When considering this topic one has to clearly distinguish between the often confused terms invention and innovation.
New ideas for products and also their prototypical implementation, including all functions are still referred to as "only" an invention. These inventions are important because the potential to assert themselves as innovations often lies at their core.
However, they are not referred to as innovations until a novel solution could succeed on the market under real conditions and thus change the market situation.
We work on orders in which our clients expect from us to develop innovative product solutions as well as in situations in which our partners have generated the most technologically promising product ideas.
In the latter cases, the challenge is to work out a solution on the basis of the MAYA principle, MAYA standing for Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable.
The advantages of the underlying technology should therefore be exploited to the highest possible degree, but these products also have to be designed to such an extent that potential users recognize the added value and accept the novelty of the solution.
In the case of an in-house developed closure system for avalanche probes, the "patented flash assembly" system, our client Ortovox just gave us a very simple briefing:
The product family of avalanche probes should be improved in any way.
We then focused on the closure system and using the creativity techniques, in this case the methodical search for solutions to analogous problems, we relatively quickly thought of a rope tension as it is also used for the suspension of luminaires. Meanwhile, we have been able to patent the system on both the European and the American market.
Another order by Ortovox was to develop a shovel for avalanche rescue which should be compressible, but not by the common method of dismantling it into separate, losable pieces. First we have created three completely new technical concepts, of which one was selected in a joint evaluation with Ortovox. In the following stage of development and design process the selected concept turned into the shovel family Grizzly I and II which were able to assert themselves on the niche market for avalanche shovels and meanwhile are used by many professional mountain rescue teams in the Alps.
