Video Highlights of PDMA Innovate Carolina 2013

As we shared recently in this space, Trig Innovation was proud to sponsor and participate in Innovate Carolina, the signature event of the Carolinas chapter of the Product Development and Management Association, for the fourth year running. 

The Carolinas PDMA has made Innovate Carolina an annual can’t-miss event in local innovation circles from the Triangle and Triad down to Charlotte and Greenville-Spartanburg, and the 2013 event last month at NC A&T State University in Greensboro was no exception. 

From the keynote speakers to the breakout sessions on a host of innovation topics, this year’s conference again exceeded both past efforts and expectations.  As part of our sponsorship commitment, Trig Innovation assisted the Carolinas PDMA with on-site video production, and we’re proud to promote the results. 

Check out the Carolinas PDMA YouTube channel for a series of video highlights of the event’s major presentations given by Jeff Grant of Invue Security Products, Pam Henderson of New Edge, National Gypsum’s Michael Blades, Doug Powell of Leap Insights, and representing our gracious hosts at NC A&T, Dr. Thaddeus McEwen, professor of entrepreneurship and management.

We think you’ll find all of these as thought-provoking as we did—enjoy.

Left to My Own Devices: Thoughts on the Do Lectures

By Drew Brisley

I recently traveled to Wales for the Do Lectures Startup event, a global gathering of bright minds from across the spectrum of business, arts, sports, and more.   It’s an event that is difficult to categorize, from the people, to the presenters, to the overall experience.

To call it a conference is a misnomer—conferences usually take place in large municipal hubs, at fancy hotels, and are full of people who come from the same industry or profession.  To the contrary, the Do Lectures events are out in the country, under a tent, where people from all backgrounds gather to learn what it takes to be Doers, with a bias towards action versus simply having ideas. Doctors, designers, programmers, surfers, chefs, world travelers—the whole spectrum—they were all there.  That diversity made the experience so rich, because we all came with something unique to contribute. 

This diversity sparked something unforeseen, giving the gathering a whole new life, as opposed to a normal conference—something that really couldn’t be planned. There was no segregation between speakers and attendees.  We were all just there to share ideas, have conversation, learn, and most importantly, do. 

The impetus of the group behind the Do Lectures as an organization is more doing, less thinking. So for this particular event, they tasked the speakers and attendees with joining small teams that would hack away at solving real problems.  From getting more local manufacturing back Wales to getting kids outside to play and educating people on sustainability, teams were hooked from the beginning  and hopeful of tackling these problems with a group of like-minded, but differently-abled people. Mentors from various backgrounds made themselves available to help the teams from remote locations via Skype, and each of our groups leveraged their advice and guidance to shape our solutions.  After 72 hours of brainstorming, each of the teams made their pitches on solving these large-scale problems.  The only thing we didn’t have time for was second-guessing our work; there was only enough time to learn the scope and nuances of the problem, quickly build our solution, and then iterate our pitch to the rest of the gathering.

Spread throughout the weekend were 20 talks from leaders and doers from many walks of life.  Just as the conference itself was rich with diversity, so, too were the talks.  I particularly enjoyed presentations from Zack Klein, co-founder of internet video portal Vimeo, and Scott Davis of CNWD, a Welsh food business.  

A recurring theme throughout the talks, no matter the walk of life from which the perspective emanated, was the notion that startups are “all about the people,” another way of expressing their purpose as solving real-world problems for real people, as opposed to ideas for ideas’ sake.  This foundational concept resurfaced over and over again, and, refreshingly, this was at the expense of discussion about bottom lines, exit strategies, and funding.  

To illustrate the point in sharp relief, Owen Rogers of IDEO spoke about a project where his world-renowned design firm was given the task of redesigning the emergency care experience in hospitals.   In order to gain a true perspective of the patient experience, design researchers placed video cameras next to patients, giving stakeholders a true patient’s-eye view of what it was really like to be a patient in their hospital. The result was a video clip of the hospital ceiling. Needless to say, the board of directors was convinced that something needed to change.

Several talks focused on branding, positioning the concept of branding as expressing the “humanness of companies and how brands connect people.  This may seem fairly obvious, but I was reminded throughout the Do Lectures how easily it’s forgotten. After all, the products, experiences, and businesses we are building, are for people. Somehow this can get muddled and for me, as a designer, the obsession with the physical product itself can overshadow the real, quite profound reason that it was created in the first place—to right a wrong. 

In the end, the Do Lectures provided a refreshing getaway, with the opportunity to be around so many people from so many walks of life, coming together with the common purpose of making life a little bit better for the rest of the world.  

NC State College of Management Features Trig Innovation Story

We’re honored that Sam Harris and the communications team at North Carolina State’s Poole College of Management recognized Trig Innovation and its founder, Ty Hagler (Jenkins MBA class of 2011), with a recent feature story on the college website.

In the story, Harris tells the evolving story of Trig Innovation, and how Hagler is using the training he received in the Jenkins program, along with the network of fellow students and faculty members, to drive the success of our company. 

Trig Innovation is a real intersection of entrepreneurship and innovation, both hallmarks of NC State’s MBA program for professionals.  Thanks again for the recognition.  Go Pack!

Trig’s Brisley Heads to Wales for Do Lecture Series

Trig Innovation industrial designer Drew Brisley has earned selection to attend the latest installment of the Do Lecture series.

An emerging ideas gathering based in Wales, the Do Lectures focus on launching big ideas to change the world.  While other conferences, such as TED talks, focus on inspirational ideas in technology, entertainment, and design, the Do Lectures target those who actually want to implement ideas, whether for new businesses, inventions, causes, or arts. Attendees across the globe must apply for consideration, and upon acceptance, enjoy three days on the Welsh countryside completely unplugged, pursuing an idea or set of ideas with the other conference participants.

