John Thackara has written an excellent follow up of necessary design tasks required to support the concepts put forth in this Guardian article and encapsulates the situation succinctly,

If something must be done, rather than just talked about, then design moves centre stage.

From a statement [pdf] released by the Chartered Society of Designers, UK, here are the highlights:

...the review published on the 30th October by Sir Nicholas Stern has much more relevance to the design sector and although it provides gloomy reading it also offers the design profession challenges and opportunities that it should readily embrace.

Stern calculates the cost of taking action now against climate change at an average globally of 1% of GDP. He calculates the cost to GDP of not doing anything to be 5%, with opinions ranging to 20%. Even on Stern’s figures, an investment today will produce a 400% return by 2050. Even 1% is an ambitious amount but design can play a role in lowering the initial costs of our high carbon economic growth and so that a balance is achieved of levying taxes and lessening energy use.

As a profession we influence products of all sorts and buildings and the energy they use. In design development and service design we are also able to reduce the energy used in delivering them. But in order to do so the designer must posses the knowledge needed to deal with such matters. This will involve collaboration, new working methods, knowledge transfer and a new attitude to design research.

If Stern is taken seriously then designers will see new opportunities for their services, they will need to adopt a business language in order for design to become embedded in the range of businesses strategies and to take a seat in the boardroom, and they will enter new overseas markets which need to invest in products that allow them to trade in carbon emissions. For those economies that are loathe to invest the figure suggested by Stern for fear of inhibiting their rapid economic growth, design and innovation will be paramount in ensuring they are not disadvantaged.

And for those who argue that any action is irrelevant due to the behaviour of India and China, well consider the influence our profession could have on their designers of the future...

Victor Lombardi of the Noisebetweenstations blog has kindly consented to a reblog of his seminal post "Is design the new management consultancy?" here. He uses logic and evidence to break down the facts and reach the possible answer. Which is no, design is not the new management consultancy.

Some folks are asking this question. I've spent the past two years making the transition from designer to business consultant, jumping a lot of hurdles along the way. Here's a little of what I learned:

* Highlight opportunities instead of bitching. As designers, we walk around in the world and feel overly sensitive to everything that isn't designed well. We watch customers struggle when using poorly designed products. There's an inclination to highlight these faults to executives whom we think should know about these faults. And maybe they should, but mostly they need help seeing the big opportunities. It might sound like product faults and market opportunities are simply the flip side of the same coin, but it's the difference between being perceived as a whiny designer and a valued business advisor.

* Know your limits. When I hear a designer say, "We were doing the same kind of work McKinsey would do" I think "You really have no fucking idea what McKinsey does." I used to work at BCG (in the IT dept) and I have yet to meet a designer with thinking, methods, and tools nearly as sophisticated as those consultants. Just consider the career path at these firms: they take the top students from the top business schools who in turn have taken the top undergrads, and so on. Then the consultants work in a demanding up-or-out environment where excellence is necessary. This culture breeds great execution much more effectively than the best design studio cultures.

And I've beat the design thinking drum as much as anyone, but it's naive to believe only designers think this way.

* Invest in new hammers. Not every business problem is best solved by a product/service design or redesign. Sometimes an acquisition is the answer, or a divestiture, or hedging the financial markets. Business leaders have a lot of tools in their toolbox: marketing, sales, operations, finance, IT, HR, strategy, customer service etc., and each of these in turn has a deep toolbox, with practitioners who all want more strategic influence. Understanding them - and knowing when product or service design is not the best approach - makes for a more well-rounded management consultant.

* See the big picture. Sometimes design does have direct influence on business strategy. But describing that influence in terms of customer experience alone can lack the information that executives want to hear. Learning how to describe design's benefits in financial and strategic language is key.

* Be realistic about the influence of design. The current barrage of Fast Company and BusinessWeek stories on design can lull us into the impression that design is now king. In my experience, this isn't anywhere near the case. Sure, there are great changes happening: I see more companies doing field research and more realization of the power of customer experience. But it'll take years for the generations of business people to change their thinking and practices.

* Know what you mean when you use the word strategy. Unfortunately, strategy has become a muddled word, the meaning even traditional management consultants don't agree on (see Strategy Bites Back for an amusing look at the situation). But this is no excuse for us to practice muddled thinking. Here's a simple way I've been clarifying it in conversation:
o Product/service design: decide how to create something
o Design strategy: decide what to create, with a perspective beyond the current cycle (e.g. 3-5 years)
o Business strategy: decide what a business should do, with a perspective beyond the current cycle (e.g. 3-5 years)

Join the conversation in Victor's blog here.

Here is a 5 minute video on Don Norman to commemerate his receiving the 2006 Benjamin Franklin Medal for laying the foundations of user centered design.

Video

Just in time for the CII NID Design With India Conference to be held in New Delhi, India from December 4th 2006, Style-Vision conducted a roundtable discussion during London Design Week 2006 just passed and sent in a summary of their insights. More information and photographs available here.

Karma is a sum of all that an individual has done, is currently doing and will do. For the business world it will mean taking into account the entire cycle of cause and effect. Perhaps India can lead the way.

In London this year during the London Design Festival, senior management and trend researchers gathered once again for the Insight India Round Table. This event, organized by the Nice-based agency Style-Vision and Pune-based studio Onio Design, allowed a select group of trend researchers as well as design and brand managers from a wide variety of disciplines to share their views on future Indian consumers.

Yes, India is changing. Plenty has been written on Shining India in recent years. However, beyond the dream of the middle class, the country has kept many of its former characteristics.

Rural India with 72% of the population represents the real untapped market of India, reminds Professor S. Venkat of the Institute of Information Technology of Pune. A fundamentally different consumer lives there. People are using kerosene and wood as a daily source of energy but they are also buying more frequently from virtual bazaars since distribution is critical. Global brands will have to adapt their marketing techniques if they want to play and win on the Haat, the weekly market in rural areas.

The extreme diversity of Indian society remains and is mirrored by aesthetics, explains Manoj Kothari, Director of Onio Design. For instance, the intense use of ornaments and symbols are traced back to pre-Mogul history, while the sense of colour is closely linked with climate and geography (white colour in the soft South and vibrant colours in the ardent North).

However, since the economy's takeoff in the 90s, an increased geographical and social mobility is disrupting all aspects of the Indian ways of life. Leapfrogging from different technologies gives consumers direct access to cutting-edge services, according to David Griffiths, design consultant for the UK and India. An example is the lack of broadband networks causing consumers to directly use internet mobiles instead.

New ways of life and a new consciousness of the self are appearing among the new generation. The LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) are searching for a new sensuality, a mélange combining memories from the past with modern tastes, expresses Nazlin Imram, regional sensory manager for Symrise flavor and nutrition. A cheesy taste? Trendy kurta? The executive man's watch? Abhijit Bansod, chief designer of Titan watches, and Yogesh Purohit, fashion/textile designer, both rejuvenate heritage and invent the values of the new India.

The incremental and massive access of Indian consumers to a certain well-being will require the invention of innovative sustainable business models for the future India, affirms Elizabeth Olson, general manager for Beauty Design of Procter & Gamble. James Ludwig, Director of Design at Steelcase agrees that the same mistakes cannot be reproduced with natural resources, water and energy.

It is no doubt that opportunity exists in India. But the difficulty is the How? The challenging questions raised by the Indian paradox inspire global brands to tear up their conventions.

How does one create, maintain, destroy, and efficiently manage the entire lifecycle of products from its creation to its end? Such a holistic anticipation is often new for the global business world.

The participants of the Insight India Round Table started to design applications for India: a fashion brand for the youngsters, a hygiene product for rural and urban women, or an affordable computer for remote rural communities. A path to good business and good karma!

What about you? How would you design for karma?

We live in an uncertain world.  Many people find uncertainty personally stressful and try to create order by making early decisions that reduce risk and uncertainty. Traditional business practice is to eliminate uncertainty so that planning can take place. That's good practice and common sense, but here's a tip for managers who want to improve their design team's innovation depth: develop the ability to tolerate uncertainty.

A tolerance for uncertainty may allow better quality answers by delaying decision making until more is known about a situation. The point is convincingly argued by Roger Martin of the Rotman School of Business, Tom Peters and others. 

Toyota exercises a similar attitude while developing their cars. Jeffrey Liker describes this as Principle 13 in The Toyota Way;  "Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options, implement rapidly".

In practice this may mean periodically re-evaluating the reasons for doing something; even the reason for the entire project or the reason for the company's existence. It may mean not deciding on any particular design until later in the process.

It will certainly mean walking with uncertainty for a little longer than you'd normally be comfortable with. Both Mr Martin and Professor Liker point out that this uncertainty should be planned for and incorporated in your design process. Let's call it disciplined uncertainty; reconciling the two worlds of reliable process and creative exploration.

Don't be afraid of uncertainty, it may seem like procrastination, foot-dragging or even indecision, but provided you've planned to be uncertain for a while, you're likely to see more powerful ideas from your team. 

by Tasos Calantzis

You've presented nearly your entire product idea in under a half hour and three slides remain. Here are the last three rules before you finish.

Rule#10: Show that there is inherent intellectual property that can be defended.

Intellectual Property for our purposes here describes the valuable ideas that could defend your product in a competitive environment. Usually we'd be talking about robust intellectual property such as a utility patent, however that's not the only kind. Proprietary processes, economies of scale, exclusive supply deals, speed to market or your company's powerful brand name all create barriers to entry for competitors and leverage for negotiation when selling the product. All to make dealing with you the easiest, most logical option for your partners and tricky for competitors. In addition, it's taken for granted that the idea doesn't infringe on any one else's idea. That's easily and checked on Google but much more thoroughly so by your patent attorney.

Rule#11: Admit that there are unanswered questions (even doubts) about the product idea.

