…that is, I believe, one of the most important questions for a business to ask itself. Because your actions and your offerings depend a whole lot on the answer.

Today and tomorrow The Economist and Design Council have gathered people from some of Britains leading businesses in London for a conference on ‘redesigning business‘. As the introduction on BDC’s website simply says: “When the old ideas stop working, business must find new ones. So is the current economic slowdown a fantastic opportunity for design?”

The interview here is an excellent introduction to the topic and at our corporate blog I have elaborated a bit on the role of designers and design thinking.

Bill Verplank lecturing at CIID

In a very short time Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design has succeeded in creating a vibrant and inspiring environment and raised the bar for design education and research in Denmark. Their international faculty, their unique combination of education, research and consulting and the institute’s outreach have made CIID an essential part of the Danish design environment.

One of their really great offerings to the design environment outside the institute is their open lecture programme. Each year CIID invite prominent people from their extensive international network to come to Copenhagen and teach at their courses – and give open lectures while they are here anyway. The list of previous and upcoming speakers is long (you will find my name on it twice…) and they just added the next coming three lectures this spring: Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Nicholas Wakeham and John Holager. While I only know Mette from the distance through her work at CITA, I have had the pleasure of working with both Nicholas and John previously.

A couple of years ago my company Move worked with Live|Work on a service design project for the pension company PFA. John is working as a senior service designer with Live|Work and during the project we did a joined workshop at their offices in Oslo. On a warm sunny day in June we had a great time discussing and producing experience prototypes for PFA’s clients to test and give feedback on the new service. John is still with Live|Work and on March 17 he will present some of his current thinking on the discipline of service design.

Nicholas we met when we started our networking platform Link UP six years ago (time’s running fast…). Nicholas was a part of the Swedish design group aeswad (which is an abbreviation of ‘Am Ende Sind Wir Alle Deutsch’ - I got the explanation once but somehow it  never stuck in my brain…). Together we developed a really cool concept for debating important issues – the design battle – which we executed a couple of times on different occasions at the University of Copenhagen, the Danish Architecture Center and at Rust. It was great fun. Today Nicholas is working as a creative producer at Varelsen and on May 5 you can meet him at the Danish Design School when he is lecturing on the art of doing at CIID.

All lectures take place at the Danish Design School in the large auditorium next to the canteen. If you cannot find the room (and if you have not been there before, that will probably be the case) please call Alie Rose on +45 2090 5005.

See you there.

“I have a faith but I’m not a follower of any religion. I don’t believe in religious systems. Actually, I resigned from the Church of Denmark when I was 20 years old, so why should I be forced to carry a symbol of a system that I left?”

And Kristensen is firm in his belief of freedom from religiously infused citizenship apparel. He’s ready to take his complaint all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, should the Ministry of Justice not comply with his demand of erasing Jesus from the passports.

So far, the Ministry isn’t reacting. Neither are the Danes according to a majority in the parliament Folketinget. Jesus stays in the passports.

Let me give you a (very) brief update on the relationship between Danes and Jesus.

Before the Danes met Jesus, they believed in the Norse Gods, a merry fellowship of skull-smashing bearded brutes that told the Danes that if they died on the battlefield they would go directly to Valhalla and spend life in eternity eating meat and drinking mead and engaging in inter-Vikingial skull-smashing until the Last Day of Ragnarock when über Norse God Odin would summon them to fight against the evil skull-smashers of Asgard.

Jesus was born 965 years before the then King of Denmark, Harald Bluetooth, stated that all Danes believed in Jesus and his father, God. His announcement was made through the proper official channels of the time, a rune stone with a brisk statement specifying: “I’m Harald, son of Gorm and Thyra. I won all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian!” on one side and a relief of the Crucified Christ on the other. This stone, named the Jelling Stone after the village where Mr. Bluetooth saw fit to erect it, is also known as the Birth Certificate of Denmark.

The Birth Certificate

Danes were Catholics until 1536 when the then King Christian III decided that all this buying of indulgence and sending tithe to Rome was a load of bollocks, so from now on all Danes were Protestants and the church was a matter of state and Mr. Christian didn’t need the Pope because Chris was fully capable of taking care of his own clergymen, thank you very much.

