Liz Gerber, PhD

Design for America on ABC

egerber — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:38:02 +0000

Congratulations to Northwestern’s Design for America’s team for their work featured on ABC news. Excellent job team!

Design for America Fellow Thea Klein-Mayer to speak at TEDx

egerber — Sat, 11 May 2013 01:40:58 +0000

Design for America’s Fellow, Thea Klein-Mayer, spoke today at TEDx U of Chicago. We are so grateful for her amazing creativity and commitment to the success of the Design for America network.

Daniel Lewis Rees receives Cognitive Science Fellowship

egerber — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 19:18:37 +0000

Congratulations to Design for America’s instructional designer, Daniel Lewis Rees, for receiving Northwestern’s Cognitive Science Fellowship for his research on case-based reasoning and innovation education. I am honored to be co-advising him with Dr. Matt Easterday. The Loft would not be possible without his creativity and hard work.

Dian Yu receives Cognitive Science Graduate Fellowship

egerber — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 22:18:38 +0000

Congratulations to Dian Yu for receiving the Cognitive Science Graduate Fellowship for her proposed research to understand visual dissonance to improve graphic design. I am thrilled to be co-advising her with cognitive psychologist, Dr. Steven Franconeri.

Thanks to Scott Drucker for his short video on Design for America

egerber — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 01:57:21 +0000

Chicago Filmmaker Scott Drucker spend the summer recording Design for America and creating an informative overview video of our work. Thanks Scott!

Check out Design Chicago on April 10th

egerber — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 22:37:32 +0000

We are hosting the the seventh annual Design:Chicago seminar. The speakers will discuss “Leadership by Design”: how leaders structure their organizations to harness and use design of products, services, processes, and organizations as a competitive strength and opportunity for change in today’s corporate landscape. Leaders from Harley-Davidson Motor Co., Kitchen & Bath Americas at Kohler Co., Logitech International SA, Sonim Technologies, and Target Corporation will discuss Leadership by Design.

Don’t miss the opportunity to meet Navi Radjou on April 12th at the Segal Design Institute and Kellogg School of Management

egerber — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 16:07:05 +0000

On Friday, April 12th from noon to 1pm, we are thrilled to be hosting Navi Radjou at the Segal Design Institute and Kellogg School of Management. He will discuss frugal innovation.

The lecture will take place on the Northwestern/Evanston campus in Jacobs G45. The lecture is open to all.

FRUGAL INNOVATION: A DISRUPTIVE NEW BUSINESS (and SOCIAL) PARADIGM

Frugal innovation is the ability to “do more with less”: that is, to reduce complexity and create significantly more business and social value while minimizing the use of increasingly limited resources. Thousands of inventive entrepreneurs and firms in resource-constrained emerging markets like India, China, Africa, and Brazil apply frugal innovation techniques to create simple but highly-effective solutions that deliver more value to customers at lower cost. Using many real-life case studies (Renault-Nissan, GE, Siemens, Unilever), Navi will show how you can apply the frugal innovation tools, techniques and mindset to address the needs of cost-conscious and eco-aware consumers worldwide in sectors ranging from healthcare to manufacturing to energy to education to financial services. Navi will also describe the grassroots “frugal innovation movement” unfolding across US and Europe, led by progressive government agencies like FEMA and SCIP, next-gen incubators like TechShop and Rock Health, and visionary universities like Stanford and MIT.

About Navi:

Navi Radjou is an innovation and leadership strategist based in Silicon Valley. He is also a Fellow at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, and a World Economic Forum (WEF) faculty member. He is a member of WEF’s Global Agenda Council on Design Innovation and a regular columnist on HBR.org. Navi is co-author of the bestseller “Jugaad Innovation” which The Economist calls “the most comprehensive book yet to appear on the subject” of frugal innovation. Navi is also co-author of “From Smart To Wise,” a book that PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi calls “a practical guide for accelerating your own wise leadership development.” An Indian-born French national, Navi lives in Palo Alto, CA. http://NaviRadjou.com

University Sponsored Crowdfunding WIP accepted at the 2013 Team Science Conference

egerber — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 01:42:17 +0000

PhD candidate, Remy Briam’s Work in Progress titled “Analysis of a Team Effort in Coordinating Resources Through a University-Sponsored Crowdfunding Platform” was accepted by the 2013 Team Science Conference.

Novice entrepreneurs are continually seeking ways to fund their projects. One increasingly popular funding mechanism is crowdfunding. Today many crowdfunding platforms exist, but few platforms are geared specifically toward a university community. This study considers the role of crowdfunding in the university and the coordination between stakeholders including students, alumni, alumni relations, mentors, faculty, administrators, and researchers.

NSF Graduate Fellowships awarded to doctoral students

egerber — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 17:41:02 +0000

I am proud to announce that my doctoral students Julie Hui and Mike Greenberg just received the NSF Graduate Fellowship and honorable mention NSF Graduate Fellowship, respectively. They will be researching and designing collaborative tools for novice innovators.

Top 11 reasons you should ignore top 10 or top 100 lists: Metropolis Mag:

egerber — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 02:36:25 +0000

Last month, Public Interest Design named me as one of the top 100 people re-imagining the world. As honored as I am – and please do put me on all your lists! – I couldn’t help but think that “top” lists are exactly the opposite of innovation. Herewith, the top 11 reasons to ignore all those lists that you’re not on.

11. Lists are issued by the kind of people who are always talking. Innovation comes from those at the fringes who don’t have time to write lists. Do you think Alexander Graham Bell was worrying about other scientists’ ideas when he invented the telephone—or was he following his hunch that one might be able to hear sound over a wire?

10. Lists describe the world in generalities. Innovation comes from attending to detail. Apple engineers optically scanned people’s ear cavities, built 100 mockups of the Apple EarPod, and then asked more than 600 people to jump up and down, run, shake their heads—all with the intention to create the recently introduced earplug that stays in the ear in all in extreme heat and extreme cold. Can you put that process in a list item?

9. Lists are limited. The best idea is sometimes number 1,203. In 1946, frustrated with leaky cloth diapers, Marion O’Brien Donovan—in a desperate last resort—cut up the shower curtain in her bathroom and sewed a diaper to prevent leaks. Many iterations later, she patented the first reusable diaper cover made from nylon parachute cloth. The “boater,” as she called it, was the precursor to today’s disposable diaper. What if Donovan had stopped at iteration ten? Would we still be leaking?

Read the full article at Metropolis Magazine