Considered as one of the 11 "best innovation and design books of 2010", the Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur "Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries" has been taken as a reference for an important part of this year Final Design Studio of the Master Course of Product Service System.

Introduced in our course by prof. Cabirio Cautela, the concept of "business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers and captures value" and it is foundamental for promoting a successful innovation.

Being a conceptual tool, containing those elements which express the company logic, the business model represents the final step of a focus shifting process in design: from the "tangible product" to the "intangible organization".

The Osterwalder-Pigneur's book offers a "canvas" to frame the analysis of existing business (or business "to be"), which is structured around a series of clusters related to: partnership relations, main activities, resources and value propositions, customer relationships and segment, communication and commercial channels and cost and revenue streams. 

The intent of the course was to make available the canvas to the students to test its potential as a tool for analysis and design.

I must confess my surprise at seeing the result of the work: with enthusiasm the students have transformed a rigid framework of analysis into an amazing design tool with a high communication potential.

In the picture just few examples of "interpretation" of the canvas, which transformed itself into element of "storytelling" without loosing its original tool structural sequence (compare it with the original one, please).

So ... let me give my congrats to prof. Cautela and all students for their excellent work, absolutely worthy to be publicly shared.

More info about the canvas on the authors website.

Jonathan Safran Foer is by far one of the most unconventional (and interesting) contemporary authors. After his two must-read novels "Everything is illuminated" (2002) and "Extremely loud and incredibly close" (2005), last year he published his heartfelt public appeal to the vegetarian cause, describing the unsustainability of the food industry in contemporary society ("Eating animals", 2009).

Now he's back with a brand-new creation: an experimental graphic novel which is going to revolutionize the very same concepts of "book" and "interactive story". And - by the way - is going to became an icon of design (not only the graphic one).

The title is "Tree of Codes", now available for pre-order on Amazon.

All started with the interest of the author for the "die-cut" technique and for the physical relationship this could created between the pages.

As any other "innovator" he faced the problem of making his work coming to reality as every printer he approached said the book was impossible to make...

Until he found Die Keure in Belgium and Sara De Bondt Studio who helped him in this fatigue.

I dare to say that the final result is extremely "behavioral" as it is evident from the following video:

The plot was "carved out" from one of Safran Foer's favorite novel "The Street of Crocodiles": curious to know the peculiarity of this book and how it looks like on the inside? Check these photos...

As Olafur Eliasson said: “Jonathan Safran Foer, deftly deploys sculptural means to craft a truly compelling story. In our world of screens, he welds narrative, materiality, and our reading experience into a book that remembers that it actually has a body.” 

(via www.fastcodesign.com)