Go Financial Crisis!

Am I the only one?
The only one who doesn’t only see negative outcomes of the current financial downturn?

Among my fellow students there has almost been a hype following the news, finding the latest article covering the most recent lay-offs. Of course you cannot blame a student talking about the financial crisis when he/she is about to start writing a master thesis. And yes, it is a fact that students graduating now will have a harder time finding a job than before. So of course it is natural to be worried when you have made a hard investment during five years and when you finally are about to reap the fruits the economy goes to hell. It’s even natural to become a bit bitter. The funny thing is though that I’m not worried at all, even though I’m one of those students soon to graduate. Here is why.

Innovation and creativity FTW!
Crises spur creativity and innovation! When in a crisis or feeling danger it is a human behavior to automatically sharpen the senses and be on extra alert. In a business setting companies sharpen their senses, trying even harder to find new better ideas, or new application areas for old ideas, to please their customers, to cut costs and to innovate. Or at least they should. Because those who bet on creativity and innovation in bad times will have a much better chance of coming out on top. You need to be creative in order to spot new business ideas, in order to see opportunity where others see problems, in order to be able to take something obvious and turn it into non-obvious in a new setting.

I believe we have a lot to learn from the designer-world here. Designers are trained to be creative and to see solutions where others see problems and they often like to work under simulated pressure. Many great designs have come out of economic downturns or other types of crises. For example, the world famous Barcelona chair, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1929, is a brilliant example of design coming out of the turmoil of that era. Or why not to mention the birth of industrial design in the US which is said to have been born and accepted as a legitimate profession during 1927-1929, the very escalation to the following world recession.

Small innovations such as Neoprene (the first mass produced synthetic rubber compound), nylon stockings and the xerography technique were all invented in the 1930-ies. Examples of companies founded in this era are Porsche and American Airlines.

Turning to the Chinese
So, from extraordinary situations also come extraordinary ideas and products. Or maybe it is just a coincidence that the Chinese symbol for crisis is said to consist of two elements? The first part communicates “danger”, and the second part “opportunity”. Could it even be so that the old wise Chinese saw that in every crisis there is also opportunity?

In either case during hard times creativity and innovation spur.

See the opportunities
A person seeing the opportunities in the world right now is Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems. In an open letter to the management at the company he writes how Sun can use this opportunity to grow as a company. Or as he puts it “innovation loves a crisis”.

Bad times also bring another treat for human kind, reflection. Bad times force you to reflect upon what has been done and what can be changed. It forces you to reflect upon your actions and then renew to the better. Reflection is in my mind something we have had way too little of the last years leading up to today’s situation.

So maybe the world should put the designer’s spectacles on and start to see opportunities and solutions instead of failure? Then we might be able to turn the current status sooner than we think. Or as Andree Iffrig suggests in her article about design innovation, that people tasked with solving the economic crisis maybe should go to design boot camp.

A financial crisis might not only be a bad thing.

Fredrik Alverén