When It Comes To Innovation, Obscurity Is Not Obstacle It’s Opportunity
The process of innovation is hotly debated – too many outliers, too many obtuse definitions and too many origins however definition of innovation has never changed since the day the term was coined by Joseph Schumpeter with the definition of innovation connected directly to the applications of new technology, new material, new methods and new sources of energy thus effecting the over all capability of exiting designs, engineering and production in the market. The more a product changes causing demand to increase for the producer of a design, the more “innovation” is intended by his definition. But this is not enough.
Factors such as design fixation, functional fixedness ( a cognitive bias limiting a person to use an object only in the way it is traditionally used), narrow verb associations, assumption blindness, and analogy blindness along with in the psychological attitude of designers and business creators means a change in view and the distant association view of a designed effort, product or service can mean an immediate change in the capability of a design and therefore who uses it but more, who buys it. In “The Obscure Features Hypothesis in design innovation” we see the exact tools that can be used to take designs from the R&D Lab or the sketch pad to manufacturing and into the real world as either mass produced products or independent efforts. Either way, these tools show the way to increased design and innovation capability.