The YIA Innovation Forum returned in 2014 after a hugely inspiring event in 2013, and brought another six great people into the Bay of Plenty to talk about their journeys over their careers. They blur the lines between innovation, materials, sustainability, customer experience, healthcare, and the environment – just what we have been asking our students in this year’s YIA to think about.
The speakers from this year’s forum brought a diverse set of skills, experiences, and stories. They each had their own lessons and takeaways, but one thing that united the group was a focus on people, culture, and innovation. Trent Mankelow said it best with the old Maori proverb ‘He Tangata, He Tangata, He Tangata’, It is people, it is people, it is people.
This year four of us have collected our thoughts each taking a speaker(s) we particularly enjoyed to create a summary of the event for both those that attended, and those who weren’t able to make it.
Trent is a local, born and bred in the Bay before setting out, and fitting that he was the first to speak and share his journey through a Bachelor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences which lead him to realise that he had spent years learning what computers do, but not who they do it for.
Inspired by the book Human-Computer Interaction (Alan Dix, Janet Finlay, Gregory Abowd, Russell Beale) he delved into the then-fledgling field of ‘user experience design‘ and founded his company Optimal Usability with a friend Sam Ng and a cheque from his dad. From their first major project for Canterbury clothing, to hiring their first employee, selling the company to Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), his major takeaway was to focus on the people.
Recognising small achievements and supporting the team, as well as having fun, help to build a culture and team that you want to work for and grow a passion for. They even captured team feedback and photos and published a book. Play seemed an important part of the Optimal culture, something that both Trent and Sam felt they needed to take seriously.
They have talked a lot and often to leaders and successful people, learning from them. Their early appointment of an External Advisory Board has driven them to consider decisions more carefully and listen to others to improve their business.
Trent also talked about the big jump into developing their own suite of products called Optimal Workshop (which they have cannily hung onto). He talked about the huge challenge and commitment this took (some $600k of internal investment) and the importance of splitting this off from the company. This was vital, he said, to prevent the team from being cannibalised by paying clients in the user experience side of the business. There was a real tension in having both ‘products’ and ‘services’ in the same part of their business.
Optimal was founded on the idea of designing for people, so company culture always played a huge part in his operations. Even upon selling to a multinational corporation, he wanted to be sure his former employees and workmates would have the chance to keep their culture alive, and that the people were still the focus.
Takeaway points:
Robbie van Dam, Director and Co-Founder of Goodnature, followed Trent. Goodnature are developers and makers of innovative, humane, and non-toxic pest control devices based in Wellington.
Robbie started his higher education studying Architecture at Victoria University of Wellington later graduating with a Bachelor of Design in 2003, an unusual combination and one that says something about Robbie as a designer and thinker. During this time he worked on conservation projects as a technical advisor providing support to the Department of Conservation (DOC). A notable project was increasing the endangered Kakapo population from 65 to 130 in one New Zealand native bush region.
Robbie recognised that the issue wasn’t the bird but rather the predator, and inefficiencies in the pest control systems meant a handful of predator traps had to be carried by person or helicopter into remote locations. Although there’s nothing better than a trap for a specific kill, Robbie admitted that, being driven by ‘designer’s logic,’ this was illogical.
Goodnature was formed in 2005 with two other design school friends, Stu Barr and Craig Bond, to develop innovative solutions to these pest control problems. A $20k DOC R&D grant was used to test the feasibility of the CO2 gas powered solutions leading to a $250k innovation grant to commercialise the product, a solution that has gone onto to save DOC $8M a year. See the product in action here.
Goodnature has gone on to get inward investment from MEHL led by veteran design investor Richard Cutfield and Campbell Gower (Phil and Teds) to drive their next stage in growth. This has led to more accountability, so rather than the design guys having a meeting and saying ‘it will be alright next week,’ suddenly it has become ‘I will have that done by tomorrow!’.
Robbie admitted to being prone to the innovator's curse of wanting to make products constantly better, constantly being out with the product, in the environment, and with customers. He attributed much of their success in this area by a clear division of responsibility in the team and applying an innovator’s mind-set to all areas including design, operations, and marketing.
On IP, Robbie advised against spending too much on patents but instead spend as much as possible on R&D. Also publish as much science as you can to demonstrate your position and knowledge. He told the story of how he consistently was advised to be cautious of product copying from Asia, yet the first copy originated from Petone – 15kms from Goodnature’s base in Wellington.
Takeaway points:
Stewart Collie was next to follow, and took us through his journey of innovation, textiles and “Woolly Thinking”. Now working as a Science Team Leader at AgResearch, Stuart has forged a path as a leading expert on wool and its development as versatile and smart textile.
From bio-compatible textiles to electrically conductive polymers and working with Three Over Seven’s ‘WoolRunners’ he showed us how vital science and research is to those wanting to stay ahead of the game. Now being a part of a large Crown Research Institute (CRI), he highlighted how important it was to encourage innovation in CRI’s with schemes like their ‘Curiosity Fund,’ which allows money for scientists to develop their own experimental ideas and methods. The Curiosity Fund took simple project proposals and granted 20 projects a year with some becoming larger projects downstream.
After having the chance to work with a number of start-up companies such as softswitch (an Electronic Textile that Steve Jobs and Jake Burton put into a Burton Snowboard Jacket to control an iPod). He noted how important sound science and research can be to your success, providing the rigor that was so important over time.
