SE.7 – ELective Seminar
KICKSTARTING INNOVATION
Emerging Design Practice in the Digital Age

Faculty: Anna Pla Catalá

Digital Technologies have entered all domains of knowledge and production radically affecting the landscape of architectural practice and establishing an entirely new productive ecosystem.
Smart software, novel materials, intelligent robots, new processes of artificial intelligence (AI), and a whole range of Internet-based services and products (IOT) are converging into a new economy based on new sets of rules for decentralised manufacturing and distribution methods. (FOF, F2F, B2B, B2C, etc.)
The focus of this seminar is the study of the ongoing development of Design Practice. Our goal will be to turn creative designers into innovative thinkers capable of proposing new design/business models for the current Industrial Revolution (3.0, 4.0) we´re immersed in.
How can design innovation support the development of new products and services?

_Product vs. Service_How to build your business plan  
The seminar investigates the processes of design and innovation, and evaluates and tests your own ideas through a series of case studies and group projects. You will make specific use of the accumulated knowledge, techniques and prototypes, in order to build a business plan for a Product or Service that has the potential of becoming a proper Innovation.

_From Idea to Market
Innovation is the process by which Ideas become productive entities capable of entering the market. That entails being able to create Value (economic, industrial, cultural, etc.). The problem faced by designers cannot be reduced to producing novel products but how to bring them into the economic cycle.
The course will provide a deep understanding of the innovation process, its importance to our economy and of all of the various factors affecting its success including intellectual property, funding and strategy.

_IP in the age of Shapeways_Copyright and Patents in the Sharing Economy
Intellectual property is of vital importance to the entrepreneur in creative industries. Students will learn how to operate as entrepreneurial designers within the Sharing Economy and be equipped with knowledge of the different types of intellectual property, intellectual property rights, the application process for obtaining intellectual property and its importance to the innovation process.

__From Prototype to Production_ Crowdfunding Strategies
Final Submission: In order to apply the concepts learnt, students will create a Kickstarter Campaign of their own Innovative Product or Service as a highly synthetic conclusive project of your IaaC experience in the hope of getting sufficient funding and launch its marketization.