We’ve just launched a really interesting “Innovation Fellowship” with Pepsi, where innovative thinkers from different disciplines will work side-by-side with Pepsi’s most senior leaders to help them work through key business challenges using Continuum’s strategic design thinking and processes.

Working in small, cross-disciplinary teams with coaches, Continuum will be leading fellowship participants to develop actionable solutions to real-world design challenges driven by Pepsi’s strategic plans. The workshop series will culminate with participants presenting their work to members of Pepsi’s senior leadership team.

We’re accepting applications for the program until September 15th. Our “Innovation Fellowship” will begin a month later, on October 15, and will meet on Fridays for eight consecutive weeks. In addition to the opportunity to participate in the workshop, fellows will receive a $4,000 stipend to cover travel expenses.  The workshop will be held in three different locations including New York City, PepsiCo’s Purchase New York campus, and Continuum’s Boston office.

If you’re interested in receiving an application, contact innovationfellows@pepsico.com <mailto:innovationfellows@pepsico.com> . And be sure to check back here in the coming weeks to learn more about it.

This week we kicked off a brand identity project for a client. A pretty common occurrence, but this particular project comes with a twist. Continuum is partnering with Design Museum Boston to craft its brand identity. The twist? The museum is nomadic, existing mainly in a virtual space. Design Museum Boston creates pop-up exhibits throughout New England that educate the general public on the role of design in their lives.

Our challenge? How do you create an identity for an organization that is constantly changing? Fortunately for us, we’ll have your help to find the answer. For the next six weeks, we’re partnering with Core77 on a blog series that will reveal our process and progress as we take on the challenge. Think you know what the Design Museum Boston identity should be? Let us know, we look forward to working with you.

Recently, Continuum staffers Devorah Klein, Principal in Human-Centered Design, and Caitlin Toombs, Program Development Associate, braved a day of basic training at the famed West Point military academy in Hudson Valley, New York. Why, you ask, would these two subject themselves to such torture? They were lucky enough to attend a practice R-Day.

R-Day is the first day of training for the new class of recruits, done each year in the summer. The real R-day is run partially by the more senior cadets, so for a rehearsal, West Point opens up their doors once a year to a select few brave civilians, who allow themselves to be the guinea pigs for a dry run.

The Continuum team wasn’t just in it for the extraordinary stories they’d get to tell us when they got back. Klein and Toombs were interested in how R-Day—so tough that you are supposed to fail and fail fast—could affect behavior change. After all, change is hard. And the military knows a thing or two about effectively managing behavioral change.

How can going to extremes, beyond your personal limit, help you make dramatic changes in your life? What could they teach us about adherence and compliance—and, more importantly, about human behavior?

Find out what they learned in Devorah Klein’s video.

Designing from the Trenches from Continuum on Vimeo.

In Continuum’s work for Preserve, they designed the first truly environmentally responsible toothbrush, one that enables consumers to act green while caring for their pearly whites. Preserve, who has been making toothbrushes from recycled yogurt cups since 1997, partnered with Continuum to decrease their environmental impact—and the Preserve Mail-Back Pack Toothbrush was born.

Combining sustainability practices with brand experience expertise, Continuum developed concepts that led to the creation of the innovative new packaging for Preserve. The lightweight package encases the toothbrush, protects it during shipments, presents it well at point of sale, and doubles as a return envelope. Consumers simply return the toothbrush after use in the envelope and mail it back to Preserve, so it can begin its next life stage. Preserve then turns the returned toothbrushes into plastic lumber that can be used for things such as picnic tables and boardwalks.

Read more  about the sustainability, packaging, and brand work Continuum did on this project and the dramatic sales increase Preserve has experienced because of it.

I got to experience some visual eye-candy this morning. Well, it was more than just eye-candy. It gave me that warm fuzzy feeling in my tummy; like mom’s chicken soup. Commuting into Boston, the pool of white and red plates darting in front of me, lining up like soldiers, still feels foreign after all these years. But, this morning, in the sea of white and red plates, a refreshing flash of empire gold & navy caught my eye. I awoke from my commuting coma. “Is this real?” It’s on a brand new car and the plate itself looks brand new, but I seem to remember these plates from the 1970s and early 8os, during my childhood in NY.

