Hat Tip: Alessi's Formula for Innovation

How does Italian "design factory" Alessi keep coming up with such inventive and playful products? A little bit of gut instinct, a unique "formula" for measuring a design's potential and a determination to keep taking risks.

Interviewed by McKinsey Quarterly, Alberto Alessi reveals some unconventional attitudes to product development that are more inward-looking than most marketers might recommend, but that clearly yield results.

Products often develop organically, and emerge from the imagination of designers
in a kind of 'field of dreams' approach, rather than being the result of carefully planned customer research. But it's not as random as it sounds. Here are a couple
of the company's product development ideas that might just work elsewhere.

• Create Your Own Formula The "formula", which is used to calculate a product's sales success using four factors. Two -- function and price -- are "peripheral" to Alessi. The other two are (it would seem) highly subjective and hard to measure.

  One is SMI, or sensation, memory and imagination. This is the degree to which people respond to a product and the "relationship between the object and the individual".

  The other is how the product bears out a person's values. Most people invest certain products with significance and use it to convey something about themselves to others -- what you buy can used to communicate your status, ethical stance or another aspect of your personality. Luxury brands have long recognised the importance of aligning their product values with buyers' aspirations and creating 'experiences' and associations that last beyond a single product.

• Work Close to the Borderline Unlike market research, which looks outward when evaluating products, the Alessi approach all happens within the business. What's more, it doesn't matter if a prototype's not universally loved -- "If I believe it is a good product and that it has to be done, I will support it," says Alessi.

  So why bother evaluating products at all? Alessi sees it as a way of taking informed risks and trying out new ideas. Innovative designers and marketers are willing to work close to the "borderline" between what's possible and what's not possible. "The destiny of a company like Alessi is to live as close as possible to the borderline, where you are able to really explore a completely unknown area of products."