In a small loft space in downtown New York City, 13 women sit cross-legged on cushions. A noise machine hums in the background. Small succulents and crystals line the room, along with overstuffed purses carrying laptops. At the center is Deborah Hanekamp–or Mama Medicine, as she is known–a healer-slash-entrepreneur in a muumuu who is guiding the women […]
Author Archives: Liz Pommer
Designing for growth: five keys to innovation
World leader in marketing (read: business growth and innovation), Jeanne M. Liedtka shares her insights into When my co-author, Tim Ogilvie, and I published Designing for Growth: a design thinking tool kit for managers in 2011, few corporate and public leaders had heard about the qualitatively oriented problem-solving methodology called “design thinking.” At that time, those who knew anything […]
Defining policy failure in the Australian public service
Policy failures reduce public trust in Australia’s Public Service, so what does policy success look like? By Associate Professor Catherine Althaus and David Threlfall, University of Melbourne There is a history of perceived and actual high-profile policy failures in Australia over the past decade. It’s an easy list to rattle off: the Home Insulation Program(HIP), the National […]
A society or just an economy?
Uschi Shreiber uses a human-centred design approach to test with real people, their level of awareness about whether their job could be replaced by technology Yesterday, on my way to Davos, I tried a little experiment about the future of work. With each worker I met, my question was: could his or her job be […]
Five challenges that will make or break the gig economy
The gig economy, or platform work, has emerged from nowhere courtesy of the mobile technology boom, but there are question marks over whether it heralds a new future of work By Andrew Trounson, University of Melbourne For something so small, the gig-economy makes a lot of noise. These days, Uber drivers and food couriers in […]