Alex Lee, President of OXO International and the design entrepreneur behind the worldwide success of the Good Grips range of kitchen tools, proved to be an inspirational guest speaker at last autumn’s Helen Hamlyn Research Associates symposium, held at the RCA on 25 September 2006.
Lee’s case study of a product range named one of the Fifty Greatest Design Hits of the 20th Century by The New York Times magazine clearly demonstrated how inclusive design could generate successful innovation and provided encouragement for the research partners in the audience.
As an organisation, OXO International is much smaller than its reputation suggests: it has just 50 employees. But it has set up a virtual network for design, manufacture and sales, so that it can concentrate its effort on understanding and meeting user needs at the front end of innovation through the practice of inclusive design.
Alex Lee has developed a business model that other companies around the world are studying closely. Speaking at the RCA, he left nobody in any doubt that understanding user needs is top of his agenda as a design entrepreneur.
