design and business strategies from IDEO, frog, HBP
I read (and thoroughly enjoyed) The Art of Innovation from Tom Kelley of IDEO a year or so back. We’ll see how the Tim Brown’s book stacks up. One thing from the blurb that I found particularly interesting is the mention of increasing the use of prototypes. As all of the objects that I design ultimately end up as rendered prototypes, I recently was reminded of the need to always take the prototypes from the virtual realm and into the land of the physical. I’ll explore this realization at some point in the future as a part in a series of posts describing my design process.
Hartmut Esslinger hasn’t been on my radar since his early work with Apple but of interest is his idea of “modular, open architectures”. It looks like ideas such as allowing customers to pick and choose sub-assemblies might actually have some traction. My designs don’t necessarily provide a architectural platform for other to utilize, but one of my design tenets is the idea of “Modular Monolithicity™”. The core of any of my design tend towards the monolithic, however, I always like to bake in the opportunity for add-ons …
Finally, one comment about Roberto Verganti and Design-Driven Innovation in which he postulates “the most profitable innovations are those that create a radically new meaning for a product.” I disagree. The most profitable innovations are those which create entirely new product categories.
The best way way to predict the future is to create design it.
mnima 