Value up, costs down.

On 6th May Provoke Tallinn together with CadON held a product development seminar on how to create high added value with low manufacturing costs. Seminar was featured on Estonian Year of Innovation´s blog (in Estonian).





See also article (PDF, in Estonian) by Estonian magazine on creative engineering.

Provoke Helsinki - new address

Provoke Helsinki is now located at Keilasatama 3 (map).

Contact information:
Tel. +358 (0)9 2510 7654
Address: Keilasatama 3, 02150 Espoo, Finland

World will be different after the recession?

A lot will have changed; more regulations, old respected companies disappearing, fresh business models booming, marketing and branding changing through co-creation, viral marketing, community/consumer power?

Agile virtual networks of companies and individuals will boom: why buy an office/factory and hire 1,000 people when you can do the same - or more in a flexible network?

Could be that one common nominator will be adaptability? Building new businesses that have a minimum of fixed costs, yet the capability to scale up rapidly. Moving brands instead of fixed ideas? Integrator-role might become dominant, pursuing solution-driven offerings that can be rapidly adjusted to user needs on the fly.

Sustainability will grow in importance; not only ecology, but social and financial aspects as well.

And people will once again try and build models that would never be hit by another recession again. The next recession will eventually hit people by surprise after some years. But in between, there is going to be an interesting phase of growth; will it focus on financial growth alone - or growth of meaning as well?

Product Development Day.

By Hannes Seeberg

Product Development Days are organized by InnoEstonia - a part of InnoEurope innovation centre which offers ideas for product developers to inspire and support them in creating new value. Fourth event took place on February 12th in Tallinn. Theme for the day was "What products and services are expedient to developed in the year 2009?"

We were there to understand what is being told about product development in Estonia. Participants came from food industry, IT, branding, universities and trade unions - manufacturing industry was missing in the list. As the organizer pointed out, the amount of participants for the event had decreased 2-3 times due to bad economical situation of Estonian companies.

The topics:
■ "Strategics and product development" by Priit Karjus
■ "What is needed to know about competitors and the market in order to make the right decisions for product development?" by Margus Žuravljov
■ "How to effectively remove risks in product development?" by Toomas Danneberg
■ "How to involve users to company´s product development process?" by Alar Kolk

To note, all of the speakers based their presentations to a question "How to do it?", however did not answer to the theme of the day. See their slides (in Estonian).

Previous speakers for InnoEstonia´s Product Development Days include also Steve Chazin, who directed Apple´s comeback-marketing during the end of 90´s. See his videocast (in English).


More info: hannes.seeberg@provoke.ee & InnoEurope

Industry engines.

by Hannes Seeberg

What are the development opportunities for Estonian manufacturing industries? What are the upcoming global manufacturing trends for the year 2018? What should the industries concentrate at?

These were the main questions discussed at The Manufacturing Forum, a high-level public culmination event of Estonian Development Fund´s foresight project "Industry Engines 2018", held on December 2nd in Tallinn. Hannes Seeberg, Managing Director of Provoke Tallinn, was one of the 150 invited industry quests, together creating a preliminary vision of Estonian manufacturing industry with a 10 year perspective.

The outcome: there are two potential areas for global market, where Estonian manufacturing has opportunities:
■ energy-saving and environmentally friendly products;
■ products for healthcare and well-being sectors.

As we in Provoke see it - there is a future need for products, that are produced using less energy and materials, are energy- and cost-effective during their life-cycle - yet add great value for their users.


Speakers for the event were prof. Richard K. Lester (MIT Industrial Performance Center, USA), Antti Herlin (KONE Corporation, Finland), Siim Sikkut (Estonian Development Fund), Mr Joe Harford (Chairman of High Level Group of Manufacturing, Ireland). Day-long event ended with a reception by Mr Juhan Parts (minister of economic affairs and communications in Estonia).

See videocasts and presentation materials (both available in English and Estonian).

More info: hannes.seeberg@provoke.ee & Estonian Development Fund

Design Thinking helps when the economy poses new challenges

by Mikko Kämäräinen

Design Thinking is gaining more popularity among companies wanting to refocus their strategies around end-customers. Cutting costs is obvious - but to keep innovating cost-effectively at the same time is the key to turn the challenges into new opportunities. Understanding real user needs and being able to innovate end-customer value, then test it before going too far in development is crucial as companies face an economically demanding era.
Move On! magazine by Fintra featured a case story about Design Thinking in issue 04/2008. You can download the article (in Finnish).

More info: mikko.kamarainen@provoke.fi

New site

We've updated our site at www.provoke.fi.

Comments are welcome. You can post anonymously your comments here - or send an email to info@provoke.fi.

Provoke Tallinn in Estonian media.

by Hannes Seeberg

„Think how much companies spend on commercials. Take half of million from there and invest it on product development instead! Create a product, that everone wants to buy. If you are not able to do that, advertisements would not help you.“
■ Hannes Seeberg in Saldo, Estonian business magazine, November 2008.

Ask for a scanned article (in Estonian): hannes.seeberg@provoke.ee

by Hannes Seeberg

„We need a product development union, which gathers skills of different occupations. This way Estonian companies could get a advice for their product development from one place.“
■ Hannes Seeberg in Äripäev, Estonian business newspaper, September 2008.

Full article: Aripaev.ee (in Estonian)
More info: hannes.seeberg@provoke.ee

New people

Saikat Biswas has joined Provoke Turku as the newest Senior Industrial Designer. Saikat will work for the Creatives team. He worked previously for Kyocera in India.

Prototype early

by Pasi Mattila

Pasi Mattila talks about fuzzy frot end prototyping in Prosessori Magazine. (In Finnish)
Prorotyping early means you get to test your concepts before investing too much on development. This is the key to iterate ideas cost-effectively. Do not ask users what they want, but DO ask them what they think of your ideas.
A prototype is worth a thousand pictures. Being able to prototype early enables more iteration and more opportunities to create winning ideas.

LiveProto is a tool for creating working proof-of-concept prototypes before HW/SW design.

More info: pasi.mattila@provoke.fi