Nostalgia—a theme we’ve been seeing for many years—creates positive consumer associations. Those that lived through the era enjoy being connected back to their youth – during simpler times. Those that weren’t born yet find it cool. Mixing nostalgia with what’s next is a win-win for a brand refresh.

Continuum has been collaborating with 826 Boston, a local writing and tutoring center that helps students find their voice. 826 Boston is the seventh chapter of 826 National, founded by best-selling author and screenwriter Dave Eggers. Last week, our friends at 826 Boston, held their annual Spring Benefit. Part of the evening’s festivities included the unveiling our latest collaboration project: A line of posters designed and hand silk-screened by Continuum. Like 826, we believe that communication is important – design is communication and words matter.

Check out this short video, showing the production process and be sure to visit 826 Boston’s online store to get a limited edition poster of your very own.

Words Matter. from Continuum on Vimeo.

When you think of healthcare, most people think about hospitals, nurses and doctors. But increasingly, healthcare is happening outside of hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices. The Medical Development Group hosted a panel on Wednesday night around “The Future of Home Healthcare Products and Devices.” Representing the business perspective, Frank McGillin, the VP of Global Marketing at Philips Healthcare, talked about how increasingly, patients are handling more serious conditions on their own. Even talking about healthcare at “home” is a mistake, with connotations of a little old lady sitting in a rocking chair. As healthcare moves out of the hospital, patients need to go back to living regular lives, and this means healthcare at the beach, in an airport security line and on a mountain. One way to support these diverse needs is by leveraging resources with technology, allowing patients to be monitored and checked wherever they are.
 
David Rose, the CEO of Vitality, and Ben Rubin, the co-founder and CTO of Zeo, shared their viewpoints from a technology perspective. David Rose examined trends he’s seeing as technology is used to enable home healthcare. Highlights included embedding technology for ubiquitous sensing and feedback. Drawing on his experience developing a sleep coach, Ben Rubin discussed the importance of considering how data is shared and presented – the last thing sleep data should do is cause sleep performance anxiety!

Ben Rubin, Zeo and David Rose, Vitality

I finished up the panel by presenting some thoughts on how patients and caregivers feel about managing care at home. They are struggling with the increasing number and complexity of tasks they are being asked to manage. While it is great to imagine a future of careful monitoring and measuring and feedback, this vision must be balanced with the reality that patients and caregivers don’t want to be inundated with data about their health.
 
David Barash, the president of Concord Healthcare Strategies, and the moderator last night, helped frame the discussion from his perspective as a physician, pointing out how overwhelmed many physicians are with the task of monitoring so many patients, but that the new generation of doctors is becoming more comfortable using technology as a tool to support this.

Frank McGillin, Philips and Devorah Klein, Continuum

It was a fun evening, with a large and lively crowd. My only complaint was that we ran short of time, which curtailed discussion. Given that there were some clear points of disagreement that could have ripened into full-blown debate, this is a shame. But it did ensure that no fistfights over, say, the role of cell-phones in home healthcare erupted.

I just attended the “Better World: Accelerating Lab to Market Innovation” conference hosted by MIT’s Enterprise forum. What had me thoroughly entertained—on the edge of my seat, actually—was the unexpected turn in conversation.

I’ve been to enough of these events to know that MIT leans toward the quantitative and analytical side of discussions. And in this case, with speakers like David Berry of Flagship, Alex Pentland, PhD MIT, and Iqbal Quadir of Legatum Center MIT, all indications were pointing to a deep, fact-based, analytical discussion. What happened, however, was entirely different. Our own Devorah Klein and IDEO’s designer Beto Lopez, who were also on the panel, captured the full interest of the audience when they pointed out—in the context of sustainable design—that human interactions can be purposefully designed. When connected to consumer values, human-centered design can inspire and promote behavior change, which, in turn, can encourage early and mass adoption of products and services—consumer, medical, industrial and otherwise.

All the panelists began to build on the point, with David Berry leading the charge. “When it comes to developing Joule, our company that is focused on creating a process to convert solar energy into a liquid fuel,” says Berry, “leveraging design so that we create a user experience that’s readily adopted by consumers is core to our success.” So, while Joule has plenty on its docket—raw science and technology development to name a few big ones—design is deeply embedded in its language and goals.  

