The Art of Innovation: What Every Brand Can Learn from Inspired Product Design. - Issue: 2003 Qtr 4

An impossible deadline.
A boring product.
A stagnant industry.
Boy, talk about pressure! You’ve got one week to design the best grocery store shopping cart on the market. And television cameras will document every second of the process. Well, product design firm IDEO, from California rose to the challenge and succeeded big time with a wonderful design (definitely not your standard metal crate of a cart) and a behind–the–scenes glimpse into how great ideas take shape.
But don’t just take our word for it — read the book. The Art of Innovation chronicles not only how IDEO went about creating a breakthrough design for a shopping cart in just one week, but it gives every brand marketer a glimpse (and more than a few great pointers) about how to breathe some life into a brand.
Here are some of the things we probably already knew but may have forgotten along the way:
Deadlines can create positive pressure, if you’ve got the right processes in place.
Teams work best when they don’t spend all day in meetings.
Silly ideas often spawn elegant solutions.
If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.
Concept fast, revise often.
It’s all about the user experience.
Our list goes on and on, and we’re sure that if you read the book, you’ll see all sorts of ideas that you can apply to your brand marketing. Thanks, IDEO for an inspiring book.
The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley. Published by Doubleday.
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