The article pits two experts who debate the issues involved. Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain defends the classic ubiquity argument—“with open systems, a company can court far more usage and mind share.”

Frog Design’s Mark Vandenbrink, in his best “Jane, you ignorant slut” voice, retorts that Apple’s closed system gives the company a competitive advantage by creating “a more perfect experience” for its customers.

Who’s right? They both are. Apple proves closed systems work. Red Hat proves that open systems work. Both can drive competitive advantage. The idea that one strategy is right and therefore one strategy is wrong is flawed.

Instead of falling for that argument, let’s note that these systems are ‘creative/innovation’ systems—not software ‘development’ systems. This is a more self aware mode of comparison and from this perspective we can choose to make trade offs based on which design system will align better for our specific strategy.

Apple’s closed system worked because the company embraced a high-level commitment to design thinking and design-as-form. The systems and artifacts they designed were created to be beautiful and highly ‘human’ (as opposed to engineered technology). Frog Design is an expert in this form of design. But this ‘closed’ system is very expensive, highly dependent upon one powerful, ‘visionary’ design leader. Few businesses possess such committed leadership.

On the other hand, design has always been a competitive strategy chosen by desperate players. It’s easy to forget now, but as recently as six years ago Apple was anything but a lock to survive. Much less thrive. With Microsoft enjoying 96% of the market, Apple was a desperate company.

Thankfully for Apple shareholders and fans alike, Jobs was the man for the job. His early exposure to design, coupled with finding his design soul mate, created the opportunity to succeed. But it was a highly risky strategy. And one that could have easily failed.

Red Hat shareholders and fans know that open systems also drive a competitive advantage. Indeed, Red Hat is proof positive that a small company with nothing to lose can use open strategies to great success. With competitors like Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Novell (remember them), this small player has become a billion dollar company…selling ‘free’ software. That’s a pretty compelling story on the competitiveness of openness.

It’s only fair to note that Apple has utilized more open strategies with its open iPhone application creative process. Less known is the fact that Apple operating systems have, for years, been based on the same open development community-driven processes that Red Hat’s enterprise software uses—even Apple didn’t start from scratch.

In the end, both companies succeeded because of the disciplined and courageous leadership of two non-conformist business leaders who shared an inherent (though differing) belief in ‘design’—Steve Jobs and Matthew Szulik. Fortunately for me, I had the opportunity to work directly with one of these men. And every day I enjoy the products and services the other helped create.

Open or closed? Yes.

For writers, designers, or anyone in a creative field, notebooks are your place to record inspiration and craft ideas. I’m rarely without one. My notebook collecting has bordered on the obsessive—and many of my notebooks are made by Moleskine.

Moleskine notebooks have long been a favorite tool for designers. I can’t imagine an audience that is more important and influential to their brand strategy. Which is why I was so disappointed to see Moleskine launch a contest to crowdsource a logo project.

As many designers will tell you, crowdsourcing is a seriously contentious term for the design community. Rather than hiring a professional designer and paying them for their work, a company asks many to do the work, rewards one winner with a token prize, and keeps all of the submissions to use as they wish. Since the designers aren’t able to work with the company to understand the business or their goals, they have to throw out the design equivalent of a hail mary.

These contests devalue the role of the designer and the client-designer relationship. When a company runs a contest like this, it sends a message that a brand is little more than a logo, and a logo is little more than an image and type that can be designed by anyone regardless of their level of knowledge of you and your brand.

Design organizations like AIGA have been very vocal against these contests for this reason. Recently the Obama campaign decided to crowdsource a poster contest—for its support of jobs creation, of all things. Here was AIGA’s response.

One glance at Moleskine’s Facebook page will tell you what their fans think of their contest.

Moleskine certainly isn’t the only organization to try to launch a design project as a contest. But the reason Moleskine has received such an incredible backlash is because we’re so passionate about their brand. We’re not just consumers of these products—in a way, they’re part of who we are. It’s our brand, too.

Which means this is more than just a case of a brand gone bad, it’s a betrayal.

Moleskine could certainly be considered what my colleague Chris Grams would call an Ad-Free Brand. In fact, before this incident, I think they could have been a great example in his book. Their brand was crafted around an irresistible story of artists and writers like Van Gogh and Hemingway creating with notebooks just like these.

Moleskine owes much of its success to a passionate creative community who have carried their notebooks into coffeeshops and client meetings—helping them share the story of the brand. Now they’re sharing a different story.

