Bright Ideas

Innovation happens when least expected, a combination of hard work and happy accident. Yet, no matter the specific area of investigation, there are elements that need to be present to promote creativity — imagination, curiosity, persistence, daring and playfulness.
Architectural Lighting magazine
April, May 2006

If your company builds signs, you surely study this magazine s New Product pages, because new and innovative products give your shop a design, cost or production edge that your competitor may have overlooked. Studying these pages provides your shop with the necessary items to apply a fresh, unique appearance, technique or light source to a sign design.

Oppositely, the Internet, although it deserves a thousand or more honors, stinks if you re searching for new ideas, especially when compared to magazines. Internet pages narrowly focus on one object at a time — a brand, company or product type — and lucky accidents, discoveries, seldom happen in such focused searches. A magazine provides a page turn that, like an uncharted hilltop facing an inquisitive explorer, gives you news or actions you may not expect.

All artists and designers speak of lucky accidents, the unplanned application of a color or shape that somehow makes a design, painting — or product — better, if not extraordinary. The same theory — that one should explore all sources — applies to all design, and, in the custom-sign field, such unexpected discoveries may easily evolve to innovative signage applications.

Many creative people use the word accident to describe the results of an experiment that s been implemented with uncommon tools or materials and that will, hopefully, produce unforeseeable, but interesting, results.

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For example, digital artist Bonnie Lhotka once coated an unprintable substrate with rabbit-skin glue, to see if her digital-print machine s ink would stick to it. It did. Photographer and author Theresa Airey digitally prints her photos, paints them and prints them again. Each photo is unique because of the planned, yet capricious, outcome of her search for accidents.

The theory also applies to business. A recent Harvard Business School Working Knowledge newsletter featured writer Sarah Jane Gilbert s interview with Harvard Assoc. Professor Robert D. Austin, who co-authored a paper, The Accidental Innovator, with Swarth-more College professor emeritus Lee Devin. The paper explores accidental innovation, how it works or doesn t, and how good accidents can be encouraged. It examines important innovations as the byproduct of accidents — dynamite, penicillin, matches, stainless steel, Velcro®, Teflon® or the microwave oven (which was conceived after the discovery of a melted candy bar), for example.

The paper says to look for the unexpected, that innovation can t always be planned, and good accidents happen. Austin emphasizes the importance of understanding the nature of breakthrough inventions in your industry.

Austin said that businesspeople characteristically see working towards an undefined goal as inefficient, but, if you re questing true innovation, conventional thinking can be a handicap — a theory that s more easily grasped by artists than managers.

To advance a particular project, Austin said to prepare your mind to notice the value in unusual occurrences. Knowing too clearly where you are going, focusing too hard on a predefined objective, can cause you to miss value that might lie in a different direction, he said.
It s all about exploring the unknown — happiness for some, a dread for others.

Another huge idea source is tradeshows, because you can t predict what you ll see — or who you ll meet (people are vast idea sources). In your tradeshow plan, include such sign-related shows as Lightfair Intl., held this June, in Las Vegas, where 550 companies exhibited lighting products. According to a Lightfair survey, 90% of its attendees say it s the place to see unique, innovative products.

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For example, the Philips (New York City) Aurelle™ LED-lamped candles that flicker like real ones. Design these outdoor-safe, wind- and water-resistant imitations into a boutique or dinner-club sign — candles romantically shimmering in the frosted-glass vases that Philips provides — and blow your customer s socks off. They ship in 2-, 4- and 10-pack systems, and you can direct wire them via an adaptor.
Another is HessAmerica s (Gaffney, SC) award-winning Night Module. The thin, vertical-tube, unique-use, lighting system, designed for area- or pathway-lighting applications, can also illuminate — and accent — outdoor wayfinding signs, and, in addition to adding a modern look, it can save you the cost of fabricating your own weather- and vandal-resistant floodlight system.

You had to see this one to believe it: a half mile of 3,125 LED-lamped Christmas lights on one plug, presented by Diogen Lighting™ (Littleton, CO). To do this, Diogen markets a 5-amp adapter that allows you to connect, via an AC outlet, up to 125 of its commercial-grade, Forever Bright brand, LED-based light strings. Diogen s coaxial connectors and threaded coupling cap reinforce the system s end-to-end connection.

Also consider Diogen s ColorWave™ technology system that produces a magical lighting effect by shifting the lamps colors via a patented, micro-controller circuit. Offer this system to your bar or cabaret customers, for ambient or holiday lighting.
Diogen also offers incandescent, replacement, LED-based, 110-120V bulbs that screw into standard lamp sockets and appear as regular low-watt incandescent lamps. You can see these at www.diogenlighting.com. Think of these lamps as long-life, energy savers in mall or theater-style signs.

Globally, lighting is a $79 billion industry; the United States accounts for $21.1 billion, or 26.7% of that market. You can attend next year s Lightfair at New York City s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, May 6-10.

Solid-State Lighting Gains

On June 6, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced it will provide a total of $7 million for five, cost-shared projects for solid-state lighting (SSL) product development. SSL, the DOE release said, has the potential to more than double the efficiency of the nation s general lighting systems and thereby reduce overall U.S. energy consumption. The selected companies — Color Kinetics Inc. (Boston); Eastman Kodak Co. (Rochester, NY); General Electric Global Research (Niskayuna, NY); Osram Sylvania Development Inc. (Beverly, MA); and SRI International (Menlo Park, CA) — will provide a 30% average cost-share.

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SSL manufacturers continue to develop more efficient systems, although lighting-industry analysts worry that Asian manufacturers will eventually outmaneuver U.S. product makers, because many offshore companies are investing in standard SSL commercial- and industrial-lighting systems. They also expect technology improvements in which, eventually, all newly installed lighting will become dimmable and addressable, similar to the light pixels on large-screen displays.

To do this, micro-computer systems must control home, office and industrial lamps via in-line, electronic pulse-codes and internal, rather than wall-mounted, switches. Presumably, these newer, wireless controls will be ZigBee-specific systems and, therefore, as locally transportable as today s home-television remote controls.
ZigBee is an associated alliance of 200 companies — Philips (New York City), Honeywell (Morristown, NJ), Texas Instruments (Dallas), NEC (Irving, TX), Schneider Electric (Rueil-Malmaison, France), Samsung (San Jose, CA) , Epson (Long Beach, CA), Cisco (San Jose, CA), Johnson Controls (Milwaukee), Ember Corp. (Boston) and more — working together to enable a global standard for reliable, cost-effective, wirelessly networked products. Its goal is to provide consumers with standard 2.4GHz, flexible and easy-to use wireless systems for everyday devices.

If its drive is successful, electronic companies will employ a standards-based platform for all remote-control and monitoring applications. Until the formation of ZigBee s IEEE 802.15.4 wireless-communications standard, no standards existed for wireless-sensor and control networks. The ZigBee name, the organization said, pays a tribute to the zigzag dance that honeybees use to communicate the sources and distances of plant nectar.

Currently, white LED lights are too expensive for common household use. However, their backers, lauding the LED lamps long life, direct your attention to commercial installations where lamp replacement costs are high.

A textbook example is Siemens Building Technologies Inc. (Florham Park, NJ). It has a six-year performance contract with the Commonwealth of Kentucky to retrofit traffic-signal lamps on Kentucky s state-maintained roads — every traffic signal, flashing beacon and school flasher is to be replaced, close to 3,000 in all. Kentucky s highway department estimates (and Siemens guarantees) a $1.7 million annual energy savings; the changeover will reportedly save Kentucky $10.2 million over the contract s life.