www.core77designawards.com/recipients/design-play"

A team of our students has won an award in Core77's Strategy/Research category for a project they started in our Experiences Studio and continued in our Ventures Studio.

DesignPlay is Design Thinking for Children. It is an open-ended, foundational creative framework that builds on what children already do as they play. As they imagine, create and collaborate with others, DesignPlay helps kids understand that they can influence their environment. Their empowerment leads to change in their immediate environment and beyond.

The student team consists of: Ahmed Riaz, Susan Huang, and Jonathan Fristad. Two others who worked on an earlier version of the project: Eric Dorf and Chirapat "Mon" Vorratnchaiphan.

www.core77designawards.com/awards/design-for-social-impact

Spark Project Award Winner

Besides the DMBA team who an award in Core77's Strategy/Research category, another team placed as a finalist in the Design for Social Change category. Developed in our Sustainability Studio, SPARK is a way to connect people in defined geographic areas and create sustainable community by engaging human potential. People have lots of skills to share and need help learning new ones. Using this information to bring people together, it doesn't go wasted and, in addition, helps people better know their neighbors.

The SPARK system starts with neighborhood leaders or visionaries who introduce their community because communities work best when they are self-governing. SPARK matches skills and needs and rewards connections and sharing.

The student team consists of: Amy Gustincic, Shira Kates, Paula Kuhn, Alex Scott, and Arash Shirinbab.

We've used the book, Natural Capitalism, in our Sustainability Studio for several years, now. It's a fantastic, if shockingly illuminating, account of the business responsibility and opportunity related to all aspects of sustainability. The one complaint we receive from our students is that it seems "old," having been written and first published in 1999. Though the examples seem old, today, the points and learnings are just as relevant.

However, Hunter Lovins, one of the original authors of Natural Capitalism, and a friend of the DMBA program, now has a new book that serves as an updated version of her old book, both in terms of examples as well as points. Climate Capitalism still has the business-centric, sane, and optimistic call-to-action that Natural Capitalism had but with newer examples, figures, and metrics.

Any course on sustainability would be wise to include it and any businessperson or business student interested in improved economic performance, reduced risk, and emerging opportunities should read it regardless of whether or not you believe in climate change. In fact, one of the central messages of the book is that these strategies make sense--and money--because they are good business.

Climate Capitalism, by Hunter Lovins and Boyd Cohen