Jamming to Direct Technology Development : An Analysis of Two Technology Jams

When technology is taken as the starting point for the development of new products and services, there is a risk for so-called technology-push innovations. Instead, the technology-driven perspective could be complemented with a design driven perspective (Verganti, 2009), in order to help create a better balance in desirability, feasibility and viability (Brown 2009). However, design driven innovation processes usually are time-intensive. With the development of Technology Jams we aim to speed up the design driven process, while preserving its other characteristics.. These Technology Jams are inspired on musical jams and design jams, where people from different backgrounds explore ideas together in a hands-on way. However, technology Jams take a specific technology and a target context as a starting point for ideation of new products and services. Rapid prototypes are used to give shape to these ideas in order to explore and improve them. In this paper we introduce the concept of Technology Jams. Furthermore, we describe two Technology Jams that we have organised. We discuss how their respective theme, setup and provided working material affected the process and outcome of the Technology Jams. We conclude by pointing out directions for possible future development and additional research in order to iteratively improve the concept of Technology Jams.Printed Electronics Meets Mobil