Is design innovation? Is innovation design?

Nussbaum is watching this story develop and offers today’s view on his blog
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2005/11/innovation_vsde.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_nussbaumondesign

At the risk of getting too circular, he also posts back to Core (but not to this actual group - at least not yet).

good link.

Wasn’t the Hilary Cottam controversy/outcry because she (aledgedly) didn’t design (at least one of) the buildings in question?

Also, is there really a call to actually seperate a new “Innovation” discipline as Nussbaum states? That wasn’t my interpretation of Bierut’s article at all, and the idea seems odd. No one discipline owns innovation in any organization. It’s not Innovation vs. Design, it’s Innovation by Design, and it can just as easily be Innovation by Engineering or Marketing, etc.

Is design innovation? Is innovation design?

IMO good design is innovation. Always has been. Designs that are not innovative are simply styling exercises, or metoo products. In a perfect world, designs that don’t improve the function or usefullness of a product should never hit the market. They simply add to the visual clutter of our world and dilute the ingenuity of the original idea.

+1

I laugh every time someone explains the innovation “process” to me. It is exactly the same process my professors taught me in college to approach a design problem.

This is why we ID’ers will always be the most qualified professionals to actually develop innovative solutions to unmet consumer/end user needs. Contrary to what they think, marketing people are not the best qualified individuals to truly innovate.

I laugh every time someone explains the innovation “process” to me.

Your language suggests that you think there is one singular innovation process. I’ve seen lots of design processes. But frankly I’ve never seen an innovation process–certainly no sustainable, repeatable process that consistently results in financially successful products/services/experiences.

Larry Keely cautions about conflating design and innovation. To be sure, there are plenty of great design’s that are hardly innovative (like my Kitchen Aid mixer), and there are plenty of innovations that have nothing whatsoever to do with professional design (like Velcro).

Indeed most of the countless innovations that make modern western life what it is were not invented by people who would call themselves designers. So how can you seriously make the claim the industrial designers (a relatively recent profession) are the most qualified to develop innovative consumer solutions? What do you based this on?

Ely Whitney invented assembly line manufacturing based on the division of labor theories of Adam Smith. Henry Ford modified the idea based meat packing operations and invented the moving assembly line and with it modern mass production. Michael Dell pushed the idea even farther with near just-in-time mass manufacturing. All of them highly innovative. None of them designers.

No discipline is “the most qualified”. Design has a part to play. Engineering has a part to play. Marketing has a part to play. Finance has a part to play. And so on. Innovation is an alchemy whose ingredients are a diversity of bright, motivated people.

designs that don’t improve the function or usefullness of a product should never hit the market

How about designs that improve a product’s usability? Its desirability? Its profitability? Its recyclability? How about designs that make products less wasteful to produce or dispose of in ways the consumer doesn’t directly experience? Such designs shouldn’t go to market?

How about designs that improve a product’s usability? Its desirability? Its profitability? Its recyclability? How about designs that make products less wasteful to produce or dispose of in ways the consumer doesn’t directly experience? Such designs shouldn’t go to market?

Read the original quote again. The things you mention improve the product, so they don’t apply (profitablility is questionable, since it often DOESN’T make the product any better for anyone but the company that is ripping off the original idea)

No, the products I’m refering to are things like razor scooter. Cool product at first. Then EVERYONE made one, with no real improvement, just to jump on the profit wagon. It watered down an original novel idea into a mass marketed 12 year olds lame toy.

A little more controversial example are a lot of sporting goods. companies pump out new products each season, with little change in the core function, just to keep up with the other companies. This results in a lot a products that do the exact same thing. Oh sure marketing puts their special little twist on each one, but really the product does the same thing just in a different color. (look at snowboard boots. Are there innovative designs? yes about 5 (boa, lace, bindingless, linerless, etc). are there only 5 boots out there? no there are about 500)

One of my pet peeves is a product that has ‘innovative’ features that don’t truly improve the original function, but rather just change it enough so the manufacturer isn’t guilty of technically ripping off an idea or infringing on a patent. Innovation should be a new improvement. Innovation should NOT be a way to get around an existing patent. This is the easy way out for the not creative types. If you don’t have a better product don’t put it on the shelf! :wink:

Ely Whitney invented assembly line manufacturing based on the division of labor theories of Adam Smith. Henry Ford modified the idea based meat packing operations and invented the moving assembly line and with it modern mass production. Michael Dell pushed the idea even farther with near just-in-time mass manufacturing. All of them highly innovative. None of them designers.

