Cash Cow Today, Sitting Duck Tomorrow - By Gianfranco Zaccai
Just because a company has an "it" product doesn't mean it can afford to rest on its laurels. Here's how to keep producing winners.
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A growing list of firms have designs on Hongik
Long a mecca for the design industry in Korea, Hongik University in northwestern Seoul is now being graced by multinationals looking to poach the latest talent.

Nike Inc., one of the world's best known sports apparel brands, interviewed 10 Hongik undergraduates and alumni recently, after informing the school through an e-mail earlier this year that it would like to hire two or three new faces.

Nike is only the latest of several multinational corporations to express interest in Hongik students and alumni. The school's department of industrial design has already produced designers for other leading firms such as Honda Motor Co., Motorola Inc. and General Motors Corp. Eventually, Nike got wind of the school's growing reputation, and decided to find out what the fuss was all about.
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In an exhibit at New York's MoMA of real and imaginary products, modern hazards are the muse
By Mark Feeney, Globe Newspaper
NEW YORK -- We live in a dangerous world, and terrorism may be the least of it. Microbes, crime, drowning, poisoning, auto accidents, tsunamis, pollution, famine, drought . . . the list is as long as human experience.

Industrial design is the exercise of the human imagination on human experience. It's inevitable, then, that design should incorporate safety and security concerns, so much so that we hardly notice. There's a reason cars have bumpers and biohazard symbols are meant to look so alarming. Form may follow function -- but function, in these and countless other instances, follows fear.

''SAFE: Design Takes on Risk," which runs at New York's Museum of Modern Art through Jan. 2, offers a wildly diverse look at how industrial designers are addressing the world's many menaces. The original idea, which predated Sept. 11, 2001, was for a show called ''Emergency," highlighting objects pertaining to emergency response. After the terrorist attacks, the show greatly expanded to include other concepts such as ''shelter," ''armor, ''property," ''everyday," and ''awareness."
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DMI Launches Innovation Blog
As a lead-up to the DMI Innovation Summit, DMI has launched an Innovation Blog to stimulate online discussion and learning around the role of innovation in today’s business environment. Each week, the Innovation Blog will feature visionary guest bloggers who will drive the innovation discussion. Featured discussions include:

Future guest bloggers will include Dan Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, among others.
Join the discussion now!

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News from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
WIPO SMEs Newsletter is a monthly e-publication providing reader with useful intellectual property information contained in articles, links to articles already in the internet, case studies, best practices, forthcoming IP and SMEs relevant events and published presentations featured on their website. We hope you find it useful and informative. We encourage you to share the newsletter or items of interest with friends and colleagues.

For past issues and information on Division activities please visit http://www.wipo.int/sme