innovation

Trends 2008: Will 3D printing finally go mainstream?

Everyone wants to be a designer. That's the value proposition of JuJups.com, a new online service claiming it will allow consumers to design their own personalized and customized 3D content. 3D printing, as the underlying technology is called, is a form of rapid prototyping that builds up three-dimensional objects by "printing" successive layers of materials (polymer, cells, sugar, etc.) on top of each other.

As a recent Wired story points out, 3D-printing technology has been around for a while, mostly used by professional design firms and design-intensive businesses such as automakers, handset makers, and aerospace companies. … Read more

Slow innovation -- long wow?

The Putting People First blog by Experientia has pointed me toward the excellent essay "The Long Wow" by Adaptive Path's Brandon Schauer. Schauer outlines a vision of creating lasting customer loyalty and brand value that runs counter to the fixation on quick wins and instant gratification, which many companies, under the pressure of shorter product life cycles and CMO tenures, seem to pursue these days. He defines "The Long Wow" as "a means to achieving long-term customer loyalty through systematically impressing your customers again and again."

This goes far beyond adding new features … Read more

Pavlov would have loved this clock

If we get one of these alarm clocks for Christmas, we're planning to send our doctor bills to the manufacturer because it'll surely be to blame for higher stress levels and the ill affects associated with them. The reason: The "Neverlate Executive Alarm Clock" not only wakes you up but also delivers Pavlovian reminders for various tasks from its programmable "Daily Reminder" log seven times a day.

The clock has other ways to keep your OCD tendencies in top shape, such as different alarm times for the weekends and his-and-her schedules. We've seen … Read more

Change as a feature: designing for consumers in a state of permanent crisis

Can you call a concept a cultural phenomenon if different people conceive of it at the same time? Within the past few months, three publications have come to similar conclusions. The digital media agency Avenue A | Razorfish released a study called "Fast Forward: Designing for Constant Change." It consists of thirteen essays as well as research exploring how consumers' digital media habits are changing, and how this affects the design of user experiences and brands. The key take-away is: Today's online users are forced to adjust to constant change in increasingly volatile rich media environments, and they … Read more

Skateboarding for eco-conscious riders

My colleague Hunter Smith of frog design has used his entrepreneurial spirit to launch a budding start-up based on his two greatest passions: eco-design and skateboarding. Hunter's company, aptly named SuperGreen Boards, employs some of the most advanced eco-friendly technologies for producing custom longboards, slalom, and speedboards.

SuperGreen Boards uses bamboo, which is not only beautiful, strong, and flexible but is also sustainably harvested. Maple wood, known as the gold standard for skateboards because of its strength under the pressure of the rider, takes a minimum of 100 years to mature before it can be used. Bamboo, in comparison, … Read more

VMware's mistaken understanding of open source

Wow. I guess for those who have yet to be forced to compete with open source, it's permissible to come out with grossly inaccurate comments about open source. Even Microsoft would never say something like this, which Diane Greene (VMware's CEO) said to The Register:

There is still a lot of innovation going into our hypervisor. As long as there is a lot of innovation going in, (open source) is not the right model.

What we want to do is fund ourselves to be able to build new stuff. If you're purely open source, there is no way you can do new stuff.

Um...no. That is completely false. It's not even a little, teensie weensie bit true. In fact, it's when one is in the midst of innovation that open source makes the most sense. Ms. Greene seems to be suggesting that open source makes sense when you're ready to put code out to pasture because it has passed its prime. Quite the opposite is true, if you're hoping to derive value from community, which is the whole point of open sourcing code.

Community-influenced innovation.

What Ms. Greene ought to have said is something like this:… Read more

Is HoneyShed the end of the future of online advertising?

Call it branded entertainment, advertising-as-content, or just brand-vertising: obviously inspired by TBS' veryfunnyads.com, which according to MediaPost claims more than 73 million views since launching last year, brands and advertisers are teaming up to push the envelope of online advertising even further. Recent example: Publicis Groupe, Droga5, and Digitas have joined forces to quietly launch what they had already announced in May this year--a site dubbed HoneyShed on which advertisers can air brand-specific programming. Clips can be shared by viewers via e-mail or embedded on blogs and other sites. HoneyShed also offers instant e-commerce: "I want it." … Read more

Open source a key to software innovation, suggests Nobel Prize research

Stacey at Hyperic has an excellent post parsing research from recent Nobel Prize winners, Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson. Digging into their research, she uncovers the following analog to open source:

...when discoveries are "sequential" (so that each successive invention builds in an essential way on its predecessors) patent protection is not as useful for encouraging innovation as in a static setting. Indeed, society and even inventors themselves may be better off without such protection. Furthermore, an inventor's prospective profit may actually be enhanced by competition and imitation.… Read more

Open or not - innovation remains a fuzzy concept

The Economist has a special report on innovation in this week's issue, and it's good to see the magazine recognizing "open innovation" as the perhaps most important current trend in this space: "Rapid and disruptive change is now happening across new and old businesses. Innovation ... is becoming both more accessible and more global. This is good news because its democratization releases the untapped ingenuity of people everywhere and that could help solve some of the world's weightiest problems."

The report is an expansive tour de force through the entire innovation landscape, covering a … Read more

Radiohead has become a verb

" In Rainbows" is out, has reportedly already sold more than 1.2 million copies (which would dwarf sales of each of the past three Radiohead albums), and fans and critics alike are in awe. The music is great, of course, but the band's biggest accomplishment is probably that it has turned music into a global event again. Album releases had become somewhat trivial in the age of iTunes -- and now the buzz around "In Rainbows" created this big, meaningful moment of mass-togetherness.

The Spacelab blog nails it: "So now the world listens. October … Read more