Design & Innovation

Another good article from this month’s Inc. was about P&G’s concept for using innovation for growth and how small businesses and entrepreneurs can use this process regardless of their size, industry or product type. The goal is to design processes that will ensure companies continue to innovate repeatedly and reliably. Because most of are still business minded and are looking for a step by step process, I thought this article might helpful for bringing your ideas to life!

The steps identified include:

1. Find out where to play, and playing in a market that is underserved. There are better chances than inventing a new technology that may not be needed or may be only a trend. This involves selecting a strategy that make sense for the small company and not trying to be something that you can’t possibly be.

2. Use your customers to develop your product or service offering. In my case, because we do PR on behalf on many of our clients is to involve them in the marketing plan and brainstorm process so that the most well rounded plan is developed with their customers in mind. The more successful they are, the more successful we are.

3. Generating new ideas through brainstorms. One new insight was “In small companies some people invent and many people execute, but everyone must observe.” The more I read about new ideas for design, the more I think of new ways to incorporate in our business and in my every day life. The article talks about those that generate ideas should partner with another employee to gain feedback on its viability and to hash out details.

4. After the ideas are harvested, the next step is find out which ones are the most promising. Every quarter P&G project teams lay out their ideas and research on a poster board. It is as time for others to comment and ask questions and help to improve the idea. The best ideas may be implemented as a product.

5. Prototyping is the obvious next step, which bring us back to IDEO, Gehry etc. and the importance of design at the beginning stages. The author suggests that the sooner you have a visual the easier it will be to make improvements or adjustments. In this stage utilizing those that will use the product is particularly important because they will be your biggest asset or detriment depending on how well the design is executed.

6. For small business that have good ideas, they might not have the capabilities to take them to market, therefore a really good idea if marketed properly could be developed and manufactured through a larger company. P&G and other major consumer products companies are looking for these opportunities all the time.

7. As the company grows, it is important that the design team grows as the company grows and that they are implemented in all aspects of the business. Design thinking can be found in any discipline, from marketing to accounting to IT. In this stage it is also important to teach the new employees to use the same design thinking process so that as the business grows, each employee learns how to innovate for themselves. Although innovative companies usually are made up of innovative people, those that make the operation decisions must help breed innovation.

If you have tried embedding videos in your blog posts, chances are you faced a tough time getting it to show up right. This is because of some inherent problem in the editor in Wordpress.

To fix this, we have installed the EasyTube plugin, which makes posting videos a breeze. Here is what you need to do.

1. Get the actual URL of the YouTube video. It will be something like http://youtube.com/watch?v=-4LtYMNl4yw
2. In the editor, insert the code where you want your video to appear, where URL is the URL of the video from step 1
3. Click “Publish” to save and publish your post.

I have embedded the following video using the steps listed above. This page gives you details about some other options that this plugin has to offer.

I enjoy reading many of your posting. I am glad to see activities on-line taking off. Here are some suggestions.  First, I hope that all of you will edit your profile so that your posting will show your full name — no nick name or initial, but full name. Please edit your profile so that your full name is displayed. There is an option to display your full name. But in order to have that option, you must type in your name. Again, you choose whatever login ID you like. But, if you put your real name in the proper field your profile, you can display your name for your posting. Second, choose ’student posting’ as the category of your posting. Third, please add few tags at the end of your posting. It will be fun to see the changes of our tag cloud change over time.  Fourth, it is a requirement. But generally, the blog is a way to connect contents. So, it will be nice to see links, pictures, and videos in your posting. You can include YouTube clips, for example, right inside your posting. For example, here is the new version of the video clip that we saw in the class, “did you know”:

You can also quote the contents from the source, using block quote feature.  If you have some other suggestions for the posting of the blog, please let me know. For example, there was a story on New York Times on Target’s response to a blogger’s complaint.

“That was the message the cheap-chic retailer seemed to convey in an abrupt e-mail message to ShapingYouth.org, a blog about the impact of marketing on children. Early this month, the blog’s founder, Amy Jussel, called Target, complaining about a new advertising campaign that depicted a woman splayed across a big target pattern — the retailer’s emblem — with the bull’s-eye at her crotch. “Targeting crotches with a bull’s-eye is not the message we should be putting out there,” she said in an e-mail interview. Target offered an e-mail response: “Unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets,” a public relations person wrote to ShapingYouth.

So, make your posting more colorful and interesting. But, make sure it is rich in your OWN thoughts, more than anything else.

Tonight at 7PM, we will have an opening reception. Also, we have two more provocationsuploaded.

Dick Boland from Case Western Reserve University and Tracy Cooper from Temple University submitted their provocations. Their provocations are available here.

There are several new provocations came in. So, the list has been updated along with bios. All the participants are now listed alphabetically.

We want all the participants to add their own blog, if they have one, on the blogroll section of our blog. Just send us a link and we will add it.

The workshop is just around the corner. We are still busy finalizing all the logistics for the workshop. But, most participants have been registered, hotel rooms are reserved, foods are ready, the official web site is almost ready and I am almost done with my own provocations. As we are getting close to the workshop, I will be posting some of my thoughts here and I invite all the participants and other readers to do the same. My hope is that this blog will continue to remain vibrant even after the workshop as a central hub for Living Lab for Philadelphia. You may wonder what is Living Lab in Philadelphia. Well, come back in a day or two. You will see what I mean by that. Or you can visit here to find out what it is.

Welcome to the blog of Temple University’s Digital Transformation of Urban Experiences - a design research workshop. The workshop will take place at Temple University between November 1 and 3, 2007.

For more details, check the workshop’s website; also stay tuned to this blog for regular updates. If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to this blog’s feed.