More From Duncan

On Aug 21, 2010, at 12:13 PM, Duncan wrote:

^^^ Long ago I used to stress this, in the book I refer to the perturbability rate, meaning new design should be quite marginal... "it does not take much to achieve the necessary "new" in new design...  I need to emphasize this more... again....^^^

There are two issues that are bugging me... how big the change has to be, and how much of this comes from the designer.

Your glass candles, I suppose you asked retailers for candles made of glass, where the light shines through the glass and creates a nice effect. Oil table lamps already existed that cast a nice glow, so I guess the innovation was just to do it in the shape of a candle..?

***Essentially, yes...***

The rug in your video... I don't know enough about the sector to see what was new when you touted this to retailers. It's nice subjectively, but what was unique? Was it the pattern, or the way you combined wool of different color? Or was this a follow on product from a really unique product you had previously introduced? I'd have difficulty telling a retailer exactly what is new.. but maybe speciality carpet retailers would see something different in this rug.

***Right...***

Perhaps because I'm not knowledgeable enough about my industries, I have felt like I have to introduce large innovations to reach the 'good, doesn't exist' threshold. Is it simply enough to have something that people say 'that's nice'? For example, there is nothing new about a t-shirt with a new pattern or logo, but retailers might like it. We can't articulate the difference.. you just look at it and say 'ahh that's nice'. Similar to your rug? Kind of like an implied 'good idea, doesn't exist'?

*** I saw a T shirt  a year ago, with this statement printed:  "There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who read binary and those who do not."  Now that is hilarious.  If you read binary.  The thing is selling like crazy.  But is is just another tshirt.  (10 in binary means 2 to the rest of us, but for some reason, in an ADD fit, i learned binary once long ago.  I can also reckon on an abacus.)

If this is true then it seems like you just need a desire to be in the industry. No great requirement to come up with anything innovative. Just simply something people look at and like. BUT any designer could come up with, say cutlery, which has a unique design that looks nice.

***You must have passion (suffer) and find joy solving the problem.  Then you can work with great designers.  It otherwise does not take much...  this is another reason why I find it so frustrating as to why more people do not get started.***

There's so many permutations of design that it's easy to come up with something slightly different that's 0.01% different from anything that's ever been on the market. But what work am I doing here? I'm just telling the designer to get to work.

***You seem to be running to the other extreme.  Not 100%, and not .01 %, more like 7 or 8 percent, if this can be quantified, although personally I think it is more of a qualification, not a quantification.***

John

Duncan

Here is the beginning of my post, delete this sentence. And here is the rest of it, delete this sentence.

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