Justin Magee’s Post

Are you a designer wanting up to £80k for a people-centred and/or systemic project? One of the biggest barriers we have found to designers to design for planet is project funding and budgets. So here is a way to fund some of your self-created briefs!

🌟 Design Foundations Round 6 is Now Live! 🌟 Exciting news for all innovators and change-makers! 🎉 The latest round of the Design Foundations competition is officially open for applications. This unique opportunity empowers businesses to harness people-cantered and systemic design methods, paving the way for ideas that can deliver transformative benefits for people, the planet, and society. Got a groundbreaking idea? 💡 This is your chance to bring it to life, whether it’s a new product, service, place, or business model – or a significant improvement to an existing one! 📅 Opportunity Details When: Registration Opens: 04/11/2024 Registration Closes: 15/01/2025 💼 Award: Grant funding requests between £40,000 and £80,000 100% project cost coverage (up to £80,000) What we’re looking for: Your proposal must include one or more of the following: • Identifying new opportunities to innovate, and planning how to respond • Generating fresh ideas in response to a known need or opportunity • Improving existing innovative ideas Ready to make an impact? Create solutions that truly matter. 🌍 Apply now and help shape a better future through design! #DesignFoundations #Innovation #SustainableDesign #GrantOpportunity #FutureShaping

📣Funding Competition - Design Foundations Round 6📣 Design Foundations Round 6 has a deadline of 15th January and project should have a have a grant funding request of between £40,000 and £80,000. The scope of the competition is fairly wide in terms of innovation but must cover one or more of the topics below. - Defining innovation opportunities: You will use people centred and systemic design methods to identify, understand and prioritise needs and innovation opportunities that are relevant and valuable to your business. You will plan design led innovation activity to address these opportunities, including generating, testing and improving new ideas. - Generating new ideas: You have identified a specific need or opportunity and will use design methods to verify it, then generate and develop new or improved ideas in response. - Improving existing innovative ideas: You have an innovative idea and will use design methods to simulate, test, and validate it, enhancing its quality and the benefits it provides throughout its lifecycle. find out more at https://lnkd.in/ePGY_qzi

4 ways to develop connected thinking during the design process: 1. Start connecting EARLY, don't wait until you've designed everything as much as possible yourself, it will create more work to make changes. 2. Your design is going to be MADE, from a variety of materials and systems that need to work together as a whole. It will also be used and have an IMPACT on people and the environment. You do not know everything about everything, so be humble and let other experts have a say in the design process. Take a TRANSDISCIPLINARY approach. 3. Establish your VALUES from the start - what social or ecological impact are you trying to achieve? Ensure you collaborate with those who share your values 4. SHARE your concepts. Collaborators can't approach you if they don't know about your project. This is a tough one for design firms. Many company policies make this impossible. However, there are ways around this - use of related images, words, and key principles to describe your project. Once you build trust with someone, you then decide if you want to share more information privately. But the trust building is the first step that has to start somewhere! I created Make Me With to help designers use this process, create a holistic impact led ecosystem, develop collaborative and transdisciplinary design thinking, create new opportunities accross the supply chain, and make supply chain connections that go beyond the product, or service, to the process. Starting with the built environment, and aiming beyond. Striving towards a regenerative future. The best way to start is to join the Make Me With ecosystem here https://lnkd.in/dN_D2cMm, so that we know you're interested! Let's connect, to create and regenerate! 🙂

📡 This is an incredible opportunity: Innovate UK’s "Design Foundations 2024" funding competition is now open. This funding offers a chance for design businesses and advanced manufacturers to collaborate and drive forward innovative concepts that can transform the future of product development. By blending design expertise with advanced manufacturing capabilities, businesses can unlock new avenues for growth and impact. The competition emphasises design thinking as a catalyst for better, more impactful product solutions. Advanced manufacturers and design firms can come together to create high-value, user-focused products, making a real difference in the market. Access to resources that could scale your concept from idea to market-ready solution. Who Should Apply? Design businesses ready to collaborate and co-create groundbreaking solutions. Advanced manufacturers looking to bring innovative designs to life and gain a competitive edge. The Liverpool City Region is rich with talent and innovation potential—this is your chance to elevate your projects and make a significant impact through collaboration, and LYVA Labs is here to help you on that journey. Apply here: https://lnkd.in/eM5_BEYp Butters Innovation Limited | 4D Products | D Squared Product Development #summaryInnovate #LiverpoolCityRegion #DesignInnovation #AdvancedManufacturing #CollaborateToInnovate #LYVALabs #FundingOpportunity #DesignFoundations2024 #LCRInnovation

