In May-June last year Experientia (in collaboration with Richard Eisermann of Prospect and Tjeu Arits of Arits Consulting) worked intensively with the City of Genk, Belgium, to set out the project vision and prepare all the application documents in order to gain Flemish Government/ERDF funding.

Meanwhile, the project was evaluated positively and yesterday it was officially launched.

From the launch press release:

Today, the Belgian Ministry of Economy formally inaugurated Humin, a programme developed for Flemish SMEs and start‐ups that creates competitive advantage through people-centred innovation. Sponsored by Limburg/Genk, Design Region Kortrijk, and FlandersInShape, Humin puts design at the heart of every business, enabling Flemish managers to become more effective and more successful. The focus of the programme is on understanding the people who use an organisation’s products and services, using design methods to translate these insights into tangible, bottom line benefits for business.

Over the next two years, Humin will have 1.4 million Euro available to connect businesses and designers, providing innovation tools and methods to SMEs and innovation training to designers. Through intensive workshops and one‐on‐one interventions, designers will coach organisations in the skills necessary to identify opportunities for innovation within their businesses. They will then help their clients to develop these insights into new products and services through design. The goals of Humin will be to:

• Raise the entrepreneurship of 30 Flemish SMEs and start‐ups through the use of people-centred design and innovation methodologies;
• Train 20 persons to become Design Coaches, the experts in people-centred design methods who will support the participating SMEs;
• Create a set of practical tools for both of the above groups that enable innovation and the application of design thinking to business problems;
• Improve the perception of entrepreneurship in Flanders, inspiring individuals and companies to try new methods of innovation;
• Strengthen the international reputation of Flanders as a region focused on innovation;
• Create a community of people-centred innovation practitioners that will prolong the impact of the project beyond its two year running life;
• Develop a body of knowledge (and a means of accessing it) that will provide a legacy for use by the region in the future.

With the generous support of Flanders and Europe, Humin offers an extraordinary opportunity and financial incentive to learn, practice and implement top‐level innovation methods that will provide long lasting benefits to Flemish businesses. Any business or organisation that is trying to meet the challenges of today in more creative ways can sign up as a candidate for the programme. Any designer who feels he/she has the right mix of experience, business understanding and design skill to make a credible impression on managing directors of SMEs should put themselves forth for Humin. But capacity is limited to 30 ‘business seats’ and 20 ‘designer seats’, so please visit www.humin.be for more information and to register your interest today.

The project manager is Dany Snokx, who worked for 11 years at Philips Design in Eindhoven, and for past four years was engaged as creative director for Philips Lighting.

The bilingual (Dutch/English) humin.be website provides plenty of background information.

The first report, “Living in the 21st century: older people in England” (press release – study download) presents a major longitudinal study (316 pages) about the reality of ageing in England. It covers employment, material well-being and poverty, health, quality of life and independent living.

(via FutureLab)

The second study, entitled “Don’t stop me now – Preparing for an ageing population“, (press release – study download) illustrates how unprepared the UK Councils are for this ageing population.

“The report asked older ‘mystery shoppers’ to identify the everyday challenges they face in accessing council services. They approached 49 councils asking a series of questions and found that most councils need to improve the way they provide information in key areas such as volunteering, leisure and social activities, learning opportunities and transport.”

The programme should also result in the development of new products, services, and concepts. Finally, the programme should increase the qualifications of employees to take part in the innovation processes in the participating companies and public institutions.

The programme, which has a yearly budget of DKK 100 million (13.4 million euro or 20.9 million USD) and runs for four years, 2007-2010, is administered by Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority, which is part of the Danish Ministry for Economic and Business Affairs.

The activities are grouped in three areas: strategic, regional, and other important areas.

