I received an email today from Ruben Robert the cofounder and head of marketing at Fellowforce.com. You may remember I introduced you to Fellowforce.com in this posting on June 16, 2007. Ruben sent me a press release outlining an exciting new way for organizations to gather innovative ideas.

Jeff Crites, Fellowforce.com Director/North America, explains:

“We started our platform for Open Innovation two months ago, and since then we’ve received ideas and suggestions for leading brands worldwide. The idea for this new service is due in large part to a submission in our own innovation box. A Fellowforce ‘Fellow’, Marcel Heinkens of the Netherlands, suggested we offer an Open Innovation widget for websites. Today, four weeks later, we’re introducing the ‘Innovate Us’ button, enabling any business to welcome ideas from a global force of innovators.”

(more…)

Don’t stop innovating just because you had a great idea and a successful product launch. It won’t take long for the competition to come along, so add to your idea. Here are some resources to keep you ahead of the competition

1. Look for emerging trends that will begin to impact your product. See also How to Identify Emerging Trends.

2. Plan out how you will restart your product’s life cycle.

In my last post, I brought up the idea that as designers and innovators we must consider our intentions and the consequences of missing intentions. For example, if our intentions do not include being environmentally friendly, we will still have an impact on the environment. Ignorance does not excuse anyone!

For that reason, I have created a list of 30 innovation and design intentions. Sometimes we intentionally create or affect these with our innovations. Other times, by not considering them we influence these factors by our ignorance. Not only do we need to consider how our innovations impact things when they are in use, but how they will continue to influence things when they are no longer useful.

(more…)

What drives our innovation and design ideas? What shapes and molds them? What underlying intentions are present within our designs? Better yet, what intentions are missing from our designs? Just because we do not intend to destroy the environment doesn’t mean that we are excluded from doing so.

TED.com recently published a video of architect and designer William McDonough giving a presentation at the TED Conference 2005. In his presentation, William McDonough seeks to find out what our buildings and products would look like if designers intentionally took into account “All children, all species, for all time.” If you haven’t seen The wisdom of designing Cradle to Cradle, I suggest you watch it.

As designers and innovators we must consider our intentions and the consequences of missing intentions.

If you would like to learn more about William McDonough’s philosophy of “cradle to cradle” design, which bridge the needs of ecology and economics, you can read his book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.

Working on an innovation right now? It is time to check your logic.

1. Are you still solving the right problem? See if you got off track.
2. Is your innovation possible? Look at the big picture.
3. Will you investment pay off? Check you budget.
4. What assumptions are you operating on? It is time to test assumptions.

Need more help checking your logic? Check out 50 Questions that Will Make Your Next Idea Thrive and the Top Ten Reasons Ideas Fail.