Creativity

By: Jaime Clifton, Research Curator

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread.”

--John Muir, 19th-century environmentalist

Before humans ever conceived of sustainable design, nature was doing a good job. Plants and animals have evolved to use energy efficiently, to be multi-functional yet balanced, and to use information to carry out living processes.

A report by the Ellen MacArthur foundation earlier this year predicted that there would be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050, unless urgent action was taken. And the Dutch are taking action in a private/public partnership working with environmental entrepreneur, 21-year old Boyan Slat.

As I sit here on a sunny Saturday morning, trying to face the ‘tyranny of the great white page’, I stumbled across this brilliant TEDTalk, entitled, Inside the mind of a master procrastinator. All creatives, colleagues, students, and fellow procastinators should listen to this, and it’s hilarious as well as insightful about the ‘dark playground’.

Something to think about on a Friday afternoon.

All over Sweden, both private and public companies and services have been experimenting with a six hour work day, in the hopes that employees will be more productive and quality of output would improve. One company, Filimungus explains employees almost universally report being happier, more energized and engaged in their work.

Often, with social change or any innovations, people focus on the big fix and miss the many small steps that culminatively make a difference--a kind of threshold effect just as in ecological systems. A San Francisco based start-up called Nebia a new shower head that conserves water, and that is designed to respond to people's needs. In theory, we all want to conserve water, but at the same time many of us love standing in a long, hot shower.