Open up your mind and say, ahh...

The BMW i8 plug-in hybrid isn’t set to go on sale until 2014, but that hasn’t stopped BMW from ripping off the roof to create a Spyder variant of its conceptual super coupe.

The third concept in BMW’s new line of alt-powered, i-branded vehicles, the i8 Spyder will debut at this month’s Beijing International Auto Expo packing the same mix of plug-in hybrid drivetrain technology as its coupe counterpart.

That means a 223-horsepower, turbocharged 1.5-liter three-cylinder gasoline engine mounted amidships and partnered with a 129hp (96kW) electric motor powering the front wheels. A trio of driving modes allows the two powerplants to work alone or in conjunction, with the low-performance, all-electric setting limiting output to the front wheels and delivering up to 19 miles of gas-free motoring. Electric juice is provided by a 7.2 kWh lithium-ion battery pack spanning the middle of the vehicle, which BMW claims can be charged in under an hour and a half. Crank the drivetrain up to maximum performance mode and you get the full 354 hp and 406 pound-feet of torque, enough to hit 60 mph in a little over 5 seconds. But the Spyder isn’t without its compromises.

Like other convertibles, the removal of the roof requires additional bracing to keep the chassis from going floppy. That means more weight and the potential for dulled performance. In the case of the i8 Spyder, overall tonnage is up by some 330 pounds over the coupe, requiring an additional half-second to get to 60 mph, but BMW claims that the Spyder’s additional pounds haven’t affected its all-important 50:50 front-to-rear weight balance.

While the obvious change is the removal of the roof — rumored to be replaced with either a cloth top or duo of carbon fiber panels — new front-hinged, upward-swiveling doors replace the partial glass units fitted to the coupe and are much more feasible for the real world. Expect those to make it to the coupe as well.

The same goes for the interior, which has evolved from a highly stylized cockpit concept to something that’s teetering on the verge of production-ready.

Three “layers” span the interior, with the “comfort” section made up of the seats and storage areas, while the “technical” layer comprises the instrument panel, steering wheel and 8.8-inch, high-resolution central information display. Even the center console, which previously looked like something out of Tron, has given way to a more traditional setup, complete with transmission stalk, climate controls and BMW’s iDrive controller.

Included inside is BMW’s latest version of its ConnectedDrive infotainment and telematics system, comprised of a camera-based collision warning system, parking assistant and the all-new Traffic Jam Assistant, which can accelerate, brake and steer the i8 when traveling at low speeds in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Another hint the i8 is inching ever closer to production is the increase in dimensions, with the overall length coming in at 4,480mm, a gain of 152mm (about 6 inches) over the hard-top, with width growing by 33mm (1.3 inches) and height gaining 72mm (2.8 inches).

What won’t make it to production is the pair of Razor-style scooters mounted above the engine bay – another hypothetical prong in BMW’s multi-modal transportation scheme – but then again, this wouldn’t be a concept without some kind of frivolous design frippery.

Designers spend a lot of time giving advice to each other. There has been a litany of books by designers for designers. There have been a few by business people on how design can benefit business. But there have not been many about the process of design and creativity at the most fundamental level of all–the human brain. Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine is that book. Released a few weeks ago, it’s the most important book to hit design in many years, because it goes to the heart of how the mind works and offers surprising and immediately useful ideas on the neurological origins of creative insight.

Through a series of stories about some of history’s greatest creative breakthroughs, Lehrer takes the reader into how those ‘aha’ moments happen. By starting at the level of the individual and scaling up to communities, corporations, and even cities, Lehrer presents a measured and invigorating view of how our brains imagine new things. The book contains an endless array of helpful ways to think about creativity, but here are a few that struck me as most relevant to designers.

