Notes: Project M, Pie Lab, Thinking Wrong
Just got an email from a friend encouraging donations to Project M, a group of people changing on the world through design, and their newest venture: Pie Lab.
Pie Lab serves new life into communities through pie. Savory or sweet – pie is loved by all. As something that is loved by all, Pie is common ground and can be used as a tool for social change. Pie Lab brings joy, prosperity and social transformation through a channel of dynamic ideals that revolutionize the way business is done. At Pie Lab we are not interested in competing in the rat race. At Pie Lab we are interested in stimulating a new challenge: business that promotes a more nourishing future. Pie Lab is all about the interaction of a community with business where business responds to the needs of a community as they change. Pie Lab is real people with the goal to galvanize positive change in communities.
John Bielenberg, leader of Project M, on his philosophy of “thinking wrong”:
Thinking wrong is really about challenging our conventions, processes and orthodoxies, especially during the idea-generation phase of design. I believe that the process of thinking wrong is an antidote to how our brains create synaptic connections, or heuristic biases, to efficiently function in the world and produce predictable, but expected results. It’s about generating a huge number of possibilities, before selecting or executing, and is based on the assumption that creativity, invention and innovation are good things. At Project M we use a variety of exercises to short circuit our biases and connect things that wouldn’t normally be connected. It doesn’t mean that the final project looks or feels “wrong.”