Of the roughly 30,000 new product introduced by the consumer packaged goods industry every year, 70% to 90% will not be in the market after 12 months. Clearly, there is no such thing as a "sure thing" in this business. You gain credibility if you acknowledge this. You may have unanswered questions about practicalities like production or selling price issues. They could also relate to intangibles like the product's likelihood of attracting investment. Telling potential partners your doubts encourages them to think of solutions together with you.

Rule#12: Demonstrate that this could form a growing business.

Product ideas that have the potential for expansion into a range of products or an entire new business have the edge on one-hit wonders. After the realism of the previous rule, this is the opportunity to show some optimism about the potential beyond this idea. The previous slides should have answered the important business questions, this one reminds everyone why they were worth asking in the first place.

By now you've realized that this series is not perfect and should actually have been called "A Pretty Good Product Pitch". Nonetheless, these 12 rules are a fast way to summarize the key facts that decision makers need to evaluate a product idea. They're also not a bad way to sort out your own thoughts about that hit product you have in mind. And to make sure your next product pitch ends in success.

The Perfect Product Pitch is a 4-part series by guest contributor Tasos Calantzis of Readymade. It covers the 12 essential things you already knew about pitching a product idea to your boss, client or VC guys but forgot last time around. Thanks go out to Dave Bayless at Evergreen Innovation Partners for providing the basis for this series.

Within a large design group you are likely to encounter two distinguishing career goals: designers who want to manage others and designers who don't. As a result, it makes sense for the organizational structure of the group to support the career goals of both individual contributors and managers.
[...]
In both cases, the opportunities may exist beyond the design organization. Product Leads may opt to pursue more direct product ownership by absorbing business responsibilities and becoming business/product owners in the Product Management organization. Strategic Designers may instead expand their skills to include new business growth and move into Product or Corporate Strategy groups. The diagram below illustrates these potential growth paths as well as those found within the design group (red lines).

Read the full post accompanying this growth chart here.

Luke Wroblewski, a prolific writer and design strategist, has written a series on the organizational structure of a corporate design department. He has kindly permitted DD to reblog three of his posts on the topic here.

In Design Group Organization I outlined the structural relationship between Product Leads (designers responsible for a specific business unit's product designs) and Strategic Designers (designers who lead the integration of corporate strategy and product concepts) within a large design team. In this organizational model, Product Leads and Strategic Designers often work on the same product but in different roles and at varying capacities.

During the ideation phase of a new product, the Strategic Designer is heavily involved. They work with key business stakeholders and corporate or product strategy teams to illustrate a vision of success through product concepts. They use the power of narrative and visualization to collaboratively develop a product vision that corporate stakeholders ultimately sign-off on.

During this process, the Product Lead is involved but does not need to absorb the overhead of the strategy development process. As a result, they remain able to direct the efforts of their design team on existing products for which they remain responsible. The Strategic Designer is handling most of the hands-on work and meetings for the new product.

As the ideation phase moves closer to implementation the Product Lead becomes more involved. They begin to work closely with the Strategic Designer on more detailed information architecture and interaction design concepts. Gradually this process generates a complete design spec for the new product. During this period, the Strategic Designer's involvement lessens as the Product Lead takes on ownership of the product.

Read the full post here.

Luke Wroblewski, a prolific writer and design strategist, has written a series on the organizational structure of a corporate design department. He has kindly permitted DD to reblog three of his posts on the topic here.

If you've made it this far into your product pitch without everyone glazing over, you're probably going to get to finish your presentation. So now you can relax and give a bit of background information before delivering the most important bit of information; the product's revenue potential.

Rule#7: Describe the thinking behind the product.

You might want to head off some time-consuming and arduous cross-questioning by describing what lines of thinking you've discarded in the past. Of course then you'd have to say why have you've chosen your current approach. It's not necessary to go into detail but the people listening to you need to be able to make their own minds up about whether your idea has been tackled in the most promising way.

Rule#8: Explain what potential customers think of the product.

If the budget allows good qualitative research, commission it by all means. If not, a good indication of the product's likely appeal can be obtained with a simple questionnaire. It's critical that no-one closely involved with the project be sent to gather this research. They're likely to sell the idea, however tacitly, to the interviewees. This kind of research doesn't need hundreds of respondents. Usually as few as 20 or 30 properly filtered respondents will give a good idea of whether the product has the right appeal or not. The filter to be applied is simply the core user description from Rule#3.

Without going into the psychology of the interview situation, there are at least three points to note. First, the object is to understand whether the person sees any valuable, rare benefit in this product that they would actually pay for. Second, dead end questions (for example yes/no questions) are much less helpful than open questions that don't lead the witness and allow them to express their opinion. This would include, for example, asking whether they see any difference between this and other similar products. Finally, the most important question is going to be something like "Why wouldn't you buy this product?". This is to discover whether there are any hurdles to this person adopting this product. People overwhelmingly prefer the status quo. Almost every new product has to displace some existing product or preconception in your customer's life or face utter failure. This is a good place to find out whether your product has enough appeal to do that.

Rule#9: Estimate the potential revenue of the product.

As a project develops, sophisticated financial analysis may become necessary but, like all of these rules, the idea is to arrive at a realistic guess early on. Working on a scrap of paper or a quick spreadsheet, what is your best estimate of the retail revenue of the product over time? What key assumptions are you making about the size of the core market? Awareness levels? Distribution coverage? Sustained market share? Price? Repurchase rates and repurchase cycles? In other words, nothing that the census bureau and a bit of web surfing can't turn up.

The Perfect Product Pitch is a 4-part series by guest contributor Tasos Calantzis of Readymade. It covers the 12 essential things you already knew about pitching a product idea to your boss, client or VC guys but forgot last time around. Thanks go out to Dave Bayless at Evergreen Innovation Partners for providing the basis for this series.

Jonathan Ive, CBE, has been extensively covered by BusinessWeek in the September 25th issue. The lead article is an indepth well written look at the design process at Apple followed by the highly reserved Ive and his team. What are the key things about this team at Apple?

They're close-knit and self supportive.

It's a team that has worked in idyllic comfort for many years. Some designers were at the company long before Ive arrived in 1992. They rarely attend industry events or awards ceremonies. It's as though they don't require outside recognition because there isn't any higher authority on design excellence than each other, and because sharing too much information only risks helping others close the gap. [...] "Its good old-fashioned camaraderie -- everyone with the same aim, no egos involved," says British fashion designer Paul Smith, a friend since the late 1990s when Ive sent him a new iMac. "They have lots of dinners together, take lots of field trips. And they've turned these gray frumpy objects called computers into desirable pieces of sculpture you'd want even if you didn't use them.

They're global bringing numerous cultures to the creative table.

And they personally reflect the design sensibilities of Apple's products -- casually chic, elitist and with a definite Euro bent. The team, made up of thirty- and fortysomethings, has a definite international flair. Members include not only the British Ive but also New Zealander Danny Coster, Italian Daniele De Iuliis, and German Rico Zörkendörfer.

They're important - to the company and are treated as such.

Most of Ive's team live in San Francisco, and rumor has it that the starting salary for the group is around $200,000, some 50% above the industry average. They work together in a large open studio with little personal space but great privacy. Many Apple employees aren't allowed in, for fear they'd catch a glimpse of some upcoming product. A massive sound system pumps up the music. Ive invests his design dollars in state-of-the-art prototyping equipment, not large numbers of people. And his design process revolves around intense iteration -- making and remaking models to visualize new concepts. [...] Ive's team at Apple isn't the usual design ghetto of creativity that exists inside most corporations. They work closely and intensely with engineers, marketers, and even outside manufacturing contractors in Asia who actually build the products. Rather than being simple stylists, they're leading innovators in the use of new materials and production processes. The design group was able to figure out how to put a layer of clear plastic over the white or black core of an iPod, giving it a tremendous depth of texture, and still be able to build each unit in just seconds.

Read the rest for a peek into the mind of the man behind the iPod. Or take a look at this slideshow of his work. In fact, go figure out the details of why you really love the iPod.

Andrew Zolli recently wrote in his piece in BusinessWeek,

And eventually, corporate managers will master these skills, at which point every consumer product will be permanently dipped in white acrylic, come with an ergonomic fly wheel, and embody a whimsical anthropomorphic cuteness.

Then what? To find the next deep wellsprings of innovation, you have to learn to listen to "weak signals"-fringe ideas today that will be common wisdom tomorrow.

He identifies three key areas as fringe ideas for innovation - 'ecology', 'gaming' and 'social networking'. One could also view these as emerging markets, that is, those that can be defined as emerging opportunity areas for innovation. Then, instead of the run of the mill understanding that emerging markets are countries or nations, lets look at them from the socioeconomic and geopolitical point of view. Now, we have 5 emerging markets:-

1. Geographic
Here is where BRIC, ASEAN, Mercosul et al get covered - the emerging markets of India, China, Brazil, Turkey, Egypt etc

2. Gaming and virtual worlds
This is an emerging market in its own right, witness only the amount of business being done on Second Life. Does it also include stuff like all the brand placement in "Talladega Nights" etc?

3. Social networking or "my life online"
This is the sweet spot where companies like Skype, Typepad and Google perceive as emerging markets, among others.

4. Sustainability
There is probably a better word for this emerging market, but ecology, the environment, global warming, climate change and resource contraints lead to the emergence of a market for 'green' products, services and messages.

5. Social development/ bottom of the pyramid
Dominic Basulto over at the BusinessInnovationInsider blog has an excellent summary of CK Prahalad's latest look at the opportunities in this space. Here is a snippet on innovating for this market,

Prahalad outlines the four conditions that must be present for similar types of breakthrough innovations to occur:

(1) The innovation must result in a product or service of world-class quality;

(2) The innovation must achieve a significant price reduction - at least 90% off the cost of a comparable product or service in the West;

(3) The innovation must be scalable: It must be able to be produced, marketed, and used in many locales and circumstances;

(4) The innovation must be affordable at the bottom of the economic pyramid, reaching people with the lowest levels of income in any given society.

