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Welcome to designbivouac’s inspiration collection.
Exploring design and innovation.
Over 30 years of collaboration, designbivouac has uncovered lasting insights. Inspirations is a curated collection of inspirational objects and ideas shaping a continuous journey of creative exploration.
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Lessons from Superfest
Never heard of the brand Superfest? If you venture into a pub in the territory of what was once East Germany under the Soviet Union, chances are you’ll enjoy your favorite beer using one.
Never heard of the brand Superfest? If you venture into a pub in the territory of what was once East Germany under the Soviet Union, chances are you’ll enjoy your favorite beer using one. Like the space program, the history of this nearly unbreakable glass is a testament to what can be accomplished in the name of international competition. But, unlike the successful Apollo program, like Velcro, Superfest’s lack of market success raises some cautionary and uncomfortable questions about the power of market forces.
The origin of Superfest hardened glassware can be traced back to a pivotal moment in the world of glassmaking—the invention of tempered glass. Tempered glass, born out of a quest for durability and safety, revolutionized the industry with its enhanced strength and resistance to breakage. However, tempering glass and a later innovation involving laminating plastics between layers of glass to strengthen it are expensive processes that can cloud glass clarity.
As a result, the government of East Germany, highly motivated to prove the value and innovation capacity of Eastern Bloc countries, set out to develop a nearly unbreakable glass that was inexpensive to produce. Through relentless research and development, chemists experimented with ion-exchanging, a process that involves heating ordinary glass and immersing it in a Potassium Nitrate solution, which alters its chemical structure. Gaps at a molecular level that make glass prone to cracking are filled by Potassium Ions, making the glass far more resistant to breaking.
When released in 1977, it was 15 times more durable than standard glassware. Despite its superiority, Superfest, German for “super firm,” never became a commercial success. In part, this was due to the remarkable nature of the product. Once most restaurants and pubs in the Eastern Bloc had purchased Superfest glassware, the need to replace their inventory dropped dramatically. What was once an annual business expense for many companies has been eliminated. Additionally, many companies that one would think would be very interested in it, such as Coca-Cola, actually made money by selling their glass bottles. So, despite offering a far more robust and seemingly more sustainable product, companies preferred an inferior product that helped their bottom line.
Decades later, in response to a request from Steve Jobs, Corning introduced a similar chemically hardened glass for the iPhone. While expensive, it met the need for a thin and robust display for electronic devices. Today, the product is called Gorilla Glass and is featured on billions of best-selling consumer electronic devices.
Overall, the Superfest story prompts you to wonder, as Fern so eloquently asks in the linked video, how many of today's products are worse than they should be? Take a closer look at this fantastic story on Fern. It may challenge some of your views on market forces and how they operate today.
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Nurturing Design Thinking
Fast Company recently asserted that the era of design thinking has ended. Far from the end of the era, companies increasingly realize the need to build their internal design thinking capabilities to enhance their innovation capacity. As we move into a new era of nurturing in-house design thinking, companies must make long-term commitments to supporting the conditions for design thinking to thrive and be patient enough for innovation efforts to take root and bear fruit.
Fast Company recently asserted that the era of design thinking has come to an end. Far from the end of the era, companies increasingly realize the need to build their internal design thinking capabilities to enhance their innovation capacity. As we enter a new era of nurturing in-house design thinking, companies must make long-term commitments to supporting the conditions that enable design thinking to thrive and be patient enough for innovation efforts to take root and bear fruit.
Nurturing a New Methodology
It takes time for new methodologies to be adopted across a company. It takes time for people to understand fresh approaches and for changes in how teams work to lead to tangible successes. It takes time for a movement to change how companies operate. Indeed, it takes time to transform a company. Design thinking has the potential to do just that, and for it to take hold within a company, it benefits from the mindset of a gardener. Consultancies have worked closely with companies seeking to learn and apply design thinking for decades. Most are engagements involving multi-year journeys, onboarding new hires, and the persistent involvement of CEOs.
Company leaders must set the conditions essential to adopting design thinking. First, they must set expectations and plan for several years of growing a design thinking capacity. Efforts often start by working in areas relevant to the company but not so significant as to cause undue risk. Using this approach, even with small victories, others within the organization can see how the process applies to them. This approach also allows for experimentation and the kind of trial and error that occurs when onboarding new design-thinking practitioners. In addition to transforming how existing employees innovate, hiring colleagues with new design research capabilities, unique business outlooks, and the ability to prototype with technology quickly is often necessary. All of this takes time. Several tiers of leadership within the company must be involved to ensure that the focus on design thinking can persist beyond leadership changes.
“Being mindful of how deeply the roots of design thinking are reaching within a company is essential to ensure that the movement can persist even if fundamental leadership changes occur or a company pivots strategically.”