Top Ten Lists…

… a technique over the years to draw attention to a subset of things, from a larger set of things.  Top ten this, top ten that,… whether song hits, worse dressed celebrities, museums, retirement cities,… pretty much anything you can think of.  It’s actually a very effective technique.  I often Google lists by category to narrow my search for suggestions.  I was heading to New York, and I search for the top ten steakhouses in the Big Apple.  You have to be careful that the person, group or organization developing this list is someone you would want to take advice from,… but if they are, it gets you quickly to a few choices that you can double-click on to get more details.  I recently received a ‘top ten list’ from a business associate who read a blog that referenced my company – Steelcase Inc.  It was well written, so I decided to check it out.  It’s a blog called schneiderism, authored by John Schneider,… whose interest is the innovation that comes from the intersection of design, strategy, technology and marketing.  So while I was interested in what he said about his recent visit to Steelcase’s Global Headquarters (extremely generous in his compliments), I was more intrigued by the depth and breadth of this blog.

As I dug deeper I discovered that John’s day job is as VP and Principal at Walsh Bishop Associates, a renowned Minneapolis, MN A&D firm.  I also spotted that they developed a Michigan property I visited just two weeks back – Turtle Creek Resort,… what a small circle we run in.  Before I reflect a bit on the schneiderism blog, I wanted to first elaborate on a few of John’s comments regarding his Steelcase experience.  In his top ten list, called 10 Things:, John talked about some of our current research projects, like telepresence and ubiquitous computing,… as well as our association with IDEO and the importance we place on innovation in general.  But what caught my attention was John’s #1 ‘thing’ in his list, wherein he clearly articulated how the ‘importance of the user’ is pervasive throughout Steelcase,… from our customer visit user-experience, to the focus we place on user-centered design in developing innovative products/applications, to business processes that are user-focused by their nature.  It’s something we work very hard at, thus it’s great to hear it is appreciated.

Now for the schneiderism blog; let's start with his tag line, informational omnivore; which literally translates into information being the source of John’s basic sustenance,… he lives to discover and integrate new information; I love this characterization.  I spent an hour or so snooping around schneiderism, and one post stopped me in my tracks – The Workplace of Now is Not About Furniture (May 22, 2008).  I thought ‘oh no, is this going to sour my opinion of what I thought was an excellent resource…?’  I cautiously read on, and John did not let me down.  He concludes that ‘virtuality’ (work from anywhere) is putting “pressure on the office to change in ways to support this boundless workplace,… to become one of many nodes on the network (of places) which brings us together for effective interactions.”  I could not agree MORE.

The schneiderism blog has about 30 categories and hundreds of individual posts across these categories.  There are the obvious ones based on John’s stated interests; design, innovation, which have the most entries.  And then less obvious categories, which is consistent with John’s insatiable desire for interesting information; things with engines, epistemology, weather, and yes even economics…?  Each of these either reflect a source of design innovation or design innovation is the way these subjects are best understood.  Commentary which makes for an interesting new stop as I surf the net.  How about you...?