This week's article, by Dr. Chris Mattson, presents an idea that has highly influenced his way of thinking about design. The article is centered on ideation and focuses primarily on how to do it well. It introduces the concept of design space, design exploration, and the trade-off curve. https://lnkd.in/gYRUBgkF

DESIGN THINKING is all the rage, and has its place (I LOVE leading design sessions).-- However, #designthinking WITH communities (so to speak) needs an upgrade, or as they say misses the mark.-- Excellent piece by Anne-Laure Fayard + Sarah Fathallah in Stanford Social Innovation Review. -- There is a gap between IDEAS or the design + IMPLEMENTATION. They argue instead for a #criticaldesignstance rooted in a set of values and commitments to be: #relational, #reflexive, and #politicallycommitted. https://lnkd.in/gFCnkSTU KEY POINTS: - This alternative places an idea, concept, or prototype directly into #context before pilot. (I believe in #tech's ability to better enable this.) - We need to think more #longterm, and "by design" (no pun intended), design thinking is shorter term - as it is intended to bring something to market / life / communities fast. Thus, we need to leverage a more diverse range of experts in the early phases itself. #reflexivity (And I would argue that this means interdisciplinary groups and those that DON'T think about the given problem day-in-day-out but impact its success, or work on the supporting infrastructure). - We need to revise #funder criterias to better match longer-term #outcomes we're driving - either by loosening or changing them. MY TAKE: - We bring context into the room not just by including #community members, but by painting a more nuanced picture of the community from the start for participants. (I.e. To broaden #perspectives or expand #mindsets from the start.) - It's not a one-and-done but a #journey hence requires sustainable #relationships (so much easier said than done, esp for corporate changemakers, as the resources sometime simply don't exist w/o any proof of ROI for mainitaining those relationships). - We need to improve the actual #innovationinfrastructures in local communities themselves. This requires thinking beyond the entrepreneur or enterprise and to how sectors interact to empower individuals and #communities to sustain + support themselves & their various #freedoms (including but not limited to economic freedom). (And per the article, it is not all net new, but leverages what exists.) #crosssector #intersectionalchallenges - More longer-term solutions deeply rooted in interdisciplinary #learning - that attempt to look back & forward - #empower us to tackle the complexity of social innovation differently. #socialinnovation #wellbeing #innovation #scenarios #futureswork #futures CC: Rebecca Ackerman

🔍 Innovation and Design: The Dynamic Duo Innovation and design are two intimately related concepts. Innovation is the act of introducing something new, while design is to conceive the looks, arrangement, and workings of something. 📈 The Innovation S-Curve The innovation S-curve describes the impact of an innovation over time. It starts slow, increases in impact, then slows down before leveling off. 🔄 Incremental vs Radical Innovations Incremental and radical innovations differ in how they use knowledge. Radical innovation often requires completely new knowledge and/or resources, making existing services and products obsolete. Incremental innovation builds upon existing knowledge and/or resources. 🔬 The Henderson–Clark Model The Henderson–Clark model distinguishes between ‘knowledge of the components of innovation’ and ‘knowledge of how the components of innovation link together’ (called architectural knowledge). 🎯 Good Design Makes Good Business Sense Good design translates customer needs into the shape and form of the service or product, enhancing profitability. It includes formalizing the concept, package, and process implied by the design. 🗺️ The Design Process Design is a process that must be designed according to process design principles. It involves concept generation, screening, preliminary design, design evaluation and improvement, and prototyping and final design. 🔄 Simultaneous Development and Early Conflict Resolution Employ simultaneous development where design decisions are taken as early as they can be, without necessarily waiting for a whole design phase to be completed. Ensure early conflict resolution to avoid delays and confusion later in the process. 🏢 Project-Based Organizational Structure Use a project-based organizational structure to ensure a focused and coherent team of designers is dedicated to a single design or group of design projects. #Innovation #Design #BusinessStrategy

Design thinking is important for innovation

Open innovation is the future of all design. We reached peak centralized design already in the 90s and have been lingering there since. There will be nothing new in centralized design. Technology will develop but design itself - final products - have nothing new to offer if they continue to be made by the few. I can not imagine that in the future companies still design everything with few employees and take a risk that customers will love that. It makes no sense. The future markets will be too complex and competitive for that. #openinnovation #design #productdesign