Then democracy kicked in and in 1849 the Danes made themselves a constitution, the Grundlov. And when they reached the point of deciding their beliefs, their only frame of reference for dealing with these matters was 900 years of some head of state telling them what to believe in. “You are evangelical-Lutheran because I say so!” had been the mantra of the then King Frederik VII.

But the Danes were firm believers in democracy now so they became perky: “No, everybody should have the right to believe in whatever they want – except for you. YOU be evangelical-Lutheran, Mr. F!” and gave that circumstance its own paragraph, §6 to be precise. So it’s a constitutional right of every Dane – except the King or Queen – to make their own kind of peace with whatever kind of deity or lack thereof that they choose.

Today surveys show that only 5-6% of Danes believe in God.

But.

82% of the Danes are members of the Church of Denmark and pay 1% of their combined income in Church Tax. Around 72% of newborn Danes are christened in churches. 42% of all weddings take place in churches. Danish priests are civil servants whose education and wages are paid for by the state.

This peculiarity derives from §4 in the Grundlov. In the concise linguistic tradition of Harald Bluetooth it states that “The evangelical-Lutheran Church is the Danish people’s church and as such supported by the State.” So you see, it’s in the law that a particular church is the Danish one –  and everything Danish is good. That’s why a vast majority of Danes believe in not separating church and state and most Danes will tell you that Denmark, even though thoroughly secularised, has Christian values deep in its core and if you dig for that core they will tell you that it means we are compassionate, forgiving and love our neighbours.

So Denmark is full of grace, according to Danes. Let’s elaborate on that. Let’s go to Germany, the home of Martin Luther.

In his famous Theses Luther stipulates that salvation doesn’t come at the price of following rigid rules and regulations but is a gift from God to everyone and the only price you have to pay for eternal happiness is to meet the world with grace.

Unfortunately Danes have entered this bargain like cheap used car dealers and have done everything they can to pay as little grace as possible for the eternal happiness that they put in the marketplace of State-building Solutions. They have fully embraced the concept that the similarly German but much later theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”.

Bonhoeffer was killed by the Nazis a few days before WW2 ended in 1945 for his role in the German Anti-Nazi Resistance. Bonhoeffer was serious about his grace, you see. He thought that grace without repentance, the willingness to change ones behaviour, was cheap. If you discover harmful doings that inflict unhappiness on your neighbour, you should make an effort to stop those harmful doings - practice “costly grace”, not just feel sorry for him and turn the other cheek.

We’ve already covered the Danes’ attitude towards change, so let’s not go deeper into that now. Let me just give you an example of the fact that when believing gets tough, Danes choose not to believe.

During the last year, Denmark has seen two different but equally high-profile cases of whether or not people should be forced to leave the country.

Case 1:

Back in the late 1990s a Danish woman called Camilla Broe played an active role in arranging the transportation of some 100,000 Ecstasy pills from the Netherlands to Miami, USA. She has confirmed this herself. When the American police confront her with their investigation in 2001 she goes back to Denmark where she was protected under the rules of extradition between Denmark and USA.

But those rules were changed as a part of the new Anti-Terrorism Act of 2007. This means that Camilla Broe can be extradited to USA for trial and, if found guilty, returned to Denmark to serve her sentence. In September 2009 she arrives in Florida, but the trial ends in February 2010 with the charges being statute-barred. By 1st of March she’s back in Denmark pending the ruling of the Miami Prosecutor’s complaint about the first ruling.

Case 2:

During the last 12 years around 17,000 Iraqi citizens have applied for asylum in Denmark. Approx 12,500 have been granted asylum and 4,500 have had their application denied. Of the latter, 4,200 have left the country as of May 2009, but 282 have refused to leave due to the violent situation in the regions of Iraq that they fled from originally. On the 15th of May last year the Danish Ministry of Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs declares that it has signed an agreement with the Iraqi government about forced extradition, and on 16th May, 70 Iraqis seek refuge in the Church of Brorson in Copenhagen.

The night between the 12th and 13th August the police enter the church and start putting the Iraqi families on flights to Iraq.

So far so good.

