Power Offer!

Today involved leaving the hostel at 9am (yay, an extra hour in bed!) and taking a slightly longer walk to the KIF centre to attend a lecture day.

Lecture from Jean-Claude Larrèche, INSEAD

The first lecture was from Jean-Claude Larreche the author of The Momentum Effect: How to Ignite Exceptional Growth. Larreche explained that renewal was needed in order to achieve efficient growth, this involved creating a new vision, new priorities and new missions. The lecture was more focused towards business rather than design, however there were some interesting aspects that we felt were relevant to our project:

• Two engines of efficent growth could be technical discovery and customer discovery.
• If you are not confused in the customer research aspect of design, you won't have any insight.
• Companies should cut their budget for marketing and focus on customer discovery.
• You shouldn't design products, but offers. Customers look at the offer, not the product. So if you make a POWER OFFER, your customers won't be able to resist!
  

Lecture from David Mallard, IDEO

David Mallard from IDEO was very inspiring in his lecture about user research. The large number of examples made clear the importance of user research and how it can shape the final product. Some of the research methods, for example interviewing the extreme users, gave us an insight into to how we should go about researching for our project.

"From a fashion students perspective, I found the lectures fascinating as I have not been taught to think from the customers perspective at this level. I will definitely use this way of researching in future projects."
- Katie Ledger, MA Fashion & the Environment, London College of Fashion (and member of our group!)

One other interesting quote for all you guys, especially all you designers:

"We call our first concepts sacrificial concepts, because they're gonna die"
- David Mallard, IDEO