Small Innovations via International Verrified Manufactuers? As easy at 1,2, Scotland

How many manufacturing directories are there? 1000's. Alibaba possibly the most comprehensive for China. But what if you're not producing millions of units of X how do you find partners? Scotland has the answer. 

  

 Earlier in the year, a new directory, Make Works, opened it's door with a substantial way to find top end manufacturers for small batch manufacturing. In fact, the site is quite a substantial resource for Scotland wide manufacturing and not only for small batch runs. On the heels of ETSY announcing Manufacturing Ties we see a shift to demand based not only on design and makers but in-country resources allowing small makers to retake the retail to manufacturing windows. 

Well described in the Scholarly Journal Economics of Innovation and New Technology article "The Relationship Between Firm Size and Innovation Activity" we see the correlation and mechanisms for breakthroughs to happen and via the Make Works site we see a simple example of this with full resources, video's interviews and details to break the standard value chain establishing a tremendous possibility for retailers to re-engage small run capabilities allowing not normally known designers, and sellers to get goods to market that are heads and tails above Gucci and Prada for uniqueness and at a price consumers can handle. 

                               

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Want Clearer Direction for 5 Most Dangerous Creativity Myths. Here's how.

The mechanisms of creativity aren't just process, process process as many designers say - not a clear direction. Here are 5 basic Creativity Myths and a path to a clearer decisions when facing them.

1) Structure Kills Creativity
2) Yes is Best
3) Adding Resources Increases Output
4) Busy = Productive
5) Email is the Best Way to Collaborate

Taken independently we can surmise that moving slowly and methodically through ideas until output is achieved is not foreign to archeologists and anthropologists and should be the same with designers and R&D. Yes is best when it comes to improvisation but not culling the output to determine what will be produced. Throwing more hands at the same pot of potatoes to be pealed is also not accurate nor economically sound and certainly just because there are more hands being busy does not equal productivity. Naturally email as a mechanism collaboratively cannot be the case with disperse teams and limited capability to track that which is in process yet so many firms rely just on email as their mechanism for design collaboration. 

Originally described in The 5 Most Dangerous Creative Productivity Myths we see the breakdown with a little more detail, but not so much as the research put into The Role of Creative Industries in Industrial Innovation detailing how the specific rise of the creative industries have been able to through specific internal mechanisms deliver specific ROI that non creative sectors cannot produce

                               

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Google + DARPA Head + Banks = Motorola Modular Phones for Banks

Why would a DARPA Head running Google Labs and ex Microsoft Surface Designer work together? Modular swapable crypto/wallet phones.

When Google bought Motorola the colaboration seemed simple: more connected devices. But when Regina Dugan, the former director of DARPA teamed up with Daniel Makoski, founder of Google’s modular Project Ara phone it does not take too many extra dots to connect all the pieces. BitCoin esque, Google/Motorola hardware with advanced UI and swapable computation engines for constantly changing cryptographic standards. Now it's just wait and see time. 

                               

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