Award Talk: Joy Mountford, Innovation: when is early too early? -
Special EventsAbstract » Every company wants and needs to innovate to produce competitive products. This is particularly critical now in the US. Many of these prototype product ideas are quite good, but never see the light of day. At different times and within alternate companies they later become excellent products. There are many factors that contribute to good ideas apparently 'failing' to be released. Rarely are there papers or discussions held to dissect what factors led to their apparent rejection. Companies often repeat innovation mistakes, without benefitting from the hindsight from others. I will illustrate many media based products I have been involved with and were left on the shelf, only to come to life later. Although innovative enough, I will share the insights that probably led them not to come to market.
BIO: S. Joy Mountford is currently a consultant to eBay on the future of ecommerce. Through her long career in human-computer interaction she has been an internationally recognized leader in the field. She has designed and led teams designing a wide variety of systems. She has led teams designing and developing a wide variety of computer systems. She was a VP of User Experience Design at Yahoo!, a VP of Digital User Experience and Design at Barnes and Noble and an Osher Fellow at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA. She was a senior project lead at Interval Research, and continues to consult to a variety of companies and to present innovative talks world-wide. She headed the acclaimed Human Interface Group at Apple in the late '80s and '90s; beginning her career as a designer at Honeywell and a project leader in the Interface Research Group at Microelectronics Computer Consortium (MCC). Her impact continues through the International Design Expo, which she created over 20 years ago to challenge the next generation of interdisciplinary graduates.