The Key to a Breakthrough: Daydreaming

We often feel guilty daydreaming. The time spent in an extra long shower or staring out the window feels wasted. But daydreaming is a critical component on the path to a creative breakthrough. The activity that takes place inside of our brains while we believe we’re daydreaming is unique and activates a part of our brain associated with insight. Lehrer describes the ‘3M attention policy’ that has been credited with several innovations over the course of that company’s history. The policy was based on an intuitive understanding of creativity that has since been validated by modern brain research:

The science of insight supports the 3M attention policy. Joydeep Bhattacharya, a psychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, has used EEG to help explain why interrupting one’s focus–perhaps with a walk outside or a game of Ping-Pong–can be so helpful. Interestingly, Bhattacharya has found that it’s possible to predict that a person will solve an insight puzzle up to eight seconds before the insight actually arrives. …What is the predictive brain signal? The essential element is a steady rhythm of alpha waves emanating from the right hemisphere. While the precise function of alpha waves remains mysterious, they’re closely associated with relaxing activities, such as taking a warm shower. In fact, the waves are so crucial for insight that, according to Bhattacharya, subjects with insufficient alpha-wave activity are unable to utilize hints provided by the researchers.

Successful Teams Are Never Too Familiar With Each Other

We live in an increasingly complex world with increasingly complex problems that require teams of people working together. But sometimes what seems like a great team fails. Why? How do we best work together? How do we build creative teams with a greater likelihood of success?

To answer this question, Lehrer describes the work of Brian Uzzi, a sociologist at Northwestern University who sought to identify a model for successful group creativity. He analyzed what can often be a complex creative group endeavor: the Broadway musical.

He found that the success of musicals like West Side Story, one of the most critically and financially successful Broadway plays of the 20th century, can be understood by the nature of the social relationships of the creative team involved. Uzzi invented a designation called Q. Groups with high levels of Q are closely knit teams. Groups with lower levels of Q are essentially strangers. It’s the teams with the right mix of unfamiliarity and intimacy that are the best performers. West Side Story had the right mix of Broadway stars and virtual unknowns. And there is a clear pattern, Lehrer writes

Uzzi’s data clearly demonstrates that the best Broadway shows were produced with intermediate levels of social intimacy. A musical produced at the ideal level of Q was two and a half times more likely to be a commercial success than a musical produced with a low Q or high Q.

Lehrer speaking at PopTech on the power of outside intelligence.

Bring in an Outside Perspective

We have a saying at Bruce Mau Design: “Amateurs going in, experts going out.” For a long time, we struggled to articulate the benefit of being a “nonexpert” in a field. We often talk about “fresh eyes” in design. When you’re working too long with anything, by definition, you can’t “see” it anymore. It helps to get a person unfamiliar with the work to give a fresh perspective. Well, it turns out that this is a fundamental pillar of innovation: Our habits form what’s called a ventral route. It’s like a rut in a road. It gets so deep that you simply can’t get out without outside help. Using a story about InnoCentive as a starting point, Lehrer describes the paradox of expertise in that it can sometimes become an obstacle to creative problem solving:

There is something deeply counterintuitive about the success of InnoCentive. We assume that technical problems can be solved by people with technical expertise; the researcher most likely to find the answer is the one most familiar with the terms of the question. But that assumption is wrong. The people deep inside a domain–the chemists trying to solve a chemistry problem–often suffer from a kind of intellectual handicap. As a result, the impossible problem stays possible. It’s not until the challenge is shared with motivated outsiders that the solution can be found.

Those few stories are really just the beginning. The book also talks about the reason why Shakespeare was so prolific (your social scene has a whole lot to do with your chances of a creative breakthrough), how an autistic surfer has revolutionized surfing because he is predisposed to obsessive even debilitating attention to his craft (something all good designers are familiar with), and how the human friction we experience in cities is the key to their constant flourishing.

Lehrer’s book works well because it tells deeply human stories to illustrate the underlying science that drives the creativity of the subjects he describes. It’s for that reason that this book is so important for designers. It helps us understand what’s driving our creative impulses and thought processes at the most fundamental level. Lehrer, the science writer, may have been an amateur going in, but he’s an expert now. And we’re all the beneficiaries.

Buy Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine for $15 here.

