Creating breakthrough products (Portland, OR, USA)
Saturday, February 28th, 2009 by Keith Instone| March 5, 2009 | ||
| 12:00 pm | to | 1:00 pm |
Jean-Claude Balland will present “Creating breakthough products” as part of the Portland State University Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science Graduate Seminar series. Dr. Balland is a high-tech business consultant and has extensive experience in sales and marketing in Europe and the US.
Technology-driven innovation has given most of the products we take today for granted, such as television, microwave oven, telephone, and many others. The success of this approach cannot be overemphasized. But with the abundance of choices coming now from technologies that can easily be duplicated anywhere in the world, a new paradigm is emerging that gives the customers a more central role in driving the definition of innovative products. But how can a company tap this new way of innovating?
To succeed, breakthrough products must be useful, usable, desirable, and justifiable. Ethnography and design play a key role. Ethnography is a collection of approaches which aims to understand customer unstated needs; design capitalizes on the outcomes of ethnography to create experiences that will create emotional connections between the customer and the product and the company.
This seminar introduces the audience to a customer-driven methodology, and is an overview of the course to be offered in the Spring titled User-Centered Innovation.
See the PDF description of the session for more information.