCamp and BarCamp Chicago. I’ve stayed away from these events in the past, becasue I always assumed they were only for developers – and I haven’t touched code in over 4 years. And they are, but it was an interesting event nonethless and gave me the chance to meet some interesting folks.

SocialDevCamp was focused on social networking technology and busiensses and was less relevant for me but I did get a chance to meet some very friendly guys who had some great ideas on how to get the wireless presentation remote project that Ash and I have been working on manufactured and prototyped. These contacts alone made it worth the trip, as was a funny presentation by Ron May of the May Report on the lack of transparency in venture funding. Ron’s a fixture at these events and didn’t fail to entertain at the BarCamp either.

BarCampChicago was this past weekend and I could only make it for part of the day on sunday. The presentations that I did see were quite interesting including one session on unpublished API for CTABustracker.com. I also got to meet some great folks at this event including one guy who showed me Fotoviewr - a great looking application for viewing the photos which are already stored online at places like Flickr. The application that he has written does a much better job of visualizing your photos and can be embedded onto personal web pages.

I also got to see barcompany’s final presentation on their startup in 24 hour project called moworking - a way to gather mobile workers at a common location like Starbucks. Interesting concept and talented guys – a good combination for any startup. Good luck.

So in summary – good events but definitely wouldn’t spend more than half a day at each of these.