What’s a Social Business? It’s a business alive with energy and big ideas. It’s collaborative, authentic, customer-centric, trusted, open and real-time.

Click to download the PDF.

And it’s about time. After decades of mechanistic, process-oriented management dogma, progressive organizations are waking up to the disturbing truth that they’ve squeezed all the creativity out of their business. But when companies embrace organic, passionate, socially-savvy initiatives, they blossom. That’s Social Business.

This XPLANATiON was produced in association with our colleagues at Dachis Group’s Social Business Council, a collection of practitioners from large businesses who are charting the course for Social Business. We interviewed Council members and turned their knowledge into a clean, clear visual that quickly helps everyone understand the benefits of Social Business.

You can view the XPLANATiON on Dachis Group’s Collaboratory blog or download a PDF here.

October 19, 2011: We posted a newer version today with updated artwork.

Intended as a forceful wake-up call for Iowa educators, the video stresses the importance of an educational approach that moves away from “low-level mental work” and towards stronger development in critical thinking and problem solving.

We knew we needed the look of “Iowa, Did You Know? to respect the serious tone of the content — and also create a sense of urgency. To do this, we minimized the color palette and illustrated in a simple, flat style. We found ourselves inspired by letterpress and silkscreen posters — they always seem to convey such personality and immediacy. This is true for both modern band posters and things like historic FSA and political posters.

To help strike a contrast between Iowa and the world, the Iowa scenes have an earth-toned color palette as well as a burlap texture. This makes them feel somewhat analog and vintage. Anything related to the outside world or new technologies received a brighter, cleaner color palette that is more vivid and energized. We used Thirstype’s Apex typeface to bring an academic feel and a look that meshes with IowaFuture.org’s branding.

XPLANE previously worked with Dr. McLeod and Karl Fisch on the educational “Did You Know? 2.0” video in 2007. We collaborated again in 2009, this time including The Economist, on “Did You Know? 4.0” which focused on media convergence and technology. These videos have more than 7 million views on YouTube.

The “Iowa, Did You Know” content was developed by Dr. McLeod, with all storyboarding, design, and animation by XPLANE | Dachis Group.

Tell us what you think!

Update, August 5, 2011: Here’s Scott McLeod’s blog post with more info about the piece and the series.

XPLANE was challenged to create an application that was more than just a “page turning” tool. “The process definitely challenged our designers, making us consider new ways to enhance functionality around how data was being presented, while also fostering intuitive interaction between the user and the application,” said Parker Lee, executive vice president, global account services, Dachis Group. “The end result really does put a new face on information.”

You can download the “World in Figures” iPhone app from the iTunes store today. The iPad version is in development.

But before you get started, let me ask you a few questions… Did you know that 40% of workers say they bring work home to complete at night, or work overtime at least once a week? That 15% of people admit that they are addicted to email — some confess to checking their email at the beach, at weddings and even at funerals? That the number of workers who work remotely is on the rise — in 2009, 28% of the global workforce worked remotely and by 2016, an expected 43% of the workforce will become remote workers (and did you know that studies show that working remotely improves productivity by 15%)? Did you know that a whopping 26% of Americans say they never take vacations?

If you didn’t, kick off the work week by watching this:

Late last year we collaborated with Kronos to make this video highlighting how the work week has evolved through the centuries, across cultures and because of labor regulations, technological innovations and shifting workplace norms. It’s the second in a series covering the ever-changing global workforce (the first, “How Will You Manage?”, has been viewed more than 40,000 times on YouTube).

So. It’s Monday.

How will your week work? And how has it changed since you joined the workforce?

The other day I casually mentioned Genius Scan to Dave and it quickly became his favorite app (at least for now :-)

Most of us have our favorite apps and our guilty pleasure apps, some of us have those “it’s for my kids” apps and all of us have our can’t-live-without apps. And everyone has their own system for arranging things. Click the image to see mine…

I keep some frequently used apps in the top row as a type of second dock. I love the folders in iOS4 — I’ve filled the rest of the home screen with those, grouped by category. And I use a second screen for apps that I’m still undecided about. Way better for me than having seven or eight screens on my old iPhone 3.

My all-time favorites include: TeuxDeux for to-do lists, Mint for finance, Instapaper for offline reading, Shazam for music recognition, Words With Friends for fun, Ambiance for ambient noise when I’m seeping in hotel rooms, check.in for Gowalla and Foursquare, FTPOnTheGo for flat file web editing, Air Sharing and USB Disk for Mac/iPhone file swapping, iTalk Lite for recording audio, Dragon Dictation for speech to text, MotionX-GPS for tracking… and of course Google, Amazon, Twitter and TweetDeck.. and many others as you can see from the screenshot.

Current faves include: PocketBooth, Instagram, Icebird, Flashlight+, LiveSketch and AppShopper.

And someday I hope to start using Couch to 5K :-)

What do your screens look like? Post ‘em to the xBlog Activities Group so everyone can check them out.

I love my iPad, but the finger-only interface has been a continuing frustration for me. As an artist and designer, I want to do things that I can easily do with a pen and paper, like write, scribble and sketch. But these are not things we typically do with our fingers, any more than we eat soup or salad with our fingers.

Apple apologists will say that you can sketch and write with the iPad, and indeed we can. Yes, and indeed we can also eat salad or even soup without utensils if it’s absolutely necessary. But that’s not ideal, is it? Over the years we’ve developed tools, like forks, spoons, knives and yes, pens, that make life easier. We should expect no less from our interface designers.

Recently I participated in a stimulating discussion on Twitter with user experience designers @docbaty, @daveixd, @mojoguzzi and @fred_beecher that left me thinking — could we solve this problem without changing the hardware? And indeed I think we can.

The problem that a pen solves (beyond carrying ink around) is that it gives the user the ability to “see where they are going.” Using your finger to draw on the iPad, or even one of the many styli that are available, has the tendency to hide the point of the virtual “pen,” thus hiding the path.

Now imagine an interface that allows you to use the natural gesture you use to write with a pen or pencil, and gives you a point that you can see. Suddenly you can see where you are going and the primary problem is solved.

One of the things that occurred to me this morning — which led to this insight — was that when Apple first “virtualized” the keyboard by adding it to the software interface instead of the hardware, there was a lot of initial resistance. I was one of those resisters. I couldn’t imagine using a phone without a physical keyboard. But over time, I learned to use the virtual keyboard and now I appreciate the additional flexibility that this interface gives me: to have more screen or less as the case demands.

Why not do the same with the stylus? A “virtualized pen” would answer most of my gripes and over time I would probably come to love it. I might even stop carrying a pen and paper around. And that would be an interface I could fall in love with.

As Garr Reynolds mentions over at Presentation Zen this morning, yes, this project was created with “off-the-shelf slideware” (Keynote and GarageBand, actually, along with Photoshop and Illustrator). Content by XPLANE, The Economist, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Laura Bestler. Design and development by XPLANE.

For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit The Economist’s Media Convergence conference site at mediaconvergence.economist.com, or stop by shifthappens.wikispaces.com for all things Did You Know.