BenQ's iF award-winning Black Box concept has designers all over the world going "but that thing's been on my sketchpad for months!". Well, we could all have won an iF award guys. The pictures released by Benq show the device as a mobile phone, a calculator, a radio and a sort of ambient fishbowl. All good and useful things but nothing near what the device truly represents.

Instead of BenQ's mobile phone-type idea, what we're looking at, folks, is the next generation of mobile device. The one that will change literally everything for quite a lot of people. Every tech editor and gadget fan has been preoccupied for the last year with products like the fabled next generation video Ipod . The gorgeous Onyx concept from Pilotfish and Synaptics treads similar ground. It seems to be all about growing the screen in your pocket.

The little surfaces that Gabriel White has devoted an entire blog to are about to get a little bigger as the screen expands to fill the front of the device. The history of buttons is about to get a virtual chapter as we chuck out those tiny QWERTY thumb boards. The tactile issues will get sorted and someone will liberate us from fingerprint smudges and scratched screens. The touch screen is finally developing to match the physicality of human hands. Maybe we're reaching the tipping point for convergence.

If this description makes the next generation look like a gentle evolution of the current generation of Communicators, Palms and BlackBerries, take heart. This is not about the device. The most attractive thing about the Black Box is it's name. If it truly is a black box and no longer a phone masquerading as all sorts of other stuff, then the potential can be unlocked. What its really about is access. Leave all the smartphone baggage and the tiny computer baggage behind for a moment and consider a device that doesn't get in the way of people's access to internet, e-mail, documents and contacts. A transparent device designed for open ended access.

Because it accesses and stores these online, the device has less software, storage and processing power. A black box. Not exactly a phone nor a computer nor a pda but something able to perform the most essential actions of those devices as well as any of them, maybe better. All that at the lower cost of a simpler device.

This is not the Origami, and it's not the $100 laptop, it's what these things will be by the time they're useable mass-market products for the whole pyramid. If they manage to somehow fit in your pocket.

In a simpler device, the pre-existing design sophistication of all those Googly web-based apps is connected to mobile broadband instead of having a powerful device and heavy proprietary phone applications. It's an alternate-reality realization of the partly unfulfilled consumer-level application service provider dream.

In addition, a Black Box can support total language and culture customization. Instead of imposing Scandinavian or American logic and Roman script on others, make the portal transparent to each culture. All anybody needs then is their own culture, eyeballs and fingertips.
At the bottom of the pyramid, people have already demonstrated their willingness to shell out months of wages for a mobile phone.

It's the utility, convenience and economic potential of these items that makes them so desirable. All of these could be dramatically heightened by the next generation. If the device is not a cultural and technological hurdle but an easy portal to go through, this could be the next emerging growth market.

Mobile phones connect the world's poorest to other individuals. The next generation device could connect them to the world. It has the potential to change everything from banking to grassroots business networking. It's an enormous leap for the biggest mass market but can it be made effortless? That's the challenge but it's not such an outrageous one.

As Niti Bhan has pointed out, Nigerians are the largest group of outside visitors to BBC mobile. Any visitor will tell you that it's a simple, useful and well-sorted mobile destination. Just the kind that the Black Box is looking for.

Tasos Calantzis is the managing director of the award-winning design company Readymade

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.

Grant Gibbs designed the Hippo Water Roller to give poor, rural South Africans an easier way to collect water. The Hippo is a plastic tank which doubles as a wheel, with a handle. It's easy to fill and easy to pull over rough rural terrain, even by children. It's an ingenious solution and as it turned out, people love the product, but will not pay for it. Despite its success as a development aid project, it was always acknowledged that it would not be a commercial success.

On the other hand, an interesting fact that emerged from the 1999 ICSID Interdesign, hosted by the Design Institute of South Africa was that the same disadvantaged people would pay someone to deliver water to their homes, rather than fetching it themselves from a communal tap. It seems that time is as valuable at the bottom of the pyramid as at the top.

