Design Product Archives - Page 5 of 7

Swarm intelligence to solve business problems

Everyday businesses are flooded with the need to make all sorts of decisions - strategic, operational and tactical .Many of these decisions are taken by business managers or leaders who may or may not always follow a popular view for that particular decision. Have you ever looked into how nature…

Painting to Kirigami: Arts an underappreciated innovation source

Inspiration is everywhere and everything -Throughout the history, great minds have applied this philosophy to come up with highly impactful innovations. Amongst the multiple sources, one source of inspiration which gets less attention is that of ‘arts’. Arts has played a key role and continues to play a key role…

Making it too easy can backfire: Cake mix story

At times making it too easy can backfire! That’s what General Mills, a famous US based Food company uncovered when they were investigating the reasons as to why their Betty Crocker brand ‘Cake mix’ failed to generate sales. On analysis they found the following issues, – Women always took pride…

Biomimicry Art

Mother Nature has perfected the design, size, shape, colours, and look & feel of all biological entities. They have been designed most effectively by keeping in mind, its role on earth and its survival. It is not a surprise to see designers, architects and engineers taking cues from nature when…

Canary from coal mine to software testing

Canary release is a technique to reduce the risk of introducing a new software version in production by slowly rolling out the change to a small subset of users before rolling it out to the entire infrastructure and making it available to everybody. Canary testing is recommended as good practice…

Early bowerman waffle outsoles rectangle

Nike shoe sole inspired by waffle iron

Nike's co- founder,Bill Bowerman, who was a track and field coach at the time, had been searching for a way to make shoes lighter and faster. While he was working to find a solution to this problem, his chat with his wife over breakfast got him the inspiration to build…

Photocopier drum inspired by beer

A product innovation example offered in 1991 by Ikujiro Nonaka and Martin Kenney in the Journal of Engineering and Technology Management involved a key part of a photocopier — its drum. A team of engineers at Canon Inc. was considering how to redesign the drum in order to ease photocopiers’…

Elephant fatality and water shortage in high altitude solved

Using solutions from nature has time and again proven to be highly successful for problems posed by nature. Two interesting stories on how nature’s resources and engineering is put in action for solving interesting problems Plan Bee to avoid elephant fatalities According to the Wildlife Trust of India, train collisions…

Genetics inspired by Austrian monk and peas

You might have always wondered as to why only of your siblings had a sharp nose or wide ears? The answer to your question can be answered if you understand certain principles of heredity. The field of genetics has come a long way over the last decade or so. Business…

Comics make boring legal contracts interesting

William Edwards Deming, the famous quality guru once said,”in God we trust, rest bring data”. Though most would agree with him there in one topic where I am happy to challenge him and make a claim without data to back up- ‘More than 98% of people never read the terms…

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