IKEA Hackers

user innovation

Posted on July 23, 2020

Check out IKEA Hackers if you’re in the mood for some fascinating ideas on how to “hack” your furniture pieces into something else! (Here’s a simple hack to make nesting tables out of IKEA stools). Working on a early project with Shi Ying Lim on how amateurs come up with... [Read More]
Tags: product design innovation

Business Method Innovations and Firm Value - An Empirical Investigation

Updated

Posted on June 3, 2020

Are business method innovations valuable to manufacturing firms, or should firms (particularly manufacturers) focus on product and manufacturing process innovations, as is traditionally the case? Leveraging on the decision of State Street vs. CLS Bank in 1998 whereby business method patents are now patentable subject matter, we compared returns to... [Read More]
Tags: business methods service design patents

Revisiting the Role of Collaboration in Creating Breakthrough Inventions

Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (accepted)

Posted on November 14, 2019

We challenge the notion that collaboration is always better than working alone. In our study using technological and design patents we find that the decomposability of the invention significantly moderates the effectiveness of the lone inventor. Particularly, tasks that are less decomposable relatively advantages the lone inventor. We also show... [Read More]
Tags: product design technology collaboration innovation

Anchored Differentiation - The Role of Temporal Distance in the Comparison and Evaluation of New Product Designs

Working

Posted on November 1, 2019

A new design can be compared with its contemporaries or older designs. In this study, we argue that the temporal distance between the new design and its comparison play an important role in understanding how a new design’s similarity with other designs contributes to its market valuation. Specifically, we argue... [Read More]
Tags: product design style innovation value of design

On Styles in Product Design - An Analysis of U.S. Design Patents

Management Science 2018

Posted on March 1, 2018

We show how one can identify styles (categories of product design that are perceived to be similar) using design patents. Using this data set we show that (i) style turbulence (unpredictable changes in style) is increasing over time, and (ii) technological turbulence (unpredictable changes in technology) have a U-shaped relationship... [Read More]
Tags: product design style innovation