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 in shaping innovations ;creativity is the common denominator that links arts to innovation.

Showcasing few interesting examples of how the field of arts is creating product and service innovations.

Ancient Paper Art –  Kirigami

Many of us have experienced that electronic components don’t stretch easily and must have imagined that it would be so nice of we can have a bendable mobile display, laptop screens or even smart clothing.

The rigid electronic circuits had always challenged physicists that is there any way to match these rigid circuits with human skin, which is full of bends and curves especially when we are moving.

Kirigami, a beautiful traditional art form has provided solution to this problem. Kirigami is a form of Origami itself, which allows folding, cutting and flattening of paper or material. As a child we must have created many beautiful patterns with Kirigami.

Inspired from Kirigami, engineers cut and fold the materials that in turn can be incorporated into electronic devices. This makes the material highly malleable that one can twist and bend the foil. With Kirigami, the polymer can stretch upto 2000 percent. This advancement has many potential applications like electronic skin which can easily mimic human skin, for robotics and health applications, bending display screens and electronic papers.

Toyota Dream Car Campaign

A child is always full of imagination. A child’s imaginations has no limits/ What if these imaginations are to be treated as a source of innovation? Yes, that is the story behind Toyota Dream Car Campaign.   Toyota for the past few years has been successfully conducting Toyota Dream Car Art Contest.

In this contest they invite children from all over the globe share their ideas about future mobility. They are asked to draw their own dream cars. These artworks are showcased on dedicated website

These art works are then shared with the Toyota Enginers to find pearls of inspiration for new concepts and designs. We may find some great car like ‘Handicap friendly cleaning car’ or ‘the Toyota arctic car’ in future, which is born by imagination of these children.

Toyota considers these contests as serious business and it is not just child’s play !

Aboriginal Art Bags and Accessories

Aboriginal art is an art made by the indigenous people of Australia. It includes work made in many different ways including painting on leaves, wood carving, rock carving, sculpting, ceremonial clothing and sand painting. Aboriginal art is closely linked to religious ceremonies or rituals.

Now the simplest idea of combining these art pieces into bags and accessories, is providing a great ethnic connect to people. Small bags, shoulder bags, coin pouches, cosmetic bags with aboriginal art printed on them are finding great acceptance in the market over plane leather bags or so. It is turning up a good accessary for self as well as for gifting purpose, which is useful as well as displaying a good connect with ancient art and society.

ResonVate Thought
Arts of different forms like Kirigami can be inspirational to drive breakthrough innovations

I would like to ResonVate
with ideas on leveraging the concept, crowdsourcing, simplicity
which can be applied in product design, service design, communications, branding
in areas like Retail, Manufacturing, Government, Healthcare

Reference