At the opposite end of the technology spectrum, mobile phone company MTN has become one of the fastest growing telecoms companies in the world by expanding into risky markets in Africa. Some stories tell of people traveling for days to spend several month's wages on a phone. It's easy to assume that the explosive growth of mobile phone sales in Africa is simply a matter of usefulness; people are able to communicate where previously they were not. However it's possible that this is only part of the reason.

Aside from the inevitable calls to far away family and the crucial contact number for an itinerant handyman, mobile phones are used to arrange a lift, a party or for other social events that would have otherwise meant a possibly fruitless walk. In other words, the phone provides convenience, just like the service of water delivery.

C.K. Prahalad has pointed out that developing world customers are savvy and value-conscious. That's true, but there could be more to their discernment than that. Maybe the difference between the Hippo Roller and MTN is that these markets need not only great usefulness but also great convenience before they'll open their wallets. Add the possibility of earning extra money and you may have a winner.

Tasos Calantzis

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.

It's hard to work in a large design team without getting at least somewhat involved in how the group is organized. During my time within such teams, I've been a part of many discussions and iterations of different organization models.

From these experiences, I've developed a model that seems to be able to sustain a large amount of distinct project work and simultaneously support the diversity of the designers within the team.

The model is under laid by the fact that in addition to different skill-levels, designers also have unique strengths and interests in particular types of design work. In particular: product design, strategic design, and design management.

Read the rest of the explanatory text that accompanies this diagram 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.

Based on the previous conversation with Don Norman, author Trenouth then spoke to Craig Vogel about his thoughts on the subject:

Author of "Breakthrough Products", former IDSA president, and Director of Center for Design Research and Innovation, Craig Vogel shared his thoughts on activity-centered design and personas.

Experience design and activity design are the same. But knowing a person's preferences is also important because a functional solution should be complimented with lifestyle attributes.

Norman is a psychologist and not a designer. His focus is on human activity which is fine. I think there is more to products than [just the] action analysis but it is an essential component.

So according to Vogel a study of activity while necessary, is insufficient. Norman says that a study of activity is not only necessary and sufficient, but it is potentially dangerous to look beyond activity as this could prove distracting, resulting in poorer product designs.

In the integrated new product development process outlined in "Breakthrough Products" Vogel says that good product design results in products that are useful, usable and desirable. Norman is a social scientist. As such his professional bias is toward measurability and hence activity-centered design. Usability is easily measured, while utility and desirability are not.

Norman's concern is valid though. Human-centered design and tools like personas can often find themselves distracted by matters irrelevant to the design. Vogel's respose is that the danger is in untrained implementation, and that a human-centered perspective and tools like personas are incredibly valuable in delivering products that are more useful, usable and desirable.

John Trenouth has a masters in design from Carnegie Mellon University and over a decade of experience designing interactive products and systems in both telecommunications and healthcare. Currently he blogs at niblettes and runs a boutique design firm Spire Innovation specializing in product innovation and design research.

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.

Your product pitch isn't going well and the reason is suddenly clear. No-one else thinks the idea is much good. If only the clock could be turned back and an extra week spliced in, then this could all have gone so much better. Or could it? Here's the checklist you'd have needed; filled with the 12 essential things you already knew but somehow forgot this time.

Rule#1: Explain the usefulness of the idea in one sentence

Any aspiring moviemaker, salesperson, social networker or evangelist knows that you have to explain your killer concept in 30 seconds if you want anyone to listen. Yes, the old elevator pitch. It doesn't hurt to relate it to what your listener already knows too. There's going to be a hiccup if you've got to explain particle physics before they get it. Before your audience starts getting ideas about how close this thing is to reality, BJ Fogg recommends explaining how long you've been working on this right up front; to create a realistic expectation.

Rule#2: Show that the product is dramatically better than current products.

According to Doug Hall, it is critical to explain the one or two most important benefits of your product. Surprisingly, mentioning any further benefits actually decreases your chance of success. That needs to be immediately followed by two supporting arguments. Firstly, why should anyone believe that you can deliver those benefits and secondly what is the most dramatic, meaningful difference between this and other products?

