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INCREMENTAL INNOVATION
Recently business schools worldwide began to include incremental and radical innovations in their curriculum. What is so unique about this? Let’s look to innovations based on the views of the Design Council UK, an independent charity and the government’s advisor on design. The Design Council UK works with the world vision that the role and value of design is recognized as a fundamental creator of value, enabling happier, healthier, and safer lives for all.
INCREMENTAL INNOVATION
Finding big ideas in a crowded space
Looking at an existing market or product and finding an opportunity to make an improvement to the way it looks or works is the bread and butter of design. For market leaders, it’s a necessity to staying ahead, as design can be used to attract a new user group or differentiate a product by making it easier to use.
The advantages of the incremental innovation process are threefold:
Every next-generation product needs to compete; it’s a must. Products need to evolve to allow competition with the previous generation to roll on.
You are offering a recognizable product to an existing market, therefore it makes it so much easier to communicate and sell your big idea.
The process of incremental production allows for affordable development. Products can be made better without breaking the bank.
Of course there are disadvantages to focusing on small er, more prudent design innovations—getting noticed in a crowded and noisy marketplace can be tough and there is the challenge of creating a genuinely differentiated, improved offering. The question to ask is how different is your product really? Also, brands are never alone; competition is high playing the same game, for the very same reasons.
The real opportunity in this process of innovation is for design to start with the need, not the solution. If you build your big ideas from the need, incremental innovations will follow.
Here are some successful stories covering incremental innovation.
The Joseph Elevate collection is a really good example of incremental innovation with its unique twist on an existing design. This company has built an empire on clever, yet simply designed, kitchen products. Their adaptation of everyday kitchen utensils has resulted in not one but a whole family innovative new products.
Another incremental innovation success story is the new Bouroullec Serif TV for Samsung Designed by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec. Love it or hate it, Samsung added a new layer of desirability to an existing product by turning a generic flat screen TV into a piece of furniture. The Serif is designed to be portable and with minimum clutter and maximum ease, you can place your Serif anywhere in the room—on the stand or even a table—for any occasion. Its unique I-shaped profile is sharper and more sophisticated than ever, giving it a completely different look than any other TV. It’s the very definition of minimalism design that’s created to elevate your room’s aesthetic. Your screen doesn’t have to be black when it’s turned off. A range of choices and settings make it simple to transform your TV screen and use it in different ways, like Ambient Mode, which serves up beautiful images and useful information.
Finally, it’s worth it to mention Ayca Dundar, a Design Council Spark finalist and inventor of the Pop Umbrella—a retake on the traditional umbrella design by being flexible and less likely to break. Pop Umbrella’s sustainable design consists of only six parts and has a supple structure, so it flexes during strong winds. It also closes into a compact flat disk for ease of transport. All in all, Ayca hopes Pop Umbrella will result in fewer lost and broken umbrellas on the streets on rainy days.
