A View of St Pauls from the South Banks of the River Thames. Photo: Christopher Pollard

“There will be new maps and compasses for those of us who leave, new points of departure that will eventually become wholly real. But at the end of my most recent visit, as I flew out of Heathrow, over the tower blocks and the discs of green parkland and the sweep of the motorway, I caught a glimpse of a bend in the Thames, so familiar and so alien, and I wondered if it had all been a trick of the light.”
— Mahesh Rao

Source: London Lost and Found – The New York Times

Photo: Shoji Moriwaki, Creative Commons 2.0

A call to arms that challenges young, idealistic Americans who wish to solve problems in far-flung places to think about channeling their noble, social entrepreneurial energy at home to tackle the many complex problems that our country faces.

Basically a compelling 9 minute Saturday night read.

Source: The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems — The Development Set — Medium

What does it look like to apply design thinking to the discipline and practice of leadership?

Source: 7 qualities of design-thinking leaders – InVision

Photo: Tom Bricker, Creative Commons 2.0

IBM is not a design company. Of its nearly 400,000 employees, few could rightly be described as aesthetes; of its assorted products, many seem to be of the “function over form” variety. And yet, if you look past its pocket-protector reputation, there’s little doubt that IBM is angling—more aggressively than any corporation of its size—to become a leading design company in the most literal sense of the phrase

Source: IBM’s Got a Plan to Bring Design Thinking to Big Business | Wired

London-based comedy writers Aaron Gillies and James Menzies create brutally honest ad parodies and share them on a Twitter account titled We Fix Your Adverts. Using Photoshop, they replace (or ‘fix’) the original tagline with their own one-liners that are hilariously profane. Warning: Some images are NSFW.

Source: LOL: Brutally Honest Versions Of Regular Ads | Digital Synopsis