Dominant Design

Dominant design is one of the terms discussed in the fourth chapter of our textbook so I decided to blog something related to it. I found an article called “ Using design to drive innovation” published by Phil Best who is Vice President of Product Design & Innovation at design agency, LPK and a veteran of Procter & Gamble, he is credited with establishing design as one of P&G's core competencies.
Analyzing the author’s opinion, the relevant point mentioned in this article is that during recent years companies had been through different eras pursuing their business success. The previous era was strategy, more recently it's been innovation, and now it seems like design is playing a key role in the way companies are approaching the market.
It is important for the companies when a consumer seeks a new product to have a great design (differentiation factor) this relates not only to their own product design but also the visual identity of a company. What I mean is that good design should be concerned not only innovation in style but also in manufacturing processes, price, service and support needs of people. Many successful projects operating in the market are appreciated for their simplicity and functionality.

The article's link:

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jun2009/id20090629_681162.htm?chan=innovation_design+index+page_design+thinking

Types and Patterns of Innovation

I would like to share with the class a very interesting video which is an interview with a 20 year old boy called Nikita Lutsenko from Ukraine, who is a programmer and he designs applications for Apple. During the interview he touches in some interesting points where he explains how he negotiates with Apple, how long does it take to create and update an app and reveals impressive sales numbers. The applications market seems to be so profitable and attractive, that Nikita finishes the interview aiming to be an app millionaire in the next 6 months to a 2 year period.
At the end of the third chapter of our book, the author highlights the importance of the term dominant design and according to Nikita when he creates an app the most important things are usefulness and design, emphasizing that people that buys apple’s products are looking for better designs. After familiarize myself with some new innovation concepts from the book, I also think we can consider the app market as an incremental innovation of the Smartphone’s business that could be understood as radical innovation from old telephones.

Here is the video link:

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/international/2010/08/24/qmb.lutsenko.apps.cnn.html

Important aspects to avoid in Innovation

Almost every company nowadays is well aware about the importance of innovation for their business success. My concern is how the top managers/sources of innovation are managing and implementing the new ideas. Innovation can be related with change in the way you are changing the “old” habits to what you think are better for the organization. The problem is that people are scared of change, they get used to their job, they accommodate, which means they show some resistance to changes.

Another issue that can block the development of innovations it is because many supervisors tend to limit employees progress in the company. I believe that we have to manage innovation in order to avoid barriers and don’t let the situations drive us, keeping in mind that the main goal is sustainable growth.