After 15 years of design research as a growing and now dominating force within the business of developing products and services of real value for the consumer, the question about what’s next is beginning to rise.

As the power and methods of design research is becoming known by everybody who wants be sure to make money in a world of ‘more products faster’, it is obvious that we all need to find the next tool or weapon in the battle to develop the next big thing, before the competition.

Here’s my bet, and I’ll be blogging a bit about that for a while, because I think it is explosive… Corporate Collective Creativity. With design research as a standard process we need to look for a new creative potential to release. We believe that potential could easily be the vast research and innovation resources that exists within every company – but that usually stays largely untapped due to a variety of organisational, psychological and even physical reasons.

Most senior designers have years of experience with being two things: design developers – and facilitators of processes that synthesizes the right framework for the innovation work. Almost always painfully ignorant to the specific project designers gather information from the market and from inside the client’s organisation … where they often find many of the answers already – inside the organisation, right under the client’s nose, usually, though, well hidden or just not actively seeking to become of value. Simply because the organization does not recognize the value or is able to facilitate it.

If the corporate world can learn to activate and cultivate the vast research and innovation resources inside their organisation, the speed and precision of development can be seriously increased. We believe they can learn that from us and our colleagues in the design business.

Consumer behaviour is changing as a result of the economic downturn– but how? I’ve observed how it’s affecting the eyewear sector.

Before the downturn hit, this is what eyewear consumers were doing:

1. Flashing money
Eager to flash the cash, consumers bought frames that looked expensive.

2. Standing out
Consumers bought flashy, expressive frames.

3. Changing styles
Consumers bought expressive and expensive frames because they could afford to buy new frames if they grew tired of a certain look.

And this is what eyewear consumers are doing now:

1. Choose sides
Brands that are neither cheap nor expensive are suffering as the middle ground disappears. So choose sides.

2. Stand out – intelligently
Consumers don’t want bling – but intelligent details and technical solutions that add value to their choice of frame.

3. Think longevity
Your consumers want design that lasts longer. Prepare for a return to rounder, friendlier shapes and less expressive colours.

As always – in recession either classic products or true innovation will prosper. Nobody wants more of the same.

Not everything goes fast in China, but some things move incredibly fast. One of them is the MagLev train in Shanghai, which I took this week. It takes you 30 kilometres in less than 8 minutes. Leaning into curves at a speed of approx 430 km/h is quite amazing.

The paradox is that the end station, however, is in the middle of nowhere. We had to transfer to a taxi. And with a speed of 430 km/hr, couldn’t you have built a bit more track?

Nevermind, many Danish commuters daily spend between 3-4 hours in an old-fashioned train travelling between Copenhagen and the country’s second-biggest city, Aarhus. MagLev would do the same lap in about 45 minutes. Add a bridge across the Kattegat and it’s 20! Almost faster than taking the phone:)

Wake up, DK! China’s coming!

The Minister of Trade and Industry in Norway, Sylvia Brustad, recently announced design as one of her focus areas and grants the Norwegian Design Council 10 million NOK to initiate a design driven innovation program.

Even though it is not much, it is a very important sign in Norwegian politics. The politicians might finally have realized something our Nordic neighbours realized years ago. Design is about creating value and not just about styling…

Later this fall, the government will publish a white paper on innovation. In the government’s plan for innovation made in 2003 – design was hardly mentioned. And this was the same year as the Korean government launched their very own five year design strategy to increase the country’s GDP – with great success!

So here we are almost six years later with multinational companies around the world using design as a strategy in sharpening their competitive edge… Have Norwegian politicians finally gotten the point? And will they succeed in forwarding this message to business and industry? When Sylvia Brustad says she believes in design as an innovation driver – does she really mean it?

In an interview, Sylvia Brustad mentions products like the Tripp Trapp chair and Cherrox boot as good examples of design innovations in Norway. These are almost 40 year old products that represent the “old way” of thinking design. Sylvia Brustad needs new examples of design innovations! She needs examples that show the potential in design TODAY – e.g. service innovations that examplify design being used in developing immaterial values – in creating user experiences.