Camilla Broe hasn’t denied taking part in drug trafficking. But she claims that it was a result of Battered Woman Syndrome; that her actions should be seen as the consequence of the violent domestic environment she endured at the time. She also states that since the criminal acts that she is charged for happened 12 years ago and that she is now the sole provider for a daughter, the charges against her should be dropped.

The Iraqis had all received and taken note of the refusal of their asylum application, but claimed that the situation in Iraq was too violent to make it possible for them to comply with the Ministry’s decisions and that several of them had been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by Danish doctors. They also claimed that their children were born and raised in Denmark, had never visited Iraq and only spoke Danish since that was the language spoken at school.

Two cases pleading for the compassion, forgiveness and neighbour-loving of Danes. But with one difference: To meet Camilla Broe with grace would also constitute criticism of the American Justice System. No problem there. Never waste a good opportunity to badmouth foreign countries. But to meet the Iraqis with grace would constitute criticism of the Danish Justice System – and we can’t have that now, can we?

This difference showed up immediately in opinion polls.

60% of Danes think that Camilla Broe should be acquitted of all charges, 18% even think she should be paid some sort of compensation for her troubles. 27% think the trial against her should be allowed to proceed.

53% of Danes think that the extradition of Iraqi families was the right thing to do. 54% find it all right for the police to enter the church at night and transport men, women and children away in buses to prisons and airports. 32% think they should have been allowed to stay due to extraordinary circumstances.

So if you ask the Danes about Jesus, they will tell you that he is welcome to stick around and do his grace-thing as long as he also does something Danish while he’s here. They will even comply with most of his demands for the human race as long as it doesn’t in any way, shape or form impair the Danes’ right to love themselves unconditionally.

That’s why Mr. Kristensen will have to come to peace with the fact that the Crucified Christ will be represented in the colour of dusty beetroot in his passport for eternity.

I am a big fan of Hartmut Esslinger, founder of Frog. With more than 40 years of experience and being the man behind one of the World’s largest and most succesful design companies, he has the ability and will to talk straight about the business and nature of design. And so he does. Even though he often appears to be somewhat of a grumpy old man, his is actually an eternal optimist – and as he says in the end of this cut-up interview which I found via Swissmiss: “After forty years you have a lot of garbage behind you, but I always see the sunshine”.

I had the pleasure of experiencing Esslinger live in San Francisco a couple of year ago at IDSA’s conference Connecting. You can read about his inspiring and straight-forward talk here . And  if you want to get even closer to Esslinger you should read his autobiography ‘A Fine Line’ which in a very accurate manner explains what it’s subtitle says: How design strategies are shaping the future of business.

The Bornholmians have been told all their living years that even though they are geographically detached and pretty far away from the rest of the country out there in the Baltic Sea, equal treatment means equal treatment, so if anything is wrong with them and the expertise to cure it is somewhere to be found in the Kingdom, help is at hand.

But there’s something on Bornholm called ovre. I guess the best translation will be to ask you to think of the term ‘over there’ and then get lazy and just think of ‘over’. Ovre means ‘everything in Denmark that is not Bornholm’.

Bornholmians have a love/hate relationship with ovre. On one hand the island is in no way big enough to support itself. The amount of sunshine, smoked herring and granite just isn’t sufficient to keep 42,000 people self-sustained. Especially not the granite, since that would mean literally carving up the island piece by piece and exporting it to vain house-owners all over the world. On the other hand the island has been under Swedish, German, Soviet and Danish supremacy through the centuries, so even though peace has reigned in the last 64 years there’s still a great animosity towards everything and everyone from any ovre lurking around in the back of the Bornholmian brain.

The woman’s cancer was cured. But she lost one breast. She lost the breast because the freeze microscopy facilities needed to perform a breast preserving treatment was only available ovre and the doctors at Bornholm Central Hospital and the mayor of Bornholm County had agreed to not let ovre boast about their fancy equipment and steal their patients and therefore did not inform women with breast cancer about the possibilities modern treatment provide and their rights to choose freely from any facility in the country. Five women lost breasts unnecessarily before someone intervened.

