Category: Innovation

  • How design thinking doesn’t work (and how it does)

    In the early 2000s, as the dot-com bubble burst, IDEO rebranded parts of the preliminary research designers ususually did as as “design thinking”, a step‐by‐step process. The core premise was to take the creative problem-solving methods used by designers and make them accessible to non-designers. This move allowed IDEO to monetize their concept through training,…

  • Innovation in AI Development: Stargate versus China

    The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) has underscored the critical role of innovation in shaping the global technological landscape. The strategies of the U.S. and China diverge sharply. The U.S.-led Stargate Initiative exemplifies a centralized, corporate-driven model, while China’s state-backed ecosystem is geared towards decentralized, cost-efficient innovation. Innovation in AI hinges on balancing resource…

  • AI for designers: How to stay ahead of the curve

    1) Start with understanding what AI, ML, and deep learning are. Focus on concepts like supervised/unsupervised learning, neural networks, and data preprocessing. 2) Explore AI uses in design Generative design (e.g., Autodesk’s tools). Predictive analytics for user behavior. AI-driven prototyping and simulation. Personalization and customization. 3) Learn Programming and AI Tools Python is the most…

  • Jaguar: A controversial rebrand

    Is this Jaguar, the blue chip brand on par with Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Rolls Royce – the brand standing for sleek and elegant sports cars which won Le Mans seven times? Jaguar is a British icon and an emotion which creates loyalty, as evidenced in over 160 million views of the rebrand on social…

  • Design support for the 21st century

    Published 2021 by Dongdaemun Design Plaza/ddp Design Fair/Seoul Design Foundation. From hand-holding to startup financing The history of design support until today has two distinct phases: project hand-holding and startup financing. From the nineteen-eighties until around the 2000’s, the economy revolved around industrial production, and a preferred model of design support was project hand-holding. In…

  • Design Integration: From Imitation to Ecosystem

    This article was first published in Fall 2005 in Designmatters by the Danish Design Center (DDC) as ‘Imiteret, kommercialiseret, oplevet: Sammenkædningen af design, virksomheder og denverdensøkonomiske udvikling’. Company structures changed dramatically over the course of the last century. The structures and processes behind the production of goods evolved, and with these also the relationships of…

  • Are you a designer?

    Design is fundamentally utopian. As a designer, you live in a certain time and culture, and that comes with peculiar habits, opinions and expectations everybody takes for granted. Some 10 to 20 years later, all of these veneers and assumptions you take for granted now will look curious, offbeat, and at times shocking. A designer…

  • Podchain, ownership and usership

    Car ownership was a fundamental idea of progress since Henry Ford came up with his Model T in the early 20th century. During America’s golden years, roughly from the nineteen- fifties until 9/11, owning a car was the first thing on every teenager’s mind. It was a sign of freedom and independence, the visible expression…

  • On mental models, refusing a five billion dollar offer, and petting a cobra

    Mental models are ideas of how things are. They are not about how things are in reality – they are beliefs about how things work or should work. People’s mental models can be wrong. If they are, they tend to be persistent, creating problems and at the same time impeding the ability to fix these problems.…

  • Innovation starts with concepts

    Organisations often struggle to change. One fundamental hindrance are tacit mental concepts, the foundation for both daily decision-making and the long-term strategy formulation of organisations. Once mental models have become taken for granted, they are held implicitly and can be barriers to novel thinking around a common aim.

  • From Photoshop to Artificial Intelligence

    President Trump recently tweeted about allegedly photoshopped pictures of Melania. It shows that in our social media age, the task of editing images becomes increasingly important. The current market leader in image manipulation is Adobe’s Photoshop, namesake of the now common verb “photoshopping”. Photoshop is part of Adobe Creative Cloud, a subscription service for image software which…

  • Models of Innovation in Japan and Korea: MITI and KIDP

    Korea’s strength in the creative industries, together with the strength of their multinational brands, is regarded as a model by other Asian countries. How did this model come about?

  • Innovating education

    Government policies and interventions are powerful instruments that can change social and economic realities on the large scale. However, social reality is highly complex.

  • Conceptualizing brands: Metaphors of Brand Management

    The management of brands is often biased by the way managers conceptualize and understand brands. We have identified four commonly employed metaphors of brands which, all in their own way, produce unwanted effects on the management and utilization of brands.