1 Comment Written by Robert on June 2, 2008 – 7:44 am

Innovation in design is a change in the development, production, distribution, or use of an artifact, environment, or system that is perceived as being different from its precedents by its proposed users or target audience (Target Group).

In this context, innovation is distinguished from “invention,” in that it can only be truly understood by examining a contribution’s precedents as well as the consequences it creates.

In other words, an innovation can only exist in a continuum, defined not only by what comes before it, but how it is received. For instanceregardless of how strongly a product or process breaks with convention, it can only be described as innovative if the public responds to it as such. Indeed, many of the most innovative designs of the twenty-first century were made possible not by radical breakthroughs in technology, but by the cross appropriation or reapplication of existing technologies and methods across markets (Crossover, Redesign).

Innovation necessitates the contribution of a new definition, perspective, or set of circumstances to a community; therefore, issues of diffusion and adoption are critical when labeling anything as “innovative.” Design innovation is the result of a heuristic process (Heuristics). Rather than simply responding to a given problem, designers identify a number of possible solutions as well as inconsistencies, alternatives, and consequences to those solutions. In doing so, the process of design innovation illuminates the relationships and adjacencies that typically occur within a complex problem or set of problems.

Although difficult to evaluate quantifiably during the design and production processes, innovation is nonetheless a key factor in determining the continued success of a company today. As this fact has come to light, managers who previously privileged efficiency-based approaches (ROI, IRR, and so on) at the expense of less quantifiable heuristic approaches (collaboration, independence, creativity, user-centric design, and so on) have begun to appreciate and engage both in order to establish a culture of innovation within studios and companies. It is exactly at this intersection of “management thinking” and “design thinking” from which “real” innovation is borne. Generally, innovations can be organized according to their type and their dynamic.

The type of innovation (incremental or radical) describes the degree of change that the innovation represents; the dynamic of innovation (sustaining or disruptive) describes the effect that an innovation has on a given market and its targets. Incremental innovations take their form from an emphasis on “trajectory-based thinking.”

They are defined asmuch by the kinds of innovation that contributed to their earlier development as by the independent contributions a particular iterationmakes. An example of incremental innovation is the conversion of photography froma silver-halide-basedmediumto a digitalmedium.Radical innovations may derive their function fromother preceding innovations as well, but the effects of their introduction completely change the grounds on which other similar innovations are defined. An example of radical innovation occurred when the emergence of nuclear weapons changed the context of war from a conflict involving groups using conventional weaponry to that of a “global conflict.” (It isimportant to note that withsomuchpositive emphasis being placed on innovation today, the determination of an innovation’s overall contribution to humanity always requires ethical judgment (Ethics).

Within these two types of innovation, incremental and radical, one can derive two dynamics of the innovation process. The first, “sustaining innovation,” is an innovation that is primarily based on performance along a timeline, and does not drastically affect the design of other components on which its function relies. For example, the design of the paths on a piece of silicon that raised the speed of microprocessors from 286 megahertz to 386 megahertz was a sustaining innovation that improved the speed of “computing” without significantly altering the experience. The second kind of innovation dynamic is known as “disruptive innovation.”

This dynamic is based on its impact on fellow components rather than any performance metric. This dynamic might not denote a significant improvement in the function of a system or larger design, but does signify a break from established methods, materials, and/or functions. Therefore, a disruptive innovation provides an opportunity for change and often makes some methods, materials, and functions obsolete in doing so.

For example, the introduction of the laptop significantly changed the way in which computers were designed, used, distributed, manufactured, and marketed, signifying a change that would drive an entirely new realm of computing known as “personal” and “portable” computing. In short, design innovation is a complex process that relates to the development, application, and reception of a new solution to a relevant problem and therefore can be distinguished from simply generating ideas.