Innovation CHEF

The ability to realise a design, to hold it in your hand and look it over is a source of great satisfaction to any product designer. The advent of 3D rapid prototyping systems brought design up from the drawing board (or monitor) and into the physical world. These prototypes were often nice to look at but far from robust.

A new wave of technology is showcased in the recent IFTF publication and describes a future world of instant and embedded technology and huge implications for manufacturing. While not quite at the sophistication of those on Star Trek it still is going to be a huge change in short run manufacturing.

Many companies use rapid protoyping in their design processes. This prototyping has had a significant impact on product design. Designers and engineers can identify problems early in the design cycle. Marketing and human factors can test for market acceptability and usability. The designer can easily be on a different continent from the marketeer or the production engineer who can download the design to their local fabrication tool and have a part in a few hours.

This form of prototyping is can now be seen to transform into rapid, high-end manufacturing. The downloadable product is well on it’s way. As YouTube allowed anyone to be a broadcaster – platforms will spring up to allow anyone to be a manufacturer. Mass customisation is throttled by the fixed dimensions of moulds and tooling – remove that constraint and the advent of YouBarbie arrives.

This has already been seen in the transformation in the print world. You can write, photograph photoshop, and print anything – including your own professional magazine out from the internet.

Check out the PDF. There is a lot of thought provoking stuff from the Institutes researchers and commentary from the SciFi writer Bruce Sterling.

Though there may be a downside too.

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Crowdsourcing meets ethnographic studies in the true emerging markets of the world. Nokia asks the question: what would you design for an 18 year girl in India? A young man in a refugee camp in Ghana? A family in Rio? 

In this incredible video from the LIFT08 conference Younghee Jung talks about how Nokia explored the different usages of their mobile phones by customers to gain valuable insight on future products design. In a project called Nokia Open Studio the company recruited local teams to run a design competition in the Shanty towns of Rio, Mumbai and Accra.

The products that people design reflect the lives they lead in floods, limited electricity, gunfire and police confrontations. The designs are original, honest and often heartbreaking.

We recently got to see Bob Johansen from the Institute for the Future. See original blog post here.  The videos are available on Vimeo. For all those who Twitter or use Facebook or Bebo or use any kind of social networking platform this is a must see. Remember this is ten years away.

Blended Reality Digital Story: The World As I Choose to See It from Institute for the Future on Vimeo.

The Future..

What does the future hold for Ireland?

In an uncertain present who would dare to say they knew what the future held? Ireland played host last week to Bob Johansen from The Institute for the Future. The institute is an independent, nonprofit research group specialising in ten year forecasts by integrating micro and macro trends. Big multinational companies and leading governments use the insights they get from Bob and his colleagues to shape strategy and investments. After all, with a 70% success rate over 40 years; these are the guys with the right pedigree and track record. What did Bob have to say about 2009? What about emerging technology and socio-economic trends and how they will affect Ireland? Was there anyone paying attention?

Bob holds that 2009 will be a “springboard year”, one of great opportunity. While clearly a lot of organisations are just doing everything that they can just to survive there are clear trends that smart companies and entrepreneurs are taking insight from that will pay off within the next 10 years. 2019 will be a much more connected time, your Bebo and Facebook friends will be there in real time helping you shop, keeping you planet friendly and talking you out of the fattening pizza that looks good but your friends know doesn’t fit the diet. It won’t be all busy bodies either, safety data, traffic info and statistics will all be available, local to you through the miracle of geo-positioning and in-vision displays. Start investing in those language lessons too, multi-linguists are going to be powerful people. All that connectivity isn’t going away and your multilingual Twitter feed is going to be part of the instant data river your life is going to swim in. Companies such as HP, Google and Microsoft with their cloud computing initiatives are leading the way on the infrastructure side but there is plenty of room for the small and nimble player to create value once Cyberspace disappears like a shadow and integrates with the everyday life.

Who is taking advantage at the moment? Certainly the big IT players. Governments such as those of Finland and the Korea have made the investments and set in place the strategies that will reap dividends for their economies. In Ireland, we have got some good longer term bets out there. CSETS such as the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN ) or the Bio-Diagnostic Institute (BDI ) are in the game for a cheap integrated sensors everywhere, transparent display world. Their world class science and global partnerships must be convertable though. It is not about stamping your foot for more IP or demanding spinouts – it is about building a truly supportive structure that allows Irish based innovation to take advantage of the trends out there and create value.

A decent broadband structure has to be seen as the playground for our kids to learn the ropes. I got my first taste of programming on a ZX81. I’m not a programmer now but computers have always been part of my life and a tool to be used. If we want to be leaders not just consumers then we must be learners first. The few who heard Bob and his forecast last week and gained some insights would do well and start learning fast.

I have my copy of Get There Early on order. I’ll do a review.