Unlocking Innovation
Insight to Amplify Italy’s Impact
After a month in Italy visiting companies, working on business challenges using human centered design frameworks and meeting business and design leaders from Italy to California, I am left with two words echoing in my head.
Creative. Potential.
About 40 participants, hailing from around the globe (but mostly the U.S.) and from a range of backgrounds (undergraduates and MBAs to seasoned professionals) descended upon Vicenza, Italy. The Italia Innovation Program kicked-off in mid-June and focused on stimulating the Italian economy by injecting companies with innovative ideas and fresh talent while exposing innovators to the pulse of Italian business.
Comparing business in Italy to my start-up adventures in Start-Up Chile, the Harvard iLab, my Israel Trek, and countless hackathons and entrepreneurial activities from New York, Boston, and San Fransisco to Chicago, I walked away with a perspective of what I believe is needed to
Unlock Italy.
To understand Italy’s greatest opportunity, I needed to first understand Italy’s greatest strength.
Italy breathes art and design.
We listened to family business titans recount story after story of how they prevailed by being ‘the best’ and ‘the first’ in industries from wine to cycling to eye wear. A CFO even shared his perspective on the ‘emotion’ and ‘feel’ of their products. We also visited factories to see the processes that yields such quality and consistency.
In each story you could feel the love and pride for the craft of product design.
It is engrained in the culture, which points to an area of opportunity…
Business design and innovation beyond products.
In projects I like to use the Ten Types of Innovation as one tool to generate ideas.
Italian innovation focuses on enhancing Product Performance, but innovation in other areas such as Profit Model and Customer Experience are usually secondary. It is true that successful Italian companies have innovated in other areas, such as Illy who has developed new brands under the company umbrella (e.g. Domori chocolate) and also expanded to new channels by distributing internationally, but it usually comes after working to create a superior product.
What would be unleashed if Italy’s same intensity and love for product design were shifted to innovation in other areas?
Can focus simply be shifted from product design to other areas?
What more would be needed to develop new capabilities and expertise?
More on that in the next post.
#UnlockItaly
