What drives our innovation and design ideas? What shapes and molds them? What underlying intentions are present within our designs? Better yet, what intentions are missing from our designs? Just because we do not intend to destroy the environment doesn’t mean that we are excluded from doing so.

TED.com recently published a video of architect and designer William McDonough giving a presentation at the TED Conference 2005. In his presentation, William McDonough seeks to find out what our buildings and products would look like if designers intentionally took into account “All children, all species, for all time.” If you haven’t seen The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle, I suggest you watch it.

As designers and innovators we must consider our intentions and the consequences of missing intentions.

If you would like to learn more about William McDonough’s philosophy of “cradle to cradle” design, which bridge the needs of ecology and economics, you can read his book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 10:31 pm and is filed under General Innovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.