The strategic effort concerns three broad thematic areas: (1) areas where Denmark has particular business skills (e.g. environment and energy technology, construction, health, design and food); (2) cross-sectoral issues relating to social problems with promising market potential (e.g. healthy and energy saving construction, or fighting obesity); and (3) welfare areas, in particular where the citizen interacts with the public sector (e.g. care for children and elderly citizens and the health sector). Fifteen projects are currently running:

• Indoor climate and quality of life – more in Danish
• Service renewal in practice – user-driven service innovation in small artisanal companies – more in Danish
• Accessible packaging for the elderly and the functionally impaired – more in Danish
• Innofood – employee and user driven innovation in value chains – more in Danish
• User-driven mobile community – more in Danish
• User-driven innovation and communication of textile qualities – more in Danish
• The future’s interactive convenience store – more in Danish
• Future waste systems – more in Danish
• Coherent patient process – more in Danish
• A good life for the elderly – more in Danish
• The healthy way – more in Danish
• Lead user-based entrepreneurship (in collaboration with Lego and MIT) – more in Danish
• New product development with lead users (in collaboration with Grundfos and MIT) – more in Danish
• Intelligent utility – more in Danish
• User-driven innovation and strategic design – more in Danish | English

Desinova is the name of this last project, an historic, systematic, and longitudinal study of strategic design and co-creation innovation in services happening now in Denmark. The project’s outcomes are expected to have global implications for innovation in industry and civil society.

The Desinova project objectives are:

• to generate ten successful service innovation projects;
• to make participating service companies and agencies more capable of service innovation;
• to develop a Service Innovation Model that explains how service company personnel, strategists, marketing people, designers, anthropologists and users successfully co-create;
• to evolve policy recommendations for business, education and research.

The regional effort ensures that knowledge of and experience with methods for user-driven innovation is disseminated throughout the country. Regional actors in each of the country’s six geographic regions organise a yearly project in their region:

• Copenhagen Innovation Center (Capital Region) – more in Danish | English
• Handicaps – a knowledge resource to better aids (Central Jutland Region) – more in Danish
• Tele home care – chronic patients and the collaborating health services (North Jutland Region) – more in Danish
• Healthy meals for hospital patients (South Denmark Region) – more in Danish
• Bornholm’s harbour – the hidden treasures (Bornholm Island) – more in Danish
• User-driven innovation in value chains (Zealand Region) – more in Danish

The third area of effort covers applications from projects that work with any other important issues, businesses and institutions, notd covered by the strategic or regional effort, such as the 180º Academy and the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.

More info:
- Presentation by Dorte Nøhr Andersen, Head of Division, Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority – (pdf)
- Presentation by Lars Bo Jeppesen, Director, Danish User-Centered Innovation Lab, Copenhagen Business School – (pdf)

The list of invited speakers and discussants features Bill Moggridge (IDEO); Geetha Narayanan (Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, India); Lou Yongqi (Tongji University, China); Mugendi M. Rithaa (Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa); Aguinaldo dos Santos (Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil); Fumi Masuda (designer, Japan), Chris Ryan (University of Melbourne, Australia); Luisa Collina (Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy); Josephine Green (Philips Design); Roberto Bartholo (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Anna Meroni (Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy), Luigi Bistagnino (Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy); Nigel Cross (The Open University, UK); Victor Margolin (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA); and Ken Friedman (Danmarks Designskole, Denmark)

No less than 163 abstracts have been accepted, including our own. Take a look at the titles and the presenters to get an idea of the variety on offer, all within the wider theme of design for sustainability, or read a reflection on the selection by conference chair Ezio Manzini.

The topics sound great and I will enjoy attending, but I have to point out that the large majority of the papers come from academic institutions. In fact, there are only a handful of major companies (Intel and Philips) and design consultancies (such as Experientia) involved.

This is something bound to be different at another major international conference scheduled in Turin, Italy, the UPA Europe 2008 conference, taking place in December. Conference co-chair (and my business partner) Michele Visciola told me that many major international companies have submitted papers for this conference with the theme “usability and design: cultivating diversity”. More is to follow soon.

Experientia’s Jan-Christoph Zoels and Mark Vanderbeeken (the author of this blog) are in charge of the afternoon workshop on ethnography.

The event web page explains the importance of empathy in the creation of a successful user experience and stresses the relevance of a user-centred design for small and medium size companies.

The day will start off with a series of presentations:

• Prof. dr. Peter Vink of TNO and TU Delft (Netherlands),
• Anna Kirah, Kirah Consult & Future Alliance (Denmark),
• Matthew White, an independent designer (UK),
• Joannes Vandermeulen and Kristel Van Ael, Namahn (Belgium),
• Alexander Grots, IDEO (Germany).

