Innovation Space is a course designed to challenge senior students to collaborate on an interdisciplinary basis while completing a thought-provoking project. Each project is designed to allow students to address real-world issues. My team, Leverage, has created a product suite for power wheelchair users. Our product suite equips a wheelchair with a backup camera, an expanding lap desk, and a headrest with integrated Bluetooth speakers and microphone. These products are designed to increase the productive potential of the disabled, particularly quadriplegics injured around the C4 vertebra level. During the course of the program, my team will create physical prototypes of our product and I will create a full business plan. The individual written portion of my thesis will consist of discussion of a branding framework developed by creative director Patrick Hanlon. In addition, I will suggest methodology for effectively branding our company.

Children today are being primed with technology at very young ages, leading to a more digitally focused lifestyle. Tangentially, today's digital culture has led to the increase of online shopping rather than in-store shopping. A group of students at Arizona State University's Innovation Space program, in partnership with Disney Consumer Products, set out to create a children's product that bridged the physical-digital gap, and encouraged outdoor activity. The result of their work was Blitz: a versatile, outdoor gaming console that brings traditional outdoor fun into the digital world. This thesis and paired creative project are an extension of the research and development done by the Blitz team. The purpose of this additional research is to discover how parents and children shop online in to design a website to market and sell the Blitz gaming system. Some of the topics covered include visual design, functionality, user interaction, and marketing tactics. The goal is not to develop advertising tactics to manipulate children, but to find the best ways to design for, and market children's products.

Challenging project-based learning, this 3-part thesis analyzes the current environment of business and university relationships, examines an experimental course at W.P. Carey and proposes a unique, execution-based teaching strategy. The outcome is a sustainable and mutually beneficial relationship between business and universities that allows each to operate at its maximum potential while bridging the gap for students between classroom theory and its application in the real world of business.

Luxury is a sector of all global industry that has been proven sustainable, having flourished during global economic successes and withstood hardships across numerous decades. Consumers are drawn to luxury, both the physical and perceived value that luxury products offer. Luxury champagne tastes better, luxury vehicles are higher performing and luxury fashion reflects the highest quality designs. The belief in superior product is what keeps luxury relevant. However, it is the brand identity created on behalf of the firm behind a luxury brand that remains the vital component to develop and maintain its top-tier status. Luxury fashion firms are synonymous with their brand, the persona and user experience created driving all facets of creative and business execution. While product name and perceived value are contributors to global success, the evolution and maintenance of such status relies upon the consistency of brand identity. To begin, I will identify a criterion that differentiates luxury fashion (mega-brands) from mass-market and commercial fashion, as well as outline the components that comprise a luxury brand identity. After a clear understanding of the meaning of luxury is established, I will layout the process of how a brand identity is consistently communicated through the business cycle, from the initial creation and design process to the end point of the final sale stage. To further enrich the learning established, I will apply the developed concepts in a dissection of the top five luxury fashion firms, Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Gucci. Analyzing each mega-brand, I will evaluate how the company's brand identity has evolved over the course of the firm's heritage and analyze the current brand creative direction (brand identity, ethics and aesthetics). Understanding the brand's persona and image, I will highlight the physical representation through brand codes and symbols to support the firm's positioning as a thriving luxury empire. Lastly, I will interpret the company's latest advertising campaign, deconstructing the application of brand identity as well as the contribution the campaign provides to supporting firm success. Ultimately, after gaining sufficient understanding of what a successful luxury firm is comprised of, I will identify the shortcomings identified within the last firm evaluated, Gucci. I will examine the branding failures of the current state of Gucci, analyzing what contributed to its fall from top luxury brand status. Additionally, I will provide details regarding what measures are currently being taken to regain its superior status as well as provide my own recommendation to the firm. In summation, through the process of understanding successful luxury branding practices, I hope to have enriched not only my understanding of brand identity but have gained the ability to develop my own point of view, to suggest a branding path and measures to be taken to steer Gucci back on a track.

This thesis is a technical project management overview of development of software for a student startup venture named TableTop. There were many changes made throughout the process in order to address new conditions as to keep the vision of the project on the most direct and reasonable path. Development followed the agile product development model in order to adapt as the concept pivoted or as hurdles presented themselves. The goal at the end of the project was to have a well-defined business model based off of the lean startup business model canvas. The business model would shape development of the software that needed to be functional and ready for testing by the completion of the thesis. Functional was defined as having completed the user and merchant side of the application including communication between both. Ultimately, a user needed to be able to complete a transaction that a merchant had submitted on the software.

