Feb. 6-8 2013 – CICG, Geneva, Switzerland

Democracy in Distress – Re-engineering Participation

Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - 14:00 to 15:45
How can democracy survive and develop in an age of global networks and ongoing acceleration?
 

Mobile Stories

Wednesday, February 6, 2013 - 16:45 to 18:15

Discover the creative potential of mobile phones and how artists and designers repurpose them in original ways.

This session is presented by 

Resilience and Resistance

Thursday, February 7, 2013 - 09:00 to 10:30

Our present is the realm of VUCA - of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity - and our future seems more fragile than ever. We still must, however, plan for it. And we indeed can, by using mindsets and methods that incorporate and embrace uncertainty, allowing for new organizational agility in the face of ever increasing volatility.

  • Author and Blogger Forbes, Information Week
  • Co-Founder and CEO of Futurescaper, Crowd-sourcing Expert
  • Social Innovation Activist, Entrepreneurial mind and Initiator of Startup Live Athens

The Agile Enterprise: Rethinking what it means to manage

Thursday, February 7, 2013 - 11:30 to 12:45

Businesses small and large encounter environments that change fast and that change profoundly. To keep lean and nimble, to build, measure and learn in ever-faster innovation cycles often requires change at the very core of organizations. We'll look at ways of reconfiguring business, from agile management frameworks that evolved from software engineering to how to make unique fashionable bags - each with a perfect product-market fit.

This session is presented by

Innovation Drivers: XXX

Thursday, February 7, 2013 - 14:30 to 15:45

In Lift's tradition of innovation by cross-pollination we will explore what businesses can learn from one of the most profitable industries on earth: the adult entertainment industry. Not only did x-rated content bring us streaming video, online payment and perhaps one third of all internet traffic, but it’s also a role model in terms of business innovation while broadly eschewing legal patronage. From personalized experience goods to the sophisticated use of free content and an emerging class of entirely new devices and interaction models, there’s a lot to learn from the strongest creative industry that nobody ever talks about.

Noise and Speed: Loose Brakes and Failing Filters

Friday, February 8, 2013 - 11:30 to 12:45

The abundance of tools and services to produce and distribute messages, mails, tweets, sounds and images lead us to an explosion of content and a crisis of relevance - the distinction between substance and spam is continuously blurred. Filtering, purification and concentration thus gain more and more importance, both on a personal as well as on a technological level. So how can we cope, apart from just shutting our eyes and ears and inboxes? What sorts of new noise do we have to prepare for in order to pick up the remaining signals from the slew of randomness? And what creative potential can artists and designers mine from it?

Reinventing the Crafts: the Future of Job Traditions

Friday, February 8, 2013 - 14:15 to 15:45

In our post-industrial setting new forms of work are spreading fast, bringing together traditional values with new technologies and old skills with contemporary aesthetics. How can businesses large and small be both proudly artisanal and globally scalable? How can we adapt the way we design business models and live business ethics, how can we develop HR departments and management practices to actually let in actual craftsmanship and mastery again?

From Fiction to Design, from Design to Fiction

Friday, February 8, 2013 - 16:45 to 17:45

The mutual relationship between science-fiction culture and technological research and design.

  • Science-fiction author
  • Professor and Head of the Design Interactions programme at the Royal College of Art
  • Senior Lecturer, University of Greenwich and co-director of AVATAR