Wow it’s been an intense week, with a number of projects reaching conclusions of sorts and some major developments for Realise we will tell you about soon… All this seems to have coincided with the World Cup, midsummers day, a bout of hot weather and the most extraordinary record breaking slog of a tennis match at Wimbledon. It’s as if the stars have aligned allowing things to resolve or develop all around us at breakneck speed. I feel as punch drunk as Isner, but despite all the tough challenges and good news this week, my favourite thing has to be this email from a colleague describing the World Cup situation (this has to be read with his wry gruff ‘grumpy old man’ voice):

It’s just like World War 2.  France surrender early,  America turn up at the last minute and we’re left to fight the bloody Germans”

Brilliant. With you there Ian.

Good weekend everyone - here’s to Summer and being alive!

We’ve always loved the line from Codexx our innovation partner: “Business is a Bit like Juggling”. When things are going a bit mental around you, try saying this to yourself in a slightly sarcastic and wry tone. It always cheers me up!

We’re on a major quest right now to find a studio management system to help us juggle more smoothly. It’s a huge task just evaluating all the options and working out what we need. (more…)

Of course you know that good, well managed innovation in business is crucial to our survival and success in the coming years.

Obviously the product design process is the definition of innovation in producing new products. But ‘innovation’ covers a lot more than new product development, it’s the way you creatively improve your whole business…

• How do you come up with and capture ideas? And how do you choose  the best ones to use?
• How do you put ideas into practice and measure the results?
• How do you re-engineer your business processes to achieve more efficiency or customer service?
• How best to benchmark yourself against your competitors or other industries to get the most useful information?
• How to manage all this new and existing knowledge that is so valuable to your business?

Because the product design process is a creative innovation process there are many (more…)

We’re currently trialling Office Web Apps and Google Apps as part of our big collaboration test this year. Our intention is to use these tools to do a better job and offer more for our clients - particularly for the start-ups launching new products, where we need to give more help in getting the product to market.

Product Design Consultancy is a complex activity involving a lot of disciplines and people putting in their own ideas, information and decisions. So we need a better system than we have now (emailing documents around) enabling everyone in Realise, our Network of partners, other suppliers and clients to collaborate on projects. For us as a small business, Google Apps and other online collaboration software is a low enough cost to make this possible.

But actually what cost could we pay in future? Are we potentially selling our souls? Product Design does involve sensitive intellectual property (IP) which does make me question the safety of (more…)

From European Plastics News: Posted 30 October 2009 9:50 am GMT

Switzerland-based composite developer Gurit says group sales decreased 24% over the first nine months of the year to CHF245m.

Sales from the Gurit’s marine sector were most badly affected, falling 41.9% to CHF32.7m. Spokesperson Bernhard Schweizer says this is because marine is a high end sector.

“Marine is a market related to luxury goods, and high net worth individuals are not commissioning new boats at the moment,” he told European Plastics News. “Also, many sports boats rely on corporate sponsorship, which has fallen during the recession.”

However, the marine business may have hit rock bottom, as it “shows first signs of stabilisation at a low level with Q3 2009 sales in line Q2 2009”, says the firm.

Sales from the transportation business fell 15.3% while wind energy sales were down 12.5%. Gurit says sales from the Wind Energy sector will be markedly lower this year-end than in 2008.

However, the company’s 2009 operational EBIT margin target is around 5%, largely thanks to cost reduction plans. Schweizer says Gurit has cut around 400 jobs this year and is focusing on profitable markets such as Asia.

Last month the firm successfully closed the acquisition of a stake in Chinese structural foam company China Techno Foam. It also has a foam plant in Tianjin in the country.

This is a wonderful example of how design can change behaviour. I’m intrigued to know whether this lasted or if people got bored of the novelty and went back to the elevator…

Check it out I hope you like it too.

Design for Fun Piano Stairs

Connecting more, faster with more gratification - the internet mapping project.

Trendwatchers ahoy! According to the main port of call for future stuff -  Trendwatching, apparently we’re currently steaming through a sea of “NOWISM”. Good grief , er… what? Well Trendwatching defines this as:

NOWISM | “Consumers’ ingrained lust for instant gratification is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s building as we speak. As a result, expect your brand and company to have no choice but to finally mirror and join the ‘now’, in all its splendid chaos, realness and excitement.”

In our society, where it’s taken for granted that our basic needs are met, our focus is increasingly on hyper-speed convenience, freeing us up to (more…)