TREND: Look Homeward, Designers
Hard times are pushing innovation consulting firms to become do-it-yourselfers. As corporate customers scale back, more firms are designing products on their own. Seattle’s Teague, which designed the Boeing (BA)Dreamliner interiors, is developing an ultrathin, flexible reading lamp that bends like a paper clip (left). San Francisco's Lunar Design, whose clients include SanDisk (SNDK) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), has introduced a sleek sink stopper (above), which won a 2008 International Design Excellence Award. And MAYA Design of Pittsburgh—Whirlpool (WHR) and Samsung (SAME_pq.F) are among its clients— is creating a set of mix-and-match software and hardware that will allow users to create customized electronics, such as phones that turn office lights on or off remotely.
