Yesterday on his Dark Matter Matters blog, my friend Chris Grams respectfully challenged author Seth Godin by asserting that his latest book “Tribes” limited his audience by preaching to the choir.

Grams describes two separate and distinct audiences that could benefit from Godin’s work. Following Roger Martin’s model, one is the ‘validity-minded’ designer audience (his already loyal following, the “choir” if you will).

The other audience, the one who widely panned Godin’s book, is the ’reliability-minded’ business community that needs concrete examples and reliable outcomes. More data. More case studies. More proof.

Grams suggests that Godin could do more to reach out to this group, that he write his next book less for ‘validity-minded’ tribes and more for members of the ‘reliability-minded’ tribe.

Godin, in a comment on the blog post, graciously responded: “The challenge isn’t to preach to the choir. The challenge is to give the choir ideas they can use to spread the word.”

What a wonderful exchange. I’m a big fan of both Chris Grams and Seth Godin. And I appreciate that Godin has defined his role in the mission of spreading the good news.

For thirty years I’ve heard the call for ‘creatives’ to learn to speak the language of business. As Roger Martin advises, it continues to be valuable advice. But it cuts both ways.

What we should not underemphasize is Dr. Martin’s call to the business leaders: Think. Become more like designers. In a world where innovation is truly strategic, creativity is an imperative.

Business leaders need to be open to changing their world view about creative work forces. Recognize and appreciate the differences. Create cultures where creativity flourishes.

Unless they do, they will be left with one bullet to compete— cutting costs. Not very strategic. Good luck on that.

It’s been a busy week here in Lake Woebegone, my home town. Last Friday I gave a keynote address at High Point University for its conference on design, arts and technology. I was impressed by the campus and the activity I found there. This year’s theme for the conference was “Design Matters.” I came away convinced that High Point University believes it and is acting on its belief. Good for them. I think that may explain why HPU has garnered the recognition it has:

At High Point University, every student receives an extraordinary education in a fun environment with caring people. HPU, located in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina, is a liberal arts institution with more than 3,400 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 50 countries and more than 40 states at campuses in High Point and Winston-Salem. It is ranked by US News and World Report No. 5 among comprehensive universities in the South and No. 1 in its category among up-and-coming schools. Forbes.com ranks HPU in the top 6 percent among “America’s Best Colleges.” The university offers 66 undergraduate majors, 40 undergraduate minors and seven graduate-degree majors. It is accredited by the Commission of Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and is a member of the NCAA, Division I and the Big South Conference. Visit High Point University on the Web at www.highpoint.edu.

I’m delighted to finally be introduced to this unassuming gem right here in North Carolina.

The next bit of news came via messages from my business partner Matt Muñoz and my good friend Chris Grams early this morning. It seems Bruce Nussbaum used my response to his blog from late February as the basis for his own new blog.

Bruce Nussbaum is a contributing editor at BusinessWeek and has lead BusinessWeek’s innovation and design coverage for many years. His blog is one of the essential resources for designers and business leaders interested in being relevant in the 21st century. I’m honored to be referenced in his blog.

I was first introduced to Bruce’s work through an interview in Corporate Design Foundation’s  @Issue magazine [Vol 4; no. 4]. It was beautiful, and just the thing I needed to read at the time. But it was his speech at Parsons a year ago that really moved him into the upper echelon of ‘design thinking’ thinkers for me.

Here’s a tidbit:

Are Designers The Enemy of Design?

In the name of provocation, let me start by saying that DESIGNERS SUCK. I’m sorry. It’s true. DESIGNERS SUCK. There’s a big backlash against design going on today and it’s because designers suck.

So let me tell you why. Designers suck because they are arrogant. The blogs and websites are full of designers shouting how awful it is that now, thanks to Macs, Web 2.0, even YouTube, EVERYONE is a designer. Core 77 recently ran an article on this backlash and so did we on our Innovation & Design site. Designers are saying that Design is everywhere, done by everyone. So Design is debased, eroded, insulted. The subtext, of course, is that Real design can only be done by great star designers.

This is simply not true. Design Democracy is the wave of the future.

Dead on, Bruce. Check out that entire speech.

And that’s the news from Lake Woebegone, where all the customers are strong, all the designers are good-looking, and all the executives are above average.

I [heart] Hope.

Perhaps the topic is dated now. It’s so two weeks ago. But recently one of the design world’s greatest and most beloved icons— Milton Glaser— entered into the Sheppard Fairey v. Associated Press copyright battle. Mr. Glaser is famous for creating the I [heart] NY art along with dozens (hundreds, thousands) of other iconic graphic designs. He’s something of a hero to me.

Now, my friend Paul Jones has been twittering up a proper storm about Fairey’s lawyer— Tony Falzone— being on UNC Chapel Hill’s campus this week. So I thought I’d enter into the fray myself.

My initial response— what an industrial-age argument to be having!

As I read the Print Magazine interview, Glaser’s lack of comfort seemed to be caused less by the legal argument of ownership and more centered on the ethics of attribution and the moral issues of training young artists and designers in art and craft. I’m in full agreement on those issues.

But does anyone really think the AP or its photographer could have used its own ‘art’ on posters, t-shirts, et. al. and created an effect similar to that of Fairey’s poster? No reasonable person believes that.

Fairey created an iconic image out of a generic photograph. I love and respect Milton Glaser and everything he means to the design profession. But if he is arguing the legal issues involved, I’m afraid he will be asked to eat his hat by Falzone, if it pleases the court. Let’s all pray it doesn’t come to that. [DISCLAIMER: I, of course, AM NOT A LAWYER, judge or legal scholar, although I sometimes like to mimic the lines of the judge in Miracle on 34th Street: "Overruled!"]

Perhaps the talents and products of artists and designers have been so devalued over the last century or two that we’ve had to protect ourselves as best we can. We’ve prospered by successfully assigning value to the artifacts we create.

But culture and the creative process is the real creator of value. And that value is diminished any time artifacts are the sole representation of value. We can’t even see it anymore. But open source software development is a powerful proof point.

Value in open source software is found in the community of developers, in the culture and the authentic meritocracy their culture demands. It’s found in the genuine participation of customers and partners throughout the entire ecosystem. It’s messy. But businesses who serve and support those participants provide value. Those who seek to control, own or exploit the culture of these communities lose value.

This is one of the reasons I love Red Hat’s new mission statement (my good friends Chris Grams and Jonathon Opp are still up to good). Detailed in Matt Asay’s blog (where he read it in a Red Hat ‘bathroom briefing’), it is simple, beautiful and right on target.

“To be the catalyst in communities of customers, developers, and partners creating better technology the open source way”

I suspect that one might puzzle Mr Ford, too.

The opportunity for the design profession to redefine its own value is now. We will lose out again if we defend old models of ownership that are increasingly irrelevant. Each of us has to decide whether we believe primarily that design is a driver of innovation and problem solving, or of property. I’ll stand with the open source community, Fairey, Andy Warhol, Public Enemy and Isaac Newton on this one.

Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if Fairey stood with me too. Argh.