Increasing collaboration among employees is a top priority for many organizations today. How can we help companies and employees collaborate better? Through Innovation Space, our team Kioro has an opportunity to design and develop alternative solutions that will help achieve the idea. This paper discusses the fields of the five disciplines including from Graphic Design, Industrial Design, Engineering, Sustainability, and Business. The scope and content is aimed at focusing on each role, his/her basic responsibility and some of the highlights of his/her work over the whole semester. The very interactive and engaging environment at Innovation Space has driven me to think about teamwork, interpersonal relationship, and self-evaluation. By observations of my team members, this paper covers a reflection with a list of solutions to improve my life. Innovation Space not only teaches me about new product development, but also has a significant impact behind and lead me to think about life.

As part of the InnovationSpace program, interdisciplinary teams of five undergraduate students from the areas of business, engineering, graphic design, industrial design, and sustainability are responsible for creating a product idea that addresses a societal need. My team, Flo, was tasked with finding a product/service solution that will increase collaboration or creativity in a workplace environment. After deciding as a group how to define collaboration—working with others to achieve a common goal—and creativity—getting to an end goal in a different way than is expected—we spent the fall 2014 semester researching pain points and areas of interest for potential customers and users. We learned that one of the barriers to productivity for our target users in startups and mature corporations is that they often lack the right mix of private and collaborative spaces. From this insight, we created a product system called Trenz.
There are benefits and drawbacks to both collaboration and individual work. Trenz sits at the intersection of both work styles, thus aiming to negate the downsides of both and harness their benefits based on real-time user needs. Holistically, the corporate workplace furniture industry is stagnant, despite several trends that pave the way for future innovation. Even though studies are consistently released on the benefits of natural light, flexibility, and activity in the workplace, the furniture industry has not yet responded with a solution that successfully solves all three while keeping the user in mind. As such, Trenz is a product-service system with the potential to create a new segment in the market because of its user-centric design, the support of individual/group work dynamics, and its feature set that can accommodate a diverse group of users.

Thesis Abstract: Cygnal The healthcare market plays a vital role in how our team worked with innovation space to design a product that fit user needs and could be a sustainable business. Whatever product we design is going to be dictated based off of how the insurance market will pay for it and how much we can charge for our product and services. In fact, the healthcare market is so incredibly unclear with outdated regulations that all of these fraud schemes and inflammatory prices are bound to happen. Stronger government involvement in this instance, I believe would help the issue. In reality, there are so many people taking advantage of the system that you cannot put the blame on anyone exploiting the system. What is clear though, is that they are taking advantage of a system that looks like it was set up to allow them to do so, and in that sense, Medicare is responsible for allowing this market to become warped. The healthcare industry played a vital role in our team for Innovation Space is completing our project. If we do not have a firm understanding on how the insurance market works, how much wheelchair companies are pricing chair components for, and how easily customers can see a financial benefit in switching to our product, it will not survive in the market place. That is why I as the business student am dedicating a lot of time in the final months of our project to make sure that our pricing is accurate, and feasible. The health insurance market, even if it is dysfunctional, will be ultimately paying for our product, and in business if you do not truly know your customer, you are bound to lose him. This paper uncovers why this market is warped and how to do business within it.

As the shift to more innovative and open workspaces continues gaining popularity, millennial-heavy trends are now influencing businesses to create a more "Google-ly" and open atmosphere that caters to the needs of different personalities in a quirky, fun and innovative fashion. Millennials are becoming even more central as they begin to dominate the work force and replace more than 75 million older workers who are nearing, or are currently at, retirement age (Twenge et al., 2010). These Millennials have high expectations of their employers and will quickly leave their job if these needs are not being adequately met . One of those expectations is a push for creating spaces that optimize creativity and collaboration among employees. Team n o o d l e aims to address this problem by tackling the issue of underutilized conference rooms that dominate traditional business environments. Team n o o d l e is introducing a product that aims to eliminate the inefficiencies of traditional brainstorming sessions, such as time spent prepping, sticky-note usage and clean up. Otlet is a multi-functional conference table that doubles as a recreational gaming center. Otlet combines work and play by creating an open and engaging environment for sharing ideas. It serves to enhance creativity and collaboration among workers, and in the process may be a catalyst to transform the culture of that workplace. Academic research has begun to validate the importance of fun in the workplace. A number of studies have demonstrated that fun relates to employee attitudes and affective states, such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, engagement, positive mood, and positive emotions . (Fluegge, 2008; Karl and Peluchette, 2006a, b; Karl et al., 2007, 2008; McDowell, 2004). Today, a business's online presence is everything. A 2013 poll by AT&T revealed that 67% of businesses are using their website to market to customers . Additionally, 66% of small businesses are maintaining or increasing their spend on digital marketing . The rise in popularity of digital marketing and the Internet is, for the first time, empowering small businesses to compete with businesses of all sizes. The ability to reach audiences across the world has evened out the playing field and leveraged small businesses to compete on a national and global level. Otlet's success will be dependent on an effective and innovative digital marketing strategy. With that being said, I recommend that team n o o d l e implement an initial digital marketing strategy for Otlet that includes a website, paid ad campaigns, a search engine optimization strategy, landing page development, and content marketing.