Image: Sylverarts/Shutterstock

Paddy Harrington

Paddy Harrington is executive creative director for Bruce Mau Design (BMD), a member of the MDC Partners network. Since joining the Studio in 2003, Mr. … Continued

Organovo’s 3-D bioprinter can now create blood vessels and connective tissue. Will it someday fabricate entire organs?

“If someone asked the question in 1960, ‘How long would it take to put a man on the moon,’ they would have one answer. And if someone asked the question in 1964 they would have a very different answer,” says Keith Murphy, CEO and cofounder of the biotechnology startup, Organovo.

Sometimes groundbreaking scientific advances never thought possible are actually just around the corner. And the breakthrough Murphy’s referring to here is one that his company’s been working toward since 2008: the creation of a functioning human organ in a lab with the help of 3-D bioprinting technology.

Here’s how it works: First, Organovo creates a “bio-ink” out of human cells, collected from biopsies or stem cell sources. Researchers then feed those “cell droplets” into a 3-D printer and program the arrangement of the droplets using custom-built software. “At that point, it’s kind of like working with Legos,” Murphy says. Currently, Organovo can build blood vessels along with various types of connective tissue, or fibrosis.

While Organovo’s not alone in using 3-D printer technology to create biological material, other companies’ creations generally require the use of a synthetic polymer scaffolding to keep the cell structures from falling apart. But Organovo has found a way to keep the cells together without introducing any foreign substances, making it as close to the real thing as possible.

“Our system can get you to a fully cellular structure which is important if you’re trying to study the behavior of cells in their natural environment,” says Murphy.

For Murphy, the story of Organovo started five years ago when the chemical engineer decided he wanted to start his own business, but was still searching for a killer product. For 17 years, he had worked on the corporate side of the biotech industry at places like Alkermes and Amgen, but by 2008, Murphy was in need of a change. That’s when the startup world came calling. “I needed something that was more fast-paced and that really involved innovation, thinking on your feet, and being dynamic everyday,” Murphy says. He finally found the big idea he was looking for when he met Dr. Gabor Forgacs, a biophysicist from the University of Missouri who had developed a powerful 3-D bioprinting technique, but didn’t know how to commercialize it. While the potential for making entire organs is undeniably enticing, the mere promise of that breakthrough isn’t enough to sustain a company, so Forgacs needed to figure out a way to monetize his printer in the short-term. That’s where Murphy’s years of business savvy came in.

“We launched the company really looking for financing in the third quarter of 2008,” says Murphy. “If you remember what happened around September, October of 2008, you know that’s a challenging environment to be raising money in. We had to find a real business solution–an unmet commercial need for the technology.”

So Organovo began supplying its tissue to pharmaceutical companies to use as test platforms for experimental drugs. Unlike raw cellular material or structures that use synthetic scaffolding, Organovo’s samples are whole biological entities, so they’re ideal for finding out how a compound will react in the human body. “In certain disease areas, taking cells and putting them in a petri dish isn’t sufficient because those cells aren’t behaving like they do in the body,” says Murphy. “A lot of times (drug companies) make a wrong conclusion and find out 8 billion dollars later.”

Along with its pharmaceutical partners, Organovo licenses its hardware and software to academic institutions like Harvard Medical School and the Sanford Constortium for Regenerative Medicine, where researchers are working toward even more applications of the technology, including the elusive construction of full organs. But Murphy says they can’t do it alone.

“Specifically it’s going to take federal research funding. That’s the biggest thing that’s going to drive this area forward. If it suddenly became a federal priority and there was a lot of research funding going in this direction then you could have (organ-printing) in a small number of decades.”

Then again, if we’ve learned anything from Murphy’s moon landing example, it could happen much sooner than we think.

Images: Organovo

What does a real-life CEO have in common with the central figures of a fictitious Mafia crime family in The Godfather? According to Justin Moore, CEO and founder of Axcient, plenty. 

Moore is a serial entrepreneur, early-stage advisor, and angel investor. He’s currently at the helm of Axcient, a company he founded that provides backup, business continuity, and disaster recovery services to the small and mid-sized business (SMB) market. Right now, Axcient is protecting more than 2 billion files and applications for businesses across North America.

