The following guest post is written by Maurice McGinley, a friend and former colleague at Philips Design. While some of the points might be a little outdated, this post showcases a methodology of Design Research and Design Led Innovation that is practiced in companies
I was both surprised and curious to find out that legendary business guru Michael Porter's multi-million dollar Monitor Group had filed for bankruptcy protection in November 2012. It was an interesting read for me as it highlights some of the problems of the business of consulting.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. – Buckminster Fuller
Chet Huber, former President and CEO of GM's ONStar, shares that the technology for disruptive innovation is a dangerous thing as the "
In September last year, do you remember I mentioned that I was going to Berlin to co-facilitate a workshop with our partners The Design Thinkers group?
Kontra over at counternotions writes:
There are many counterintuitive ‘rules’ in product design, these two are among the most intractable: • The more successful a product, the harder it’s to upgrade. • The more users say they want a product update, the more they complain when the change
Other than the fact that disruptive innovation creates jobs and incremental (efficiency) innovation destroys them, Clayton Christensen, the guru of disruptive innovation (a must read by the way!) said:
That's the billion dollar question.
But without Jobs, can Apple still innovate? George Colony of Forrester Research suggested in April that Apple will, like Sony after the death of its leader, Akio Morita, in 1999, decline: "When Steve Jobs departed, he took three things with him:
The 3rd Quarter (July to September) of 2012 was just an awesome time here at Design Sojourn. We were engaged to run a number of Design Driven Innovation and Design Thinking workshops, and it was
I'm not sure if I should jump for joy, laugh or cry? Perhaps I should just sit dumbfounded. Forbes recently reported a new trend in Silicon Valley; Venture Capitalists are now funding Start-Ups with no idea what they are going to do. Sounds like
In Chapter 13 of the Steve Jobs Biography, Walter Isaacson describes how in the creation of the first Mac, Jobs formed a development team that operated outside of the boundaries of the Apple organization and was filled with people that "were creative, wickedly smart, and
I agree.
I frequently work with small to medium sized businesses (including boot-strapping start-ups) and have to adopt a similar frugal mindset. Sometimes these quick solutions can create value that can go a long way.
Innovation, and even Design Thinking, often gets killed by organizational processes or internal politics. Here is a really cool cartoon that shows you how it happens so that at least, we can all be vigilant.
I've found that one of the big reasons why Design Thinking fails in organizations, is that no one has the guts to stand up and say that an idea/concept/proposition sucks.
This point is an extension of our
Clive Thompson, in his column on Wired, dispels the myth that innovation comes as a surprise and is difficult to predict. He writes:
The assumption is that breakthroughs are inherently surprising, so it takes special genius to spot one coming. But that’s not how innovation really
Six months ago I called the consumer electronics (CE) industry ugly after they launched a plethora of computing tablets to compete with the iPad. I'm happy to say that my faith is slowly being
The UK Design Council has produced a nice little video interview with the likes of IDEO's Paul Bennett and Professor Roberto Verganti (of Design Driven Innovation fame) sharing their thoughts on what is design and what design can do for businesses. <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/12819375?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=ffffff" width="521" height="293"
One of the problems of Design Thinking is that it has inherited some of the bad habits of the Business mindset. In particular the need for repeatability and for research data to help justify any design decision the organization makes. Frog Design's Ben McAllister
I’ve always believed that videos were one of the best things to happen to learning on the Internet. Now people from all around the world can see beyond just the word and fully appreciate a
When I glanced over "Google Equates "Design" With Endless Testing. They're Wrong" by Co.Design editor Cliff Kuang, my immediate reaction was, does the editorial team at Fast Company's Co.Design know what they are talking about? I had to re-read it just to be