And finally, while it may or may not be an emerging market in its own right, demographic changes in the western world point towards the 'greying' population, a segment that requires significant design and development insights in healthcare and lifestyle products.

"You dominate in one market, does that help you dominate in another?"

Wal-Mart's recent problems in Germany and the subsequent analysis uncovers some of the pitfalls that face market leaders when they choose to cross cultural borders. The common theme is that if you do not already possess an 'iconic' brand - Starbucks or Apple are the common examples - you must adapt to the indigenous culture. And this applies across the board from your business model, marketing strategy and product mix to choosing to follow HR practices from your home culture or local culture. While none would like to acknowledge that their brand may not be considered as iconic as Starbucks' or Apple's, here are 5 common mistakes companies make when structuring a global brand strategy.

1. Interpret, don't translate
2. Value is contextual
3. Playing follow the leader
4. Making assumptions
5. Ineffectual leadership

Download the full article [PDF] from ReBrand here.

A recent five part Design Directory article penned by Tasos Calantzis was written to bring insight as to how design can be integrated into the realm of business. More to the point, the lead-in suggests that design's primary corporate challenge is to gain equal billing alongside traditional C-level functions. It was also suggested that this thinking might ruffle some feathers. It is without a doubt that this was one of the more prophetic statements made within the article.

Throughout the article there are several terms thrown about in a shotgun fashion. Included are terms like design thinking, design of product systems, and the commoditization of design. All of which are hot button topics and very quickly polarize discussions when it comes to how design should be implemented in a corporate environment. 

The article alludes to the idea that designers can't forget that their core competency is product styling. One might infer from this that Tasos believes that designers need to realize that the real value of design is styling. It can be summed up by the quote:

"The most familiar image of design is as a creator of style. In fact despite the many other meaningful things that design can do, it could be argued that infusing products with designer style is the core competence of design."

If one truly believes that the design industry is becoming a corporate commodity it is easily argued that it is because a designer is thought of as "stylist" by the corporate world. Throw a million design monkeys into a room with a million crayons and eventually you will end up with a rendering of the next "iPod Killer". 

There is no doubt that good styling can help make a product a hit. It needs to be made clear that what makes for a long lasting, timeless product that people can't imagine their lives without is a product that has been thought of in context of its whole system. At the very least someone that truly understands the idea of design thinking should be leading that charge. Low hanging fruit examples would be products such as the Eames Chair, or more contemporary products like the iPod. Products such as these didn't get designed believing styling was the core competency of the process. It was the designer's understanding of the experience of sitting in a comfortable chair reading a book, or having their music collection become something that is easily extensible and carried with them in their pocket. On the contrary, one could argue that companies like Sony have great styling. Their products are beautifully fashioned, but they seem yet to grasp (or arguably have forgotten) the holistic system of design.

Designing Product Systems is a term that came out in this article that requires more discussion. Designing product systems is a philosophy on which the design industry can hang their hat. Company's like IDEO have laid the foundation for this type of thinking while companies like OneOak Design (Developers of Product Systems) have recently been founded on the principle of designing for product systems. Designing product systems stems from a basic belief that design is integral to the development of any product.

A colleague once described design as the spearhead of the product development process. However, designers need to be more than the head of the spear, for that implies that design is far too free to be pointed in whichever direction the wielder wants in the heat of battle. A designer needs to be able to assimilate information from virtually every single business discipline in order to be successful in the process. Corporations that believe that design is a "need to know" player in the process will never be able to realize the impact design can have on their product line.

Mr. Calantzis gets design. One could even go as far as agreeing that he understands design thinking. Walking away from his article(s) believing that his voice is one that will be carrying design into the bored rooms of the corporate world is a bit of a stretch. The article had a bit too much of a feeling of resignation to the status quo. Too much of a feeling that design SHOULD blend into the noise. He said:

"Using design to improve the way things look and work may be an old fashioned notion but it served industry well for the whole of the last century and it remains one of the things that designers do best."

Maintaining that what designers do best is styling is keeping the industry in the 20^th Century. Design is part of a larger holistic process. Design is a complex industry that is as difficult to describe as "Engineering" or the color black. A true design thinker uses their skill of styling as one of the many tools in the chest to realize the conversion of disciplines. One could argue that there is no other industry that that must listen and translate information from virtually every other discipline in the building. Without understanding the market, the product fails. Without understanding the Engineering behind the product, you can't properly style the product. Without understanding the manufacturing process one can very quickly design in more problems and costs downstream that will completely strangle the products success.

It is the corporations that understand that designing a product as part of a complex system that are ushering in the next wave of products that tap into the social fabric of human nature. Design is growing up and trading in its styling badge for one that is more representative of the growing responsibility of design in the corporate environment. Resigning to being a stylist is not doing the industry and the products it represents justice.

Jon Winebrenner is the industrial design partner in the Vancouver, BC design firm OneOak Design. For the five years prior to starting OneOak Design Jon worked as lead Industrial Designer for Sierra Wireless on the now defunct Voq Smartphone program. It is during this time working for Sierra Wireless that he had the opportunity to work along side companies like Ziba Design, fuseproject, and RKS Design. Between being a fly on the wall while working with these companies and seeing a full Smartphone development process fail from the inside out, Jon was allowed to learn to believe in the Design for Product Systems philosophy.

Part of the fuzziness in defining what design actually is, is due to old definitions having outlived their usefulness. Some businesses  have come to realize that design is much more than making things look pretty. In many cases a link can be found between how effectively design is used in an organization and the overall success of that organization.

A short list of companies who are undisputed industry leaders could include Nike, Apple, Proctor & Gamble, Nokia , Toyota and Samsung. In each case, success can be attributed to other factors but the influence of design has been integral. 

These are companies who aim to be the absolute leaders in their industries; unique and far ahead of their competitors. They have discovered that the tactical ability of solving business problems with design creates successes that can now be knitted together with the emerging culture of innovation to create a strategic tool. For these leaders, design has become integrated into the business as a C-level function.

For companies like this, one finds a hierarchy of design thinking. Firstly a robust design process produces individual products which are carefully considered relative to their competitors. More than that, these products are designed in response to latent user needs and therefore ahead of current thinking. They form part of well-designed product systems which solve business problems. Finally, design thinking is applied in ten areas of business, transforming the organization.

It is this last layer of design thinking that contains the true advantage. Design is not an activity that is owned by designers. It is merely a profitable use of creativity. It can be learnt and applied by anyone in the organization. This is part of it's power. Used correctly, design thinking can give any person in the organization a new ability to create dramatically increased value; just like efficiency, quality and customer focus have been able to.

Design has the ability to create products and experiences that have never existed before. When people all over the organization are thinking in this way, the true originality of their ideas cannot be predicted. Competitors can only follow because the organization is continuously disrupting the field.

Design is not the only way of disrupting the field. Methods like Six Sigma, the Toyota Way and the Theory of Constraints also make the same claim. The difference is that these are all process improvement methods whereas design applies innovation to products and experiences. In fact a good design consultancy will use these and other methods as tools in creating disruptive innovation through design.

Design has a great ability to be used in collaboration with other fields of expertise. That's why it works so well with branding, advertising, engineering and architecture and other fields; to the point that it sometimes becomes indistinguishable from them.

Thanks to Jess McMullin for producing the original template on which this series is based and for giving his permission to use it.

The Power of Design is a series in 5 parts by guest contributor Tasos Calantzis looking at the different ways in which design can be used within a company, cutting away hyperbole in the typical design sales pitch and investigating the real benefits of design to customers,  the organization and its revenue. The 5 parts discuss incremental steps: no design, style, form & function, solving business problems and achieving leadership.

Hybrid Organizations as a Strategy for Supporting New Product Development is the title of a research paper by Alison Rieple, Adrian Haberberg, and Jon Gander of the University of Westminster.

A summary of their findings:

This paper focuses on strategic alliances, in which one firm (normally a large, multi-product corporation) obtains critical product-development resources, such as design or technological know-how, from an independent firm (normally a smaller and more specialized design consultancy or a technology developer). The two firms develop a fairly close relationship - perhaps only for the period of a specific assignment, but often over a longer period spanning several projects. These hybrid relationships are governed through informal means, such as unwritten agreements between key individuals, as much as through the more usual form of legal contracts.

Crucial to the success of a hybrid are "boundary-spanners." These are members of the partner organizations who are able to move freely within both, translating the requirements of each into language and behavior that is acceptable to, and understandable by, the other. Trust between the senior managers who set up a hybrid in the first place, and the boundary spanners who maintain the relationship subsequently, is a critical factor. Trust lowers cost and raises productivity. Cooperation increases under conditions of trust, because with trust such costly barriers as formal contracts and detailed monitoring can be removed. The resulting less-formal specifications can also allow the parties to respond more rapidly to any changes in circumstances.

Hybrids protect the smaller firm from the stifling effects of the larger firm, while allowing its creative knowledge to be exploited. This happens through what is, in effect, a "semi-permeable membrane" in which certain features are blocked from movement while others are transferred.

Boundary-spanners, or bridgers, as they are sometimes described, are people who move between both organizations, translating the norms of each into language and behavior that are acceptable to, and understandable by, the other. There is almost no research on the role that boundary-spanners have in hybrid organizational structures, and yet they are likely to be one of the most important factors in the success of those structures. After all, new product development is a social-, collaborative-, and interaction- intensive process involving experimentation and negotiation over the lifecycle of the new product's evolving form, bringing together knowledge, expertise, and technologies from different sources into a whole. Learning involves the negotiated resolution of constraints and generates new knowledge, which may then be embedded in the design of new technologies, products, or processes. Thus boundary-spanners need to be skilled first of all in the nuances of creating a new product.

A perfect example of successful boundary spanners can be found in an article written by Tom Mulhern and Dave Lathrop, of Conifer Research and Steelcase Inc., respectively. Their article,"Building and Tending Bridges: Rethinking How Consultants Support Change," detailed the way in which design consultant Conifer Research used its methodological expertise in furniture and workspace design to improve Steelcase's product innovation and organizational performance. Although Mulhern and Lathrop had not worked together before, they had "worked around each other" and knew a lot of the same people. They were both part of an established network of relationships and reputation, and this is likely to have facilitated the development of trust between the two organizational boundary-spanners.

Mulhern and Lathrop also epitomize the internal boundary-spanner role. Steelcase had previously gone out of its way to seek external perspectives from a "host of brilliant, innovative, but generally outside resources, with the outcome generally packaged as a 'deliverable.'" But in order to achieve the impact they sought, Mulhern and Lathrop recognized that their job would be to inspire insiders to take up the cause. They described this process as developing "experience bridges." The bridges they established linked people, information, and process and thereby "dramatically accelerated" progress through the development of shared understanding.

In conclusion, it seems as though a strategic alliance between a large corporation and a small creative house works effectively for product innovation, with the role of the boundary spanner being crucial to the success of this approach.

September is chock full of events and there are more later this fall. Here are some that caught our eye.

London Design Week

RED OPEN HOUSE - 22 September 2006

The Design Council's RED unit opens its doors and invites you to drop in to meet the team, hear about their approach and exchange ideas. RED is a small inter-disciplinary team with a track record in design led innovation in public services. Past work includes co-created preventative health services, a radical re-think of the prison system and a new approach to designing schools for the 21st century.

11.00am - 7.00pm
22 September 2006
Design Council, London

Please fill out the online form to register your interest in the event.

London Design Festival from September 15th to 30th 2006

About, With and For - Chicago, October 6-7th, 2006
Advancing the practice of user-centered design research

Sarasota International Design Summit 2006 - Oct 9-11, 2006

Full list of international design events here.

Using design to improve the way things look and work may be an old fashioned notion but it served industry well for the whole of the last century and it remains one of the things that designers do best.

In this century, however, more is being asked of design. And faced with new threats, designers are happily obliging. It turns out that design thinking is well suited to solving all sorts of business problems. Organizations looking for a steadier advantage than the usual tit-for-tat style of competing have turned, amongst other things, to design.

The question has been whether products themselves could open up new markets, to actually create new opportunities instead of being created to fill opportunities. In order to do that, this type of organization has had to start to figure out how to think ahead of the field instead of reacting to the moves of competitors. It's probably true that design's main advantage over other types of business consulting is it's ability to understand people's needs and meet them in practical and desirable ways. To do this, designers use ethnographic research to observe real people in real situations. As humans, our actions betray needs that are simply too obvious to mention. Very often the way customers behave points out unexplored day-to-day problem areas. This is where an astute team could make life much richer for a customer. 

This results in the ability to spot opportunities for the business before competitors do.

That's not to say that design could supplant other types of business problem solving, just that design could be thought of as a permanent, legitimate business function. This has propelled design's day-to-day role from thinking about individual products to thinking about product systems.

By this description, solving business problems using design starts to look like a whole lot of wrenching change. That impression isn't diminished by the term "culture of innovation" which gets thrown around as a new aspirational goal. In reality though, innovation is not just for the guys in lab coats and creativity can be learnt. Businesses find that workers at the coal face are full of ideas of how to make better use of their time and effort as well as pleasing customers. Sometimes all that's required is a good design team to guide the process.

That process starts by linking the tactical hits that are possible through ordinary form and function design. These small successes together with customer understanding and a growing ability to solve problems creatively allow the organization to move faster with new ideas.

All of which makes for a distinct advantage. However this does not yet add up to leadership in an industry. For that, design needs to be a strategic tool.

Next: Leadership

The Power of Design is a series in 5 parts by guest contributor Tasos Calantzis looking at the different ways in which design can be used within a company, cutting away hyperbole in the typical design sales pitch and investigating the real benefits of design to customers,  the organization and its revenue. The 5 parts discuss incremental steps: no design, style, form & function, solving business problems and achieving leadership.

From Jeffery Pfeffer and Robert Sutton's new book, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense comes this concise encapsulation of design thinking,

Design thinking is one of enlightened trial and error wherein one observes the world, identifies the patterns of behaviour, generates ideas, gets feedback, repeats the process, and keeps on refining.

From this starting point then, lets look at each word in turn, from the point of view of putting it into practice.

Design is fundamentally a value system, a set of principles, that is then manifested in tangible form.

Conventionally, this has been known as setting the design criteria. However, rather than specification guidelines, as used in engineering, if one were to change metrics and numbers into values or emotional responses, one could, in fact, create a method for building and managing a brand.

For example, once you are able to identify your core value proposition, what sets you apart from the rest - it doesn't even have to be only your competition or the industry in which in you belong, but in totality - you can then use those characteristics to set your criteria.

Here is way that the persona or story, once identified, translates into the 'design criteria' or the specification document i.e. the PRD. However, when you take this one step further, into the perceptual or intangible, you can use the same qualities, identified by the persona or story, to articulate the essence of your brand.

Once a picture of this hypothetical brand is captured, to a degree, by this snapshot, every element that supports it, is held up and measured against one question only. Does this activity, action, message or product, work towards maintaining the integrity of the big picture brand personality? Or does it set up a cognitive dissonance in the customer's mind because it breaks away from the existing perceptual image of the company or brand?

This then becomes the only feedback necessary in guiding the process of building the brand, product design, marketing strategy, or even corporate planning. Are we being true to ourselves? Are we consistent with our brand promise? Are we keeping the faith?

And as you can see, this process of do, check, tweak, redo, maps on to the definition of design thinking given in bold above and also the basic user centered design process.

Design thinking is nothing more than the application of the user centred design process to all and any business activity, rather than just the creation of tangible products.

One of the recurring patterns of late is how mobile phones - not just the handset, but the system as a whole, have become drivers of innovation in emerging economies.

For those who have no fixed address, a phone in their pocket provides a connection to the rest of the world, and a means to be reached. The story of Jeevanlal Pitodia, the pavement dwelling vegetable seller without a fixed shop or stall triggered this thought. Neelakantan's observations only fueled them - whether it was the cab driver or the junk seller.

For all of them and more, the phone was more than just a device with which to place a call. It's an instant office, a receptionist who'll take messages, an inbox where orders can be placed, the equivalent of an email address or website, and most important, for all micro entreprenuers, a means for new clients to reach them.

Not just in India or China; this phenomena of the handphone - freed from the shackles of state sponsored infrastructure required for landlines in the majority of these developing nations - has demonstrated its effect in improving the micro economy and providing opportunities for the entreprenuerially minded in hitherto backward regions around the world.

Larry Keeley talks about post industrial platforms, philosophies such as self expression, political freedom, enlightenment and mastery - he said that these were the foundations on which successful businesses of the future would be built. One can see them all, in one form or the another, in the simple concept of one very small, but very powerful device.

If only designing successful new products was always as easy as making the new one work better than anything before it. Every product manager knows that it's not - but try telling that to your designers! Their training is in making things look and work better. What your designers would call incremental functional improvement is one part of creating successful design, but it's not enough to ensure success. That's why adding blades to razors has been such a game of diminishing returns.

Clearly there are good reasons to compete by making something that works better than any competitor. This is the beginning of innovation. But that still doesn't take us out of 5 blade razor territory. The improvement must be much bigger than that.  It's important to actually make something easier or more effective for the customer in a way that they can somehow measure.  And when they measure it, it must be dramatically different. As Doug Hall and his peers point out, a big reason why many products fail is the ordinary person's resistance to change. This means that a new design has to be an extraordinary improvement over previous designs before someone is persuaded to give it a try. The temptation to take a leading product and make the new one 10% better is a well-documented way to fail with new products.

The way that companies usually go about innovating is by studying other successful products (especially competing products) and trying to improve on them. This is both the strength and weakness of functional improvement. On the one hand, improved function can clearly give a new product an advantage, but because the new product is based on previous products, it's also easy to copy.

This means that there is seldom a long term advantage to functional improvement and success is often hit and miss. This focus only on single products instead of the deeper thinking that can produce a whole system of innovative ideas, hampers longer term success.

Like adding style to products, adding extra benefits by innovating is not normally costly compared to the potential for success that it offers. It can be quite an efficient way of using existing resources to improve sales. You don't have to be 3M, HP or Samsung to have innovation. It's just a way of thinking that can be learnt. Innovation is simply a clever idea that has been successfully commercialized. Any company can do it  by training its people to think like, well, designers. 

But developing people's creative abilities is still not an asset that can give a company a long term edge. It's a great start because it creates the raw material for the reinvention which every company must have to succeed, but to win in the long term a culture of innovation is needed.

Next: Solving Business Problems

The Power of Design is a series in 5 parts by guest contributorTasos Calantzis looking at the different ways in which design can be used within a company, cutting away hyperbole in the typical design sales pitch and investigating the real benefits of design to customers,  the organization and its revenue. The 5 parts discuss incremental steps: no design, style, form & function, solving business problems and achieving leadership.

Here is a quick summary of trends spotted in this year's Red Dot competion:

Competition participation and results

Asia - from product piracy to design award After Asian companies and designers - apart from Japan - have mostly been in the spotlight in recent years due to so-called product piracy, this region appears to be increasingly developing a design quality of its own.

