Specialisation in sectors and businesses'

NOT A BLOG ABOUT BIKES.



On friday I went to one of the Pierhead Sessions. I managed to get a ticket for the George Monbiot's keynote lecture. (thank you @harri80 for the ticket). For me it was interesting to hear someone who I had recently quoted in my MA thesis. While most of the speech was about climate change and the impact of Carbon Dioxide is having on the planet. I was particularly taken with a small section of the lecture around the concept of specialisation. The sheer complexity of climate change and the science surrounding it has made the language in Monbiot's words, almost impossible for people to penetrate and understand the scientific facts. To such an extent that 'even the scientist don't understand what another scientist means'. There are a number of points that I have been thinking about around this subject;

Over the last few years Hoffi has moved from a company that has tried to do everything for everyone to a much more focused approach where we target branding both on and offline. This specialisation is then introduced throughout all market sectors. It is a classic way of structuring a business. For example can provide many different services for a particular sector or you can provide a specific service for all sectors.

Although it has been documented before this, it is probably Kevin Roberts book 'Lovemarks' that discusses the idea of brands moving away from the traditional attention advertising, to an attraction economy. This is taking place through many different portals both on and offline but there are two things that seem to be a re-occurring themes. The first being storytelling and the second is conversation. So for me the interest lies in how companies / brands / scientists / governments / people, communicate complex issues to the correct audiences in a way that they understand yet do not feel spoken down to or unengaged / uninvolved?

My final part of this brainstorming ramble is the 'missing link'. Recently my work with ARK and investigating other similar co-design programmes such as dott and creative co-op I have come to think that maybe there is a group of people that could be the link between these groups of people. As translators these people could bring information together and then tailor them to the reader. In someways this has been what 'designers' have done for years. However traditionally they have done it through a physical response. It could have been a website, brochure even an tv advert. But what if the designers role were to change from being a 'maker' in this sense and move more to facilitator? The rise of co-production or co-design are some examples as to how this maybe slowly taking place. The role of a designer could ironically become more and more specialised to allow for people to understand each other? Some designers choosing a traditional craft approach. With others using socialising as their 'craft'.

I do believe that people may have differing views of this and indeed if there are groups of people that are this missing link it would be great to hear about it.