Business Hero


M


any of the commentaries I read spoke of Jobs’s relationship


with


British born designer Jony Ive, with whom


Steve would have lunch with almost every day. Like Jobs, Ive believed deeply “that our goal is not just to make money but to make great products.” Ive rarely did interviews but he did agree to be interviewed for Objectified, a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects. He


doesn’t


feature for very long and the star of the show is undoubtedly Dieter Rams of Braun, a man Ive has cited as a major influence. But an unexpected find were the words of Dan Formosa, the founder of Smart Design. Dan’s insight on industrial design is to ignore what the average person wants, instead he says look at the extremes: “The weakest or the person with arthritis or the athlete or the strongest person. Cause if we understand what the extremes are then the middle takes care of itself.”


She had to tell her boss that everything beyond her out- stretched hand was a blur.


Now we all know examples of products that we designed for the fastest runners, the fattest wallets or the most beautiful people. But what about the other extreme; how good a job do we do at designing for the poor, the disabled or the elderly? Yes there are many examples of products designed for these groups but always from the negative standpoint, always from a position of pity, charity and deficit.


This is territory of Caroline Casey, or the blind blonde girl as she likes to brand herself (lesson one in fighting prejudice, embrace it, use it to your advantage).


To understand why


Caroline and people like her might very well be the future of business, you hear her story. Caroline’s story


part of her story but manage she did even to the point where she was hired by Accenture. Well trees don’t grow to the sky and she did eventually hit a barrier she couldn’t overcome and had to tell her boss that everything beyond her outstretched hand was a blur.


By that stage though, she was 28 and had had enough of corporate life. She wanted a new adventure so she decided to leave and throw herself into the biggest challenge she could find (and this is where the elephant comes in). Having been a fan of Jungle Book as a young girl, she decided to trek across India on the back of an elephant


is best told by Caroline herself and you can hear her tell it by searching for the videos from the TEDxWomen conference in Washington D.C. from December 2010. If you plan to do this later, stop reading now as here come the spoilers. Caroline was born with a genetic condition known as ocular albinism. Even though this made her visually impaired, her parents had an original approach to her situation: they didn’t tell her. Instead, they raised her as a sighted child and right up until she was 17 she didn’t discover that her vision was poor. How she managed is


to raise funds for the international charity Sight Savers and to raise awareness of disability issues. This led her to create her own non-profit organisation: Kanchi (named after her elephant that carried her those thousand kilometres). The objective behind Kanchi is to get people to see the value of people with disabilities to society. Not from a point of weakness, but from a position of strength. Her argument is that the greatest thing in business is being different. What is different about you is what makes you great.


She decided to trek across India on the back of an elephant to raise funds for the international charity Sight Savers


See for instance a section titled Famous Dyslexics on the web site for the British Dyslexia Association. It’s quite an eye popping list. Muhammad Ali, Richard Branson, Alexander Graham Bell, Leonardo da Vinci, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Guy Hands, Lord Philip Harris, Tommy Hilfiger, Steve Jobs, Ingvar Kamprad (Founder of Ikea), Sir Steven Redgrave, Lord Richard Rogers, Steven Spielberg, Ben Way, Andy Warhol. Almost every 20th century icon is there and add names such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Roberto Bolaño, Hans Christian


Andersen,


John Lennon and you can see why some argue that dyslexia is a blessing not a curse.


The main work that Kanchi does today is something called the Ability Awards. These are sponsored by the Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica. So why would an old phone company bother with The Blind Blonde Girl with the Elephant? Let’s see what they say themselves. The Press Release for the second edition of the Telefónica Ability Awards said their reason was


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