The afternoon will feature four parallel workshops:

• Workshop 1: Justin Knecht of the Centre for Design Innovation (Ireland) will provide a practical “DIY” manual to understand users (mainly aimed at SME’s).
   
• Workshop 2: Jan-Christoph Zoels and Mark Vanderbeeken of Experientia (Italy) will demonstrate the ‘ethnographic research’ as a new innovation method.
   
• Workshop 3: Jurgen Oskamp and Tim Ruytjens of Achilles Associates (Belgium) will demonstrate the use of ‘personas’.
   
• Workshop 4: Valerie L’heureux of the Human Interface Group (Belgium) will discuss ‘Design Patterns, a perfect technique for user-centred design’.
   

Patricia Ceysens, Flemish Minister of Economy, Enterprise, Science, Innovation and Foreign Trade, will provide the closing speech.

Programme and registration: www.ucd.be

As stated on the website of the German Ministry of Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, the aim is to enlarge the potential that senior citizens can provide to the economy, by developing new products and services for the elderly, which in turn can secure existing jobs and create new ones, and by making companies (in construction, interior design, technology, information design, tourism, etc.) aware of the enormous opportunities by this future trend and supporting them with new ideas.

A press release dated 23 April 2008, gives more detail about the initiatives planned:

Companies, experts and organisations for senior citizens and consumers will be able to constantly exchange experiences and ideas on a new national platform, with the aim of creating a stronger integration of the expertise of the elderly, and therefore better products, that will be useful and pleasant for all generations.

• Small and medium size companies will be made aware of the opportunities of the senior citizen market through regional cross-sector workshops and forums;
   
• To increase the number of new companies founded by senior citizens, they will offered customised information and training opportunities in collaboration with the Chambers of Commerce and the public institutions;
   
• A collection of “best practice” examples of promising business ideas will provide senior citizens with good ideas and encourage to make the jump towards independence.

Germany will become the leader in “trans-generational” design.

• A competence network on “universal design” gathers information and knowledge with regards to product development;
   
• Design competitions in educational institutions will provide inspiration for the type of products and packaging that are attractive and usable by people of any age group;
   
• A travelling exhibition aimed at the public at large will show particularly successful examples of products and ideas that transcend the generations.

Older consumers will more easily find products and services that are based on their needs and requirements.

• The German Government is investigating whether a quality label for age inclusive products can provide support to the elderly during shopping, and can stimulate the development of theses types of products;
   
• Information materials, such as checklists, will make it easier for senior consumers to find the useful products and services within the market offering.

The initiative will initially run until 2010.

Here are some other German language links:
- Wirtschaftskraft Alter (project site)
- Project backgrounder (pdf, 12 pages)
- Design competition “Von Kopf bis Fuß” [From head to toe]

“Data, transported and shaped by the internet, is increasingly becoming a primary way that people expect to engage with public transport in particular. Engage, as in access and navigate through transport service information, but also explore and understand the transport service itself.” [...]

“So, here are transport systems where usage data has become available – or could become available – and is then built upon, as a way of exploring whether various ‘live dashboards’ of transport across a city will engender new levels of engagement with transport. And whether this will increase awareness of personal behaviour and impact on emissions accordingly.”

His long survey is divided in a number of sections depending on the type of transport: holistic, cars, scooter, cycling, bus, rail, taxi, aircraft, maritime and walking.

Read full story

“In an orchestrated effort to boost innovation in public services, two Government departments published papers last week that include design – usually the preserve of culture and trade – on their agendas.The Budget’s stated commitment to support small, innovative enterprises springs from the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills’ White Paper Innovation Nation [pdf, 923 kb, 101 pages] and the Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform’s new strategy, Enterprise: Unlocking the UK’s Talent [pdf, 4.7 mb, 105 pages]“.

“BERR’s report – labelled the most salient part of the Budget by Confederation of British Industry chairman Richard Lambert – notes the strength of the design industry and acknowledges that connections between design and business are weak. However, it is Innovation Nation that puts design at its heart, detailing three Government-backed projects run by, or involving, the Design Council.” [...]

