Innovation Always Starts With Empathy; Look at Zipcar and Even Apple | Co.Design

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By SOHRAB VOSSOUGHI, originally post on fastdesign.com

Why empathy is a creative company’s most powerful tool.

[This post is a rebuttal to one previously written by Jens Martin Skibsted and Rasmus Bech Hansen, "User-Led Innovation Can't Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and Ikea." — Ed.]

User research has been a critical part of Ziba’s design process for more than 25 years, and we’re not alone. Long before the term User Centered Design (UCD) was coined in the 1980s, the world’s smartest companies have relied on insights gained from their customers to innovate....

Be the Target Market

Consider Zipcar. The world’s leading car-sharing service got its start 11 years ago in a Cambridge, MA cafe, when Antje Danielson described a concept she had seen in Berlin to fellow businesswoman Robin Chase. Chase recognized the opportunity immediately, because she was its target user. In 2003, she explained to the New York Times that there was “a huge demand for the service if it was positioned correctly--I knew because I was the market.”

The world is full of innovations that came from users...."

read the full post on fastdesign.com

Bobos Out as the Crocus Class Shift to Personal Responsibility- Re:thinking Innovation - Forbes

by Haydn Shaughnessy

"...The new naturalism is marked by a hard nosed interpretation of events, shorn of easy dreams. New naturalists draw on the natural world of ecosystems to explain the institutional world around them. They see decay and decline as well as growth and they are at ease with negatives because decline of some form is ‘natural’. To the new naturalist ideas, institutions, companies and people decline decay and die. And that’s all right.

Do the new naturalists belong to the creative class? No. Richard Florida’s creative class is a demographic with a broadly based skill-set where the new naturalist has a distinct frame of mind.

For those in the crocus revolution however the objective is to sidestep institutional decline and to aim for personal betterment. They will ally with other revolutionaries to achieve that. Therefore the recession has led to an uptick in websites where people help each other to access bargains and deals (and that’s why Groupon has been such a hit) or to share rides or even to share their car or to cook a meal or to lease out a spare room or let backpackers take the couch...".

Love this!

read the full article on Forbes.com