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American Marketing Association

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 12:47:34 GMT

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CUSP Conference

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:04:49 GMT

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Innovation Learning Network

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 12:56:06 GMT

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IDSA International Conference

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:14:36 GMT

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International Congress of Management

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:24:25 GMT

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Strategy Execution Summit 2012

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:42:53 GMT

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Dieline Conference

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:32:02 GMT

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Planning-Ness Conference

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 08:56:51 GMT

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Food Packaging Technologies Summit

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:13:16 GMT

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HBR: Innovating in the Scary Zone

Thu, 03 May 2012 16:12:20 GMT

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SMEI

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 12:39:59 GMT

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MIT Sustainability Summit

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:19:45 GMT

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PechaKucha

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:01:48 GMT

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Unite for Site

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:00:46 GMT

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Il Exporter Summit

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:32:41 GMT

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HBR: Three Rules for Innovation Teams

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:36:30 GMT

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HxD Conference has designs on smarter healthcare

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:11:30 GMT

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Healthcare Experience Design Conference

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 08:47:40 GMT

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Imagine How Creativity Works

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 12:37:05 GMT

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Innovation is about arguing, not brainstorming. Here's how to argue productively

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:49:42 GMT

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The Keys For Keeping Your Brand Relevant In The Post-Occupy Era

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 21:03:30 GMT

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Global Practice, Local Experience

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:57:36 GMT

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Graduate Women at MIT Empowerment Conference

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:58:22 GMT

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MassMedic

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:12:45 GMT

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Digital Blue Conference

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:50:22 GMT

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Mobility Beyond pavement

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:28:39 GMT

Wheelchairs bring the gift of mobility to millions of disabled individuals, until rough terrain gets in the way. What if we could give people even more flexibility regardless of nature’s conditions? Continuum helped MIT’s Mobility Lab envision the next generation of the Leveraged Freedom Chair, a high-performance version that is funding the original prototype designed to help the disabled in developing countries.

Global Practice, Local Experience

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 20:42:09 GMT

Since Gianfranco Zaccai cofounded its Boston office in 1983, Continuum has grown into one of the giants of the design world. The consultancy, which won last year’s National Design Award for product design, has added four offices (in Los Angeles, Milan, Seoul, and Shanghai). In addition to designing some very high-volume consumer goods—if you use a Swiffer, you have Continuum to thank—Zaccai’s team has taken on systemic problems in the fields of social design and health care, including Daktari, a low-cost AIDS testing kit for southern Africa, and the Insulet Omnipod, which helps diabetics administer medication. Recently, Metropolis’s assistant editor, Avinash Rajagopal, spoke to Zaccai about Continuum’s long journey and why he thinks design should model itself on theater.

The Keys For Keeping Your Brand Relevant In The Post-Occupy Era

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:56:56 GMT

Americans no longer yearn for bigger and better, argue Continuum strategists Susan Lee and Jenny Liang. Here are three keys to creating products and services that evoke the new American dream.

Part 2: Service Design Thinking and the Innovation of Financial Services

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 21:59:47 GMT

In a recent blog in response to the excellent 2010 book entitled “Service Design Thinking” (Stickdorn/Schneider 2010) I noted that this was the first qualifier of design thinking, as least that I had witnessed at the time, that spoke to how design thinking might be applied to a specific design practice. I also noted that the sky was the limit as to how design practitioners could take design thinking tools and methods and apply them to their own area of practice. “Service Design Thinking” does an excellent job of just this mash-up. The key elements of an integrated service design and design thinking approach to the creation of new business service/product interactions can be outlined as follows:

Patrick Whitney Visits Continuum

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:44:43 GMT

Continuum welcomed Patrick Whitney, the Dean of the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology, to our Boston studio. We are always excited to host thought leaders in the field of design to talk about innovation and design thinking.

Part 1: Service Design Thinking and the Innovation of Financial Services

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:27:41 GMT

Recent turmoil in the financial services industry has lead many consumers to question how they manage their financial lives, both now and for the long-term. The global recession has compounded the sense of unease consumers feel about entrusting financial services providers with managing and safeguarding the financial fruit of their labors. Trust is at an all-time low.

CES Show

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:25:22 GMT

Your Front Line Employees are Your Brand. Do you Hire the Right Ones?

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 11:01:40 GMT

Frontline employees--the people behind the counter, on the phone, in the cloud, and walking the floor--possess a large measure of control over the customer experience.

Just Add Water

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 09:39:52 GMT

Walk the aisles of your local supermarket and consider all the shelves devoted to liquid products—not just beverages, but the number of food, cleaning, and personal care items that have a liquid component. Now think about how much that liquid weighs, where it came from, and how much energy it took to get it to your store.

The Future of Healthcare Design

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 09:10:58 GMT

Every year, the biggest ideas in health care are presented at the Mayo Clinic’s Transform conference in Rochester, Minnesota. I was there this year to present a pre-conference workshop with a Continuum colleague on everyday creativity, and another pair of Continuum designers gave a main-stage talk entitled, “Patient Centricity: A design identity crisis.” Also on the lineup were John Hockenberry and Roger Martin, bigwigs from J+J and GE Healthcare, and practitioners from the top-tier design and innovation firms. Many cutting-edge ideas were presented, along with some spirited debate on the hot topics of delivering care and the role of technology.

