Innovation Blog http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/ Forum for ideas and approaches to generating and supporting innovation in product development. en Copyright 2008 Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:16:29 -0600 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Top Ten Reasons Why Your Company is not Innovative Organizations are always looking for ways to be innovative, but not all companies find them. Are you wondering why everyone else in your industry is passing you by? Below I present to you 10 reasons why your company may not have caught the innovation bug. Some of these ideas are tried and true, some are the work of innovative companies like 3M and Google, and some are just plain common sense. http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2007/11/top_ten_reasons_why_your_compa.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2007/11/top_ten_reasons_why_your_compa.html Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:16:29 -0600 New Product Shopping Simulations by Phil Corse, Senior Vice President, HLB Marketing Consulting Services Ever wish you could actually see the future and a obtain a snapshot of sales/marketing metrics for your new product, realizing that 90% or more of all new products fail? A New Product Shopping Simulations is an innovative real-world technique to assess market success prior to tooling and manufacturing a new product. In the Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report”, “pre-cogs”, highly psychic people in the year 2054 who sleep continuously in a tank of water, see the future and prevent crimes before they happen by alerting Detective John Anderton (played by Tom Cruise). Our hero then saves the day! http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2007/10/new_product_shopping_simulatio.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2007/10/new_product_shopping_simulatio.html Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:42:35 -0600 Some thoughts on Meaningful Ethnography By Martha Cotton - Vice President of Research for Herbst LaZar Bell I’ve been doing this a while—by “this” I mean ethnographic research in a business setting. Throughout my career I’ve experienced many ups and downs in terms of having to justify my existence and stay relevant as an ethnographer to my business colleagues and my clients. But, I would say in the past 2-3 years there has been a noticeable shift in the general acceptance of ethnography as a valid approach to solving business and design problems. In short, ethnography has moved mainstream, which is a very exciting development. http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2007/04/some_thoughts_on_meaningful_et.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2007/04/some_thoughts_on_meaningful_et.html Wed, 11 Apr 2007 09:27:33 -0600 Tom Tjaarda on Creativity Tom Tjaarda in at the ItalianCarFest in Texas on September 9th 2006. Photo by Matt Bradley. “Creativity” is one of American auto manufacturers’ major deficits, asserted designer Tom Tjaarda, guest speaker at the ItalianCarFest, Lake Grapevine, Texas, September 8-10, 2006. In an after-dinner Q & A session, Tjaarda responded to audience lament over a current banality and imitativeness in American production car design. The attitude was hardly surprising, given that CarFest participants had just emerged from a full day of hot Texas sun and pure Italian style that momentarily occluded the view of Ferraris, Panteras, Lamborghinis, etc., as not exactly grocery store transportation. Still, Tjaarda made his point.]]> http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/11/tom_tjaarda_on_creativity.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/11/tom_tjaarda_on_creativity.html Wed, 15 Nov 2006 13:22:58 -0600 Take a Look - An American Look Here's a blast from the past. The Sedgwick Virtual Theater is showing An American Look, a 1958 film highlighting the importance in America of design and aesthetics in everyday items. Billed as a “tribute to the men and women who design,” the film demonstrates the aesthetic of 1958 is returning to our modern lives. (A special thanks to Katherine Bennett, IDSA for sharing the link.)


If you like what you see here, we ask that you consider donating $1-$5 to Films at the Sedgwick. (Learn More about the Sedgwick Theater at Wikipedia)

posted by Films at the Sedgwick at 10:34 AM

]]> http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/11/take_a_look_an_american_look.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/11/take_a_look_an_american_look.html Mon, 06 Nov 2006 09:08:52 -0600 Open Innovation A cross-functional product innovation team is doing a planned “Yoga interruption” to help the creative inspiration flow in a special Innovation workshop. After all you can't be creative for 6 hours straight in a ten-hour workshop, I've found that something like the Yoga thing pays huge dividends. The team has been assembled to solve a Big Problem for a Major Brand. The Innovation process being followed dictates that all disciplines from the client and consultant organizations are represented. One of the client's manufacturing engineers from supply-chain, a guy who probably hasn't seen a gym since '65, is struggling to balance in what our instructor refers to as the “Warrior II Pose”. At that moment I look over and can read his mind. He's saying to himself, “What the *&*+% am I doing here?”

