The Secret To Design Innovation? It's hidden in plain sight.

Digging with fixers is what separates the innovators from the also-rans. Thomas Edison did it. Reed Hoffman did it. Steve Jobs in the beginning did not but then quickly learned to. So who in your firm is sifting and then fixing what they find? 

Examples of this abound at Salone Del Mobile the worlds largest design fair in Milan however for the more academic desires examples can be seen with Right Ideas in the Wrong Places and then uncovering Secrets of Design Innovation via the key of observing those who are knee deep in the process and in situations of just do it to create differentiation in their work. While this is related to advanced R&D process where the output is different the principal still holds true. Some of the tools can be examined above and through the posts here and on the iGNITIATE blog. Happy fixing!

  

                    

   

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How to Beat the #1 Creativity Crusher to Innovation: You

Next week at the world's biggest design event, Salone Del Mobile, Milan you might be overwhelmed by miles & miles of the best designers in the world thinking your firm isn't innovating because of your CFO's R&D spending attitude or your Board's risk averse ways. You might feel you can't compete but here's how top innovators beat that feeling:

1) It's all self doubt, so cut that out and you've beaten it. How?
2) Remember why you create and innovate in the 1st place
3) Take small steps. or you're going to kill yourself in the process
4) Marvel at others' talent - because someone's always "better" than your firm
5) Re-frame your self-doubt & make it a monster to be slain
6) Surround yourself with supportive people and focus on your teams capabilities
7) Celebrate all that you create
8) Talk to someone you trust not just people that you pay to work for you
9) Find what puts you and your firm in the creative zone. If it's beer, drink more, if it's outings to customers, take more. Feed the fire and it grows warmer
10) Just go for it.
11) And here is Margarita Tartakovsky's article to give you a bit more flavor. 

                                

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Building $1B Consumer Co.: Find Long-Haul Founders, Don’t Fear Incumbents, Don't Kill Creativity

One billlllion dollars. Naturally you hear Dr. Evil's voice. But how to you build a Facebook, Apple, Linked-In? Find a zealot CEO, Don't even think about entrenched players and never stop creating. Natural you think? You'd be surprised. Here's how some of iGNITIATE's clients focus on not allowing failure into the mix.

The basic rules as set by Jacob Mullins at Shasta Ventures:

- average age for insanely successful software start-ups with insane number of users is seven years. Why? Convincing people to join. If your making toilet paper or software the faster you are getting 100's of thousands if not 10's of millions of users with software goods, the better.

- Be in it for the long haul — the better part of a decade and build out a team that is willing to dig in and fight hard.

- current internet software business models focus on advertising and subscription. Can you shift your physical product to utilize if not replicate these models? Then you've got a chance.

- for Physical products, e-commerce is the smallest exit multiple as reported by the Goldman Sachs Internet Technology Quarterly Report. So if your a product person, start thinking software if all you want is $$$

- the  most valuable companies have founders who have unusually strong and focused product vision such as Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, LinkedIn, Groupon, Pandora, Zynga where the founder was maniacal about the product and molded it and the company to his own vision. 

- a strong common focus on end-user value is what matters: connecting friends; professional, networking and the job searches the gamified life, only the music you want to hear and this is just the software firms. 

- getting people to stick around: keeping users around for days, weeks, months and years after they signed up is the software world. but what of buying a chair? referrals, prizes for referrals, there are millions of ways to get more people using your products. 

- invent an entirely new product category or reinvent a market with a better product? there is no answer but with the above and a maniacal founder you have all the ingredients to battle it out - and have no qualms, it is a battle every step of the way.

- often the most valuable products come from where an existing solution is just not up to snuff.

- and naturally, entrenched players? do it better or just tell everyone you are, either way, it is conviction that allows billion dollar companies to emerge

To not kill creativity Howard Jacobson summarizes: 

- Buffering (having plenty of toilet paper on hand, when you need it) stifles creativity, so folders with ideas and notebooks with snipits and sketches much be constantly filled and then evaluated, prototyped and never rested on the laurels of the filled book itself.  

- Artificial Deadlines keep people motivated even if it is a false alarm and the possibility of being empty, of having nothing to offer. 

- Utilizing Red Bull, coffee and self-deprivation for insane potential projects that have the capacity to shock and disrupt cause the mother of invention to appear. If it isn't used now, it can be used later

- Introducing the fear of the well drying up is a cautionary tale of continuing to demand from the team and the client so that new opportunities for creativity present themselves. 

Keep these on a sheet of paper in your CEO playbook or in your COO notebook to find, hire, and cultivate team members who embody these capabilities and one billllllion dollars is right around the corner. 

