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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5 Specific Forces Powering Innovation Not Just in Creative Firms

Crayons and Whiteboards aren't enough with distributed teams all investigating with the intent to demonstrate creative efficacy. What are the forces for creativity? Here's 5. And a few more. 

Recently Fast Company detailed 5 basic steps for innovation (very much tied to New Product Development) to be grown in a firm. The Article "5 Forces that Power Exceptionally Creative Companies" leverage part of the work done at W.L. Gore, the makers and researchers behind Gortex. R&D at Gortex can be seen as the classic model of moving R&D to commercialization products in rapid succession and much like most firms focusing on this. What is interesting is how the 5 Forces model above focuses more on the advertising model. Regardless the suggestions seem appropriate if not an organizational blueprint - what a firm might be looking for in establishing divisions and output from R&D efforts. 

1) Gravity: restoring and maintaining
2) Tension: Embracing and Maintaining
3) Heat: Applying and Maintaining
4) Speed: Increasing and Maintaining
5) Generosity: Instilling and Maintaining. 

Oddly these are very reminiscent of an industrial factory model and not connected to the R&D models that are implemented by large scale enterprises able to produce 40% returns on 10% gross revenue investment in R&D. So how are they valuable? 

By understanding the core structures of the firm and the output expected, we see, as very well defined in Define[ing] A Creative Agency the types of firms and how they approach powering innovation: Thinking & Researching, Defining and Developing, Manufacturing and Communicating about the previous steps.

                               

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£0 to £6B deisgn powerhouse in 20yrs? How? £500K every day in R&D !

Juggling Design, R&D, New Product Development & success is a constant struggle. How can you formalize and secure success? Spend 10% of gross revenue on Skunks. Skunk works to be specific. 

Pfizer does it. Alessi does it. Dyson does it. Dyson the vacuum design juggernaut spends 500K a day in R&D, has whole design teams that do nothing but experiment and are able to full commercialized what they are learning. In a recent article on Dyson Core77 digs into the process and learning systems created in successful R&D and Design teams. More specifically we see via Fast Company the basis for advanced Skunkworks teams: 

1) Complete control of the works: no outside influences with the head reporting to the CEO
2) Small project teams of no more than 3-5 per project (1 pizza to feed the entire team model) 
3) small number of connections with project: only necessary ancilliary team members
4) very simple drawing and drawing release system - design is at the heart of the process
5) minimum reports required as paperwork, emails, tracking limits doing the work
6) project must work in the field with users: else team rapidly loses competence to design alternatives
7) Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled by appropriate security measures including IP as well as no publish or perish alternatives

This combined with innovation models that engage design teams and design thinking models spell success for any type of firm. And most likely without the smell of skunks at work.

                               

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How did democratic & disruptive design create +1B units sold for one product in a firm from 1647? Here's how.

Innovations, breakthroughs and game changers: every co. wants it - and cheaply. Not possible. But thanks to experimentation & democracy since 1967, one firm has sold +1B units of just one product this way. Here's how.

Fiskars, a firm you probably never even heard of has been making a simple yet carefully designed product since 1967 when a simple color error and a democratic vote helped to generate more than +1B units sold. The story of Fiskars told from the perspective of the design team resonates with another great article detailing how growth by design can be the core of any innovation lead firm. Detailed very solidly by Maneesh Mehta who is the Deputy Managing Partner, Global Clients & Markets, at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and further investigated in a recent article by McKinsey called "Grow Fast or Die Slow" we see the steps necessary. However the McKinsey article ignores the physical product side as this article focuses on the digital technologies. Still a very good primer.

                               

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Design Recalls: when it goes wrong & Nest's 440,000 recall

With 440K Nest smoke detectors recalled at $160ea assuming a 1/10 manuf. cost = $7M loss for a 1st run launch. What if this happens to your firms flagship design? Here's what.

As reported by every magazine from Tech Crunch Silicon Valley, the Guardian in the UK to Corriere Della Sera in Milan Google's flagship entry into the home "maintenance" market with the Next Thermostat was a success but not with the recall of their smoke detector with a massive 440,000 product recall. In Inc Magazine's How to survive a recall and CIO Magazine's 5 Best Practices we see the necessary steps for full produtc recall and strangely very similar to the Heartbleed virus:

1. Plan ahead - for interactions between manufacturing partners, logistics, and facing call centers, websites, etc. so that customers are not let out in the dark as to next steps as well as the legal teams and ramifications from possible legal actions. 
2. Respond quickly - assembling the necessary team as fast as possible and directly addressing customer, manufacturer and media allows for engineering to begin the process of fixing, retrofitting and of removal of the product from the market
3. Acknowledge it - by working directly with consumers, the media and internal champions to solve issues before they spiral beyond repair. 
4. Turn the corner - by getting product back into the hands of key customers, media,and merchants who can keep the flow of the newly adjusted product in the hands of those who product champions. 

                               

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What's the value of design: 288% return for firms that use it. Here's how.

The value of design, design thinking, design disruption is more than 250% of invested capital. How? R&D and Innovation pipe-lining. But more, good design. Here's how. 

In a recent DMI - Design Management Institute article, after an extensive study of  75 US firms over a 10yr period, 15 firms employed design centric thinking which lead to an increase in stock price by more than 250% above firms that did not employ design specific new product development models. Further we see the likes of design investment strategies being followed by the VC community in Will the Next Zuckerberg Be a Designer, not a Hacker? per the recent MIT Review Article and even more impressive is the existence of Khosla Ventures Designer Fund proving the maker and inventor channels are alive. When design thinking, new product development, engineering and entrepreneurship come together, firms succeed. Period. 

                               

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How a special needs child's happiness can disrupt the entire wheelchair industry

Medical devices are a notoriously expensive to design and especially launch but when Debby Elnatan and the team at Firefly designed the Upsee, it upended the wheelchair industry. Here's how she did it:

Innovation requires rule breaking and in the case of the design of the Upsee, the indications are clear: Dr's suggested that Debby's child not walk or crawl. Physical Therapists suggested she not even move her child. In this case the mother of invention became a literal reality during the creation of the device throughout the years that Debbie perfected the device. Profiled on US national and international television the design of the device, branding, research and manufacturing clearly illustrates that necessity is in fact the mother not of invention but of innovation. Look out wheelchair industry. 

                               

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Instant Design: 3D printed homes for $5000. Delivered

It's been well understood that the power of design is in the hands of those who can deliver. What about complete homes for $5000 via 3D printing? They are here. Here's how:

No longer is it days, weeks or months of preparation, teams of builders and scores of resources. Enter Win Sun Engineering possibly the first full functional construction firm to fully design and deploy a working system for the construction of 3D Printed and Manufactured homes on site. With no formal codes for buildings of these types of designs, the current technology is limited to basic structures, and construction time seems to be only days for a fully formed structure. Discussed in a lecture given in 2013, and a subsequent TED talk, Behrokh Khoshnevis gives the beginning of how and why. However, while this was taking place, Win Sun Engineering had already launched their machine. Now it's up to the designers to push the envelop of what can and can't be done.