What does a neonatal incubator have to do with research? Read on.
In 2010, Design that Matters received widespread recognition for its innovative neonatal incubator. The innovation: the incubator ran off car parts.
Neonatal incubators are an effective tool against infant mortality, as about half of infant deaths worldwide (about 1.8 million infants total) can be attributed to a lack of a consistent heat until they have the body fat and metabolic rate to stay warm. The incubation challenge is extremely difficult in developing countries, where donated incubators fix the problem, until they break. Then they sit, unused, for lack of spare parts or repair know-how. But what did the design team see along with piles of broken, discarded medical devices? Countless old cars, trucks, and SUVs somehow coaxed into running smoothly. The lightbulb went off – if an incubator was built from car parts, mechanics could easily provide needed maintenance and repairs. The resulting incubator is pretty neat, with dashboard fans for circulation, signal lights and door chimes for alarms, a car battery to keep it running even in power outages, and headlights to provide heat.
This is a clever, and more importantly valuable, design. But again… market research? What’s the connection?
Design that Matters recognized a disconnect between the way incubators were built and the environment in which they were being used. MREB Research has shown a similar disconnect in the way that Research functions provide information to the business and the way that executives consume information. The design team re-conceived the incubator to fit the constrains of its environment… how can Research re-conceive its information distribution processes to fit the new business environment?
We’ve seen companies doing just that – embedding customer knowledge in a way that fits executive decision-making processes:
1) Focusing research scoping and execution for fast delivery to inform urgent decisions
2) Using existing information flow to reach executives
3) Engineering learning moments to correct over-confidence
MREB members, learn more about embedding customer knowledge into the business.
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