And what happened then? How did Denmark cope with the fact that five women were mutilated in the name of Bornholmian hygge? The two doctors are still working at the same hospital. Their boss has commented on the incidents with only one word: “unfortunate”. The Bornholm County Mayor first stated that the decisions were made because the removal of the breasts improved the patients chances of survival, but that was immediately denied by the doctors from ovre. Then he changed his explanation to: “There was a waiting list for breast preserving treatment” but that was firmly refuted by several hospitals around Denmark. Then the mayor went silent, perhaps because the then Minister of Health stepped onto the scene and called the events “unacceptable and irresponsible” but apart from looking and sounding a bit upset – did nothing.

The five women each received compensation averaging 34,000 kroner. That’s about 4,000 euro or 6,400 dollars or a tad more than the average Dane earns per month. Or what a cancer specialist earns in a week at Bornholm Central Hospital. Quite a bargain – one breast for one month’s pay. That’s the amount that says: “something was wrong” but not nearly enough to say “something was very, very wrong”.

Apart from that – nothing happened. There were no angry letters from citizens to politicians. There was no public outcry demanding those responsible should be held accountable. The mayor still enjoys a blossoming political career. The then Minister of Health is now our Prime Minister. And the Danish Cancer Society – whose expressed purpose is to “ensure optimal conditions for those living with cancer and its consequences” called the amount of compensation “adequate”.

But what about Danish society as a whole? I suppose it could be considered a civilized reaction to this wretched state of affairs to refrain from anger and just make sure that nothing like this could ever happen again by giving the whole health care system a thorough going over. But going over systems means changing systems and we know how Danes respond to change, don’t we? Change compromises hygge. NEVER, EVER compromise the hygge.

So Danes did the opposite of reducing the problem with local patriotism. They scaled it up and took it nationwide. Last year the European Commission had to threat the Danish government with sanctions for not allowing all Danes to use their right to seek the best possible treatment anywhere in the EU. Several cancer patients died after being declared incurable by the Danish health system even though both German and Swedish hospitals were able to treat them.

The Danes’ reaction to this? Nothing.

Because nothing must disturb the hallowed ground of hygge. Not even death.

I just came across this excellent introduction on Core77 to the discipline of designing for disassembly. It struck me that in his eager to reveal the framework behind it, Alex Diener from Pensar ends up describing the whole framework and mindset behind any strategic use of design.

At the beginning of a new decade, a new year or any new era at all, it seems natural to look around and search for the next big thing to come. As designers we do this quite often – almost on a daily basis – by researching and observing people’s behaviour, their use of stuff and patterns in general, and therefore people often ask us about this. And as a lot of the people we work with have a tendency to like products and technology (or even have a business build upon one or both of these), they often ask things like ‘what new technologies are emerging?’ or ‘what kind of products will we see within the next (insert number) years?’. And though these questions are relevant, answering them alone will not provide the useful answer you really need.

Because the future of technology is convergence and the future of products is services.

Increasing availability of new technology and commoditisation of products makes both technology and products unable to create the significant differentiation in the market needed for companies to survive. Instead it is the coherent experience of technologies in a relevant application surrounded by seamlessly integrated services that will make the difference on the market in the 2010’s.

A shining example that already exists is of course Apple’s iPhone, iTunes and iTunes Music/App Store complex of products and services. While any given company with an electronics engineering team and a couple of web designers is able to cobble together an MP3 player, a mobile phone and a site for music download for that matter, Apple is second to none in this area and will most likely be for years to come. – Simply because they focus on the customer experience and desires instead of technology and products. Of course the solution sports a lot of advanced and new technology on both the hardware and software part, but this is not in itself what makes the difference: It is the application of it and the services surrounding it.

Apple, Zipcar, Netflix and a lot of other cutting edge companies share the same secret (which is not really a secret): Instead of asking ‘what is the next big thing?’ they ask what needs and desires their potential customers have and explore ways to satisfy them with whatever technology products and service it might take. Though it sounds simple it often requires some working on the mindset in companies that have traditionally seen themselves as product manufacturers suddenly to realise that they are in fact service providers developing products to give access to a service which is what their customers actually regards as the real value of the product and thereby the reason to engage with the company and it’s products in the first place.

