Nottingham Spirk
We’re asked all the time, “How do you come up with new ideas?” The truth is, there’s no one answer. We’ve asked our associates for their thoughts, and we’ll be sharing them over time. This response comes from NS Vice President of Strategy, Vikki Nowak.
The best example I can give is the Pack H2O water backpack we created in partnership with Greif Corporation. The burden of water transport can be huge for women and children in developing countries. The average person needs 8 to 15 liters of water per day; a family of six needs up to 90 liters daily. And in Africa, for example, women walk an average of 3.5 miles each day to get water. The water backpack is an excellent solution over open buckets or contaminated containers used to carry water.
The other example is a current project involving medication adherence. My grandmother inspired the idea. She was alone, and she had to take a lot of medications. She has the little box for a week’s worth of pills, but the older she got, the more she would spill or take incorrectly. That is such a bad situation, for a lot of reasons. People end up in hospitals because they’re not taking their meds, or they’re taking them incorrectly. We are working on a solution solved for a lot of unnecessary suffering but also better health outcomes.
Kent State’s design school taught me about beauty, aesthetics and balance. But it was my Pan-African studies professor, Chris Williams, from Sierra Leone, who suggested that I join Peace Corps. It was that two years that taught me that my design skills could solve bigger problems. Twenty-eight years later, innovation that eliminates unnecessary suffering is what continues to motivate me every day.
About Nottingham Spirk
Nottingham Spirk is a world-class product innovation firm with an unrivaled record of developing and commercializing disruptive consumer products, medical devices, digital IoT products and connected industrial products. We collaborate with Fortune 1,000 companies, middle market companies and funded venture companies to discover, design and execute product innovation programs and strategic business platforms that will delight customers, grow markets, and generate new revenue streams. Learn more about how we can uncover growth opportunities for your business.
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