How Cool Is This?!?!?!
Logitech has done a great job over the past several years innovating their way out of commodity computer accessories categories. With a focus on ergonomics, design and usability, Logitech is adding value to a price-driven industry and winning over consumers and corporate buyers with their valued-added peripherals.
This one has to be their coolest innovation. The Logitech IO2 digital pen is a system for capturing handwritten notes - up to 40 pages at a time - and seamlessly, autmatically translating them to your computer in typed form:
“The pen is used in exactly the same way as a ballpoint pen. You activate the pen by removing the cap, and deactivate it by replacing the cap. There are no extra steps required. Simply write down your information just as you would with pen and paper-up to 40 pages at a time. When you write with the pen, a tiny camera with an optical sensor captures your work and registers the pen´s movements, while a processor digitizes your words and images. After placing the pen in the cradle, all your information gets transferred to your PC or on a network server. “
What an idea - finding new areas of frustration with today’s technological options and fitting into consumers habits and preferences, rather than requiring people to change to fit the technology. It’s brilliant.
Think about all of the places and ways we work for our technology, not the other way around. Being held hostage by short battery lives and huddling near sockets. Using fingers to dial small cell-phone buttons. Carrying multiple pieces of technology — laptop, blackberry, cell phone, iPod, camera - rather than a single truly functional solution. Loading and reloading contacts that don’t easily transfer. And on, and on…
How can your company innovate to solve the real pain points, not just provide a bandaid approach to a problem technology? And if you’re not in the tech business, how can you find and solve the true pain points created by your product or business model?
True innovation is difficult for most companies to accomplish, yet it’s exactly what customers seek. Disruptive innovations that solve problems and fulfill real needs. The problems and needs are out there…try thinking beyond the structural boundaries and focus on what your consumers really want, not just what they’re being offered.
