Aftermath of Japan Earthquake - Spurs Wave of Technology Innovation

From electric cars powering homes to radiation detecting phone covers – Japan’s troubles has spurred a wave of ‘user led innovation’ across sectors. Innovations from companies such 3M, Nissan, Panasonic are all taking the market with immense force with new technologies and innovations, to prepare people for future disasters.

·       Imagine a car providing 6000Watts of Power to a home? Or which efficient homes will utilise only 1200W?

·       Phone Maps and Apps

·       Cities such as Fujisawa designed with solar panels - Visions of self-sufficiency for energy needs is driving this growth in a country in love with innovation and technology. The “Fujisawa model” is a revolutionary town-creation or sustainable smart town innovation expected to life, enhance people's lives with solar power, security, mobility, community, and healthcare (http://panasonic.net/es/fujisawasst/)

·       Capturing energy from sun, without blocking light – Photovoltaic Panels by 3M

·       Segway’s – solar powered with built in defibrillators – designed to aid the injured

·       Radio Frequency in Disaster Management – Detecting heartbeats, movements in order to recover life through any rubble

Japan’s drive to avoid haplessness and over reliance on foreign help is leading the way for incremental user led innovations and paving growth for other countries in need of such technology. 

Question: User-innovation sounds good but what can I do with it? Answer: Use a toolkit!

Today’s article will be a little more hands on.

By now, if you have read the previous articles of this blog, you should start to see the interest that lies in user-led innovation. Our focus in this article will be how can companies can make users transfer their needs to use them in building their solutions.

According to Von Hippel, father of the subject, a user-innovation toolkit should be comprised of the following elements:

1 - Learning by trial and error: It is important that users can test their “designs” and evaluate the consequences of their choices

2 - Appropriate solution space: in other words, this is flexibility, the freedom you provide the user by giving him a certain amount of options when he is designing his solution. The more freedom, the less restriction the better chances the product has to be really innovative.

3 - User-friendliness: the toolkit should not frustrate the user. It should be as familiar as possible if it is technical and easy to use in general.

4 - Commonly used modules: Innovation is not always about invention; it is more often about the combination of pre-existing standards.

5 - Results easily created by users: last but not least, the designs of the user must be easily translated into designs that can be used for production.

A typical example of a toolkit created by a company is what car manufacturers such as BMW did. The later uses the following to “Build Your Own”: 

http://www.bmwusa.com/standard/content/byo/

 In this case, the results is customization, but can you recognize every element in that example?

The only problem here is that this is an obviously limited solution space, so it will also limit user designs. But in terms of customization, its pretty interesting don't you think?

"According to innovation expert Eric von Hippel, users are often the first source of new products — and that has important implications for businesses."

On our first blog let's refer to the Sloan School of Buisness review article called "According to innovation expert Eric von Hippel, users are often the first source of new products — and that has important implications for businesses."

Von Hippel's main conclusion on his research made throughout the years is basically that product developers get all the credit - and actual users who helped develop the product do not get any credit at all. More in depth, Von Hippel argues that people develop their own ideas in order to achieve their own needs and then producers implement the users ideas to create new products that serve a wider range of costumers. One of the major argumentation of the trend that Von Hippel is trying to defend comes from a study made by Nikolaus Franke and Sonali Shah in which the main observation is that people tend to change sports rules in order to create a new sport that meet their own needs. This is also defended by Charles Leadbeater in his speech called "The era of open innovation".

Many companies have started to develop a big interaction with its costumers. One of the clearest examples is Lego. Lego developed a product named Lego Mindstorm in which young people are able to make their own robot. This has been one of the most important products of Lego in decades. This suggests that people are being attracted by products in which they have the power to design in order to satisfy their needs and likes. This was developed in Lego Cuuso which is one of the finest examples of user innovation.

We believe that this new trend of innovating might change the thought process in which companies deliver new products to the market. We should be ready to see companies involve end users more and more in their innovation processes. Lets continue to look at this trend as we believe it will get more and more important for companies in future years!

Introduction

This blog will refer to the new way of using the tools of innovation in order to create value for the final users. User innovation as referred in WikiPedia is "the innovation by intermediate or consumer users rather than suppliers". It is important to mention that Eric von Hippel, one of the fathers of user innovation science, discovered that companies would increase the value of products by approaching the actual users to develop their products.