Professor Dr. Peter Zec explains that "Entries by Asian companies in the design competition have once again increased clearly. Within the last two years, the number of submitted products has almost quadrupled. This shows that above all global Asian companies are increasingly recognizing that in the long run they cannot rely on low prices only. Instead, the quality, the brand development and product culture are becoming increasingly important to create loyal customers in western industrial nations."

The number of red dots going to Asian companies is rising: 98 products received a distinction in the red dot award: product design 2006, mostly in the product category "Media and home electronics" - whereas just two years ago it was only 33 products.

Zec: "This means that western competitors have to prepare for tough times and be even more innovative and creative."

Summary

The jurors were impressed with the overall very high quality standards of the submitted products, which can now be found in all industries.

Even in product categories that used to be neglected with regards to design such as Medicine and Life Science as well as in the trades design has become an important as well as essential competition factor.

In traditionally design-oriented industries such as the manufacturing of automobiles or household appliances the influence of design has increased.

In the field of media and home electronics, however, devices have become so complex that design is not living up to its full potential yet. In this field it is creativity, not technology, which currently sets the limits, according to the jurors. However, design experts expect a large breakthrough in the near future. Products such as the iPod Nano by Apple or a projector by LG indicate the future directions.

The most familiar image of design is as a creator of style. In fact despite the many other meaningful things that design can do, it could be argued that infusing products with designer style is the core competence of design. So we enter a discussion about beauty and the value of beauty.

The company that decides to use design to differentiate itself is betting that improving its style is a way of attracting customers. There's an interesting difference in approach to design between different cultures. The yardstick that businesses use to measure good design in the USA is usually improved sales. This is pragmatic and measurable. In Europe, however weight is given to abstract elements of design(the kind art students would talk about; proportion, line, color and so on) which determine whether a particular design has been well executed or not. Ordinary Europeans, and therefore businesspeople more frequently recognize these elements intuitively and are able to form an opinion on a design. This is perhaps why European products have certain characteristic styles that are easy to identify.  

It has been said that other countries like Japan blend the two approaches. This understanding of how design style is perceived is important when deciding when design can be exported across borders successfully.

In product design, improved style means making products look stylish and cool. However there are several layers to this 'coolness' as Diego Rodriguez so eloquently explains. To artists, designers and all aesthetes, creating beauty is in itself valuable. Businesses in America sometimes need to be convinced of that, usually when customers with the same sensibilities react to the beauty by buying it.

In the world of designers, few are able to marry the high art of original, iconic style with the depth of  technical and commercial abilities needed to succeed with complex consumer products. As successful as Michael Graves has been working together with Target designing coat hooks and wall clocks, his range of consumer electronics was a failure. Even Yves Behar of Fuseproject, who has an apparently technically competent portfolio, commented in a revealing interview that the $100 laptop project is much more difficult for his studio than their regular work designing slick lifestyle products.

There is a downside to designer style. If style is the only reason for using design, the gain turns out to be short term. Style is easy to copy (just ask Alessi)and the style focus tends to be on one product at a time because the company is looking for quick easy successes by applying style. Since the reward is short lived, it's prudent to allocate a minimum of resources to developing style as a differentiating factor. Hence the company employing design only for it's style potential is always either playing catch up or jumping ahead only to fall quickly behind again.

In this situation, similar to the company which doesn't yet use design for style, cost is the major weapon. Improved style cannot sufficiently differentiate products and services without highly competitive costs to attract customers. Attractive or distinctive style does offer a business a significant advantage over competitors whose style is less so. It places the company near the head of the pack and can sometimes stop commoditization and purely cost-driven competition.

Fortunately, style is closely followed in the minds of businesspeople by another attribute of design which adds benefits which make it harder for competitors to follow.

Next: Improving Function

The Power of Design is a series in 5 parts by guest contributorTasos Calantzis looking at the different ways in which design can be used within a company, cutting away hyperbole in the typical design sales pitch and investigating the real benefits of design to customers,  the organization and its revenue. The 5 parts discuss incremental steps: no design, style, form & function, solving business problems and achieving leadership.

Manufacturers and designers of products that contain electronic parts are aware of the new environmental directives being laid down in Europe referred to as WEEE and RoHS.

The RoHS legislation only covers countries in the European Union. So why should companies in the United States care? The fact is, the regulations only apply to Europe, but countries throughout the world that sell or distribute products in Europe, or even supply components to companies that sell or distribute products in Europe, need to be aware of and compliant with RoHS.

Here is a quick FAQ on what these regulations entail and what it means for global consumer durable products:

What is RoHS?

The European Union (EU) Directive on the Restriction of certain Hazardous Substances. This bans the use of certain substances in electrical and electronic equipment products placed on the European market after July 2006.

Download RoHS PDF.

The following product categories are impacted under the RoHS Directive:

1. Large household appliances: refrigerators, washers, stoves, air conditioners
2. Small household appliances: vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, coffee makers, irons
3. Computing & communications equipment: computers, printers, copiers, phones
4. Consumer electronics: TVs, DVD players, stereos, video cameras
5. Lighting: lamps, lighting fixtures, light bulbs
6. Power tools: drills, saws, nail guns, sprayers, lathes, trimmers, blowers
7. Toys and sports equipment: videogames, electric trains, treadmills
8. Automatic dispensers: vending machines, ATM machines

The following products are currently exempted from RoHS compliance:

1. Large stationary industrial tools
2. Control and monitoring equipment
3. National security use and military equipment
4. Medical devices
5. Some light bulbs and some batteries
6. Spare parts for electronic equipment in the market before July 1, 2006.

What is WEEE?

Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment. Deals with the best available treatment, recovery & recycling of electrical and electronic equipment. Legislation becomes effective Aug 13, 2005. All EEE put on the market as from that date have to be WEEE marked (EN50419) and have to be collected after the products end of life.

Download WEEE Directive PDF here.

Which products are affected under the WEEE directive?

Large domestic devices (refrigerator, washing machine, microwave,...)
Small domestic devices (vacuum cleaner, iron, hair dryer,...)
IT & remote communication device (mainfraime, PC,... )
Consumer devices (radio, TV, video, audio, ...)
Illumination (fluorescent, discharge lamp,...)
Power Tool (drill, lathe, polishing tool, lawnmower, ...)
Toys (train/car racing set, game devices,...)
Medical devices (radiation therapy device, electrocardiogram,...)
Measure & controller (scale, measuring machine,...)
Vending machines (various)

A detailed FAQ with the list of banned materials and the products covered by these directives is available here. [courtesy Brady Europe]

Which other countries are applying the EU's directives?

The RoHS laws affect only the EU. But a number of non-EU countries have adopted the idea and put in place similar laws or voluntary regulations to the same effect. Following is an overview of the expected consequences.

China
China has recently published a "China RoHS". An official translation is still pending.

Japan
There are no RoHS equivalent laws in Japan, however the industry is following a voluntary program that aims to remove lead from the production process by the end of 2005.

USA
The USA has no federal laws to reduce the use of lead. Though California has issued the "California RoHS" law that prohibits selling electronic products containing lead in California after January 1st 2007.

Korea
South Korea has recently announced a similar law which is commonly refered to as KoreaRoHS.

Taiwan
Expected to create a similar regulation by 2008.

Australia
Regulation in place or pending.

Other countries
As of now no other countries have similar laws. Though it is to be expected that more countries will follow the RoHS initiative either by issuing laws or by the industry voluntarily following the RoHS.

Much of the discussion about the role of design in companies is clouded by jargon and designer up selling. Most designers will tell you with a straight face that design is the most important factor for any business, which is obviously just not true. There's a more realistic battle for designers selling their services to corporations. That is to get design equal billing alongside the traditional C-level functions.

Design evangelists may be aghast at such a statement but it is possible that design is just not a real requirement for some companies. For example, a company may simply have much more pressing operational problems than design. For design to be effective, quality and cost must be under control, engineering, inventory and supply chain must be efficient and marketing and sales must be in working order. Design may also be considered fundamental to a company's functioning but it may simply not be the priority yet.

A company could be functioning effectively but be working in a utterly commoditized area. Should the manufacturer of the yellow triangles that cleaning staff around the world use to warn of slippery floors be looking for a design edge? There's no doubt that the most moribund industry (coffins anyone?) can be attacked with design. Indeed these are often the juiciest targets for an ambitious company daring to redefine an industry. The question is whether this is a sure-fire requirement for every dull, worthy market.

On the far end of the spectrum, highly sophisticated companies working in high technology areas could also see design as a less than strategic tool. Design thinker Steve Portigal noted the irony of Flextronics, the $18bn global ODM, being voted one of the Wired 40 based on it's design ambitions. In fact Flextronics caused a little seismic event amongst designers a few years ago when then CEO, Michael Marks announced to the world that design had become a commodity and was no longer a strategic advantage. This was shortly after the acquisition of Frog, the celebrated boutique shop and was followed by the shedding of Frog together with some other non-core businesses.  Only time will tell how prophetic Mark's words turn out to be.

In the case of defensible intellectual property devoid of design, the candidates are rare who can build a company on that basis as opposed to a single product. Most end up like Polaroid. There are also cases where some other advantage; massive scale, superior reach, hyper vertical integration and so on, confers an advantage that design simply can't match. However,  these advantages boil down to cost.

And cost is where the discussion winds up. For without design the reliable tools of quality and efficiency strive to lower the price without any hope of raising it sustainably. So there may be exceptions but for most companies another tool is required; one that can break the zero-sum game of cost-driven competition.

Next: Improving Style

The Power of Design by guest contributor Tasos Calantzis is a series in 5 parts looking at the different ways in which design can be used within a company, cutting away hyperbole in the typical design sales pitch and investigating the real benefits of design to customers,  the organization and its revenue. The 5 parts discuss incremental steps: no design, style, form & function, solving business problems and achieving leadership.

