The Northern Oddities showing at Ivana Helsinki Concept Store features "eight curious Finnish design brands on their crusade to New York City." This is the first time any of these designers have sent their work "beyond the borders of the Old Continent," and their colorful, graphic patterns and fun, approachable products are a safe bet for a warm reception during NY Design Week.

If you make your way past Ivana Helsinki's dresses and blouses you'll see a table set with Northern Oddities' wares: kitchen accessories, lamps, toys and paper goods, like the plywood notebooks by Private Case. The notebooks come in two sizes and are made from birch wood, a material indigenous to Finland, where they use it for everything from "hand tools and furnishing to bridges and churches." The wood is thin enough not to be bulky and hard enough to provide a sturdy surface to write on. There's even a handy little pencil holder on the side.

Sanna Pelliccioni made the boldest statement with Bombo, her line of colorful kitchen accessories (above) with bright blue and yellow graphics of families printed on hand towels, serving trays and plates.

Years ago a Frank Lloyd Wright sketch of what appears to be a globe stand (above) surfaced at the Foundation in his name, which holds archives for more than 20,000 of his drawings. A Chicago-based company named Replogle Globe, the world's largest manufacturer of globes, approached the Foundation seeking permission to realize it. Permission granted, they produced the Wright Globe, a walnut pedestal supporting an antique-hued globe and standing at 39 inches.

The drawing is an unidentified concept for one of the Prairie Homes that Mr. Wright designed in the early 1900s. The only marking on the drawing is in his handwriting and says, "Something like this." The proportions, and interpriation, of the drawing were calculated based on the scale of other drawings from this time period.

They apparently met with some success, as they then produced an entire line of Foundation-authorized Frank-Lloyd-Wright-branded globes, the others not drawn from sketches but rather cobbled together from a combination of Wright's design signatures.

I have mixed feelings about this. But I think it would be awesome if a missing next page in the sketchbook surfaced, and it turns out that the scale was all wrong, and that Mr. Wright actually intended to venture into outer space to encase the Earth in a really big walnut pedestal space station.

In my wildest dreams, it comes to light that the sketch had been doctored to remove the following annotation:

The Department of Energy just selected 20 Universities to compete in building a solar-powered house and Parsons School of Design made the cut for the 2011 competition.

Parsons is teaming up with the Stevens Institute of Technology to provide solar-powered Habitat for Humanity housing for residents of the low-income Deanwood neighborhood of Ward 7 in Washington, D.C.

The design consists of two modules that unite to form a functioning solar duplex. Each module is sustainable on its own, but they achieve peak efficiency when joined together. Module One will be assembled in Deanwood, and Module Two will be displayed on the National Mall for Solar Decathlon 2011. After the competition, the two modules will be connected to form a duplex that can house two families.

According to Parsons, "the duplex's primary power is generated using hybrid photovoltaic thermal cells, which produce electric energy and collect thermal energy to boost overall efficiency."

The dean of Parsons, Joel Towers, tells me that the Solar Decathlon projects involves dozens of classes in architecture, urban planning, design and technology.

When I began the Most Innovative Companies annual survey with BCG's James Andrew, nearly all the top 50 companies were American. This year, more than half of the most innovative companies in the world came from Asia and Europe. Despite all hoopla and blah-blah about innovation among CEOs in the US, the actual building of the rituals and processes that produce innovation is increasingly taking place outside America. With the S&P 500 stuck at 1999 levels, the profit proof is in the pudding. There has been an innovation mirage in the US over the past decade, perhaps two.

The new story lies in the BRICs--China, India and Brazil. Last year Greater China (including Taiwan) was 46 out of 50 in the survey. This year it is tied with Japan. Lenovo, BYD, Haier, China Mobile and HTC are on the list.