He noted that many scientists can be adverse to commercialisation and joining start-ups, but it’s this exposure, mixed with fear of the unknown, that can become a great building block in understanding what it takes to commercialise research. He felt that Design and Science have much to learn from each other, and for innovation to succeed, you must understand where your product has come from, and whom it is going to.
Takeaway Points:
Siobhan was another to highlight the importance of people to her business. First and foremost she was inspired by her father, who persevered through hard times to give his large family the best chance possible. She compared her family to a typical lean start-up - the early prototype was her sister, design perfected by the time she was born eight iterations later. Dad, the ‘CEO’, held the team together and gave her the inspiration and structure that lead to her success today. This is to view business without an exit strategy or with monetary goals, but to see the people behind the business and make a product that people want and that serves their needs.
While her company uses the internet as its lifeblood, building online communities for healthcare solutions and sharing experiences, she first recognised that the internet and technology in general can be isolating, antisocial. Social Code aims to break past the barriers of the internet by bringing people together with shared experience, where “patient engagement is the new blockbuster drug”.
The tool helps to bring patients, their support team, and clinicians together in a supportive framework to deliver better health outcomes. The service, rather than being paid for by the consumer, is paid for by hospitals, healthcare providers, health insurers, and pharmaceutical companies to help deliver patient engagement for federal grants and reimbursements, to reduce tests and admissions, improve medication adherence and achieve FDA approval.
Many current online information portals, helped by Dr Google, lack connection and real clinical advice, which is where Social Code steps up, connecting patients to each other, healthcare professionals, and support from friends and family.
Takeaway points:
Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC)
One of New Zealand’s biggest primary industries was brought to the forefront by our next inspiring speaker, Rob Ford. The Livestock Improvement Company (LIC) is one of the sleeper companies in New Zealand that flies under the radar but develops some great technology that drives the dairy sector. They invested an estimated $21million annually in product development and R&D which equates to 21% of revenue.
As GM of Information and Automation at LIC, Rob is seeing the use of technology exploding in the dairy sector. LIC’s technology is now in thousands of farms across New Zealand, bringing mobile application and automation into the dairy shed. A lecture which showed someone dialling to NASA over the internet blew him way and started him down his current path in technology.
LIC’s business is heavily involved in increasing the genetic merit of the New Zealand herd, analysing and shipping semen around the country for insemination. This space is becoming increasingly more automated, with LIC’s herd records application “MINDA” being in use on over 11,200 farms.
To innovate in this space, Rob attributes his team’s agile and lateral thinking approach, thinking ahead to meet the needs of farmers. Breaking down the traditional segregation between business and development teams and getting them in front of the customer helps the team define the product vision at the start. Understanding things like how time poor the farmer is with many jobs to be done helps their development activity become more focussed.
Realising how important the wife is in the decision making process is just one thing LIC learned very quickly in their development process. Coupling the customer insights and data into a quick rapid prototype out into a pilot farm helped Rob’s team get their products verified by farmers in action.
Rob also noted how poor big companies are at sharing or collaboration. To keep a culture of innovation alive he stressed it was important for big companies to connect and tether with small tech companies to allow the sharing of data help innovation reach the market. Creating a culture of innovation in the region, through collaboration, partnerships and tertiary programmes, should be the way forward. Enhanced industry leadership through companies like LIC should help create an innovation region.
Takeaways points:
This year, our keynote focussed on the nexus between sustainability and innovation. John has played a vital role in Australasia in the adoption of sustainable practice.
John grew up wanting to be a surfer, motorcycle rider, or astronaut, but has ended up playing a leading role in the management of downstream waste of products and product stewardship.
He introduced the audience to Sustainable Development concepts and how designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs have a special role to play to maximise the environmental performance of products and services. He defined the simple concept of looking at the environmental impacts of a product all along its life cycle. The role of ‘Eco-design’ is having to both lock-in positive environmental features and the lock-out negative environmental features.
He used the Edwin Datshefski eco design strategies: Efficient design, Cyclic design, Safe design, and Communications design to illustrate some of the approaches.
John narrated his time with RMIT in helping to establish the Centre for Sustainable Design at RMIT, a leader in the region. They undertook practical programs to implement sustainable design, as well as authoring several great books (which sit on our shelves today).
He then moved on to private practice before joining WSP, one of the world’s largest engineering consultancies, where they developed some great software for streamlining the application of Life Cycle Thinking to product development. His tools ‘Product Ecology’ and ‘Eco Specifier’ were both successful.
John also talked about his connection to Formway Furniture and the Life Chair, acknowledging both Kat Sutherland and Jonathan Prince in the audience who both played a key role in the project. This project provided a real demonstration of how important the design and engineering team was to sustainable outcomes. By the leadership of the company and development teams believing it and taking it deeply on board they were able to achieve real progress toward a more sustainable product.
John’s next move, logically, was toward product stewardship. He explained the importance of ‘extended producer responsibility’ and Product Stewardship, which is the management of the life cycle of a product, systematically limiting its downstream impact on the environment and ensuring reuse and recycling of the materials. John talked about the failure of voluntary schemes, mainly due to some companies’ piggy backing on others as a primary reason why leading manufacturers have sought mandatory legislation. This took over a decade to become legislation in 2011 (for both TV’s and computers) with likely extensions into batteries, appliances, and furniture.
Takeaway Points:
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