Thomas Friedman articulates this fascinating list of the seven categories of skills he's identified that the global workplace will need as it evolves and changes. From the exclusive interview at YaleGlobal,

One is great collaborators. When so many more things are going to be made in global supply chains, the ability to be a great collaborator, to be able to work cross-culturally and multinationally,there's going to be a huge number of jobs around managing and coordinating these global supply chains.

Second are great leveragers, people who can leverage technology, so one person can do the job of twenty. Rather than competing with India or China, where twenty people might do the job of one, you make up for the labor cost by leveraging technology.

Third are great explainers. Boy, there's going to be a whole industry in explaining. Because there's enormous complexity out there, so whether you're a teacher, a manager, a journalist, the ability to explain this complexity is going be in huge demand.

Fourth, I would call great localizers. Great localizers are people who can localize the  global. What does that mean? They can take the power of this global platform and turn it into a local business. Now that's everything from the eBay entrepreneur, [...] to the garage owner in New Haven, who goes online one day and says to his partner, "Hey Bill, did you see this? We can get out hubcaps for half-price from Romania at half the cost that it would take us to get them from Rochester." So they're leveraging the global platform, by localizing the global.        

Fifth, I'd say, are gonna be people who are great adapters. People who can stay one step ahead of the forces of digitization and automation. And that's going to apply to a lot of people in a lot of industries.       

Sixth would be what I would call people who are passionate personalizers. If you can bring real passion and a personal touch to any vanilla task, there's going to be a job for you in the flat world.       

Seventh I would call anything green. Nayan, anything green, and there is a job for you in the twenty-first century. Because green technology is going to be the industry of the 21st century.

In short, excellence in

• Collaboration across cultures, globally.
• Leveraging both knowledge and relationships.
• Communication (explaining complex concepts with clarity)
• Localization (understanding users?  )
• Adaptation (design thinking? tweaking of prototypes based on user feedback?)
• Passionate Personalization (Empathy?)
• Sustainability (solutions bubbling upwards?)

Global marketing is becoming more and more important along the years with the increasing trend in internationalization. Having too many choices, marketers face the challenge of determining which international markets to enter and the appropriate marketing strategies for the countries they are planning to penetrate. Here is a quick summary of information from around the web.

BRIC is a term used to refer to the combination of Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

General consensus is that the term was first prominently used in the thesis of the Goldman Sachs investment bank in 2003 that the economies of the BRICs are rapidly developing and by the year 2050 will eclipse most of the current richest countries of the world. In addition, the term "BRIC" can also be used to refer to a purported trade and cooperation agreement between these countries that is said to have been signed in 2002. Finally, "BRIC" has since become a more generic marketing term to refer to these four countries, or even to newly industrialized countries in general.

Mercosur or Mercosul (Spanish: Mercado Común del Sur, Portuguese: Mercado Comum do Sul, English: Southern Common Market) is a customs union between Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela, founded in 1991 by the Treaty of Asunción, which was later amended and updated by the 1994 Treaty of Ouro Preto. Its purpose is to promote free trade and the fluid movement of goods, peoples, and currency. Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru have associate member status.

ASEAN The Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN was established on 8 August 1967 in Bangkok by the five original Member Countries, namely, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.  Today it includes Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia. The ASEAN region has a population of about 500 million, a total area of 4.5 million square kilometers, a combined gross domestic product of US$737 billion, and a total trade of US$ 720 billion.

Emerging markets ranked by Market Size

The Economist ranked the market potential of 24 countries identified as "Emerging Markets". The Emerging Economies comprise more than half of the world's population, account for a large share of world output and have very high growth rates which means enormous market potential. They can be distinguished by the recent progress they have made in economic liberalization. Promising opportunities for trade is opening as their need for capital equipment, machinery, power transmission equipment, transportation equipment and high-technology products is substantial and is increasing rapidly.

South Africa's vibrant design industry is a surprise when you first discover it. Typical impressions of the Dark Continent don't usually include one of the world's best advertising and communication design industries, but local studios regularly make off with Clios and Cannes Lions.

Other creative industries do equally well; Time magazine called South Africa the number one destination for fashion design in 2003. A government initiative to create greater value from South Africa's gold, platinum and diamond mines is stimulating the jewelry design industry. A booming retail sector combined with record property prices and huge growth in construction is driving interior design and architecture.

Cape Town's International Design Indaba reflects the explosion in South Africa's creative industries with this annual 3-day conference joining the A-list of global design gatherings. Speakers now comprise the most important names in design from around the world, as noted in the May 2006 issue of ID magazine.

One gets the feeling that the design world may be warming to a dose of earthy, rich, African flavor. From London to Dubai to Singapore, South African designers are being noticed. This is a testament to the world-class education and multi-cultural sensitivity of local designers.

Until now, the euphoria hasn't extended to South African product design. South Africa's manufacturing industry struggles to absorb the 15-odd graduates each year and the local opportunities for product designers are mostly in supporting the media and branding industry with 3D skills.

However things could be changing for South African product designers. Recently some South African product design studios have started to grab international attention. Csape Town-based studio XYZ had its condom applicator displayed as part of MOMA's SAFE: Design Takes On Risk exhibition in 2005/6. Durban's Egg Design was rated by GDR in London as one of the Top 10 Young Design Companies' to watch in 2001 and exhibited successfully at 100% Design.

When Pretoria-based Readymade won a Red Dot Award and a Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Award last year for product design, they were surprised to find out that they were the first African company ever to do so. From this unlikely position Readymade has been effective in designing for global brands that need unique ideas.

Could this be is the beginning of South African product designers emulating their world-beating peers in the other creative industries? Maybe that's South Africa's next surprise.

About the author: Tasos Calantzis is a South African product designer and founder of Readymade.

The IDSA/BusinessWeek 2006 Industrial Design Excellence (IDEA) awards have just been announced. Chris Conley, who chaired the Jury this year, describes this year's jury, his reasons for selecting them and the awards selection process, here's a snippet,

With the increasing profile of design in business and the broadening of design's role in innovation, I used the opportunity to shape a jury unlike those of previous years. I invited a broad range of professionals, targeting those I knew cared deeply about design and were involved routinely in creating new, successful products and services. But I wanted these jurors to come from marketing, business development, and senior business leadership positions in addition to industrial design.

Corporate design teams took the lead this year, with Japanese giant, Matsushita raking in 6 awards. BusinessWeek interviews Toyoyuki Uematsu, head of the Panasonic Design Company, as the corporation's design division is known. In the 6 years since Matsushita's CEO made design a priority and integrated the disparate design divisions under Uematsu, the company's products have undergone a visual change, creating a coherent brand strategy, and coinciding with net earning bounding to 15-year highs for the once ailing company.

Best Product Design 2006 was awarded to Decathlon, a French manufacturer of sports and outdoor equipment.

Among design consultancies, Ziba Design of Portland, Oregon, took the lead with 3 golds and a bronze, totalling 4 awards altogether. Note that of Panasonic's 6, only one was a gold. Ziba's work with Lenovo stands out in all aspects of what good design should be - indepth research, unerring insights and superlative form giving. Yes, DD is proud of Ziba, which means 'beautiful' in Farsi.

An insightful comment on culture specific design, such as Lenovo's shown above, came from Don Norman, guru of good design,

Juror Don Norman (author of Emotional Design and The Design of Everyday Things) said: "At first the judges said 'yuck' to the design but then changed their minds when the research showed the Chinese didn't want our sleek U.S. design but their own from their own culture."

The awards tables for corporate teams seems to demonstrate the companies who have committed themselves to good design - Samsung, Philips, Lenovo and Panasonic are already global brands. Is Decathlon on its way?

Of the three largest design consultancies by size, only DesignContinuum (250+ employees) makes a showing. Where are traditional winners IDEO this year? Innovating, I'm sure. In the meantime, DD says Yay! to newdealdesign, Stuart Karten Design, One and Co, BresslerGroup and Lunar Design.

Students from Art Center College of Design and the Pratt Institute have put their schools on the map, here are the Student Design winners.

DD's favorite was the Pluma, a Portuguese entry, by design firm Brandia Central which won the gold in packaging. Having used LPG gas extensively for home cooking, this gas cylinder is half the weight of the usual metal cans - perfect for maneuvring in small kitchens.

Finally, the IDSA Gallery has the exhaustive listings and descriptions of the 108 medal winners this year. Or browse all 108 in this slideshow.

LG Electronics has just won Red Dot's prestigious Design Team of the Year award with a corporate strategy of raising their image globally through the use of product design. From their design philosophy page:

Step One: The core management philosophy is the first and foremost element of their corporate strategy of embedding design as a means of raising their global brand image. In their words, "The message, which a corporate pursues such as spirits, visions, culture etc. including philosophy, should be effectively conveyed to customers for uplifting the corporate image.. Hence the management philosophy should be considered at the beginning."

Step Two: This is their formula for product identity. In their words, "PI(Product Identity) means to embody and to sustain the brand image through product design. CIPD, the process to make products' identity & uniqueness gradually for customers' recognition of brand and its value."

Step Three: How they see product identity's role in raising the overall corporate image of the company. In their words, "As an essential factor in connection between customers and company, product conveys of company to its customers. CIPD, Corporate Identity through Product Design, aims at propagation of sustaining LG's identity as well as its establishment through design activities, which will help us to gain the trust from customers."

Finally their global design organizational structure:

The essential concept for this terracotta home composting unit called The Daily Dump is that is has been concieved as an open source design project. One where you can choose to download the design drawings and arrange to have the product made by your local potter (at least in India). Thus, believes the designer, Poonam Bir Kasturi, the IP is available for all to use, benefiting the individual potters, the environment and the households who begin to hygenically process their compostable waste. The Daily Dump offers a regular maintenance service for a small fee in Bangalore.

A detailed case study of the local, social and larger environmental impact will be available soon.

