John Thackara has planted the seeds for a new idea, XSkool aims to be a development programme for design professionals to quip them with the ideas and skills to enable them and their organisations to work in the newly emerging world.

The idea reminds me of something that has been in the back of my mind for a while, I have been using the term emergeAgency for a number of ideas recently, trying to link up emerging technology and ideas and giving them immediate agency in the world, often in response to large sudden change.

One was to do a conference, the new Etech with a slightly different focus but the other idea was to set up a ‘pop up agency’ to work on a specific problem. The staff of the agency would be students and professionals from across disciplines. To allow people to work on problems that might not normally fall into their organisations remit, to allow them to stretch their creative muscles in new directions.

The business model is still to be formed, would it be sponsored by the agencies or would we find sponsorship for specific problems?

All these ideas are exciting, opportunities to think in new ways and the opportunities to try to address problems which before would not have fallen into your remit can be exciting.

I hope XSkool does well.