Tag: innovation


Jay Peters

Innovation Motivation


Jay Peters, April 5th, 2011

Across all industries, the focus seems to be on innovation, and rightly so. Done the right way, it can revive a dying brand, create a substantial competitive advantage,  or put an unknown atop an industry. Everyone seems to be on the innovation bandwagon, but not everyone knows exactly what that means, or how to make it happen. While the big buzzword often creates excitement among employees, it often also creates confusion.

Before any innovation can happen, you need to clarify with your team about what innovation means to your company, create alignment and set expectations. Is it incremental innovation? Disruptive …

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Posted in: Design Management, Design Research, Design Tools |
Florian Weiss

Game-storming: Think in action to boost creativity


Florian Weiss, February 9th, 2011

Game storming – The ten essentials by Gray, Brown and Macanufo (click image for downloading PDF)

Games are a perfect mechansim for organizing collaboration, creativity and networking. The structured, scalable and social format allows to deal with complexity, wicked problems and uncertainties in a very flexible and thought-provoking way. The approach builds a real-world system in which insights and opportunities can be generated and strategies can be tested.

Methods and approaches to work with complexity and wicked problems have been germinating since the 1970′s. In the early years of design management the discipline was strongly influenced by system science and …

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Posted in: Design Management |
Jay Peters

Business Model Design


Jay Peters, December 15th, 2010

Like design, business models have become a key focus for establishing competitive advantage in recent years.

And like design, the best way to develop great results is to engage multidisciplinary teams, use deep consumer insights, prototype early and often, continuously improve and never rest on you laurels despite substantial success.

Business models come in all shapes and sizes, and have developed significantly over the recent years, wonderfully mapped out by Anders Sundelin on his blog about business models, The Business Model Database.

In a recent post, I discussed how we have used the (arguably) leading business model canvas developed …

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Posted in: Design Processes & Tools, Innovation Management |
Jay Peters

Business Model Innovation: Identifying the WHY!


Jay Peters, August 3rd, 2010
Business Model Canvas, Osterwalder, Pigneur & al. 2010

Business Model Canvas: nine business model building blocks, Osterwalder, Pigneur & al. 2010

Recently my colleague and I delivered a great workshop on business model innovation for new services. We used the Business Model Canvas developed by Alexander Osterwalder published under the creative commons license, which does an excellent job at explaining the WHAT.

However, what is left a bit undefined is the WHY?

Granted, we all know that companies need innovate business models to stay fresh and competitive in today’s changing landscape, but generating ideas based on assumptions of what the consumers (don’t know they) need is a …

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Posted in: Design Management, Design Strategy, Design Tools, Innovation Management |
Frans Joziasse

What we should learn from Indian leaders


Frans Joziasse, April 12th, 2010

As the global economy is slowly recovering it seems that some industries come back stronger than ever.

But how is this with the design industry? We have seen many lay-offs and we see a renewed focus among designers and design managers on creativity instead of efficiency and effectiveness. But are they prepared to cope with the dynamics of the future markets and what are the competencies do they need to cater for?

I was shocked to read the gap between Western leaders and Indian leaders when it comes to the point of people development. Only 7% of the Western leaders …

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Posted in: Design Management, Design Strategy |
Sorena Veerman

Holistic value of design


Sorena Veerman, February 28th, 2010

Forget BusinessWeek’s BCG research into the most innovative companies or Interbrand Best Global Brands research to proof the value of design. Their focus is on financial measurements only.

Instead, meet the new research into best brands: the Good Brands Report by PSKF. This report describes the brands that not only lead in innovation, but also in being responsible and connecting with their communities.

Summarised PSKF identified some common traits between these Good Brands:

  • usability: enhance your usefulness for the consumer
  • premium aesthetics: win the heart of consumers with premium aesthetics and premium experience
  • consumer engagement: actively involve consumers

    • …

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Posted in: Design Management, Design Objectives & KPIs, Design Quality |
Frans Joziasse

Check your innovation DNA!


Frans Joziasse, February 7th, 2010

A global research studied the habits of 25 innovative entrepreneurs (1). The researchers found that innovators are different due to five discovery skills:

  1. Associating; successfully connect seeminlgy unrelated questions, problems and ideas from different fields.
  2. Questioning; constantly asking questions like ‘why’, ‘what if’ and ‘why not’.
  3. Observing; “going to the spot and seeing yourself” (Toyota’s genchi genbutsu principle).
  4. Experimenting; actively trying out new ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots.
  5. Networking; devoting time and energy to finding and testing ideas through a network of diverse individuals.

Here’s a short test to explore your own …

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Posted in: Design Management, Innovation Management |