Electrolux is a global home appliance manufacturer who designs and develops products that are specifically created for particular regions or countries. They're taking the lead in connecting with their customers in a very special way.

For example, in Australia, they have just launched a luxury barbecue designed by fourth generation architect, Jeppe Utzon. His grandfather Jorn Utzon designed the legendary Sydney Opera House. To Electrolux, Utzon's design antecedants were impeccable for the Australian market, plus he was as Scandinavian as the company. Though Jeppe had never designed a product before or even barbecued (Copenhagen is rarely warm enough for outdoor cooking), Electrolux's Asia Pacific design head, Lars Erikson said in today's Australian Age,

"He was here and we had a vision and we talked about taking an Aussie product and injecting it with good Scandinavian design," Erikson says. "As a Scandinavian company, we don't want our products to look Asian or American, we want them to look Scandinavian."

Yet the 'barbie' is an integral part of Aussie culture and the final design, a sleek minimalist piece caused a design sensation. It's marketed as the first 'design inspired' BBQ, retailing at $8900. Here is a PDF of their design vision written by Lars Erikson.

Similarly, for India, Electrolux designed and developed an unusual washing machine, the 'Washy Talky' which instructs the user in three languages - English, Hindi or Tamil. Their rationale for this product demonstrates a deep understanding of how domestic chores are traditionally done in India, and by whom. From their site,

"In the past, middle-class families would have servants to do their laundry for them," explains Marija Borenius, corporate press officer for Electrolux. "Now they are doing it themselves, but they still feel anxious about it, since they don't have a lot of experience with how domestic appliances work."

Washy Talky ends that anxiety by guiding users through the washing process step by step with phrases like, "Add the detergent, close the lid and relax." If the user accidentally leaves the lid open, she will say, "Please close the lid."

Nidhi Malik, assistant manager marketing for Electrolux Kelvinator India, admits that one could always just refer to an owner's manual, but points out that women often prefer not to have to read manuals. "Also, in affluent homes where a maid is washing the clothes," she notes, "a machine that can guide her is a real blessing. Servants relate to Washy Talky as if it were an intelligent maid."

Electolux also runs an international student design competition, the Electrolux Design Lab. Last year's winner, a Singaporean student team developed an ionic clothing cleaning system.

Their combined activities seem like an example of using design to connect with their local markets around the world in relevant ways without losing their core brand identity and vision.

Hewlett-Packard is making a name for itself as a leader in green design. From their website,

Design-for-Environment (DfE) is an engineering perspective in which the environmentally related characteristics of a product, process or facility are optimized. Together, HP's product stewards and product designers identify, prioritize and recommend environmental improvements through a company-wide DfE program. HP's DfE guidelines derive from evolving customer expectations and regulatory requirements, but they are also influenced by the personal commitment of its employees.

The Design for Environment program has three priorities:

* Energy efficiency - reduce the energy needed to manufacture and use our products
* Materials innovation - reduce the amount of materials used in our products and develop materials that have less environmental impact and more value at end-of-life
* Design for recyclability - design equipment that is easier to upgrade and/or recycle

HP's DfE guidelines recommend that its product designers consider the following:

* Place environmental stewards on every design team to identify design changes that may reduce environmental impact throughout the product's life cycle.
* Eliminate the use of polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame-retardants where applicable.
* Reduce the number and types of materials used, and standardize on the types of plastic resins used.
* Use molded-in colors and finishes instead of paint, coatings or plating whenever possible.
* Help customers use resources responsibly by minimizing the energy consumption of HP's printing, imaging and computing products.
* Increase the use of pre-and post-consumer recycled materials in product packaging.
* Minimize customer waste burdens by using fewer product or packaging materials overall.
* Design for disassembly and recyclability by implementing solutions such as the ISO 11469 plastics labeling standard, minimizing the number of fasteners and the number of tools necessary for disassembly.

What social developments will create new growth opportunities and/or challenges for global businesses in the future?

"In creating the Top 20, we wanted to get beyond the trend lists that are really just about the U.S. or rich countries, and think about consumers everywhere," Tom Conger, founder of Social Technologies commented. "While a trend may be more mature in one part of the world than another, many of these trends are happening in the poorest nations, as well as the richest."

The 20 trends identified, in no particular order, are:

* Cultural Flows The spread of ideas, media, products, brands and lifestyles, collectively referred to as cultural flow, to new places is increasing as the number of cultural poles rises and the world becomes more interconnected. Cultural flows are significant because they expose consumers in both developed and developing markets to new ideas, products, and ways of thinking.

* Time Pressure People around the world are feeling more pressured for time in their lives. Many consumers feel they have less time to manage mounting levels of activity, information, and choice, and the resulting accelerated pace of life. While time pressure and its effects are felt most intensely in developed countries, change in occurring most rapidly in emerging markets.

* Cultural Multipolarity The ability to produce and disseminate culture in its modern forms is rising in more places around the world. New centers of cultural power are ascending, driving the emergence of cultural multipolarity.

* Asia Rising The countries of Asia are strengthening their economic and cultural clout and boosting their prominence in the world. This is clear whether measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rates, increasing scientific and technological capabilities, the growing variety of goods and services now available to Asian consumers, or simply the feeling of buzzing energy on a busy street in Bangalore, Shanghai, Bangkok.

* Media Spread More people have access to mass media than ever before. Media devices including radios, televisions, computers and mobile phones are becoming more affordable, while new broadcast media, like satellite and the Internet, are increasing choices and accessibility.

* Social Freedom The range of personal, political and economic options open to individuals is growing around the world. Propelled by political change, economic growth, and information flows, social freedom is expanding the range of choices available to consumers and allowing individualism to spread.

* Transparency No, this isn't Sarbanes Oxley, or at least not entirely. The increasing ability to gather, store, and share information is making it easier to know about people, products, companies, and governments, propelling the world towards transparency. Driving factors include information technology, the spread of media, social freedom, and rising incomes and education levels.

* Monetization Consumers are increasingly substituting purchased products, devices, and services for labor and time. As more people equate time with money, many are choosing monetized goods and services - from packaged flour to washing machines to dog-walking services - that offer convenience and time savings.

* Rising Mobility People are upgrading their mobility, enabling them to move farther and faster than before. Rising mobility in emerging markets will be transformational, impacting lifestyles, and opening up new areas of demand for mobility-related goods and services.

* Migration Over the next few decades, international and internal migration will continue at high levels, altering both the lives of people moving and the societies and regions receiving them. This migration will affect language, social values, food, entertainment, and many other aspects of daily life.

* Networked World Networked information devices are spreading, enabling new connections between people, organizations, and objects and allowing more information to travel faster. Already, 15 percent of the 6.4 billion people on the planet have some form of direct Internet access, and the number with access to fixed and mobile phone networks is higher still, at over 2 billion. The networked world trend is having profound impacts, which are likely to accelerate.

* Consumerism Thanks to globalization and rising incomes, consumerism is becoming an option for more than ever before. As this happens, lifestyles that rely on consumer goods - and center on the acquisition of these goods - continue to spread around the world.

* Changing Families The basic size and structure of families are changing all over the world. Fertility rates are falling, resulting in fewer births and smaller families. Smaller families are driving the aging of the world population, and changing the structure of many societies in emerging and developing markets.

* Women's Power Women around the globe continue to gain social, political, and economic power. They are exercising greater control over their lives and pursuing new options, propelled by better education and changing values and social attitiudes.

* Electrification Access to electricity is growing around the world, and a number of developing nations are pushing forward aggressively with electrification programs. Electricity changes lives - how people cook and do daily chores, how they work, their access to entertainment and information, and the general pace of life.

* Aging The global population is not only aging, but will age faster in coming decades than in the past. By 2050, the median age is projected to rise by 10 years, to 37 and there will be nearly 2 billion people aged 60 and over.

* Ethical Consumption Ethical consumption integrates personal values into purchasing choices. Rather than focusing only on standard consumer variables such as price, quality, and convenience, buyers consider ethical, religious, political, and other beliefs in their decisions.

* Population Growth Population growth continues to be one of the world's most significant trends. Every decade adds hundreds of millions of people to the global population, with the vast majority in medium- and lower-income countries.

* Growing Middle-Class Over the last century the emergence of large middle-income groups within more developed societies has gone hand-in-hand with the creation of modern consumerism. Now a new wave of middle-class growth is unfolding in emerging markets.

* Urbanization The number of people living in urban areas has risen sharply in recent decades, from roughly 1 billion in 1960, to 3 billion now. People's lives change when they move from rural areas to cities. They can do different work, increase their income, and encounter new social rules, ideas and lifestyles. The fastest urban growth will occur in emerging and developing markets, driving the creation of vast numbers of new customers.

Here is a round up of some upcoming events, workshops and conferences to note on your calender:

May 22-24, 2006, Boston MA

The 4th Annual Front End of Innovation conference co-sponsored by the PDMA and the Institute for International Research. The keynote speaker line-up includes Clayton Christensen, Professor and Author of "The Innovator's Dilemma" and "The Innovator's Solution"; Terry Jones, Founder and Former CEO of Travelocity; Tom Kelley, Author of "The Art of Innovation: Lessons Learned from IDEO" and "Ten Faces of Innovation"; Claudia Kotchka, Vice President of Design Innovation and Strategy at Procter & Gamble; Renee Mauborgne, Professor and Author of "Blue Ocean Strategy"; and many more. Peter A. Koen, Associate Professor in the Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management, Stevens Institute of Technology, will chair.

May 26-28, 2006, Pacific Grove, CA

The Overlap is an un-conference for anyone who wants to learn more about merging business practices with design-centric problem solving and customer understanding. Speakers include Clement Mok, Lorraine Justice, Brad Nemer, Tom Mulhern, Richard Farson, Erin Liman, Chris Conley and Kristian Simsarian. Space is very limited and registration is by invitation only, please contact Victor Lombardi for more information. Organizers include Steve Portigal, Jess McMullin, Dirk Knemeyer, John Zapolski and your editor.

