Creative Leadership and Simplicity

Image by Robert Scoble via Flickr

John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design redefines the concept of leadership and compares traditional leadership and creative leadership. I will have to follow up his presentation later on. Interesting how the concepts of Web 2.0 and Change Management are interwoven on this conference.

I took the opportunity of another keynote that I weren't so interested in to check John's Laws of Simplicity (just mind you - John is a designer but uses his wisdom to talk about society, management etc. In 1999, Maeda was included in Esquire magazine’s list of the 21 most important people for the twenty-first century). So, here are his Laws of Simplicty:

1. Reduce: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
2. Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
3. Time: Savings in time feel like simplicity.
4. Learn: Knowledge makes everything simpler.
5. Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other.
6. Context: What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
7. Emotion: More emotions are better than less.
8. Trust: In simplicity we trust.
9. Failure: Some things can never be made simple.
10. The One: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

I need to read John Maeda's book.