5 insights from our conversation:
1. Material directs the design process
Designing physical products means working with materials. There is a large amount of different materials to work with, but when you look at actual material categories, they are very limited. This easily pushes you into existing design patterns.
INSIGHT
An innovation creating a new material category trickles down to the design process and enables a multitude of new possibilities.
2. Moving into the market
Fairm is getting a lot of attention from potential customers in the market. This gives them confirmation they are on to something valuable. At the same time, to get their product ready for the market they need to handle a lot of critical questions. This forces them to take a step back and answer these. By improving their product they are taking two steps forward again and progress is made.
INSIGHT
It’s easy to misread praise and confirmation of your product value for being market ready. It’s part of the game to take a few steps, improve your product to meet actual market demand. Then move forward again to be able to sell.
3. It’s only true when proven
University taught them a very important principal for good entrepreneurship they still apply in their current business. Never take assumptions at face value.
INSIGHT
It’s never you who is right. It’s the confirmation of your assumptions that makes it right.
4. The lamp and chair phase
Some of the greatest concepts reach the Dutch Design Week, are promoted in Milan, or there’s a TED Talk about them. And that’s where they stop. You don’t see buildings full of the material. Or food made of that innovative new algae. They remain just that. A concept.
Many concepts have impact as inspiration. But some of them have the potential to create much more impact than that.
INSIGHT
Design is stepping out of reality. Creating new solutions. Instead of remaining a great concept of yet lamp or chair sporting the latest biotech trend, these need to be reintegrated into reality.
5. Expertise in silos
To fight climate change we need to solve problems in many areas of society. As a technologist you see solutions to any problem in your field of expertise. Either you or someone else is going to solve it. It’s much more difficult to see progress or solutions for problems in other fields like politics and regulation.
INSIGHT
It can be worrying not to know how to solve problems in other industries and fields of expertise. You don’t see what’s happening there. We can trust these fields to have their own experts who can in the end bring all solutions together.