The Time is Now for Concentrates

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:34:53 GMT

Here are five consumer trends that suggest concentrates have the potential to capture consumers’ attention once again.

Design Makes Social Change

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:16:48 GMT

"Harry West, designer and CEO of Continuum, an innovation consultancy company with offices around the world, explains why commerce is a very powerful leverage when we speak about social innovation. For a designer, to improve just a little a product, for example a diaper for the chinese market, that will be used by millions, and make it cheaper too, is a first great step for a real social change. Same thing for financial products that in Latin America will be able to improve life of women, really." Tedx Madrid

Prototyping China: Living in Beta

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 10:15:04 GMT

Continuum has been doing work in China for 15 years, mostly focused on China as a consumer  market. Our multinational clients have been  betting on China’s emerging consumers as a key  to their companies’ growth agendas since the  early 1990s. But working with China as a client market had been sporadic. A few years ago, we  decided it was time for Continuum to begin a  deliberate expansion into the mainland.

Kill the Office of Innovation

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:45:31 GMT

The focus on innovation in the corporate world today has spawned a new organizational group: The Office of Innovation. With a charter of driving innovation into the heart of the organization, the logic is sound: If innovation is important, then there should be a core group of people who are accountable and responsible for it. After all, this is how other important functions, like finance and marketing, are handled. This makes sense.

In Pursuit of the Perfect, We're Overdesigning Our Lives

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 09:44:31 GMT

Looking into the refrigerator in a home in Lima, Peru I realized that I didn't recognize anything. Nothing was labeled: there were no brands. Different types of food were arrayed on plates or in bags. Consumerism had certainly reached this town -- there was a refrigerator, but the reach of consumerism was not as deep as it is in the United States.

One Way to Innovate

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 11:01:40 GMT

Goals, Passions, Contradictions and Old Clothes - Harry West talks about innovation at TedxOrangeCoast.

Women Dominate The Global Market Place; Here Are 5 Keys To Reaching Them

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:32:15 GMT

Women are the next global emerging market.

Their economic power is truly revolutionary, representing the largest market opportunity in the world. Just look at the numbers: Women control 65 percent of global spending and more than 80 percent of U.S. spending. By 2014, the World Bank predicts that the global income of women will grow by more than $5 trillion. In both emerging markets and developed nations, women’s power of influence extends well beyond the traditional roles of family and education to government, business, and the environment.

What We've Lost With Anonymous Designs Like The Kindle

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:13:28 GMT

Emily Dickinson is disturbing me. It seems that whenever I pick up my Kindle, there she is staring back at me. And when I think of the thousands of other readers with the identical Kindle and the identical screen saver I feel diminished. I have nothing against Emily Dickinson, but I am reading David Mitchell. The different covers of the books I used to read, with their different typefaces, designs, and colors, added to the richness of my life and connected me to others. I want to show off what I am reading; it is one of the ways I express myself.

In Our Information Age, Secrecy Is Sexy.

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:04:05 GMT

We live in a culture of oversharing. We broadcast our every thought, opinion, and move as Facebook updates or tweets. There’s tremendous pride in being the first of your friends to post a good link or to start a popular thread.
This information has value; it's become a new form of currency traded over sites like YouTube, Yelp, and on countless blogs. When someone is the first to share a new restaurant, pop-up store, video or blog, they build "social wealth." For those lacking in real currency, the Internet offers rich rewards--anyone can achieve a new type of influential status as being "in the know."

One Happy Customer #8

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 16:15:50 GMT

Yesterday I learned that it is possible to be a burdensome customer, a total knucklehead and a recipient of great service nevertheless. The secret? Be nice.

What Wayne Gretzky Can Teach Us About Fixing Our Health-Care System

Wed, 25 May 2011 13:40:07 GMT

The mandatory implementation of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) is primarily affecting the older generation of physicians, who didn’t grow up with computers.These doctors aren’t used to interacting with a big screen between them and their patients, and the technology hasn’t been designed to be user-friendly.
Some doctors will spring in to action and get on board with the EMR system, as the government will begin levying fines on medical practices where physicians don’t. But others will quit altogether, and we’ll lose an unknown percentage of our top medical talent.

Innovation in the Locker Room

Fri, 13 May 2011 13:54:15 GMT

Sometimes, cobbled together solutions from everyday folks can make a designer’s job a little easier.

BOOM: 826 Boston book printed.

Fri, 13 May 2011 13:41:48 GMT

Think You Want to Innovate?

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 13:14:40 GMT

The need for innovation has never been more widely recognized and embraced in the corporate world
today. Given the rapid pace of change in almost every business sector, the future of a company is largely dependent on its ability to flex this creative muscle. The directive often translates into immense pressure on leaders to build a robust culture of innovation, where teams within the organization create big ideas and bring them to life in a way that radically impacts the business.

Design Thinking and the Mortgage Bubble

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 09:41:03 GMT

Continuum tackles the mortgage disclosure form—and how telling the narrative of a home purchase played a decisive role in its design.