“Minister for Innovation Ian Pearson believes that design is central to innovation and that innovation is key to improving public services. ‘Building design into the services of local authorities and Government departments is going to be important for the future,’ he tells Design Week. ‘The contribution of design to innovation hasn’t been emphasised enough until now, but user-led innovation always clearly demonstrated the importance of design in developing new products, processes and new ways of working.’”

An article on Science|Business provides more background:

“Innovation is changing, and government policy needs to be updated to reflect this says the UK government in a White Paper published this week, which promises to put public procurement at the centre of innovation policy for the first time.”

“This will have an international dimension, with the government pledging to align its policies with the European Commission’s lead markets initiative.” [...]

“Each government department will be expected to draw up an Innovation Procurement Plan as part of its commercial strategy, to drive innovation through procurement and use innovative procurement practices.” [...]

“The EU’s lead market initiative has picked out electronic healthcare systems, protective textiles, sustainable buildings, recycling, bio-based products and renewable energy, as areas where Europe’s spending power can drive innovation. It plans to help by improving legislation, applying public procurement and developing standards.” [...]

“The UK government has ditched the simplistic view of innovation as a disengaged process of investment in fundamental research leading to commercialisation by industry. Now it recognises that innovation draws on a wide variety of sources and is driven as much by demand as by supply.” [...]

“Switching the focus to the demand side will drive innovation by encouraging innovators to meet new, advanced needs. “Early users, whether they be individuals, businesses or government itself, shape innovations in their most important phase of development and provide critical early revenue,” says the White Paper.”

(via Niti Bhan on Core77)

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the culture secretary, Andy Burnham, unveiled the action plan, Creative Britain: New Talents for the New Economy, in what the government is labelling the first-ever comprehensive, state-supported plan to move the creative industries from the “margins to the mainstream of economic and policy thinking” in the UK.

The action plan [which was welcomed by the design industry] outlines 26 commitments for both government and the creative industries to nurture talent, create jobs and to drive the UK’s international competitiveness.

One of the initiatives is to develop a new annual World Creative Business Conference that will act as the “centrepiece” of an international push to make the UK the “world’s creative hub”.

– Read full story [The Guardian]
- Download action plan (pdf, 1.2 mb, 81 pages)

(via Richard Florida)

Sotamaa is the man behind the initiative to start a new Innovation University in Finland, by bringing together three Finnish top universities: the University of Art and Design Helsinki (TAIK), the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), and the Helsinki School of Economics (HSE).

The goal for the new university, due to start in August 2009, is to be one of the leading institutions in the world in terms of research and education in the field of technology, business studies and art and design.

The initiative is a much bigger and ambitious version of a general multidisciplinary approach that is currently also being implemented in some other major centres of education. Design-London at RCA-Imperial will create an ‘innovation triangle’ between design (represented by the Royal College of Art), engineering and technology (represented by Imperial College Faculty of Engineering), and the business of innovation (represented by Imperial’s Tanaka Business School). Carnegie Mellon University puts design, engineering, and business students into teams to work on projects. And the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management pairs MBAs with design students in product development classes.

Classes for the 22,000 students will be in English, in order to attract students from all over the world (many of whom might end up working again for that famous Finnish multinational, Nokia, who is one of the sponsors of the initiative).

What is interesting too, is their radical choice for a human-centred, multidisciplinary, and prototyping approach.

Read interview

Beyond the creative industries maps the state of the creative economy in the United Kingdom, and measures their contribution to economic activity.

Creating innovation presents the results of major new research into the role of the creative industries in stimulating and supporting innovation in the UK. The research investigates and quantifies how artistic and creative activities link into the wider economy.

Making policy for the creative economy finally explains what it means for the UK to start thinking of itself as a ‘creative economy’ rather than a set of ‘creative industries’.

Taking a series of case studies – drawn from the UK and internationally (including Lille, France; Gouda, Netherlands; and Portland, USA) – as a starting point, this report draws some fascinating conclusions about the factors common to success. Above all, it clearly shows that innovative capacity can be nurtured, even in unpromising circumstances.

Overall, three critical factors are identified as essential to successful innovation – the will to change, strong internal capacity, and external resources and feedback. The report builds a strong working model based on these three factors, and shows how it can be applied to a variety of situations, from community organisations to frontline services.

