Learning from Nature for Global Product Development

Abstract

For both innovation and strategic design management education is shown via a case study how to teach through research in a multidisciplinary manner. Blurring boundaries of professional compartmentalisation and fragmentation of knowledge is leading towards a new era of innovation by not mimicking nature. In contrast to purely aesthetic design with its emphasis on subjective values, the focus of the innovation origination process here is on the rationalised formulation of functional shape in harmony with materials, production and environmental technologies. This is the opposite of prettifying or pure styling. It is also for this reason that there will be no dressing up of a predetermined technical package for the purpose of providing marketing or advertising with better sales or promotion arguments, but instead—and from the start—a concentration on the devising of analytic solution variants.