An example that he gave was that of a CD player.  When the product first came to market, it was a true innovation.  There was not a product like it, and it was an improvement on the audio experience above and beyond its predecessors.  On the other hand, a product like the Bang & Olufson CD player was innovative in its approach to aesthetics and interaction, but was not a true innovation.  This differentiation is something that could be utilzed in a product development plan.  By categorizing product initiatives as something that is innovative or an innovation will help to determine the scale of resources as well as a time line for completion.  An innovative product can be put in the pipeline for short or near term realizations, while an innovation might be a long term (or open ended) time line.  Fitch’s approach is to utilze this differentiation throughout it’s business practice.

The discussion started from the use of innovation in presentation techniques.  This would mean the use of animation, video, or “commercials” to demonstrate and explain products or processes.  Next was the importance of designers pushing the boundaries of manufacturers, to ensure quality and to retain original design intent.  Bruce Clayton brough up an excellent point of “innovate or die”.  This meant the use of innovation to rethink or redesign a product(line) in order to save it from being eliminated in the market and even internally.

There was also significant talk of how to get executive management to accept the risk of innovation.  There were obvious solutions:  using business cases to back up design proposals and using prototyping to effectively illustrate feasibility.  However, aside from these two solutions there were significant questions remaining.  One of the last points made was extremely significant, moreso than other parts of the discussion.  That point was to establish a practice of documenting failures.  It was much easier to learn from past mistakes in order to make future decisions intelligently.