By Diego Rodriguez, Master in Strategic Design, CEO Consulting Design.

The "Hot Topic" of innovation is everywhere  more than ever in the media, businesses and proffesional circles. A lot of what people understand of innovation has to do with technology, innventions, new products, but, What about new ways of doing something already existed?, what about business model innovation?. Is like saying that there is product innovation only if it is build with a brand new material or a material never used for that porpouse, that is clearly a mistake because under that assumption nothing made out of wood could be innovation because that material has been used for the last 2000 years.

To innovate is to generate value in a different way to the user, so Can we take something close and familiar like lets say a farmers maket and innovate?. That was the challenge a group of experts studing at the Masters in Strategic Design at Universidad de Valparaiso, the result was a high impact project in which the use of space and services was re-thinked in relation to the different users. For more information please visit: http://mdeuv.awardspace.com (In spanish).

At the end of 2009 we worked with NESst (www.nesst.org), Nonprofit Enterprise and Self-Sustainability Team, Global NGO with offices in Chile and other countries in LatinAmerica, the task was the design and development of a presentation that could communicate to different audiences a global project called "360Latam Project".

The development included the translation of concepts and key words to explain the project to design a kind of trailer or multemedia, and the brand design.

¿What is Design Thinking? | Diego Rodríguez Bastías

The way in which designers think, applied sistematically to the innovation process and the solution of complex problems.

In too many occations I hear businessman or even collegues saying that they don't have time to think about the strategy, that the days are to busy, too absorbing, and that they can't not care about sales or the operations control. The story reapeats it self, in smes and in big companies. VTR (A cable TV operator in Chile) started its Innovation Unit, because "the Marketing department doesn't have time to sit and think about new products or services", says Octavio Zapata (Innovation Manager at VTR Global Com). The question that one does after that is: what about smes that don't have a budget to hire a thinking manager?. There is no simple answer to this riddle, probably because the solution doesn't have anything to do with the budget, but with different way of thinking. Design Thinking is a concept that sounds more and more everyday around the world in businesses and other organizations...(read in spanish...).

On the 26th of september 2009, Consulting Design Team got together and did the "Creativity and Business Model Innovation" Workshop for the "Colegio de Ingenieros de Chile" in Santiago City.

This workshop was specially designed for the Mentors group of the "Colegio de Ingenieros". During a four hours, the audience could learn how the mental creative process works, which are the elements that trigger this process and how to design a Business Model.

The creative processes were tought by using the "Serius Play" Methodology from LEGO Inc. that allows people to "think with the hands" y to work as a team to search for solutions on real and tangible problems.

The audience was specially interested in the Business Model Template and told us later that it was a systemic way to analyze and develop a business model.

Francisco Rivera, one of the members of the mentor group, said "the tools we've seen here were very usefull. The business model template is ideal to diagnose companies and at the same time, make yourself the key questions to innovate in the business. It's a great complement to the Business Plan".

Watch the presentation

La Web 2.0 es la responsable de los mayores cambios que han tenido lugar en la Web desde mediados de los 2000 y seguramente es la responsable del imparable aumento de audiencia (para decirlo en términos clásicos) de la Web en relación con otros canales o medios de comunicación. Parece que era cuestión de tiempo que estos cambios afectaran a las actividades académicas y de investigación. (Lluís Codina)

Para Consulting Design las redes sociales son un fenómeno que ha llegado para quedarse y el mundo académico no está ajeno a este fenómeno. Es por esta razón que hemos realizado un esfuerzo por aportar al mundo de la academia y la investigación, desarrollando el portal www.podminds.com, un sitio web de redes sociales dedicado a este segmento.

Invitamos a todos aquellos interesados en compartir, generar vínculos y trabajar en red en temáticas de investigación, docencia y academia en general, a hacerse parte de PODMINDS y formar parte de la revolución 2.0 de la Web.

No hace mucho, en el mundo de los negocios globales, sólo se hablaba estrategia, estrategia, estrategia. Los últimos cinco años han estado impregnados de innovación, innovación, innovación. En una tendencia del primer mundo, donde el “Design Thinking” parece posicionado como uno de los procesos más exitosos para innovar, nos preguntamos en qué momento nuestro sector empresarial y gubernamental se hará eco de lo que está ocurriendo en los países desarrollados.

Reconociendo la creciente influencia que el diseño está teniendo en el desarrollo económico e industrial, y las potentes políticas de promoción de marca y diseño llevadas a cabo por economías emergentes similares a la chilena, el gobierno y el mundo del diseño chileno se plantearon desarrollar una política nacional de diseño como una política de Estado, con un claro foco en una estrategia multisectorial para mejorar la calidad y cobertura del diseño en Chile, mejorar la competitividad de los productos en el mercado interno e incrementar la participación del país en los mercados internacionales a través del valor agregado que significa integrar diseño en la estrategia empresarial y sus productos y servicios.

El diseño es un diferenciador. El diseño permite precios premium. Diseño es más que aspectos estéticos. Un buen diseño hace que el público se enamore de tu empresa. El diseño no es algo que se piense después, no es un barniz que se agregar al producto base para hacer que se vea “cool”.

Las frases anteriores han sido dichas antes, nada nuevo bajo el sol. El diseño gráfico e industrial existen hace bastante tiempo, y a lo menos en el primer mundo, la comunidad empresarial reconoce que “el buen diseño” permite que productos y marcas lideren en los mercados. Lo que es definitivamente nuevo, es el concepto de “Design Thinking” (Pensamiento en Diseño).

Por Diego Rodríguez, Consulting Design.