Featured Articles, Industrial Design, Strategic Foresight, Strategic Innovation, Transportation Design, Uncategorized

My career up until 2007 had been about design and styling on the exteriors and interiors of automobiles.  This type of design work is essential for car companies, as it is better aligns the appearances and function with the demographic in mind for a brand.  While working at GM Holden in Australia, I  worked on new products and created styling themes around existing vehicle architectures, but I was also fortunate enough to work in the Advanced Design studio.   Upon joining the Advanced Design studio I was given an opportunity to develop new products for the Asia Pacific region.  We studied markets using a new field of research called foresight strategy.  My assignments were to examine new disruptive technologies and to consider Global issues for programs that had yet to be initiated.  Our team was concerned with considering entirely new vehicles as part of a global strategy meet supply new emerging markets with appropriate products and services.

Traditionally a Design work within an OEM studio (original equipment manufacturer), will spend most of their time and energy on identifying target markets and selecting themes to develop further, and then translate a theme into physical properties such as clay models and digital models. Within this system of theme development, production programs can be started, postponed, shelved or eliminated all-together based on decisions from senior leadership.  The remaining amount of time is generally used to identify more closely with the potential consumers’ mental and aspirational mindsets.  Part of our design work is dedicated to selecting key words, phrases and  images that bolster the theme development for an existing brand.  Identifying future consumer’s unmet needs as market opportunities can be very challenging, because the process and tends to be disconnected from real-life consumer insights.  The reason for this is because most of the attention and still spent on the day-to-day business operations.   When we as designers try to create sketches for vehicles and conceive scenarios that are 10, 15 or even 20 years into the future for our companies, things can quickly go astray.  Sometimes this vision models can get weighed because of all the layers of bureaucracy and legacy costs that are associated within an organization, and other times it may be difficult or nearly impossible to move swiftly on opportunities when because you are working within a large and constrained system.  This is the primary reason that why consultancies can provide such valuable insight and fresh perspective, because they have more flexibility to showcase new ideas and explore unknown product/service/experience territories.  Some car companies have an ability to overlap this with their branding strategies, yet most do not.  The opportunities which may exist outside their specific product realm could be more about services or more about delivering an experience and  in this case, the innovation and branding strategies fall short in helping to identify a key innovation.  The territory of traditional automotive design thinking has always been about proportions, stance and quality of execution on a theme.  This is one of the reasons why I chose to join Idea Couture because I wanted to share this process on their projects and at the same time combine my experience and knowledge of foresight strategy to facilitate the innovation and business side.

It was my participation in the foresight strategies and futures workshops that helped guide me to Idea Couture.   My prior experience working with the Advanced Design studio provided me access to an experimental team comprised of designers, engineers and manufacturing innovation experts.  Through foresight study, we reached a new level of understanding in regards to identifying unmet market needs, values shifts, societal changes, technology advancements, environmental concerns, economic forces and political pressures.  Each of these topics have an affect on the business planning and product development strategy, and it was in this field of study that I was able to capture a sense of innovation and an opportunity mapping that gave me an ability to correlate my ideas abou the future with Idris regarding transportation, personal mobility and fashion synergy.

In December of 2009 I traveled to Shanghai for a round interviews with potential employers.  I visited with brand name car studios, international consultancies and I was also able to meet with Idris after an exchange of information on Linked In.  We discussed some potential synergiesbetween his company and myself, even though at that time  I did not have a clear picture or prior knowledge of the backgrounds of his experienced professionals who worked with his team.  My only thought was that there would be a positive benefit for both of us by working together and that by bringing in my capabilities and combining it with their business thinking we could better deliver innovation for clients.

Working for Idea Couture has offered me a chance to build a framework of challenging old ideas.  Based on deep insights and a multi-disciplinary approach, I am fortunate again to be able to work with a group of such diverse and qualified business people, and experts to rely upon as we face the challenges of innovating new products and services at Idea Couture.   I can think of no better opportunity for using my experience and skills than with this team.  We will make a positive difference by way of delivering innovation to companies that rely on us to more effectively relate to the people that we all depend on the most, the consumer.