Grounded Innovation: Strategies for Creating Digital Products

Grounded Innovation: Strategies for Creating Digital Products focuses on the innovation processes and technical properties of digital products. Drawing on case studies, the book looks at systematic ways to ground innovation in both technology and human needs, and it explores how digital products have become integrated in the real world. It provides guidelines to innovation in a new technical environment, including prototyping and testing, within the cultural or financial parameters of a business.

The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 discusses the history and the basic properties of digital products; the different approaches to innovation; the concept of grounded innovation; and concepts and processes that are important for creating successful innovations such as inquiry, invention, and prototyping. Part 2 demonstrates how the basic properties of digital products can be used as raw material for new innovations, including interaction, networking, sensing, and proactivity. There is also a discussion on recent technology, such as rapid prototyping and mobile mash-ups. A wide variety of examples show how novel technical and conceptual innovations became commercial breakthroughs.

Grounded Innovation is ideal for product designers, interaction designers, and design-oriented engineers. It will also be a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding how digital products are created and in a general approach to information technology.

• Wide variety of examples show how novel technical and conceptual innovations became commercial breakthroughs
• Provides guidelines to innovation in a new technical environment including prototyping and testing
• Discusses how to innovate within the cultural or financial parameters of a business

Lars Erik Holmquist leads the Mobile Innovations group at Yahoo! Labs in Santa Clara, CA. Previously, he was Professor in Media Technology at Södertörn University and manager of the Interaction Design and Innovation lab at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science. He was a co-founder and research leader at the Mobile Life Centre, a joint research venture between academia and industry hosted at Stockholm University, with major partners including Ericsson, Microsoft, Nokia, TeliaSonera and the City of Stockholm. He received his M.Sc. in Computer Science in 1996, his Ph.D. in Informatics in 2000, and became an Associate Professor in Applied IT in 2004, all at the University of Gothenburg.

In his work he has developed many pioneering interfaces and applications in the areas of ubiquitous computing and mobile services, including location-based devices, handheld games, mobile media sharing, visualization techniques, entertainment robotics, tangible interfaces and ambient displays. All of his work has been carried out in multi-disciplinary settings, mixing technology, design and user studies, often in close collaboration with industrial stakeholders.