June 6th, 2006, San Francisco, CA

Products exist in a vast, often-messy environment of services, brands, cultures and competitors. But successful companies are realizing that deliberately and strategically designing products for the context in which they live can result in more imaginative, better integrated, and ultimately more humane offerings. From MP3 players and gaming consoles to kitchen appliances and office furniture, this panel discussion will focus on how to incorporate holistic thinking into product development, creating objects that are not only sensitive to their surroundings, but often define them. Moderator: Jessie Scanlon, BusinessWeek; Panelists: Diego Rodriguez, IDEO & Metacool; Steve Portigal, Portigal Consulting; Peter Rojas, Engadget; Robyn Waters, RW Trend

Register now!

Creativity Courses in Europe: Summer 06

The Creativity Workshop helps people believe in and develop their imagination through using a unique series of exercises in memoir, creative writing, visual arts, sense perception, brainstorming, and storytelling.

Crete: June 19 - 28
Provence: June 29 - July 8
Florence: July 9 - 18
Barcelona: July 19 - 28
Prague: July 28 - August 6
Dublin: August 6 - 15
Bruges: August 15 - 24

In the news today,

Venture capitalist John Doerr made his name and fortune with early investments in Netscape Communications, Amazon.com , Google and other pioneering tech firms that went from scrappy start-ups to household names.

Now, he and his firm, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, are placing big bets on an emerging sector he calls "green technology," one he believes could become as lucrative as information technology and biotechnology.

Menlo Park-based Kleiner Perkins plans to set aside $100 million of its latest $600 million fund for technologies that help provide cleaner energy, transportation, air and water.

"This field of greentech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century," Doerr said. "There's never been a better time than now to start or accelerate a greentech venture."

As one of Silicon Valley's most respected investors, Doerr's decision to champion green technology as the next big thing is generating buzz in the venture capital community.
[...]
VCs point to the global forces driving greentech investment: the rising cost of fuel, the economic expansion of China, India and other Asian nations; and growing worries over global warming.

"In my opinion, it's one of the most pressing global challenges we face," Doerr said. "It's causing the nations of the world to put an even higher priority than we have now on innovation."

How can you begin to incorporate 'green' principles in your product development process? Start with an introduction to Green Product Design and it's benefits to your entire firm then steps to implement it.

'Green technologies' are creating a buzz as the next big thing for the investment community, and 'green products' will soon be in the market. Here's an introduction to Green Product Design:

Green product design, also known as design for environment (DfE), design for eco-efficiency or sustainable product design, involves proactively addressing environmental considerations in the earliest stages of the product development process in order to minimize negative environmental impacts throughout the product's life cycle.

Green product design can encompass material selection, resource use, production requirements and planning for the final disposition (recycling, reuse, or disposal) of a product. It is not a stand-alone methodology but one that must be integrated with a company's existing product design so that environmental parameters can be balanced with traditional product attributes such as quality, cost, and functionality.

Green products can be made with fewer materials and can be designed to be more easily upgraded, disassembled, recycled, and reused than their conventional counterparts.

Implementing green product design can provide numerous benefits to a company. Focusing on resource efficiencies can reduce costs and often shorten production time. Because designing green products sometimes requires bringing diverse functional groups to the design table, green product design efforts can also drive product and process innovation.

Companies are increasingly regarding green product design as a comprehensive way to address pollution laws, resource use concerns, and restrictions on hazardous or toxic materials. Green product design can also provide an important tool in helping companies meet Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) mandates, such as requirements by the European Union that electronics manufacturers take back and recycle end-of-life products.

Next: A summary of how to implement a green product design and development process at your company.

Courtesy BSR.

Maytag intends to sell Hoover. Apparently, Hoover's market share had fallen dramatically in the last quarter of 2005 and this first mover - the inventor of the vacuum cleaner - has thrown up its hands and given up the fight against Dyson - the upstart entrant in the playing field. This articlefrom the Times Online has some amazing figures for the market share beating taken by Hoover in the 4 years since Dyson entered the US market. I've converted their table of figures into a chart that better demonstrates the plunge,

Consistently across all the news and analysis this weekend is the singular message that this drop in Hoover's market share in just four years, after decades of market leadership, is entirely due to the lack of any consistent strategy of innovation and design. On the other hand, Dyson's iconic status as an industrial design leader, engineering innovator and persistent inventor (over 5000 prototypes alone for the first model James Dyson launched) does not require introduction. Add to this, their award winning new market entry strategy and you have all the ingredients of a winner.

What is amazing is that some ways this entire episode breaks all the rules of conventional business wisdom - vacuum cleaners are commodities in today's market, while every other player in the market competed on price, Dyson walked in not only with an entirely new technology but also pegged his unusual looking (then) product at a price point over 200% higher than the industry average. He was the late entrant in a very mature market with very established players with very well known brands - after all 'hoover' has become a generic term for cleaning up in UK english. Here are the seeds of a case study of disruptive innovation and the strategic use of good design.

This little cellphone by Motorola won the second tender by the GSM Association for their "Emerging Markets handset programme" announced last week.

Designed to retail at $30, the GSM claims that they have already received orders for 12 million phones. Many wonder where the profits may lie when the cost of production is squeezed to the barest minimum in order to develop a product affordable by those in developing markets, since developing a cutting edge phone for the US, European and Japanese market offers higher margins.

Developing products for those at the base of the pyramid can be profitable, in more than just one sense. CK Prahalad, eminent strategy guru, whose HBR Article "The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid" [free reg. required] first articulated the opportunities that lay in volume markets, rather than the margin markets of the developed world.

These emerging markets provide alternate options for companies facing stagnant home markets and looking to expand beyond their traditional areas. And in the case of affordable mobile communication, offer opportunities for sustainable development that traditional aid cannot always provide. The real challenge would be the development of user interfaces that do away with the need for text based menus and screens - thus obviating both the language problem as well as the literacy problem. Then a truly global system of communication would be possible.

"China's market is not just big, it is also increasingly crowded. For foreign companies, making money here demands more effort," says Alan Horton, an analyst at US-based Summit Consulting Co.

From China Business Weekly comes this insightful look at the current state of the market and what multinationals must overcome in order to succeed in China. Statistics quoted are sobering - from 3 or 4 brands of shampoo in the 1980's, there are now over 3000. Over the same period, the number of toothpaste brands rose from 100 to almost 800. Fruit juice makers were unknown two decades ago, now there are more than 160. More than 100 car models were launched in 2004, double from only two years before.

So how do multinationals cope? Going Chinese seems to be the direction chosen by most, either by cutting costs or by developing more locally popular products.

"You can't survive in China without becoming a Chinese company. That includes local technology development, product design, procurement, manufacturing and sales," says Yun Jong-Yong, chief executive of Samsung Electronics

And, adds Gary Coleman, global managing director of Manufacturing Industry Practice with Deloitte,

"Emerging markets around the world offer significant growth potential, but the most successful and profitable companies will be those that really understand their customers and take a different approach,"

The two most important things for competing successfully in a new market are
a) understanding local customers and then
b) designing products that address their needs and values.

Contextual research provides one such means to effectively understand a market - also known as ethnographic research or user observation - insights derived from the results provide direction and guides for new product development. Firms like SonicRim conduct large scale contextual research programs in countries around the world for their clients, using ethnographic techniques such as observing users in their natural environment or interacting with products to generate the insights that lead to the development of new products and services. Based in the Bay Area, Cheskin is another such firm that leverages their expertise in market research to uncover opportunities for innovation in service and product offerings. Others deliver new product definition documents based on research results along with a cohesive business strategy to support the successful new market entry. Alternative strategies include working with specialists like Portigal Consulting, who leverages his extensive network of professionals around the world.

Research has increasingly become a vital first step in the design process, and as global markets rapidly become more competitive, it is one that cannot be overlooked.

The WRAP (the Waste & Resources Action Programme) Waste Minimisation Innovation Fund - an 8 million pound programme encouraging innovative packaging initiatives that reduce household waste - is now accepting project proposals from global brands, major retailers and leading packaging companies.

From the website,

Applications are open to any organisation with an innovative idea which they believe will have a significant impact on minimising packaging or food waste from the home. The only requirement is that the project should involve a retailer or major brand, to maximise the chances that any successful innovations are widely adopted.

Applications are open until the closing dates of 31st March for expressions of interest on Food Waste projects, and 20th April for Packaging Innovation tenders.

WRAP's Innovation Fund Manager, Mike Robey, said:

We are keen to encourage applications from project teams which could include manufacturers, packaging suppliers, designers, as well as brands and retailers. All proposals must demonstrate a potential major impact on minimising household waste.

So far, our independent assessment panel has approved funding for a range of activities, from consumer research to R&D and production trials, technical feasibility studies and pilots, and we are happy to consider a wide range of ideas.

In this round of funding, WRAP is asking organisations to apply under one of two criteria - proposals to reduce packaging waste in the home; and proposals that aim to significantly reduce domestic food waste.

A notable recent achievement was by food manufacturer HJ Heinz who carried out successful trials of a new "easy open" can that uses less steel than any other can in its class in collaboration with packaging manufacturers Impress Group BV with 250,000 pounds in funding from WRAP's Waste Minimisation Innovation Fund. Said Gerald Sturdy, technical director at Impress BV,

"Lightweighting food cans is not as straightforward as it might first seem. Our 60 strong innovation team had to overcome a number of technical challenges to ensure that the integrity of the can - its look and feel, strength and behaviour - remained unchanged, whilst developing the lightest can ends in the industry."

But this change alone would save 1,400 tonnes of steel waste every year according to the company.