5. Innovation and design

5. Innovation and design

5.1 Invention

• Drivers for invention

• The lone inventor

• Intellectual property (IP)

• Strategies for protecting IP: patents, trademarks, design protection, copyright.

• First to market

• Shelved technologies

5.2 Innovation

• Invention and innovation

• Categories of innovation: sustaining innovation, disruptive innovation, process innovation

• Innovation strategies for design: architectural innovation, modular innovation, configurational innovation

• Innovation strategies for markets: diffusion and suppression

5.3 Strategies for innovation

• Act of insight

• Adaptation

• Technology transfer

• Analogy

• Chance

• Technology push

• Market pull

5.4 Stakeholders in invention and innovation

• The inventor, the product champion, the entrepreneur

• The inventor as a product champion and/or entrepreneur

• A multidisciplinary approach to innovation

5.5 Product life cycle

• Key stages of the product life cycle: launch, growth, maturity, decline.

• Obsolescence: planned, style (fashion), functional, technological

• Predictability of the product life cycle

• Product versioning/generations

5.6 Rogers’ characteristics of innovation and consumers

• Diffusion and innovation

• The impact of Rogers’ characteristics on consumer adoption of an innovation

• Social roots of consumerism

• The influence of social media on the diffusion of innovation

• The influence of trends and the media on consumer choice

• Categories of consumers in relation to technology adoption

5.7 Innovation, design and marketing specifications

• Target markets

• Target audiences

• Market analysis

• User need

• Competition

• Research methods

• Design specifications