Try staying on topic here. This thread, for the most part is talking about product innovation, not process, organizational or marketing innovation.

When it comes to product innovation, ID’ers ARE much more qualified and up to the task than any other professional involved in product development.

Nussbaum: “But as a design advocate who fought for years to get designers to get over themselves and their obsession with framing their profession in terms of art, I can’t help but feel haplass in this debate. Just when victory is near, when design is finally being accepted for what it can do, people are denying its power, whining about the nomenclature and clutching defeat from the jaws of victory.”

Amen!

So far no one has specified that this thread (or even the way we are using the term innovation) as being only about product development. That is fine for the sake of this discussion and this board, but dangerous as a general assumption. We don’t own the word, and shouldn’t be trying to define its scope so narrowly. As JT rightfully points out, many of the most significant innovations of late have had very little to do with Industrial Design. It also seems that by narrowing the definition so much we are effectively saying: industrial designers are the best at industrial design innovation, and thus innovation. That’s kind of cheating.

In any case, I would still challenge your statement that ID’ers are more qualified even for innovation in product development. Yes, we have some skills and processes that are important a very effective for product development, but it takes many people and skills to develop a truly innovative product and make it a success. The Dell products are not innovative because of the product design, but of the company’s organization and distribution infrastructure. As beautiful as the iPod is, the ID is still only one part of Apple’s success story. Much of Puma’s success is owed to their marketing. The Prius, Segway, Computer Mouse, George Foreman Grill, the Cell Phone: engineering. Even if an idea is design led, a lot of engineering innovation is required to make many new ideas real, for example, the original iMac.

And what about software? Is that not product development? Industrial Designers can definitely use their skills there, but a lot (if not most) innovation there comes from software developers.

The unfortunate reality, despite ‘not anonymous’ comments, a lot of design work is still about styling (cars, shoes, phones, furniture, etc.). Not all ID’ers care about user needs or usability, and other disciplines such as Ethnography or Ergonomists believe that they hold the keys to innovation there. Even great products benifit a lot from great marketing, and marketers are hot on “Innovation” right now too (and rightfully so)

People without formal product development skills are not disqualified from being able to contribute to product innovation either (See Eric von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation). If inspiration comes from user insights, can we really take all the credit? Both the DIY and Open-Source movements, both responsible for a lot of innovation, could be considered to be “user” led. Design is one means to an Innovative end, but not the only.

Indeed, one of the most inspiring books on Design and Innovation in recent memory is Massive Change, yet it speaks very little of Industrial Design.



Off topic, but I find this attituted towards marketing (and often engineers as well) appalling ; I was pained to recently hear a student refer to marketers as “the enemy”. We’ve all had bad experiences, but get over it. Work with good people, ignore what discipline they come from. If there were some principles that defined “New Design”, they would be (IMO):

  1. designers don’t own “design”. innovation can come from anywhere or anyone.
  2. multidisciplinary teams, multidisciplinary people, no borders
  3. there are no icons, design is a team effort

When it comes to product innovation, ID’ers ARE much more qualified and up to the task than any other professional involved in product development

Care to substantiate this? Imagine you’re pitching your company’s design services to a skeptical consumer goods manufacturer. You claim that as an ID you are the most qualified to drive his new product innovation efforts. As an engineer with decades of engineering and business experience in successfully developing new products and bringing them to market with minor ID involvement, he raises an eyebrow and says “Really? prove it.”

What would you tell him?

And neither your post, nor the subject, nor steveb’s original post specify product innovation. Even Bruce’s article, which started this thread, only mentions “product design” once and in passing. So if you mean product innovation specifically, perhaps you should say so.