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]]> http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/11/open_innovation.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/11/open_innovation.html Thu, 02 Nov 2006 11:00:48 -0600 Product Design for the Virtual World SecondLife have taken the ideas of virtual worlds to the next level. A world with is own commerce and community where creation and character rule. “Second Life is what MySpace wants to be,” he says. “People are inventing new uses for it all the time. And the e-commerce aspect of it is going to be huge.” Although no major brick-and-mortars are doing business from within SL yet, they are taking note. The banking giant Wells Fargo built its own branded island inside SL, designed to train young people to be financially responsible. Wal-Mart, American Express and Intel are looking at using SL for their corporate training. And why not? With its natural interactivity and open platform for creation, Second Life, or something like it, may very well be the next generation of the Web. For example, if I was online banking in SL, I wouldn’t have to browse through several static screens of text. I could just walk into a virtual bank, stroll up to a teller, and deposit real-life money the newfangled, old-fashioned way: by talking to a person. Like the Web, all but the basic infrastructure in SL is built by the people who populate it. Want a conference room where you can swap blueprints with a team around the world? Create one, and other avatars can come inside. Want to sell your band’s music? Build a jukebox, fill it with MP3s, and charge SL residents in Linden dollars (SL’s currency) to download them.
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]]> http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/10/product_design_for_the_virtual.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/10/product_design_for_the_virtual.html Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:25:12 -0600 Would you choose to be able to fly or to be invisible? Click here to read the article.]]> http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/10/would_you_choose_to_be_able_to.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/10/would_you_choose_to_be_able_to.html Thu, 26 Oct 2006 14:35:06 -0600 It won't cause long term death... Click here to read the article.]]> http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/10/it_wont_cause_long_term_death.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/10/it_wont_cause_long_term_death.html Thu, 26 Oct 2006 14:21:36 -0600 About ready to retire the trophy? International Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC). This year the students took first and second places overall after taking first, second and third places last year. With all the interest in robots these days it looks like Virginia Tech is the place to be. So how many times do they have to win before they retire the trophy?
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]]> http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/08/about_ready_to_retire_the_trop.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/08/about_ready_to_retire_the_trop.html Thu, 31 Aug 2006 08:40:24 -0600 WELCOME NEWS... An Article by: Mark Dziersk, Senior Vice President of Design and Marketing, Herbst LaZar Bell

The idea that design succeeds depending on how well one defines the need is a truth that is verified by many examples—too many to count. For designers, this is not a new idea; for marketing teams today, it is news. Part of what is new are the many ways of using research to correctly define need and the manner in which this is being done today. There are many more proven ways that designers can engage and exploit clever research to achieve a better definition of need, which in turn results in better designs than ever before. I often say that business has a blind spot: metrics. Research, and its interpretation, can be a way to bridge the gap between a designer’s intuition and the metrics that business needs to mitigate risk in decision-making.]]> http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/07/welcome_news.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/07/welcome_news.html Fri, 28 Jul 2006 09:45:34 -0600 The Ultimate Way to Power a Big City... on a way to convert the vibrations from foot, train, and automobile traffic into energy.
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]]> http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/07/the_ultimate_way_to_power_a_bi.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/07/the_ultimate_way_to_power_a_bi.html Fri, 28 Jul 2006 09:09:34 -0600 Va Tech wins ChallengeX... Last year the student teams from Virginia Tech dominated the autonomous vehicle competitions by almost sweeping the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition taking 8 of 9 available prizes (1st, 2nd & 3rd in Navigation Challenge, 1st, 2nd & 3rd in Autonomous Challenge and 1st & 2nd in Design) and winning the 1st place overall in the International Aerial Robotics Competition.

So much for last year. With automomous vehicle competition season just starting we have just received news of success in another arena. The Va Tech team has won the ChallengeX competion. ChallengeX is a competition for university teams to build practical fuel efficient vehicles based on current production models of Detroit made vehicles. Three cheers for that engineering powerhouse in the mountains of Virginia.

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]]> http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/06/va_tech_wins_challengex.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/06/va_tech_wins_challengex.html Thu, 15 Jun 2006 17:22:30 -0600 Is technology good or bad? Well technology is neither good nor bad. It is only how it is used that can be judged. For years we have been told about the benefits of technology to education. Yet here is an article about whether to limit network access in a university classroom. The concern is what the students are doing with the internet access. Being an adult graduate student for the last 6 years I am pretty sure that most graduate students are there because they want to be and they want to learn. So where is the disconnect? Either the problem is much less wide spread than people think or for some reason the students are not engaged in the class.

The same kind of problem exists in business with blackberries. How many times have you been to a meeting where there are a number of attendees who spend the whole meeting dealing with there email? Is there email more important than the meeting? Maybe the meeting coordinator needs to think through who was invited to the meeting and if their role is important in the meeting. The bottom line is if technology is distracting people, maybe it is the technology and maybe it is what they are distracted from.

]]> http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/05/is_technology_good_or_bad.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/05/is_technology_good_or_bad.html Wed, 31 May 2006 08:09:38 -0600 Very small frig... So here I sit on one of the first hot days of summer in Chicago. Waiting for the AC repair man and what should show up? Nature has an article on a concept for a nano refridge. Seems that if you could build a nano fan (can't everyone) and you turned on the fan the molecules on one side would get hotter and the ones on the other side would get cooler. Now my only question is how many nano fans would it take to cool your average adult male? Well you can check out the research at arXiv.org.
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]]> http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/05/very_small_frig.html http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/2006/05/very_small_frig.html Wed, 31 May 2006 07:38:51 -0600