4 things a week: Productivity vs happiness
1. World
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole after listening to The Rest is Politics yesterday and they mentioned that the per capita growth in the UK has stagnated to the point that we had basically had zero per-capita in years. No-one seems to be able to explain it, it’s called the ‘productivity puzzle’. Despite all the technology we have, and relatively high employment levels, we are just not as productive as we should be to maintain growth.
So despite all the searching for more efficiency, more output, more money, a higher salary - on average, we are hardly a penny wealthier than we were in the 2000s.
Now, this in itself is perhaps a bit depressing. But what gets me more is that ‘productivity’ is how we are measured. Like we are little minions, squirrelling away for someone else’s gain. We have some incredibly out-dated language in both politics and economics, but this has got to be up there with GDP (Gross Domestic Product whatever that means!).
Alternatives to measuring GDP have been adopted. Most famously Bhutan adopted a measure of Gross National Happiness (GNH) in 2008. Despite this, it only ranks 95 out of 156 countries on the World Happiness rankings and they have faced increasing issues of mass emigration and a failing economy. To try and tackle this, the current leader has proposed GNH2.0 that focuses more heavily on the economy. Seems like it won’t be long before they simply start measuring GDP again.
Interested to explore the world happiness index some more I had a skim of the leader board. The UK is not doing badly at number 23, although this was a surprise to me. Perhaps because I live in London and everyone seems f**king miserable all the time, I figured we might be down at around 70. In fact we are one higher than the U.S, although judging by some of Trump’s latest decisions, I’m not shocked by that.
Finland sits at the top. Another country with a stagnant economy and yet the happiest people in the world. What’s their secret? Well, as the Finnish proverb goes
“Happiness does not come by searching, but by living”.
Now that’s certainly something I’m grateful to have found down a rabbit hole.
2. Innovation
Most of this stuff is quite over my head, but I think it’s a pretty big deal that IKEA have gone all in on Matter devices. My understanding is that Matter is like “Android” of Smart Home except that it’s not an operating system but a connectivity protocol. Basically it creates a “common OS language” that allows devices to connect up and speak to each other. Whilst devices can work over Wifi, they also can connect via a mesh network called Thread to enable more seamless connectivity. Encouraging people to buy more IKEA products.
The most recent of these devices, having ended a collaboration with Sonos, is a range of smart speakers including the Blomprakt bluetooth speaker lamp. Which, is quite a beautiful object.
3. Morrama
Hot off the press. A sneak peak at our latest packaging development for Wild - a refillable roll-on deodorant. More on this very soon…
4. Inspiration.
Last week I was invited to talk at New Designers on a panel chaired by Max Fraser. Of course, I tool the opportunity to take a look around at the exhibition and I've collated a few of the projects that I found interesting.
For those of you who haven’t heard of it, New Designers is an annual exhibition of design graduates from across the country. The ‘best of the best’ in new creative talent, each student with an opportunity to share their work, win awards and hopefully catch the eye of a potential employer, investor or journalist.
Noé Chouraqui: POINT - A mono-material 3D printed tennis ball that could be recycled and reprinted into new tennis balls. Cleverly capturing the audience (and my own) attention off the back of Wimbledon fever, this project aims to tackle the 300 million tennis balls that are produced each year without a clear end-of-life opportunity for recapture.
Hinna Khan: Wooltech - Tapping into the naturally high carbon content of wool, Hinna proposes a bio-based circuit board, forming wool into sheets and using advanced manufacturing techniques to form the circuit directly onto the material. Whilst in it's early stages, it proposed an interesting alternative to traditional PCBs.
Jaime van Rooyen: Halo - A really considered piece of industrial design that tackles the issue of washing menstrual cups in public, Halo is a portable device that can easily be used one-handed in a bathroom cubicle, removing one of the primary barriers to menstrual cup adoption.
Thats it for today.
If you want to join the conversations, email us to 4things@morrama.com.
My '4 things' will be back at the end of next week.
Jo, and the Team x
