New Balance is a midsized company out of Boston, a privately held player in an intensely competitive market. The company began by producing arch supports in 1906. It evolved into a niche company that produced running shoes for the serious athlete. The low-volume market kept the company focused and lean, with early manufacturing primarily in […]
Category: The Design of Things. to Come
A Process for Product Innovation
Although preceding chapters in this book each contain their own examples of people, products, companies, and issues, each chapter’s illustrations focus on specific topics—the individual oaks, hickories, pines, and dogwoods of the forest. This chapter provides an overview of the innovation forest itself using an example from an R&D relationship between a university and the […]
Interdisciplinary Decision Making
All exploration centers around the customer, at least tangentially if not directly. Marketers are well acquainted with customer research, as are industrial designers. But the technology and financial people should connect with the customer as well. We have found that the best companies have integrated teams that engage in customer research together. Different disciplines are […]
Chaos Within Structure
Although the external influences are unpredictable, a structure to good product development guides the process to success and provides methods to improve the robustness of decision making. The structure of the product development process guides you through the unknown, helping you define your goals, constraints, and variables. Every product opportunity has a different set of […]
The Butterfly Effect
Within that structure, if the product development process at times seems chaotic, it is! If a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, this could cause a storm in Belgium the next week. You have heard the story or maybe have seen the movie. This is the basis of the mathematics of chaos, where a small […]
Organizing the Decision-Making Process
Not only are there numerous decisions, but each decision is related to many others, typically as a trade-off. There is no way to make a product, say an SUV, that has high fuel efficiency, lots of cargo room, three rows of seats, premium features, high performance, tight craftsmanship, and individualized feature choices, all at a […]
Complexity in the Decision-Making Process
Think about the amount of work it takes to design a toothbrush. There are only two main parts: the handle and the bristles. But the handle may be a bit intricate, with an area that flexes and co-molded rubber on the plastic so that there is a solid grip when the brush is wet. The […]
Making Decisions for Profit—Success Emerging from Chaos
r’ <—) Innovation is not just about a good idea; it is a process of managing what can appear to be an army of people over a set amount of time making multiple interconnected decisions. Rather than micromanaging, let the product requirements guide the legions who make the detailed daily trade-offs. Yes, these product requirements […]
The World Above the Sewer
From sewer robots to respirators to machine tools to agricultural equipment, innovative companies understand that if they don’t embrace user-based design as a means to profit, others will. We are seeing a renaissance in how the industrial frontier is envisioned. As with the first Raymond Loewy-designed Sears Coldspot refrigerator, which in 1935 transformed the refrigerator […]
The Result: Sewer Repair and Beyond
The result is an industrial product that works in extreme environments. The product, called the Renovator, functions off a sled platform with cylindrical components that fits into pipes. The functional need of the product’s environment—pipes—produced a natural visual theme. The cylindrical features create continuity in the visual aesthetic. Cylindrical skids on the bottom of the […]