Speakers and workshop leaders will include CEOs, inventors, artists, physicians, activists, designers, marketers, venture capitalists, social entrepreneurs, and web developers, creating a diverse array of global professionals who will share ideas.

Trig’s Brisley will be attending the April 23-25 Do Start-up conference in Fforest, Wales. At the Do Start-up event, participants will attend talks and workshops led by 20 entrepreneurs from around the world. Start-up topics include venture capital, intellectual property protection, branding, selling, scaling the business, hiring the right people, and much more. At the conclusion of the event, the conference participants will actually launch a new business based upon an idea generated at the conference, thus living out the group’s mission to actually learn by doing.

“I’m really excited to be attending the Do Start-up conference in Wales,” stated Brisley.  “This is a rare opportunity for me to be around so many leaders from around the world, discussing ideas that help to shape ideas into game-changing businesses. As an industrial designer, I’ve chosen a profession that specifically seeks to improve the human condition, and that’s what the Do Lectures are all about. I know that I’ll come back with a raft of ideas that influence my design work for clients moving forward, as well as changing my perspective on how ideas are shaped for wider acceptance.”

Innovate Carolina 2013: What We Learned

For the fourth year running, our growing team at Trig Innovation was proud to participate in the Innovate Carolina conference, the annual signature event of the Product Development and Management Association’s Carolinas chapter.

Representing Trig at this year’s event were our lead business developer, Lilly Ferrick, video and photography specialist Cristina Fletes-Boutte, and principal and founder Ty Hagler.  The fine people at North Carolina A&T State University gave us a warm welcome and a great venue for the event.  We thought we’d share what we learned while at the conference—the only shame is that we couldn’t possibly see and hear every presenter, so this recap, sadly, doesn’t include all of the great contributions made to the experience.

Chris Trimble, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and author of The Other Side of Innovation, opened the conference with an unforgettable talk. Taking a page from the world of mountain climbing, he said that the difference between novice and expert climbers is that the novices celebrate reaching the summit, while experts celebrate when they safely reach the bottom of the mountain again. So it is, as well, with innovation, he said, as the so-called “Big Idea” is only the beginning. 

Trimble went on to illustrate why innovation within large corporations is a difficult enterprise by outlining differences between what he called the Performance Engine and the Innovation Engine. The Performance Engine excels at repeatable, predictable, sustained business execution. To the contrary, the Innovation Engine is non-routine, uncertain, and building something entirely new to the world as the company knows it currently.  Leaders must mitigate the differences between the two, as the respective groups that form these engines within companies do not naturally mesh well. Without effective leadership, the Performance Engine will squash the aims of the Innovation Engine every time.

The key to successfully meshing these two engines successfully, according to Trimble is based on a model where the two engines are separate, but share resources through a partnership. 

As Trimble was wrapping up, we all had an out-of-body experience that placed much more than the conference under threat.  As many now know, reports of a gunman on campus marred the event for a time, but the authorities at NC A&T did a great job of making sure that the conference participants, in addition to thousands of faculty, staff, and students, remained safe and secure as police swept the campus.

So, the first thing we learned at the conference was how blessed we are with resilient leaders in among this group.  The Carolinas chapter is a plucky group, and the morning’s events just seemed to bring out the best in everyone involved as we resumed the conference at mid-day.

Undaunted by the security disruption, the PDMA conference rolled on, and we split into informative breakout sessions led by a great group of innovators throughout the Carolinas. One of our groups gathered together in an auditorium in another building where OVO’s Jeffrey Phillips, the conference organizer, gave an impressive impromptu talk on the process they use for delivering innovation at his consulting firm.  Particularly notable was his discussion on the the proper scoping of an Innovation Charter.  By setting boundary conditions from the very beginning of an innovation engagement, you narrow the scope and give the innovation team better focus and freedom to explore options that match business needs.

With his audience quarantined in front of a women’s restroom on the concourse of the university’s stadium, Jeff Grant of Charlotte’s Invue Security Products served as a model of adaptability, preparedness, and quick-thinking. Lacking a podium, he turned a trashcan up-side down, fashioning it into a de-facto lectern for his laptop-based presentation.  He shared the story of Invue’s development process for bringing a brand new security device to market for their retail customers.  Key to bringing a speed-to-market component to the process was Invue’s “Shop-and-Chop” method, as they bought commercial products and chopped them up to find the useful components inside that would influence their own development.  

Dr. Pamela Henderson, author of Killing Ideas, gave another stellar talk that helped to round out the day, keying in on the nexus of product development, the convergence of design and engineering with marketing and branding. She defined innovators as those who deploy opportunity thinking, creating as big of a pond of opportunity as possible to catch big fish (customers) with innovations.  She noted that teams must hold on to things that may seem weird or peculiar at first iteration, as these ideas are the ones that can be the ones that influence differentiators in the end. And while engineers doing marketing creates a mess, integrating their thinking among the marketers can be valuable, as brands explain technical differences that can shape the product’s marketplace success.

In the end, we learned a lot about ourselves on Friday, April 12, 2013.  The great host team at A&T rose to the occasion in a way they couldn’t possibly have foreseen, and so did the Carolinas PDMA team, from Jeffrey Phillips to all of the presenters and participants.  While the day may have been marked by high stress throughout most of the morning, we will remember it, as we have all the other Innovate Carolina events, as an event that feeds our passion for shaping products and markets.