Rule#3: Understand exactly who will buy the product.

Google probably knows more about you than your own government by now, so it follows that you could find out quite a bit about the exact kind of person most likely to buy your product. If that doesn't work you could always buy some research. What about their lifestyle drives their burning desire for your product? Very often, you'll learn more from observing the way people feel about things than how they are able to articulate those feelings. What about them will cause them to perceive your product as really quite a lot better than alternatives? The sagest advice is that if everybody is a core user, nobody is a core user. It is extremely unlikely that your product will make dramatic difference to everybody, all the time.

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.

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.

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.

Chris Conley was in town last week for a short presentation he made on the behalf of the IIT Institute of Design. DD went to find out more about the work he's doing at his product development firm, GravityTank.

DesignDirectory: Chris, your bio says "At Gravity Tank he leads the development of Integrated DefinitionTM, a way of working that leverages the core competencies of design to enable cross-functional client teams to define new product and service innovations." What exactly does this mean?

Chris Conley: Well, let me start by explaining why clients come to us and perhaps that will lead to some clarity about GravityTank's offer and what we do there. There are three key reasons companies approach us:-

1. When they're looking for new market opportunities - usually within their existing product line or new product categories areas to explore. They know the market opportunity they want to target, such as "baby boomers" or "retail channels" but need help to define the product or product category that would allow them to take advantage of this opportunity.

2. New product or service definition - this kind of program results in a unique document describing what products or services should be developed and why. It provides the essential information, the 'show and tell' that neither the traditional technical specifications documents nor marketing's MRD provide. We deliver a clear design direction that our clients can then take to their favourite industrial design studio for the final design and development work. It's much more than a design brief as it includes strategy elements, related business numbers as well as platform considerations and design criteria to shape the final form.

3. Business challenges - This is the fuzziest of the 'fuzzy front end', when a business is facing a very specific challenge, but doesn't really know why and want us to take look not only at their products and services but their business system to see what can be tweaked.

DD: So your final deliverable is not the design of the product but a waymarker towards that design? It sounds like it's more tangible than the 'blue sky' innovation and brainstorming popular today and yet not the deliverable of an industrial design studio. Yet you prototype, in fact, you're a big proponent of rapid prototyping and it's benefits. How does that fit in with what you do?

CC: I'm always amazed at how hard it is to convey that we use design and prototyping to help figure out what to go and design. Business people use spreadsheets to model a potential business early in the process. But they are not the same folks that implement the actual business system that builds and launches the business in the market. But in design, it is hard for people to understand that while you may not be doing the final production design, design and prototypes are essential to figuring it out what to pursue.

DD: Those are words to remember, indeed. Thank you, Chris.

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.

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.

Here are links to some information rich websites on new product strategy and development:

The New Product Development Body of Knowledge

An extensive collection of the A to Z of corporate strategy and new product development, covering basics such as Porter's Five Forces to the fuzzy front end and ideation techniques.

The Tabor Report on Product Strategy

Do you have a problem here? It is very rare that you'll perceive product strategy as the critical issue from within your company. The symptoms you'll notice are unfocused value propositions, poor press and analyst reviews, difficulty getting leads, no repeatability in sales cycles, endless pricing debates, poor sales volume, and a high degree of shelfware. You are likely to believe you have a "target market problem" or a need to "rework the go to market plan," when the problem is the product itself. For lots of psychological reasons, people outside your company will see a product issue much more clearly than you.

Product Design: One strategy for the Environment and Business

On waste from the Texas Government.

Guidelines for designers working on designs for the elderly

What is such a market looking for? In a recent study my organisation undertook with an American research corporation, the fundamental requirement of elderly people that emerged was that the product should enhance and not degrade their health. This conclusion, however does not have as easy application as might at first be thought.

New Product Introduction.

An outline of the NPI process along with a comprehensive list of tools and techniques used during the product design process.

Guide to effective product design.

Answering questions from "what is good design?" to "How do we reduce risks by prototyping?" Recommended - Briefing an Industrial Designer

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: