With so many companies focusing more intensely than ever on innovation, why are so few seeing results?
Adam Richardson, creative director at the award-winning global innovation firm frog design, gets to the bottom of this dilemma in his new book, Innovation X. Richardson argues that companies’ efforts to innovate are being thwarted by “X-Problems,” a new class of 21st century challenges that defy conventional planning. But Richardson has hope. If used in the right way, these problems can present massive innovation opportunities.
Grounded in insights about how customers, competitors, and technologies change quickly and often, Innovation X is the manual for leaders looking for clarity about the emerging challenges facing their businesses. The book provides practical innovation strategies that will work in dynamic markets, and offers tactical methods that can be put to use immediately.
Combining frog design's approach with insightful analysis of companies such as Apple, BMW, Clif Bar, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Salesforce.com, and Zipcar, Richardson illustrates how to envision and realize successful new business ventures, products, and services. Innovation X is an essential guide for companies looking to get the jump on their competition in today’s disruptive environment.
Excerpts
Table of Contents (PDF)
Chapter 1: Living in an X-Problem World (PDF)
Thoughts from Adam's design mind blog
Adam presented at TEDx Taipei on July 24 in the Huashan Cultural Park in Taiwan. The theme of the event was “Unlearn. Play. Inspire.” TEDx conferences are independently organized local TED events. TEDx Taipei featured 23 speakers, including designers, entrepreneurs, explorers, storytellers, photographers, scientific pioneers, visionaries, and provocateurs are going to share their stories with a 500 person audience.
read more on design mind
Adam gave the keynote speech at Amsterdam’s Next Web conference, the fifth annual gathering to discuss trends in the digital landscape, on how “The Future of the Web Will be Invisible.” Richardson discusses the intersection of the physical and the digital, and his term “Webjects,” the blending of objects and the Web.
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At the beginning of May, frog design partnered with the Lift Conference in Geneva to do a bold experiment: conduct design research on the conference itself to understand what was working well and not so well about the conference. The organizers wanted to see if a design research approach based on real-time observation and interviewing of attendees could provide better and richer feedback, allowing them to further improve the already highly regarded event. Here is what we found.
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Recent
Remember just a few years ago when Apple used to be lambasted for only shipping a one-button mouse, and there was constant speculation as to why the company stubbornly refused to offer a multi-button mouse? The line was always that more buttons would confuse people, even though PC users seemed to do just fine with them. Since the first Mighty Mouse, Apple's mice have added more complexity, but still, there's something about one-button products that Apple really likes - both the iPhone and iPad only have one button on the front surface. At the very least, Apple likes to minimize as much as possible the quantity of buttons on its products, sometimes effectively, other times with frustrating results.
Here are some photos I took at the TEDx Taipei event which occurred yesterday. It was a great event, super well organized, with excellent speakers all around. Congrats to Kevin, Jason and the whole team for putting on a terrific show. There were many people I didn't get photos of, this is just a small selection of what was on offer.
I'm in Taipei to speak at TEDx Taipei on Saturday, and this is my first time in the city. First impressions: vibrant but more laid back than Tokyo or Seoul (can't compare to Shanghai or Beijing as I haven't been to those yet), very warm and friendly people, crazy traffic of course, wonderful stores and markets, lots of high-end shopping, very prevalent Western brands, overall a terrific sense of style and design, and wonderful food.
Check out these great illustrations from the 1960's, possibly done by Henry Drefuss' office, envisioning how the aesthetics of the electric grid can be improved. These are from a little-known book called Power Styling, commissioned by United States Steel. The book introduces the concepts this way:
