Innovation Inspiration, 1 April 2012

The base of the world income pyramid, generally called the ‘Base of the Pyramid’ (BoP), consists of poor people.  About two-fifths of the world population can be categorized as poor. Their income is less than 2 dollars per day. About a fifth of the world population is classified as extremely poor with income of less than 1.25 dollars per day. Design of products and services at the BoP (i.e. for and with the BoP) is an important ingredient of this business strategy.

The conceptual design phase at the front end of a design process is an important phase. In this phase, requirements are identified, principles of solutions are developed and the best candidate solution is selected for its further development.  Our research focuses on the conceptual design phase at the BoP. The overall aim of our research is to generate new and actionable knowledge about this phase at the BoP, and to develop tools and methods to support practitioners in improving this phase.

The world income pyramid (picture adopted from Klein, 2008 [1])

The design project “Made in Kenya”, performed by our students Gabriella Rubin and Niklas Kull, received the Michael Treschow scholarship. The project was based on their research conducted in rural Kenya. They designed a human powered juice extractor that can be locally produced at a low cost. The juice extractor empowers small scale farmers to start up their own small juice production for local commerce. This year, our students, An Ni Le and Johanna Bengtsson, will visit Manaus in the Amazon region of Brazil for their design project aimed at creating sustainable livelihood for the local people.

Why are we trying to be innovative? The simple answer is “to make money”. A more comprehensive answer could be “to deliver experience that makes life better for people”. Every business has its own answers to this question. Looking at the aerospace industry the answer could be: “to make air traveling more comfortable for the passenger and with less impact on the environment”.

For whom do we innovate? Innovations have to create value for a customer to be called an innovation and not an invention. For Volvo Aero, an aircraft engine component developer, there is a long chain of value creation through several business relations (through the engine developer, the aircraft developer and the airlines) before the value reaches the passenger who buys the flight ticket. But innovations can create value not only for the closest customer, value creation can take shortcuts. The innovations of Volvo Aero create not only value for the customers, but can also create value to their customer’ customers. Therefore, the focus should not only be on the requirements of the engine developer, but also on how to create value for the end user and passenger.

What is innovation? In the aerospace industry it can take decades before an idea is known as an innovation on the market and the products lives on the market for several decades. Innovations are not only what is on the market today, but about what will be on the market in the future.

How do we know how innovative we are? We cannot only look at the products on the market to know how innovative we are at present, those products tells us how innovative we were at the time we developed them. Innovation capability needs to be measured related to the work in progress. Innovation is both about activity and outcome, and both need to be measured.

How innovative do we need to be? As a component developer the opportunities to create radical innovative offers are limited as the components need to be fitted into a system, but for incremental innovations the opportunities are endless. But when the whole industry is working together to meet the challenges of the passengers needs and the environmental requirements, there are opportunities for all kinds of innovations.

// Johanna Wallin, Ph D Student, Volvo Aero Corporation

Innovationsinspiration, 3 february 2012

LED based spectroscopy for optical diagnostics of solids

and liquids

We have developed a number of realistic electro-optical instruments within the area of bio-photonics. We rely on fast sequential flashing with arrays of inexpensive monochromatic light emitting diodes for acquisition of broad band information from UV to NIR arising due to absorption, scattering and fluorescence phenomena. With this approach we ensure high photon economy, simple mechanics with low tolerances and we avoid expensive traditional light sources such as lasers or high pressure lamps. Further our approach provides spectral information without the need for costly dispersion gratings and associated optics. We evaluate the complex information with chemometrics and multivariate analysis for supervised machine learning and direct prediction. Our applications include medical skin diagnostics for early cancer diagnostics by combined reflectance and fluorescence spectroscopy, staining-free malaria detection by spectrally resolved single scattering microscopy, surveillance and quality control in food and diary products with an ultra broad band liquid spectrometer capable of independently acquiring coefficients for absorption, fluorescence, scattering refractive indices. We work in close collaboration with a ISP-SIDA financed African research network to find novel applications and ensure realism, simplicity and robustness of the systems developed.

Project group: Mikkel Brydegaard, Sune Svanberg, Applied Molecular Spectroscopy and Remote Sensing Group at the Atomic Physics Division, Lund University, Sweden

Time period: 080901-120131

Innovation Inspiration 25 November, 2011.

INGO – Innovation capabilities and growth

The initial part of the research project has had a focus on the industrial design consultancy. The results are presented in a licentiate thesis called ’The Enabling Service of the Industrial Design Consultancy’.

In the thesis Magnus Eneberg argue that industrial design consultancies offers both relieving and enabling service and should be viewed from the perspective of service- rather than goods dominant logic. Further on changes in the logics behind the business of industrial design in terms of how it is organized, the competencies of the industrial designer and the perceived role of the IDCs in client firms are discussed.

Interaction, interpretation and negotiation take place inside and between organizations and the individuals that is part of the organizations. The attempt to handle this process is one of the major concerns of management since it is crucial for the results of organizational learning and development.  The next step in the INGO project has a shift of focus towards small and medium sized companies, and the relations between the two parties. The aim is to deepen our knowledge on how the collaboration and learning between industrial designers and their potential client companies can be enhanced with the object of increased innovation capabilities. Integration and trust aspects will receive more attention.

Innovation Inspiration 19 September, 2011

Haptic Algorithms and 3D Graphics flr Haptic Milling

Innovation Driven Research Education (IDRE) stands for a new research education, integrating research and innovation. One project conducted by Magnus Eriksson and Suleman Kahn is conducted at KTH. The Mechatronics lab at KTH has in collaboration with the Karolinska University Hospital developed a haptic milling simulator. Where you can practice virtual milling applications with force feedback; such as skull bone operations, tooth milling or free form sculpting. For more info, please visit the web pages of the project.

Virtual sculpting in the haptic simulator from Manne Eriksson on Vimeo.

Innovation Inspiration 29 August, 2011

Increase the capacity for innovation through innovation indicators

MINT is a method of using the innovation indicators result in a change toward greater innovation. The method was developed in research projects within PIEp and tested in several companies. We are currently working with Ericsson on a project with a network of smaller companies in the food industry. Other companies that have used MINT within PIEp are Sony Ericsson, St. Jude Medical and Volvo Aero.

The method focuses on the team during a workshop to identify challenges, activities and indicators: challenges for increased innovation; activities designed to meet these challenges and indicators used to monitor activities. The workshop results for the dedicated team in an action plan to improve innovation capability.

MINT is the result of a collaboration with several researchers in PIEp Bjorn Regnell and Fredrik Nilsson of Lund University, Tobias Larsson of BTH (former LTU) and Sofia Ritzén from KTH.

Are you interested in? MINT is perhaps something for your business? For more information contact PIEp Director Sofia Ritzén