So if we are talking about product innovation then I tend agree that IDs do have some exceptionally valuable and unique insights to offer.

But even within product innovation specifically it can be difficult to separate the artifact form the manufacturing process. For instance Dell’s process innovations meant that customer’s weren’t just buying a computer. For the first time they were buying exactly the computer they wanted, configured exactly they way they wanted it rather than a stock off-the-shelf retail commodity. The customization was part of the physical Dell product in a way not possible with inventoried HPs or Compaqs. Dell’s manufacturing processes became part of what physically and experientially made a Dell product a Dell product. Perhaps I’m being too holistic.

sorry but i disagree on the dell computers as something truly original. it’s a long discussion and i don’t think it’ll be good to discuss it here maybe on another thread.



as for the question whether design is innovation or viseversa, my view is that innovation is more informal thought than design and design is more formal process than innovation.

sorry but i disagree on the dell computers as something truly original

I said innovative, not “truly original.” They aren’t necessarily the same. Old ideas from one discipline or context can be innovative when introduced to new disciplines or contexts. And old ideas in new combinations can also be innovative.

Besides, what do you mean by “truly original”? Do you mean something that has no antecedents at all? What you would consider “truly original” so I have a better idea of what you’re talking about?

what dell did was something kids were already doing but just turned it into a brand.

i call this target market, or responding to demand, not innovation. he just had the available resources to pull it off. mainly budget. and please don’t tell me he started in his dorm room.

Once again you down play and do not understand the context you are opposing. Dell did indeed do something innovative. Dell not only created the most well know PC brand in the world, they developed an inovative buisness model and fulfilment system that has been copied by the many aspiring mid-teir companies. I have had many clients who have attended Dells workshops on corporate brand/image/innovation building. Infact these workshops were the only reason that they realised that they needed design to sell their products, and that simply providing a highly functional and cost effective product was not enough.

When you look at companies or even products for that matter, look behind the cover. No Dell was not the first company to make computers, however they were the first company to streamline the fulfilment and customer support aspects accompanied with purchasing raw components, selling customer configured systems, assembling the systems on demand, delivering the systems to the customer, and providing the continued technical support and warranty that few if any other companies offered in the begining.

Saying Dell was not innovative, is like saying Ford did not innovate when they introduced the first assebly line, because cars had been in production for years before that. Speed, Quality, and Efficancies are innovations in my book

Steve, methinks he meant good old shopping for innovation for the analysis of the innovation vs design concept but the article listings got changed overnight and so his link went straight to the homepage.

Resources alone are not enough, see Gateway. The kids you refer to didn’t turn those computers into a 32 billion dollar business that ran away with the industry market share. There is plenty innovative about Dell, and yes, he started in college with about $1000.

rant

are you sleep or what? if those kids had the resources i’m sure there were millions of them who could do what dell did, even ten times better.

personally i believe dell is at most an average computer company which recieves huge amount of information backup. it’s doing what ibm is too lazy to do.

again, if you were ibm,why would you go through the trouble if you get what you need out of it without setting up a whole new operation. that’s how oracle and microsoft started.

people who think dell was innovative have no idea what innovation is.

If seeing an opportunity to introduce a way of thinking about, or way of improving efficiencies are not innovation, then what is it that you consider innovation?

IBM lazy, I would not go that far. I would say they were complacent in their vision and did not see the buisness or market in the way that a young college kid did. Is it the highest form of innovation, no but it did innovate the way that the computer industry would do business and tech support from that day on. Same goes for Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates the pirates of silicon valley. Atlas moving company and UPS, all started from college students seeing a new way of addressing the needs of a market category. So to me this is a form innovation.

My working definition of innovation is simple. Innovation is a new approach to any solution or new solution to a common need, whether in technology, user interface(design), manufacturing, material usage, or business model. To me this includes new technologies, materials, etc or simply incorporating for the first time existing items from other categories that improve performance, usability, safety, or efficiencies.

Perhaps we should all give our personal definition of what we each feel innovation is.