The momentum continued, and by mid-way through the panel discussion the conversation was fully focused on the value of design in the innovation process and in creating and building businesses. Along with understanding the economics, technology and market of their business, entrepreneurs are increasingly assigning high value to understanding the functional, social and emotional connections their products make with consumers. The bottom line: Design, in its broadest sense, is becoming a well-accepted strategic tool for business, even in the most technical-based environments and companies.

What’s the secret to success in business? What if there was a new formula—a new way of thinking—that resulted in long-term gains? According to designer, educator and writer Roger Martin, author of the new book The Design of Business, it’s all about innovation. “It’s the key to long-term business success,” he explains, “but companies think in ways that inadvertently squelch it time and again.”

At Continuum last night for a book signing and discussion led by Continuum CEO Harry West, Martin told a group of approximately 100 designers and business leaders about his theories and strategies from the recently published book. “In the modern business world,” says Martin, “analytical thinking is dominant.” Ever more scientific thinking is being applied to business. In corporations today, it’s not considered a rigorous idea if you can’t bring in data. The problem with this logic: You can’t prove anything new. “It drives out advances,” he says, “companies are lobbing off innovation with this thinking.”

When corporations begin to incorporate design thinking into their practices, they’ll see innovation take hold. How does it work? Design thinking, according to Martin, represents the advancement of knowledge. Martin’s theory posits that knowledge moves through a set of steps, from “mystery” (an unexplainable problem) to “heuristic” (a rule of thumb that guides us toward a solution) to “algorithm” (a replicable success formula). As knowledge advances through this “knowledge funnel,” productivity grows and costs drop. “The companies that will be successful in the next century are those that use this system,” he says, “and then reinvest in the next idea.”

One of the keys to making it work: Encourage abductive logic—acting on what’s probable, not certain; pushing yourself to live in the land of “what if.” “That’s where breakthroughs happen,” he says. Martin’s advice for all those folks working to make their business successful: Remain curious. “If you do this, innovation will happen,” he says. “And how hard—or expensive—is that?”

Last week, I had the pleasure of judging the first annual Staples Global EcoEasy Challenge, a competition among universities from around the world to develop the next environmentally friendly office product. Some of the world’s top engineering students, from colleges and universities in Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, and the United States, presented some really clever ideas.

The students from the University of New South Wales in Australia took first place — and a $25,000 grand prize — with their BIND concept, which stands for Binder Interlock Neat Device. A cool innovation that works like a tie-and-ring system for organizing documents, BIND represents an elegant improvement from zip ties, increasing the potential uses and likely reuses of the product. The assumption is that people will use BIND in place of less eco-friendly solutions for binding paper, such as three binders, and will be more likely to hold onto BIND as opposed to the use-and-dispose model associated with most zip ties.

In addition, there were two runners up, who each received $5,000. A team from the University of California Berkeley created an Eco Stapler made of bamboo. It was an obvious eco improvement to the everyday stapler. Nothing surprising, but the idea was well thought out and the team did their homework. Lastly, a team from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras won for the Step Shredder, an innovative idea to make a manually powered shredder. It would encourage exercise (much needed in the work environment!) and reduce energy consumption (much needed in our world). I wonder how receptive the office consumer would be to this idea…

It was great to get a glimpse into the minds of the next generation of designers and engineers. Here are a couple of additional learnings from event:

Ideas – There is no shortage of ideas that could help reduce our impact on the environment. The larger challenge remains; getting consumers to adopt new practices.

Passion – The students were passionate about the environment to the point they were often looking to trade convenience for a more sustainable solutions.

PowerPoint – Who needs PowerPoint? Each presenter used Presi to zoom and circle their way through their ideas, with many incorporating well-produced animations and video shorts.

Storytelling – These students definitely understand the value of a well-told story. Presentations included consideration of how an idea could impact a country, an economy, a business and the consumer.

Science and Emotion – Each presentation presented the math that substantiated the benefits (these were engineers, after all), and they also invested equal time on the emotional values and benefits.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this competition evolves next year, and I hope it can continue to raise awareness around sustainability and the office to help introduce creative solutions that reduce the corporate footprint. Kudos to Staples for taking a responsible leadership position on environmental affairs.

For more information on the event and the winners, go to: http://ecoeasychallenge.com/