Dedicated to inspiring designers, inventors & the creative spirit in all of us.

Based out of Christchurch, New Zealand, Roger Dennis consults in strategic innovation, foresight and the intersections between them. He has worked with clients in a host of sectors including industrial design, telecommunications, and research services. Dennis authors the blog Ideaport , which helps organizations to address complex strategic issues in the world of design. He is also an associate of Innovaro – Europe’s leading strategic innovation consultancy.

1. Will we see more innovation in 2009 or less? I think many organizations will cut their innovation capability in the next 18 months. It is obvious there is a lot of pressure to cut costs in the current recession, and innovation teams often are the first to go in such circumstances. However, companies that cut carefully and preserve the core of their innovation capabilities will be well positioned when the recession ends. The proof of this approach can be found in many examples, but the most well known is Apple. (For more information read: http://www.rogerdennis.com/ideaport/?p=160 )

2. What was your first impressionable moment that involved design? I’ve always valued well-designed products, but never really appreciated the work in design until the late 90’s when I was exposed to the work of the Ideo crew in London when working for egg (an online bank in the UK).

3. Name something that needs improved upon that would benefit the consumer if re-designed? Most products designed for babies or young children. The notable exceptions to this are products designed by Bugaboo (http://www.rogerdennis.com/ideaport/?p=49 ) and Stokke.

4. You describe your IdeaPort blog as mental floss. What brings your readers coming back for more and keeping a nice, white smile? I think there’s a lot of confusion about the links between strategy, innovation and design. I’m interested in the intersections and overlaps of these three disciplines, but not in the jargon that surrounds them.

5. Name one person who influenced how you see things with a “designer’s eye.” I couldn’t attribute this to any single person – but the Ideo experience I refer to above had a massive impression.

6. I understand your home base is in New Zealand. Would you consider New Zealand to be more innovative than Europe and the U.S.? New Zealand has the advantage of having fewer people here, and therefore (in theory) change should be easier. In addition, the country has historically been isolated from the rest of the world, so if you wanted a solution to something you had to make it yourself. However, it lacks some of the culture that accepts failure – essential for innovation – and that balances out the equation.  Given these two factors I’d say it’s probably on par.

7. What or Who would you consider as a best source on innovative thinking? Gary Hamel is still hard to beat as a source of inspiration, but if you want a real dose of inspiration just spend some time online digging out the next re-mix, mashup or embryonic startup.

8. You recently submitted a post about brand and strategy. In it, you wrote about how you supplied a customer service division with a single guiding principle: “Our service is like oxygen and a customer dies after three minutes without it.”  Does this not explain the frame of mind you should have when promoting any product or service? That was actually a guest post by a colleague of mine – Patrick Harris. I think there’s a danger in taking a catch phrase and applying it to any and everything. That particular piece of work that Patrick referred to had a specific purpose. If you want to read more about this, then I recommend a copy of the book “Made to Stick.”

From a small home office in Columbus, Ohio, Brice Bunner provides product design services for clients around the U.S. With a few products set to launch this spring in stores such as Kmart and Walgreens, Brice is making it happen with little more than a 0.7 mechanical pencil, Adobe CS3 and a flatbed scanner. Bunner shares some of the everyday things he has done to make himself a better designer.

1. What was your first impressionable moment that involved design? When I was about 8 years old, I remember having taken a camping trip and seeing a two-sided salt and pepper shaker. I was jazzed, it triggered all kinds of ideas for better camping utensils. So many thoughts stemmed from that experience.

2. Design school prepares you for many things, but share one thing that you had to learn through experience in the design world to fully understand. No matter how much you are paid, or how much you know, the opinion of some people can, for no logical reason, trump whatever design solution you may offer. I have had the uneducated opinion of a non-designer sink a design idea of mine when the person who contracted me was doing some Q & A at the water cooler.  Thoroughly unprofessional, and ridiculous, my educated expertise was forfeited to the office banter of some business savvy co-worker.

3. Name one person who has influenced how you see things through a “designer’s eye,” whether it be an instructor from school or the author of your favorite blog or book. Chris Sickels of Red Nose Studios lectured once about how failures lead to great success. I had the chance to listen to Chris speak about four years ago, and that experience was an awakening for me. He talked about rapid failure and the idea that you can succeed mathematically, if you fail so many times. Hearing that was a great influence on me and reaffirmed the idea of perseverance.

4. As a consumer you observe products while inspecting price and branding. As a designer you observe products while paying attention to aesthetics and functionality. Which of those roles is it harder to relax from when you see the “next best thing” on store shelves? I can relax from neither. I constantly shop, if that’s what you want to call it. As a consumer I’m a spendthrift, but as a designer I approach every product with a close eye for design. Few things meet that standard to where money is of no consequence; the iPhone, the Flip camera.  Both are satisfying to me as a consumer and as a designer.

5. Is there any one product you see on the market that needs to be redesigned with a new material, perhaps a better interface or even a more green-conscious approach to the design as a whole? It is cliché, but: the car as we know it. There is no reason we cannot harness the power of water to fuel our vehicles. Car companies are in the dark ages. Green design is everywhere, some of it genuine, some of it not. But now there is a challenge for us to design a means of transportation without knowingly committing to a destructive cycle of energy. Water should fuel our cars.

6. The touchstone of any inventor/designer/entrepreneur is to see their idea on store shelves. What keeps your creative juices flowing in order to reach that goal? So many opportunities arrive from running into problems. I have had sleep interrupted by my mind churning solutions to problems I encounter. A good cycle to maintain is: address a problem, create a solution, and get feedback from others. By hitting problems head on you can better assess what it is you are trying to solve. Not only is it healthy to run into problems, it is to the benefit of what you are designing.

7. Everyone has their secret to great design. Reveal your sources of influence without which you cannot design, without stating the obvious, Davisoncreators.com. My shopping cart. I seriously find window shopping to be a great mind exercise when doing design work. I love going to Wal-Mart or CVS and sorting through bad designs while thinking to myself, “that is a horrible design, I need to fix that.” Another influence for me, from when I was younger, were “The Never-Ending Story” and “The Dark Crystal.”  These two movies were honest, creative productions that, to this day, remind me that anything is possible. As whimsical as they may be, the production really carried the stories through intense, old-school special effects.

8. Working as an independent designer, how much do you rely on networking for information and the resources needed for the work you do? As an independent designer, I do a lot of fishing and baiting. I will look for work then find myself having to manage other people that I outsource with to complete a project. In a way, I am the buffer between the outsourced designer and the clients I work with. 

I have to reach out and have other people help to do package design, graphics, model making and research. Not that I am not capable; by reaching out I can expedite the tasks to designers who specialize in those respective tasks. 

I tend to network with more of the business/ legal types. Going to an IDSA meeting, I find myself surrounded by “designers” shaking hands and mingling with the same people they work 40 hours a week with, which is no benefit to me. At a local level, BNI events or Kiwanis meetings are saturated with business savvy people, leaving me as the lone designer.   

9. What should the ideal designer do every single day, with the intention of becoming a better designer through habit? Make whatever it is you are doing simpler. I won’t recommend drawing each day or any of the sage advice you might get from other designers, but I will say this: simplify what you do. It doesn’t matter if you are organizing your work station, completing a task at hand or modifying your daily rituals, make it simpler, pare it down to its smallest possible parts. I have found that innovation comes through simplification.

This holiday season has found many people re-gifting by means of a white elephant gift exchange. Curious as to where this term derived from, I came upon this article that explains the curse that is the white elephant. As it turns out, those useless, kitsch, or obsolete items you own may be the ideal gifts worth wrapping up for that company or family white elephant gift exchange.