Moore also happens to think that The Godfather is “one of the best movies ever made” and had a chance to watch it again when the film was aired extensively last week to mark the 40th anniversary of its premiere. Though a decade had passed since the last time Moore watched it, his recent viewing offered an unexpected reward. This time he found the film rife with teaching moments for CEOs running a business today.

“I certainly don’t endorse crime or violence, and I’m not suggesting business should operate like the Mafia,” explains Moore, “but there are some universal themes in the movie I can relate to as a CEO.” Moore says The Godfather offers valuable lessons in community and team building, making tough decisions, and playing to win while not neglecting friends and family.

Here are five essential leadership lessons Moore distilled for Fast Company.

1. Build a powerful community. 

Someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me. ~Vito Corleone

Uttered in the iconic rasp of Marlon Brando, the words of Vito Corleone illustrate how he creates a loyal community among those he has helped. Moore says, “By granting these favors and helping people with their problems, Vito Corleone is building a network of influence–relationships that may or may not deliver a specific or quantifiable return, but all which serve to strengthen his power base and which have the potential to be reciprocal in the long run.”

Moore says building strategic partnerships enables companies to work through challenging markets and fast-track overall success. “As a CEO, I see it as part of my job to be a super connector, networking with the technology and investment community without an expectation of reciprocation. Partnerships forged through time, trust, and mutual benefit–such as those Axcient has built with HP, Ingram-Micro, and a vast network of service providers and resellers–are the types of community relationships that bring about the greatest returns.”

2. Hold people accountable. 

What’s the matter with you? I think your brain is going soft. ~Vito Corleone

The Godfather reminds us of the importance of being tough when necessary. “As soon as Vito Corleone allowed a few moments of weakness to be seen by his enemy, they attempted to assassinate him. And it was largely because of failures of his team,” Moore observes.

“In business, accountability isn’t achieved by a murderous rampage. But the lesson is this–to be successful in business you have to be tough, and you have to be extremely focused on hitting goals and getting results,” says Moore. That doesn’t mean patience and understanding don’t have a place, he says, but ongoing tolerance of low-performing people or products just eats away at the success of the entire company. “You are ultimately responsible for all of your employees and shareholders, and that requires tough and swift decisions.

3. Don’t get emotional. 

It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business. ~Michael Corleone

“Many people don’t like to talk about the fact that in business, there are winners and losers. When Sonny Corleone reacts impulsively and emotionally, he gets taken out. In business, if you don’t take the opportunity to out-sell, out-bid, or out-market your competitor, they’ll take you out. I’m not suggesting doing anything outside the boundaries of morality or rightness–simply pointing out that when people make emotional decisions, they start making bad decisions. To lead successfully, you have to take your emotion and ego out of the equation.”

Likewise, Moore says it’s important to play to win. In business, that translates to knowing the competition and always staying at least one step ahead. “Operate your business with integrity and have respect for competition, but you also need to seize opportunities to eliminate your competition and win.”

4. Be decisive. 

Moore says that he, like most people who appreciate The Godfather, watch the movie with a combination of shock and respect. “Shock because he is so ruthless that he kills his own family member, but respect for the fact that Don Corleone knows exactly what he wants, executes decisively, and commands respect through unwavering leadership.”

While you don’t have to kill anyone to prove a point, as soon as you know what choice to make, move forward. “Know who on your team is making the right choices, and trust them to take decisive action as well. Hesitation too often leads to missed opportunities.”

5. Spend time with your family. 

Do you spend time with your family? Because a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man. ~Vito Corleone 

Moore isn’t endorsing 1940s machismo, but he is decrying 100-hour workweeks that many entrepreneurs fall prey to in hot pursuit of the next big thing. Though he’s been dedicated like that in the past, Moore finds it’s not sustainable in the long run. 

