insights on innovation

innovation and design

i made a presentation to an executive team the other day. the goal was to remove the mystery of what an innovation is and show them the knid of work that leads to innovation. the presentation went well -- i engaged them in discussions about oxo kitchen utensils, the dyson vacuum, and the segway human transporter.

i defined innovation as "the introduction of something new that is widely adopted." i like this definition a lot because it simple and direct. it does beg the question of what can be considered "new." but i especially like the second part of the statement that requires the new thing be widely adopted. it is what distiguishes invention from innovation. i like that a "market" is required.

i also presented to them integrated definition(tm), a business process for creating innovation that we have developed at gravity tank.

anyway, in my presentation i found that i made a distinction between design and innovation. design, i noted, was used in the service of innovation, to embody and communicate the functionality, value, and benefits of the new thing. this is the use of "design" as a form-giving discipline.

i think this starts to situate design within the innovation process. too often design, innovation, and perhaps invention are all used interchangeably. i do think "design thinking" is broadly applicable, but it is important to emphasize that the ability to manifest ideas in a high-quality, tangible manner is what design can do. furthermore, if we amphasize the human-centered approach, the designer manifests ideas so that people can access, understand, and use them. in other words, they adopt them into their lives. thought about in this way, design is a critical component of the innovation process.

design in undergrad engineering

i've kicked off our research project, funded by the nsf, on how design theory and methodology can be incorporated throughout an undergraduate design curriculum. the hypothesis, you see, is that most of engineering education is concerned with tools (calculus) and theory. the problems students solve are narrowly defined and have a limited, if not singular, solution set.

this approach to engineering pedagogy limits the student's ability to deal with more open-ended, wide solution space problems -- namely, design problems.

we are taking an ethnographic approach, spending time with faculty, students, and industry engineers to find out how they currently experience engineering education and the demands of engineering practice.

our goal is to figure out a way to graft design theory and methodology into the current curriculum, not necessarily displacing any particular course.