Grounded Innovation Strategies for creating digital products

How will you design the next big thing? And the thing after that? And after that.? This book can help, by providing practical techniques for the innovation process which consists of invention and investigation. Smart products are popping up everywhere and we are constantly presented with newer, better 'things' that enhance our everyday lives - the pace continually speeding up.

Efficiency of creativity mixed with designing within budgetary and business culture parameters is difficult on a good day. This book provides extensive examples of products that did and didn't make it to consumers and why so that you can learn from the mistakes of others rather than your own. The author also offers a succinct framework for idea generation, prototyping and testing and what to do when you get unexpected results.

*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.