Or, maybe returned to nature in a different state (but that's just the hippie in me). http://www.artificialowl.net/2008/12/abandoned-shipyard-covered-with.html
This site becomes more interesting as you click around and see the arresting photographs coupled with the stories of decayed societal progress, abandoned coastal plains and never-to-be countries. The collective creative output of so many brought back down to the barriers of vegetation. Reminds me of Ikiru. Actually, from the human perspective, this IS Ikiru.
It starts off really cool. Then, at about 135, i was like....I get it. Done. Stop. Geez. Then, at 2:55, it takes on a turn that is very cool through the rest of the film.
What i'm saying is, for 80 or so seconds, wave high at someone, or send the link to this. Trust.
I was thinking about this movie, Disney's foray into the horror genre, and how it is so damn difficult for established companies to truly innovate outside of their traditional revenue stream without significant decrease in their net capital. Sure, this gets to the same idea of a creative class and start ups as true generators of new ideas, but lately I've been thinking it might be something else that can be made culturally endemic.
Its my subjective theory of the moment that most companies gloam onto the idea that makes them successful, and by extension, their extensions of the brand follow the same thinking.
This does not mean that it has to be in the same vein, or even category as the original idea, but that it follows the same general pathway to ideation. People in the company think of the solution or creation in the same way as they did the original idea that made the company successful. This is usually reinforced as stemming from a strong brand identity-ex. the horror movie from Disney, while a failure, is a movie aimed at teens in which the protagonist is a teen who is smarter than the adults around her.
So, there are a few companies that have it easier, as they are built on the idea of ideas. That is to say, their corporate culture is one of innovation. Two compaines come quickly to mind as examples-3m has product development and Google has the internet. Even so, I imagine that they fixate on the creation of new ideas that share many of the same aspects as historic successes within the corporation. This, by and large, is probably a good thing. History is a great model for future success.
What I'm not aware of, and what may not exist, is a corporate structure that battles the cultural pathway to creation by applying principles to their brand model that ensure that these pathways can never be institutionalized. This is probably an overly complex sentence that says: freelancers- a company with a central hub of paper pushers and capital managers with a rotating axis of freelance professionals who solve each problem, and create each widget, as a one of a kind, once in a lifetime collaboration.
That model would certainly have many problems of its own, to be sure, starting with whether or not we can even truly call it a company, but at least it wouldn't get bogged down in the same predicable ways to come up with an unpredicatble solution.
So. The new depeche mode song has been in my head all day but I had yet to see the video for it. Well. Hip Hip Horror. It's great. It's disturbing. Its why these guys still kick ass.
http://www.artificialowl.net/2008/12/abandoned-shipyard-covered-with.html