“A leader can’t be successful in creative problem-solving and making excellent decisions unless that person is connected to people and passions outside of work. I find that it’s often time with family and friends that gives me the perspective I need to build the relationships and make the decisive actions required for continued success in business,” says Moore.

Think we missed any big leadership themes from The Godfather? Get thee to the comments and let us know. 

Unlike many Americans, Ziad Dalal doesn’t have fond childhood memories of pouncing on a plate of freshly baked Nestlé Toll House cookies. Though he didn’t spend his formative years eagerly anticipating those first warm, chewy bites, this Lebanese native sniffed out a sweet business opportunity.

More than a decade ago, Dalal approached Nestlé about opening a dessert-themed franchise of cafes featuring the Toll House cookie. A year and half of negotiations and agreements would follow before Dalal could realized his vision and opened the first location of Nestlé Toll House Café by Chip. The cafes are owned by Dalal’s company, Crest Foods, which licenses the branded products from Nestlé. From there, he says the brand took off. Franchises selling Nescafe coffee, soft drinks, and a full complement of homestyle baked goods popped up across Lebanon. International expansion quickly followed.

Now, Nestlé Toll House Café by Chip has more than 100 locations serving upwards of 60 million customers per year in the U.S., Canada, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Dubai, with plans to open additional cafes in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Dalal estimates net sales hovered between $35 and $40 million last year. That’s a heck of a lot of chocolate chips, but Dalal hungers (literally and figuratively) for more.

Just before he jetted off to Dubai to supervise the opening of another Nestlé Toll House Café by Chip, Dalal sat down with Fast Company to discuss his journey from real estate rags to chocolate chip riches. 

Early Lessons

Dalal came to the U.S. in the 1980s to attend college. He laughs, admitting his parents wanted to see him become a doctor or an engineer. Though he excelled in science and math and got a masters in engineering, Dalal also pursued an MBA, which came in handy when he got his first business idea. “When I was in college and eating nasty food, I thought it would be a good idea to have a healthy fast food concept,” Dalal explains. Unfortunately, even as a newly minted grad student, he still had plenty to learn about real world business. Dalal says his smoothie chain Frullati got caught in the real estate crash of 1987. “I lost my shirt. I was too young and too stupid,” he confesses.

What he had left were two Frullati locations and a strong desire to keep going. Six years and a lot of sweat equity saw Dalal through a growth phase that culminated in the move to franchising. Dalal quips that at the time he didn’t even know how to spell the word franchise, but he hired some talented consultants and grew the concept to 100 locations. “I had to go through this fear of not knowing, but once we had the talent,” he says, everything fell into place.

Taking On the Mother Of All Cookies

All good things must come to an end, but Dalal says even though “it was like selling my first born,” he eventually sold the Frullati chain to invest in a new idea. Ironically, Dalal’s first foray into the dessert cafe landscape came through Mrs. Fields, the juggernaut chain that’s been peddling cookies since the 1970s. 

Thanks to his time in real estate, Dalal’s Frullati occupied some prime locations and he was eventually approached to open a Mrs. Fields. He became a franchisee, but when he asked the company to open additional locations at Dallas-Fort Worth airport, for example, Mrs. Fields declined, saying that those outlets would remain company-owned. 

Dalal saw this as a challenge. “I started to ask myself, ‘What is the best brand that can compete with the 800 pound gorilla?” he recalls. It wasn’t long before he thought of Toll House. “It is the original chocolate chip cookie,” he enthuses, “it was the only brand we could use to take it to a different level.” Dalal was convinced that consumers’ collective memories of baking at home would propel the cafes beyond the Mrs. Fields cookie kiosk experience. 

He was right and in time, he says, Nestlé Toll House Café by Chip has been offered opportunities to replace underperforming Mrs. Fields locations. 

Branding Challenges

Making the transition from a bag of chips on a grocery store shelf and a bake-at-home snack proved to be a bit more challenging. Dalal says the cafes were able to pull it off by leveraging the one thing that was associated with baked goods that could be duplicated anywhere–the fragrance. All the bakery items sold at Nestlé Toll House Café by Chip are made on the premises, so every time the oven door opens, out swirls the unmistakable smell of sweet treats. 