- Press release
- Report highlights
- Report (pdf, 6 mb, 140 pages)
- Policy briefing (pdf, 5 pages)
- Videos of launch event

Abstract

his report advocates a simple yet transformational approach to public services – self-directed services – which allocate people budgets so they can shape, with the advice of professionals and peers, the support they need. This participative approach delivers personalised, lasting solutions to people’s needs at lower cost than traditional, inflexible and top-down approaches, by mobilising the intelligence of thousands of service users to devise better solutions.

The self-directed services revolution, which began in social care with young disabled adults designing and commissioning their own packages of support, could transform public services used by millions of people, with budgets worth tens of billions of pounds. From older people to ex-offenders, maternity to youth services, mental health to long-term health conditions, self-directed services enable people to create solutions that work for them and as a result deliver better value for money for the taxpayer.

Self-directed services can be taken to scale safely while minimising fraud and risk. They can also be good for equity because they empower those people who are the least confident and able to get what they want from the current system. Self-directed services give people a real voice in shaping the service they want and the money to back it up. Previous approaches to public service reform have reorganised and rationalised public services. Self-directed services transform them.

Charles Leadbeater is a Demos Associate, author of We-Think, a visiting fellow at NESTA, the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts, and a partner in the new start-up Participle (the other partners are Hilary Cottam and Colin Burns). The two other authors, Jamie Bartlett and Niamh Gallagher, are researchers at Demos.

Download publication (pdf, 56 pages, 2-sided)

In an article in The Guardian, Leadbeater makes the report more concrete and provides this summary of his approach:

Self-directed service turns traditional public services on their head. In social care, for example, if someone is eligible for local authority funding, social workers devise a care plan that allocates the individual to services that are paid for and are commissioned by the local authority. It is rare for the individual to have much of a say in how services are designed, but self-directed services put the person at the centre of the action. Professionals help an individual assess their eligibility, and the person is then given an approximate budget so they can design services that make sense for them. Once the plan is approved by the authority, the money flows to the individual and on to the service providers of their choice.

The authors — a group of students from the Norwegian University of Science And Technology (NTNU) — have contacted numerous companies and experts in their effort to show the variety and diversity of the awareness and use of user-driven innovation among Nordic countries.

Although the report has a professional graphic design, the same cannot be said for the style of writing — which betrays its student project origins — and for the quality of the English.

In the report’s first part the student authors introduce the term user-driven, its relation to other types of innovation and the diversity of the definitions. The history of user-driven innovation is also presented.

The report then continues with an overview of which companies in the Nordic countries have utilised knowledge of their users in developing new products and services, including a shortlist of success stories.

Featured companies are Electrolux (Sweden – white goods), Lego (Denmark – toys), Coloplast (Denmark – medical products), Nokia (Finland – mobile phones), Laerdal Medical (Norway – basic and advanced life support training products and emergency medical equipment), Tomra (reverse vending machines), Trolltech (Norway – computer software), Plastoform AS (Norway – Nordic Seahunter), Funcom (Norway computer and console games), Deuter (Germany – backpacks, suitcases and bags), Sweet Protection (Norway – protective sports clothing), Cycleurope (DBS) (Norway – bicycles), and HardRocx (Norway – bicycles).

As authors of Hertzian Tales and Design Noir they are most responsible for popularizing the idea of Critical Design, where objects are used as tools for awareness and reflection upon issues largely surrounding the implications of existing and future technologies. Their work is in the permanent collections of the MOMA (NY) and the Victoria and Albert in London.

Bruce M. Tharp of Core77 was able to catch up with them at the IDSA/ICSID conference in San Francisco where they presented a recent project that proposes robots with “fragile personalities.” Listen as they discuss the ideas behind their work, their dream project, their feelings about “Critical Design” after more than a decade, the relationship between their professional practice and the work of their students at RCA, and more.

Listen to interview

Innovation and the city
How innovation has developed in five city-regions

Cities provide an ideal environment for innovation: in the words of this report, they offer proximity, density and variety. However, some cities are more innovative than others, and policymakers have long been concerned with finding out why.

