Herman D'Hooge, innovation strategist in the User-Centered Platform Solutions Division at Intel, explains a user-centered innovation process and how your company can use it to engineer and develop innovative products. D'Hooge also gives an example of a product - China Home Learning PC - that was developed for the Chinese consumer market with this strategy.

This is from Electronics Business Online and a good read. The sections covered by this case study include:

How to foster innovation
Translate process into engineering product requirements
Case study: the China Home Learning PC

And here is the summary:

People-inspired technology innovation increases the likelihood that a product or technology being developed will meet the needs and desires of actual users. As such, it is a risk-reduction technique that starts with understanding the needs and desires of real people and continues with working through an iterative creative process of defining user experiences and then translating that into actionable technical requirements.

Although technologists can simply be handed a technical requirements specification, there is tremendous value in involving engineers and technologists throughout the design process: from user research and observation to working with the user experience developers, because it instills a deeper appreciation of the reasons for designing the product and the resultant technology requirements. Using this process almost always leads to superior technology product solutions.