BIF-3 Storyteller Stephen Lane on Human Factor Design Thinking

Posted by Chris Flanagan on July 31, 2007

The Business Innovation Factory has just announced an ambitious collaborative and multi-disciplinary project with the ITEM Group, Brown University’s Emergency Medical Foundation and Rhode Island Hospital to identify innovation opportunities in an emergency trauma bay – the area within an emergency department where patients receive life-sustaining treatment after serious injury or a major medical event.

As a storyteller at our upcoming Collaborative Innovation Summit, ITEM co-founder Stephen Lane will be sharing progress about the project. “Looking at the environment from the perspective of the people who actually use it will reveal insights into the ‘human factors’ that define activity within the space. It’s an exciting opportunity to affect meaningful, visionary change,” Lane explains.

He recently sat down to talk to us about ITEM and what it means to be a design-thinker in today's frenetically innovative environment.

A Rhode Island native, Lane began creating new products at a young age. At first his designs were simple yet diverse —a clever way to deliver nearly 100 newspapers at one time; an automatic toothpaste dispenser he made because it took too long to brush his teeth; a curb climbing wheelchair before curb-cuts existed.

Today, this passion for finding innovation opportunities is still there - just on a much greater scale in crowded, competitive product categories. It’s led to the launch of hundreds of commercially successful products and over 100 established patents – earning Lane leadership in the design, entrepreneurial and venture communities.

“We live in a world of constant invention, and high-velocity product improvement,” Lane says. “I have always had this understanding of what people want and never have been discouraged that the idea already exists...there’s always room for innovation.”

Lane is creative and he thinks outside the box all the time, but his time as a Rhode Island School of Design student brought on a new, more structured way of thinking. RISD took something instinctual and turned it into a practice.

That practice was put into motion in his academic days and continues now at his alma mater where as an adjunct faculty member, he teaches industrial design students to understand their place in the business world and how to value themselves regardless of where they operate in that world.

“Over 20 years I’ve applied my creative instincts and desire to innovate and design to our business,” says Lane of Item Group, the company he and partner Aidan Petrie formed right out of college in 1985.

Today, that company is parent to a trio of businesses, including Item New Product Development, a product development company; Ximedica, a capital equipment and medical device business; and the most recently launched Innovation Chain Partners, a supplier of private label product programs to leading retailers.

Lane credits the success of those businesses to the creativity of his 100+ staff, and his ability to always move forward without looking back.

One example came in the form of a maze designed in the company’s headquarters. The Item Maze is where the company’s five phases of product development come together. Evolving findings from various development disciplines, such as research, design, and engineering, are posted in a living, collaborative workspace that is updated throughout the development process. The Maze encourages brainstorming and fosters ongoing, real-time inputs from diverse professional perspectives.

Don't miss Stephen Lane at the Business Innovation Factory's annual Collaborative Innovation Summit on October 10th and 11th.

RELATED LINKS

• Learn more about how you can participate at the BIF-3 Summit
• Learn more about BIF's latest project - Redesigning the Trauma Bay of the Future