Unpacking this problem requires considerable effort. Cities are complex systems and they exist in the context of regions, nations and international relationships. Moreover, cities themselves rarely innovate – they are hosts for innovation by people, firms and organisations. This means that cities often support innovation indirectly – and that some of the most important things they do are not thought of as innovation policy at all.

Download the Innovation and the city report

Leading Innovation
Building effective regional coalitions for innovation

For regions without the extraordinary assets of Silicon Valley (what we term here ‘ordinary’ regions), making the leap from an old-economy paradigm to one based on innovation in services and high-tech industries can seem impossible. But it isn’t. As we show here, it is made up of a series of smaller, more achievable steps. Two things stand out, however: this isn’t a fast process; and it requires deep regional knowledge and strong regional leadership.

The case studies presented in this report showcase seven European regions that have successfully made the transition from ordinary to innovative region; and four UK regions that are somewhere along that journey. It concludes by presenting a guide to the ‘regional innovation journey’ and an analysis of the types of leadership that may be required along the way.

Download the Leading Innovation report

Rural Innovation

In the past, innovation policy has tended to concentrate on urban areas. This is understandable: simply due to density, much traditional innovation that is countable by R&D expenditure or patent production happens in cities.

But 86 per cent of the UK is rural, and those areas are home to almost 20 per cent of the population. Isn’t it time to look a little more closely at how innovation happens there and how we might stimulate it?

Download the Rural Innovation essay series

The presentation entitled “Device art as a resource for interaction design and media art” was about the fading boundaries between interaction design, new media art and academic research. The hybridisation of digital and physical environments (through locative media, urban displays, augmented reality or mobile games) is explored by a large variety of people and institutions, not only engineers and academic researchers but also artists and designers. The talk looked at why the projects from the new media art/interaction design/device art are relevant and what they tell about the design of future technological artifacts.

iMal is the first Center for Digital Cultures and Technology in Brussels, a new place of about 600 square metres for the meeting of artistic, scientific and industrial innovations. The 2007/2008 programme of iMAL, an initiative of the French speaking community of Belgium, will propose basic and advanced workshops (i.e. on locative media, RFID, Ubicomp and the Internet of Things, urban electronic acts thanks to the support of VAF), regular concerts & performances, a series of conferences on Arts/Sciences, a series of meetings between innovating companies and creative peoople, and the first Dorkbot Brussels meetings.

Download presentation (pdf, 20 mb, 38 slides)

Participle (which now finally has a webpage) is a new social enterprise designing the next generation of public services, with a focus on the big and seemingly intractable social issues of the 21st century. The two other Participle co-founders are Charles Leadbeater, the internationally renowned thinker and innovator, and author of the book We-Think, and Colin Burns, designer and formerly the CEO of IDEO London. The initiative is supported by NESTA, where Participle has its offices.

In the 30 minute interview which covered as much ground as a normal person can do in 60 minutes – Hilary is a fast talker – we discussed many of the areas that are dear to this blog, including co-creation with end-users, the power of design to transform public services and provide new approach to address seemingly difficult problems such as diabetes, and how to constructively deal with an ageing population. She also talks about her new Participle venture of course.

The interview was published on the website of Torino World Design Capital, where the author of this blog provides monthly contributions.

Read full story

In September about 20 executives, mostly from Scandinavia, hopped on a plane for a trip designed to shatter their notions of how to do business. The group, comprised of the first batch of students at a new Danish school called 180°academy, jetted off to South Africa. There they worked with a group called the Business Place to help would-be entrepreneurs realize such dreams as opening a hair salon or starting a toy business, though they had no relevant experience or skills.

The program isn’t anything like business school, where students focus largely on areas of their expertise. And that’s the point. Conventional business education leads executives to build on their strengths—improving profit margins, boosting efficiency, and benchmarking the best practices of rivals. This school aims to teach midcareer executives something many think is unteachable: how to be innovative. “We’ve got to break them from what they know best,” says Anne Kirah, the academy’s kinetic, gum-chewing, American dean. “When you’re only focused on your competition and what you know best, you don’t innovate.”

Read full story

(Kirah has been featured before on this blog and also been interviewed by me last year.)