"Memphis" Design Process

(Scott) I'm catching up on some reading and just worked through an article titled "Innovating Through Design" in the December 2006 edition of Harvard Business Review.

The article describes the approach to innovation of Italian furniture, lighting and household goods companies, focusing on the firm, Alessi, and their work with Michael Graves to produce the model 9093 tea kettle.

Step 1: Absorb - Alessi brought together entrepreneurial designers to discuss trends, materials, technology and the future of design. The 11 designers then set off to work independently on tea and coffee concepts - contrast this independence / parallel tracking with the collaborative / multidisciplinary approach of IDEO and other ideation firms.

Step 2: Interpret - "Alessi knew that before ground-breaking products could be presented to the public, the gound itself had to be prepared..." Alessi organized exhibitions, and sold limited edition productions for $25K a pop to museums and wealthy collectors. This helped ensure the public would always associate these designs with Alessi, and that similar designs would be looked at as imitators. It also allowed Alessi the chance to gauge public / professional reaction.

Step 3: Address - Alessi organized more exhibitions and used discourse in the design community to promote the products (rather than advertise). At point-of-sale, each product comes with literature that describes how it came into existence and the qualities that make it unique.

It is also worth noting that in deciding which designs to produce, Alessi applies four criteria: Communicativeness, Evocativeness, Cost, Functionality. There's a lesson here I think - to understand what is at the heart of your brand or company ethos. Too often we change converge criteria by project. Companies could benefit from more consistent and enduring concept selection criteria.

Thoughts on the Absorb > Interpret > Address approach? How does it compare with a stage-gate innovation process? How could you expose early concepts to the public without running focus groups? Could you ask for the People's Choice (as does Kettle Chips)? Could you set up a street corner exhibition?

Visual social networking

Found this really interesting site called Imagini which is a visual social networking sight.

http://imagini.net/

The site asks you a series of questions – the answers to which are visual.
It then gives you a neat little folder which contains your VisualDNA split into themes: mood, fun, habits, love. You can then link up to people with similar DNA’s...
If the site aked more profile questions, this could be a really interesting marketing/research tool ... I suspect this is being used already for marketing purposes as the site has a business section.

Marketing Society - Effective Innovation: The Big Idea

(Adam) I thought I would give you an update on this event that I went to last night. Firstly my reason for going was that the title sounded interesting, with the possibility of learning different approaches.

What actually happened was that there were 4 agencies (Advertising, Digital, Media, DM) who gave short talks in a Pop Idol style format about why their discipline would be the next Master of the Universe in Big Ideas! This basically involved showcasing some work that they had done and in the case of the ad agency awards that they had won.

My main problem with the event was not that these people cannot come up with big ideas, they all can to a certain extent, or the fact that there were no brand/ innovation consultancies represented. Rather it was that there was no actual substance to it, for me the interesting thing is how you get to a big idea, not why your discipline is better at it (which is difficult to prove if you don't talk about the how).

Having been to a few of these events now I am becoming increasingly frustrated by the fact that these seem to be a showcase for companies to get more business or individuals to raise their profile, rather than the sharing of learning or approaches. Especially when people are paying to attend.

What are your experiences of events or talks like these? Am I just being pessimistic about the state of the conference circuit at the moment?