                                

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Desire a new billion dollar industry? A Real Innovation? Supercapacitor = No more Batteries

How many times have you heard the word innovation? How many times was it nothing more than advertising BS? Not this time. Industry proven Supercapacitors are here & originally made, "cooked" right inside a standard DVD burner. How will design be effected? Paper thin batteries that charge devices in seconds & electric vehicles in 3mins. Sound unbelieveable? Watch the video and the physicists behind it - real innovators. Schumpeter, the father of the definition of innovation would be proud.

Where does it all come from? UCLA high-energy-density graphene micro-supercapacitors researchers. What does it mean for products & design? Well supercapacitors are made of graphene, which is thin, flexible and super-strong. Did I say super thin? Super thin. Now your cell phone is 1/2 the size not to mention graphene is carbon & biodegradable and compostable. When you're done with the thing it dissolves right into the soil. Now that's innovation!

Infographics: Your savior in new product launches

It has happened to every designer,  entrepreneur & product developer & it even happens to international firms launching new services - the launch black hole. How is it that designers of new products, businesses and even services miss what's out there? The solution: not utilizing design & market infographics. How do world class companies do it? They do it here:

And, as shown in this infographic of every kitchen utensil made, by type the playing field is defined. More, there are any number of similar examples for every other product and even service out there. A quick look, the 10,000 meter view is what separates innovators from the also rans. How does your firm stack up in the way it looks for new opportunities?

                                

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A Glass Life: everything is about to change

Digital Wallets, 3D printing of objects, food & even organic material, cloud computing, are all incredible however Google's Glass is poised to be the next big consumer market behavior changer & here's how you will use it everyday. 

Computer scientists and social anthropologists alike remember the work of Jaron Lanier one of the fathers of VR - Virtual Reality and Strange Days with Ralph Fiennes and his interactions with "The Hat" but not until Patty Mayes  demonstrated Sixth Sense at TeD viewed almost 7M times and  Pranav Mistry detailed Sixth Sense on TeD India viewed almost 10M times becoming the 3rd & 4th most viewed videos on TeD did the full integration of technology and wearable computing become close to real world. Now models are wearing it in commercials, nerds are coding with it on their heads and  jamming in guitar sessions after work. Soon it won't just be Google just like it wasn't just iOS and iPhones. Get ready for the Next Wave.

Want Contagious Ideas & Products? Here's how.

Creating beautiful products & user friendly services is a challenge in itself. Having products that are contagious, sticky & drive ROI, that's the challenge, no matter if a firm is producing 500K units or an artist is producing a limited series. But how? Here's how.

 A recent article "Why Ideas And Products Become Contagious: The Jonah Berger Formula" gives the basics: 

1) Social Currency drives the car - we love making ourselves look good, make your product or service make people look good for using it and being involved with it. 

2) Triggers: if it relates to something else you know or do, it's going to stick

3) Emotion: If it trigger a base need it's going to stick, think Maslow's level 1

4) Public: the more people can add to it, pee on it, make it their own, the better

5) Practical Value: If it's something they can talk about at work & share, it's solid

6) Stories: the more it resonates with a story you can tell and retell the more it sells

More aptly are the specifics of Geoffrey More's Book "Crossing the Chasm" summarized here recognizing the need to focus on the early adopters and the expectations of these groups and the necessary mechanisms for driving further involvement by the standard public - the larger portion of any investors hockey stick and why the only way to achieve that is by continually pumping out new products as artists create painting as detailed in "The Longer Tail"

                              

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Got a product? Make a service = increased ROI

How often do designers define investors ROI, utilizing art, finance, and engineering? Every day. But that's only 1/2  the  equation. Service "stickiness" is the other and what keeps design revenue rolling in.

It isn't enough to design a better camera as in the case of the Lytro camera and as detailed in one of our past discussions - Lytro is by Definition a Breakthrough as the full impetus of the Lytro world is the services associated with it. Fast Company once again does a fine job at bringing the basics of this model, ROI through services to light and as detailed here: How to Turn Products into Services and basics are here:
1) Utilizing a selling to renting Model
2) Expand it through education, work in teams with other brands, etc
3) Digitize it and via #1 and #2 to create stickiness. Best example, apps, renders, etc

Oddly this is defining an entire ego system surrounding the physical design of the object itself and similar to something like the BMW i-drive where a physical design has an exterior set of services that extend into the home.

Where else can you find out about product and service design:
- How Behance sold itself to Adobe for 100m and all based on the design of the service itself
- Oyua, android and full design ROI = millions from kickstarter
- SlideShare extremely simple UI created a purchase price of +100M by LinkedIN

IBM + HBS: Good design = Good business?