Products are great because they make technology useful and relevant, but they are often just the carrier of services. Services providing what you actually need: Like getting around. The solution to this is not (necessarily) the car, but now that we have it, it’s hard to imagine that it is not there. And therefore we see car manufacturing companies struggle or even die these years: When you compete on making a car and you no longer need to overcome heavy barriers in terms of knowledge or technology to do it, basically all you have left to compete about is price. Or having the latest technology first or having it fail the least. – Or making the coolest commercials. And then you die. – Because you will never be able to differentiate your company enough from your competitors this way. Because neither of the above creates a significant better experience.

If instead of being in the car industry you were in the ‘getting people from place to place in the most convenient way’-industry, suddenly your opportunities would be a lot different: You could run a car sharing service, a shuttle bus company or – if you were a public institution like a city government – install a metro system or make cycling lanes all over town… Or you could make the car that made all other cars redundant because it was thoughtfully integrated with other products and services increasing the value of both – or a solution that we cannot even imagine yet.

Services are nothing new and they are not the golden solution to anything. Services basically occur whenever people interact with each other or with companies or organisations regardless of it being person to person or through some kind of interface. And by focusing on the value you create through your services you will be able to make new, groundbreaking products and prosperous business ideas for the new decade.

But just as there are no products without services, there are no services without products. So don’t be mistaken by people trying to tell you that products do not matter anymore and that the important thing is what you design, not how you design it. That is a fatal misjudgement. Again, take a look at Apple: Though it is the iPhone, iTunes and the Music/App Store that makes the coherent experience in the end, the iPhone in itself is such a cool product that you could have people buying it even it could not even be turned on. And the interaction between the three and yourself is a carefully thought out design too by the way.

Happy 2010’s!

// I’m devastated hearing the news of the earthquake in Haiti that has seriously affected thousands of people. We got this mail from our friend at PTRMusic and we really want you to read it!

// You can also text “HAITI” to 90999 to easily donate $10.00 to help the victims of the earthquake. The money goes to the Red Cross and is charged directly to your cell phone bill.

Thank You - Tobias Wilner

Link to letter

For a long long time.

The reason is simply, I got a new job as a designer back in my home country Sweden and returned this summer. And somehow in that moving circus I forgot all about this blog. Though, I have not forgotten about Denmark. I’ve been back in Sweden for some 6 months now and I miss my beautiful Copenhagen very much and almost every day (and ohh how I miss all that bicycling!).

So this is me saying goodbye to this blog and any potential readers. Farewell!

And for Copenhagen. I ‘m almost certain I’ll be a Copenhagener again. So, so long!

Love/ Jenny

In general I think my 2009 was a good year even though it was full of ups and downs. I appreciate all the experiences even bad experiences, because it makes me look at things from different perspectives and it makes me stronger. So how should I end this great year? Be together with my boyfriend and friends to count down new years was defiantly my first priority. Like everywhere else, it’s quite common in Denmark that friends hang out together and either go out to party or party at home.  So we decided to host a party with friends at our apartment which we just moved in at May 2009. You know just to test the quality of the apartment. I think we are quite satisfied with the result, only three glasses got broken and all the colorful stains on the floor kind of disappeared after we washed it

It was a Chinese themed cocktail party but everyone got so drunk with polish vodka which we bought in Krakow last time we were there. At that moment, it suddenly struck me that all my friends are foreigners. Hehe, it’s hard to explain, but most of my friends are foreigners or not very Danish Danes. I don’t know why maybe you can help me to understand, but I guess it might be that us as foreigners share a similarity-”not Danish”. Somehow we don’t have a superior feeling towards other people, so the barriers that separate us become lower.  Anyway, we had lots of fun.

My new year’s goal is to become a more healthy and stronger (both mentally and physically) person. What about you?

P.S Luckily due to my Chinese identity, technically I’m still in 2009, Chinese 2010 will officially start from February 14th 2010.  And my boyfriend and I will go back home to celebrate New Year with my family. We are so looking forward because going to China to celebrate New Year means lots of good food plus more great food.

Hmmm it seems like I already have set up a big challenge for my healthy new year goal. Let’s see