And as she needs new examples – Norwegian designers need the support in creating them. Use the 10 million for this! The Norwegian Design Council should initiate service design projects in our growing service sector just like the Danish government has done. This can improve our services and our design industry – they both need support in evolving….

I believe that the big potential for innovations are not in the Norwegian industry – it’s in the services!

Put that in the white paper on innovation!

Look at this picture – proof that the US is the mother of innovation culture. In Denmark we also have a tradition for caramel apples. Tradition with a big T, that is. It’s never changed and it is still only possible to get the red classic version that is superimposed bottom right. Randomly browsing I stumbled over this: http://www.amyscandykitchen.com, where the main picture is from.

It’s a perfect illustration of how important it is to look at something you like (the red caramel apple) and think: “that is really nice – how can I make it even better” (look at the that striped monster in the bottom corner of the tray). Thinking “We can do better…” is the heart of progress (a possible path to wealth). Thinking “…and then we can do better again, immediately!” is the heart of innovation (the safest path to survival)- always moving, changing, improving things. Look at this picture and learn a bit about what it means when innovation is a cultural business drive – not just a contemporary management book theme. In the States this drive to innovate somehow repeats itself in just about every business area you look at. Try to impose the feeling from these two pictures on your own field of business, and consider if you do as well as Amy. We can all learn from her:-)

On my recent vacation in Egypt I saw this ATM. I needed money, but I still walked around for almost an hour to find a bank that I felt looked reasonably safe and trustworthy.

A bank with an armed guard outside gave me more confidence that I wouldn’t get cheated than with the ATM shown in the picture.

How does this translate into design? First of all, the company producing the ATM has absolutely no understanding of the problems and challenges their client, the bank, has. And the bank has no understanding of their client, the person walking up to an ATM.

Just few days of channel service analysis might have saved all 3 parties (manufacturer, bank and client) from embarrasment, distrust and annoyance.

If a designer had been involved in the process, the manufacturer could have found a better solution for the banks challenges, the clients would still feel confident about the banks services and the bank would make more money.

Who should now feel cheated?

As described on engadget, Monster Media has created several innovative kinds of interactive / ambient displays that extend our perception of commercial in the urban/public space by directly engaging the user/consumer in the commercial.

With this approach a completely new path for innovative commercials has been paved.

Engadget describes it this way: “we’ve most certainly seen window-based advertising used to lure the untrained eye to any manner of wares, but Scion‘s latest iteration certainly takes interactive promoting to new heights. In order to market its limited edition tC Release Series 4.0, it partnered up with InWindow to cover a series of street-side windows with bubbles which reacted to movements made by captivated individuals walking by. Granted, the installation isn’t nearly as addictive as say, trying to wrangle up every single Pokémon, but it definitely managed to hold the attention of a few geeked-out civilians. Check it out for yourself, the video’s right after the jump.”

Do check out the video demos on the Monster Media website.. You-ll find some amazing stuff there…

As described on the ReadWriteWeb blog, many new and interesting ways of visualizing the content/use of the internet are popping up all over the place. Fx. LivePlasma uses an intelligent Flash engine to displays semantic relations between music and/or movies.

Another example is flickrvision that displays the latest flickr image posts in real time. The service is able to display the images on 2D maps and as a 3D globe like in Google Earth.

Recommended links:

• Fidg’t – social networking address book
• Aharef: Websites as graphs
• Packet Garden. Grow a world from network traffic
• Crazyegg – visualizeyour visitors

An American guy has designed a pair of glasses …. that you pierce onto your nose. Not everyone’s thing. But top marks for creative thinking!

True innovation lies in thinking as a non-conformist and beyond any moralistic barrier. Like this dude did. You’ve got to wear your glasses every day, so why not pierce them onto your nose? That’s what James Sooy’s did and why not?
You might not like it, but all true innovators in history were seen as either weirdo’s or freaks at the start. Bell, Einstein, Gates and many more.

Today the world is increasingly narrowing down and trying to put everyone into a stream which is laid out and doesn’t give room for the ‘weirdo’s and freaks’. This is my call for being silly and coming up with cool new stuff which is not broken down by mainstream thoughts!

Read interview with James Sooy