Design Thinking

/

Where does your passion and inspiration come from? One of my enjoyments is sailing. I really like the sport and the water, many of our ideas for product come from this passion. Our business tag line is Connecting Art to Part, it is integral to our creative approach to design for manufacturing and problem solving!

In our mechanical work we are guided by the simple approach of form following function so we are acutely aware of the art of engineering in everything we do! This is my passion and many of my product idea inspirations comes from sailing and it's surroundings. Take a look at the gallery by clicking on the picture, there are six photos!

Understanding Lumens

/
Historically if you wanted a certain amount of light you would buy bulbs based on their wattage rating. Wattage is a measure of energy. If you wanted bright lighting you might choose a 100 watt bulb because you knew they generated a lot of light. The measure of wattage was a simple way to quantify light when there weren’t many choices in bulb technology. When everything was the standard incandescent bulb, using watts was a great “rule of thumb” for comparison.
Read More

Cool running LEDs

/
Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) don’t like heat. Heat shortens their lifetimes. It also damages brightness, ruins efficiency and diminishes color. “Heat is death to an LED,” says Joe DeNicholas, Lighting Business Unit director for National Semiconductor. “There’s widely published data suggesting that if you keep the junction temperature of an LED at about 100 degrees Celsius, it will last for 80,000 hours. But if you let it go to, say, 135 degrees Celsius, the lifetime drops down to about 20,000 hours. That’s why we have to keep them cool.”
Read More

Patent Quality Precedes Quantity

/
It was good while it lasted. We used to think that we would always own the innovation game. Heck, American giants like Edison, Morse and the brothers Wright practically invented the modern art of innovation. Even though we were appropriately nervous when our manufacturing base began shifting overseas at the end of the last century, in our usual fog of overconfidence, we always assumed the U.S. would own the future. 

Well, we ought to be thinking of a back-up plan.
Read More

Innovation: Making Inspiration Routine

/

It's not about brilliance. Valuable new ideas are the product of hard work and smart, disciplined processes.

Scott Menchin

 

In April, A.G. Lafley, the chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG), and Ram Charan, adviser to such business leaders as Jack Welch and Robert Nardelli, published an insider's guide to innovation at P&G and other top corporations. The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth With Innovation argues that innovation -- like learning -- must be continuous and pursued at all levels of the organization. The book describes dozens of mechanisms for keeping the idea pipeline full, such as P&G's customer-immersion programs, which send employees to live in consumers' homes, and innovation "hot zones," facilities where product teams spend weeks on creative exercises.

It's a great book, but for owners of small companies, it's a little like reading about Disney World when all you have to play with is a backyard swing set. We wondered: Could P&G's approach to innovation be made to scale for businesses with a tiny fraction of P&G's resources?

We asked Lafley and Charan to imagine they were the founders of a company in an industry of their choice, with $4 million in revenue and 30 employees. What would they do to make their business as innovative as possible?

Read More

WSJ Outsourcing Innovation

/

It's a question many companies are facing these days. As budgets tighten, businesses are outsourcing research and development and the creation of new products as a way to slash costs, speed development time and tap into top talent outside the company.

But it can be tough to strike the right balance between internal and external efforts at innovation. How much outsourcing is too much, or too little? What amount produces the best results?

To find an answer, we studied the sourcing habits and innovative performance of 359 companies based in the U.S. and reviewed existing research on outsourced innovation.

Read More

Business Insight, Keep Your Vision Keen

/

A business without a vision is a business without direction. Far too many design consultancies are reactive in their development and, even if they are growing and profitable, they have arrived where they are by accident.

Opportunities are pursued without sufficient challenges about their usefulness; projects appear from design-buyers and are accepted, whether or not they are a good fit; senior people with specific skills and experience join or leave and change the company’s capabilities.

Like boats without a destination and without navigation charts, businesses like this are drifting, subject to sudden arrivals in ports they never wanted to visit in the first place.

Now, I’m all for pursuing unexpected opportunities, and it can be wonderfully exciting to set sail on new high seas. But I am also a believer in Louis Pasteur’s observation that ’chance favours the prepared mind’. Where does preparation come from?

Read More