The events that have followed in the past few days are a case study for anyone building a brand and a community.

So what should Moleskine have done differently, and what can they do to fix it now?

1. Pay attention to your most passionate audience.

They are your most frequent customers, your most enthusiastic advertisers, your strongest advocates, and if you screw up—your worst enemies. They are the reason you’re in business. Take the time to engage with your community and understand what they’re passionate about.

Moleskine clearly made a mistake not knowing how the design community would feel about a crowdsourced contest. It’s also clear by looking at Facebook and Twitter from the last few days, Moleskine has no shortage of people in their community who care and would be willing to offer them advice. One guy even offered free brand consulting and left his phone number.

2. When you make a mistake, listen and engage.

When your most passionate and profitable audience is angry, you need to listen. And show you’re listening. This is not the time to be defensive, as was Moleskine’s first response on Facebook. It was along the lines of “Other companies are doing this.” and “You’re free not to enter.” The tone was all wrong. Of course this only fanned the flames.

Create a dialogue instead. The word “dialogue” comes from the Greek words dia or “through,” and logos, or “meaning.” Now would be a good time to make some.

This doesn’t mean you have to surrender your brand to mob rule. But you do have to engage in the conversation and show you’re listening. Even if you can’t make everyone happy, you can still help make things right.

3. Work with your community to correct the problem—and while the conversation is still happening.

Here’s where Moleskine failed again. Their second response was certainly more apologetic, but it didn’t correct the problem or show a true understanding of the issue. In the response, Moleskine said they would change one of the contest rules so the company wouldn’t retain the rights to the non-winning entries.

Most designers would still consider it spec since only one designer is rewarded for their work. It doesn’t solve the problem of devaluing the role of design or the designer.

Even now, it’s still not too late. The conversation is still active. Some tend to think when the passionate voices go silent, it means they’ve accepted your decision—when really it just means they’ve given up on you.

That hasn’t happened yet. I hope it won’t. I need a new notebook.

At the beginning of any design thinking project, David shares a set of rules that help get every participant on the same page. The rules apply to everyone (including executives) and help create an optimal environment for creativity. If you are planning to run a project using a design thinking approach, you might want to consider sharing these rules with your group before you get started. I’ve used this list many times, and I promise, it really helps keep things on track.

1. Avoid the devil’s advocate: The devil’s advocate is someone who (purposely or accidentally) shoots down the ideas of others without taking any personal responsibility for his actions. The devil’s advocate often begins his objection with the phrase “Let me be the devil’s advocate for a second…”. The devil’s advocate often intends to be helpful by pointing out flaws in an idea, but ultimately this focuses people’s attention on what won’t work rather than exploring unexpected ways that it might work.

2. Make agendas transparent: Every participant should make their personal agendas as clear as possible.

3. Leave titles at the door: No one person’s ideas are worth more than anyone else’s.

4. Generate as many ideas as possible: During ideation, you are not trying to generate the best ideas; you are trying to generate the most ideas.

5. Build on the ideas of others rather than judging them: If someone else has an idea you like, build on it. If you don’t like an idea, share another one rather than critiquing.

6. Stay on time: Don’t let your ideation session spiral out of control. Each ideation session should be timed and should have a clear ending point.

7. State the obvious: Sometimes things that can seem obvious reveal great insight from their simplicity.

8. Don’t sell or debate ideas: Selling and debating ideas takes time away from generating new ideas.

9. Stupid and wild ideas are good: Sometimes the craziest ideas lead to the best ideas.

10. DTA stands for death to acronyms: Avoid acronyms—they are exclusionary because people who don’t know what they stand for will quickly be lost. If you must use an acronym, write what it stands for somewhere everyone can see it. Keep a running list of all acronyms used during the project or session.

11. Always understand in which stage of the process you are: When you are ideating, you are not critiquing ideas. But when ideation is over and you begin the process of selecting the best ideas, you’ll need to discuss the merits of each idea in a more traditional, analytical way.

12. Play is good, have fun: The more fun you are having as a group, the more creative ideas you’ll generate.

If you’d like to learn more about design thinking and how you can use it in your projects, I recommend any of the following books.

From the amazing team at IDEO:

- The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley
- Ten Faces of Innovation by Tom Kelley
- Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown

Other great books to consider:

- The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage by Roger Martin
- Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value by Thomas Lockwood