But Dalal says the cafe couldn’t stop there. “We have a much bigger menu for all age groups,” that includes smoothies, frozen yogurt, soft drinks, coffee, and ice cream. “We have a strategic alliance with Haagen Daaz and we offer the best coffee brand globally–Nescafe.” 

Going Global

Speaking of Nescafe, Dalal rushes to point out how easily what could be perceived as an all-American brand was received in the Middle East. As a Lebanese native, Dalal understood that his global customers wanted a much more indulgent environment. “Middle Easterners are much more coffee-oriented so we had to expand the offerings and present the desserts differently.” Latte artists and table-side drizzling of chocolate sauce followed on furnishing the spaces with comfortable chairs that invite lingering. “We had to sex it up and keep the costs down. It’s a fine balance.”

As for the coffee and chocolate, Dalal says that in Iraq the word for chocolate has become synonymous with Nestle. “I think they took it out of the dictionary,” he says adding that Nescafe is a top global brand, too. “I grew up on Nescafe black. If you cut me, I probably bleed Nescafe.” 

And the Winning Location Is...

Dalal says the number one location in the world is a cafe in–wait for it–Kuwait. Before the location opened its doors, Dalal spent a lot of time worrying. “It was on an empty street. I just didn’t want the franchisee to have a bad experience.” He needn’t have lost sleep. When Dalal called the owner during Ramadan to offer good wishes for the holiday, he was hustled off the phone. “He couldn’t talk because he had a 45-minute wait just to get in the doors!”

Still Serving

As a leader, Dalal sees himself as a servant to his team. He in turn, asks his executive team to serve their field managers, who serve the franchisees, who serve the customers. Ultimately, though he says every day is a day he feels like he can’t do it, the thrill of meeting the challenge keeps him going. He plans to open 50 more locations next year, and 75 in 2014.

To keep going, Dalal says he thinks of his father’s wisdom. “When I was young my dad used to tell me a story about Napoleon burning his ships so his men couldn’t retreat from the enemy. They won. I have nowhere to go but realize my goal to be the premier global dessert cafe. I want to make history and I think we can do it.”

Image: Flickr user Ginny

As a species, we’ve sure put a lot of work into designing strange, noise-making implements that we pretend are perfectly normal by labeling them as “musical instruments.” Consider a tuba or a sitar–these are oddities by any aesthetic standard. We’re addicted to not just a wide variety of notes, but the unique flavors of each tone.

So maybe, when you think about it, there is nothing more strange about playing Jell-O than a cello.

Noisy Jelly is a project by Raphaël Pluvinage and Marianne Cauvard, two students at L’Ensci Les Ateliers. They experiment with agar agar jellies, placed upon sensors that convert their vibrations into music with the help of arduino processing.

“The signal has specific properties which are inherent to the jelly material,” Pluvinage tells Co.Design. “When you touch a jelly shape, maybe because it’s wiggling and the pressure of your finger is also not fixed, it produces a really small variation.” These minutiae add up–the wiggling, the jelly’s natural pressure sensitivity, the trembling of your own fingers–to create what, for lack of a better description, sounds like you’d imagine Jell-O to sound like.

But beyond that sound itself, Noisy Jelly is really about the experience of playing for the musician, an experience like no other instrument in the world. “The thing we find the most exciting is the relation between the tactual property of the jelly and the sound produced. It’s difficult to feel it in the video, but touching the jelly (which is really strange and unusual … and cold) is really surprising,” writes Pluvinage. “It’s enabling to have really ‘rich’ interaction. You have a lot of ways to influence the sound, and the tactile sensation you have is incomparable to any button or tactile surface.”

Because of this whimsical interaction between a famous dessert and musical creation, or maybe chemistry class and art class, the team considers Noisy Jelly to be a packageable game for kids. And while it probably is, really, who doesn’t love playing with their food? Noisy Jelly would be perfect for kids ages 1 to 100.

Hat tip: illusion