Recently, Fast Company (here) examined IBM's investment in design & direct bottom line ROI. HBS proposed (here) America's need for a Manufacturing Renaissance. What do both miss? That US design demands measurability but not unless Design Thinking Starts at the Top (here)

Throughout the world, particularly in Italy, France and Germany, design thinking is fully integrated in the final end product: the firm itself and it's leadership team. Imagery, functionality, interactivity, user experience + R&D culminate into a firms full offering to its clients. Some summarize this ias "brand development" however branding can sometimes miss engineering or manufacturing queues and likely so, customer interest isn't part of long term R&D models however slowly in the US things are changing as best articulated by Ron Shaich, founder and CEO of the Panera Bread chain, in a recent post “…the chief executive’s foremost responsibility is to identify, develop, and deploy innovations that lead to real competitive advantage. All of the other challenges that weigh on every CEO--meeting the quarter’s financial targets; enhancing the brand; creating a culture where everyone gives their best--are ultimately irrelevant if you haven’t figured out how to invent your company’s future.” - a clear definition of design disruption. 

3D Printing: Bigger than the Internet & the Future of Manufacturing

In 2007 in an address to the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore on the future of design in 2058 and how it will effect global economies the focus to the government of Singapore to pursue: Art, Design & Engineering and 3D Printing education and technologies for it's population. And this isn't anything that people haven't been aware of since 1986 when the 1st commercial 3D Printing company came into existence  The technology, developed many years earlier by who else? The military: for engineers in the field.

Art, 3D Design and Printing has been identified by Venture Beat as the technology of the future and FT has dubbed it "bigger than the internet" in a 10 minute video on how this will take place.

Of course the question is: how is your firm addressing or even embracing this technologies and design directions? Miss it and be in the same position as firms who didn't embrace the cotton gin during the beginning of the industrial revolution or companies who didn't embrace the internet in the late 90's.

The details on how this has occurred in 2012 and how it will continue to occur in 2013 and beyond plus  the companies involved in summary form is right here:

McKinsey's Innovation Battle Test - Ignore Design: THE Game Changer

McKinsey, the bastion for strategy recently detailed how to "Battle Test Your Innovation Strategy". What did it end up detailing? Nothing related to innovation at all. Would Alessi or Bodum be surprised by McKinsey's mentality? No. Because innovation isn't about "lead or leap" it is about (design) disruption and McKinsey misses the mark.

Reactive questions posed by McKinsey focus on: competitive landscapes, price points supply-side dynamics vs. customer demand, geographies or segments, segment overlap, going out of business in 1-3yrs, responses to attackers, next versions and extensions and how to start building now? Living in the present.

Only one 9 questions discussed  address a Proactive, future oriented game changing mentality: How much of a lead or leap—technological or otherwise—must we make in the next generation of our product or service? and still only addressing the "next" iteration, not true "innovation" detailing how design, via physical products or virtual services will impact the direction of the firm. Does Bodun, Lacie, Alessi or any other design-centric firm ignore such factors? No. Ignoring the key factor of innovation: zigging when others zag, pushing when others are catching up and ignoring group think is what determines battle successful firms.

Has your firm embed these mentalities in its DNA? Is failure a mechanism for growth or a limiter of experimentation which ultimately drives trial and error - the battle scars of innovation because the rest, while absolutely necessarily is just good sense - strategic awareness not an embedded innovation mentality for battlefield success.

Why do developing nations innovate faster? They NEED to.

Mother is the necessity of invention and the famous TED talk, and one of the most inspirational given by William Kamkwamba: How I harnessed the wind shows just how. With no food, no power, and not even able to speak English William innovated broken parts of garbage to build a windmill that saved his village, provided irrigation and actually generated enough power to charge peoples  cell phones for which he created a revenue stream again saving his family from starvation. How? He NEEDED to. Does your company have this need? Are your employees empowered to benefit from that which they disrupt, create and innovate?

This is why some developing nations innovate faster. They have to. Because if they don't those in need will perish. A recent fast company article on this demonstrates how in a simple progression of:
1) It must be directly relevant to the situation
2) Local fixes work faster than top down
3) Long term investment wins: the R&D model
4) Working with the government is actually good: increases roll-out

makes this possible and gives some clues how you can do this inside your organization as well.

Spotting Disruption, Designing for Disruption

Recently we were asked, "Anyone can design for a disruption, but how do you spot one" and to this, we realized that the fundamental question is not how do you spot one, it is how do you make one, and more specifically, how can this be accomplished via design.

A recent Fast Company article set's the tone, "Four Ways To Spot Markets Ripe For Disruption" and clearly articulates:
1) Are there Workarounds
2) Are values at conflict
3) Is there inertia and how is this effected by switching costs
4) Should and want are 2 different things and can be leveraged

These are the building blocks for design disruption, for specific tactics and successes, this is the domain of good design and a whole other topic all together.