Hargraves Design Fellowship - Dec 2011 Update

The Hargraves Design Fellowship continues in full swing, with the participants moving to applying the knowledge gained within their own organisations. The progress of these pilot projects and the participants experiences in applying design will be presented at the Hargraves Conference in March. However in the interim, I wanted to share with you some insights as to what the group sees as the value of design led innovation. I had asked the group the share with me their thoughts on the value of design which I included as part of an recent presentation I gave at the Design Meets NSW Parliament event on November 22. Cerebos gave this particularity insightful description:

“In using design thinking embedded in the company, this will ensure that all projects that are worked on are embedded in a clear consumer need, i.e. are human centred rather than based on someone’s opinion or ‘hunch’. This will give the company much better chance of succeeding in a very competitive FMCG market. If the idea is consumer-led and based on a deep consumer insight and in line with the companies brand vision and strategy, the resources (time and money) invested behind such ideas will go further to bringing return on investment for the company. All to often we launch products due to time constraints, retailers ‘wish-list’ or to fill a gap (not market gap, more NPD funnel gap) and these products either bring very little ROI or do not even survive in the market for a substantial period of time. The value of design thinking can help to refine these ideas and to help build upon the ones that have merit, testing these rigorously with consumers and launching only those that meet the 3 key measures of consumer insight, and being on brand and company strategy, giving the company a higher chance of succeeding and therefore some measurable economic return. Having this discipline in the company might not win you any friends to begin with, but by only putting resource behind the ones that meet these criteria will save a lot of wasted time and money”.

I look forward to sharing many of the other comments from the group over the coming months and at the Hargraves conference.

(Sam Bucolo, Design Fellowship Leader)