Futureorientation 3/2009
Dear Reader. If we continue to produce what we have always produced, then it will all eventually go downhill. Product development is the core of our businesses and organizations – both in the short term and the long. In this issue of FO, we give you inspiration for how you can developyour products and services in a future-oriented way, and we give you examples of development projects in the private and public sector.
By Gitte Larsen, former editor FO. Starting with FO 4/2009, Morten Grønborg is the new editor.
Theme: the Product Development issue
Morten Grønborg: Rock your business
A Norwegian IT company uses the energy and rebellion of rock music to conquer the world and build strong relationships with employees and customers. Inspiration comes from CIFS’ Thomas Geuken and his Rock’n’roll Business project.
Martin Kruse: Organizational barriers to innovation
All innovation involves organizational change. Read about the barriers and the effective bottom-up process.
Sara Jönsson and Jacob Suhr Thomsen: Seven cases (pdf)
In the following seven cases, we look at various overall questions about product development, and illustrate several approaches. For example: How do you communicate with your users? Who is your target group? And what are the consequences of your innovation?
Christine Lind Ditlevsen: Meet your customers where they are
Coloplast has done it: met their users. In fact, they gained 1400 unique insights into users’ lives and needs – and, not least, many suggestions for improvements and innovations. As a benefit of this user-driven innovation process, employees gained a common platform and vocabulary.
Søren Riis: The art of reinventing the car
Car-pooling is the way forward. It saves money, time and the environment.
Kristina Laksáfoss Søgaard: You get what you ask for
We are in a paradigm shift in which the scientific theoretical basis for userdriven innovation, the qualitative ethnographic study, is well on the way to becoming a key method in organizational development work. This is because we need answers to other questions than those we usually ask. Qualitative knowledge has gone from ’nice to know’ to ’need to know,’ and user-driven innovation is not just another irrelevant buzzword.
Johan Peter Paludan’s comment: Innovate, innovate! More and more do!
Jacob Suhr Thomsen: Born ON
The Internet has not grown up, even though it turned 20 in April. It has been with us for better or worse for so many years that it has flown the nest and developed its own shape and personality. Now the Internet has become so independent and strong that we are starting to see a time when ideas and products are born online.
Sara Jönsson: Virtual supermarket of the future
Few buy groceries online even though the Net offers many interesting possibilities. With its project, Interactive Grocery Shopping of the Future, the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies is exploring how an Internetbased trading platform can be designed to meet users’ recognized and unrecognized needs. The results will form the basis for a new kind of virtual supermarket aimed at expanding Web-based grocery retail. Read about the project, which will be made public in May 2010.
Gitte Larsen: When the crisis obstructs
If, instead of letting yourself be sucked down by the downward spiral, you use your creativity, the crisis may be a gift to you and your business. CIFS’ creativity expert, Niels Krøjgaard gives you four basic steps to finding a good, useful idea. You also get examples of how to usefully face five obstructions raised by the crisis.
Steen Svendsen og Søren Steen Olsen: The business of policy
We need to focus on policy development. It is necessary to ensure future political solutions, and it requires that government departments, municipalities, organizations and businesses recognize policy development as a specific work. There is a need for the policy developer to have space and freedom – not on the terms of the past, but on those of the future.
Gitte Larsen: Perks at work
Product development in the internal areas of companies is lagging, and it is not just the younger generation that wants more. Knowledge work requires much more than ever of the individual employee and fringe benefits will therefore evolve in the coming years and become even more intangible and work-oriented.
