Collaboration + Cross-Pollination = Innovation

 

I am always finding ways to collaborate with amazing people who have varied perspectives on the same topic. My experience shows that when you bring different people together to focus on a particular problem, issue or design, the "cross-pollination" of ideas and perspectives that occurs usually results in highly creative ideas that would not have happened without the collaboration.

Knowing this, we at Uvo Luxury recently collaborated with women who contribute to the charity Dress for Success Triangle (see an earlier blog written by one of Uvo's interns, Jessica on this amazing charity) to design a novel handbag for professional women at our Nov. 28th  Handbag Design Party and Charity Fundraiser event at Solas. Our design goal was to design the ultimate, ideal handbag for professional women, bringing together functionality and fashion.

From the evening’s design sessions emerged the collaboratively-designed new handbag, the "Dress for Success Triangle Handbag." We are now finishing the design phase of this collaborative effort to develop the prototype. We still would love to hear from all of you style-conscious professional women on what your ideal handbag would include. We plan on using crowd funding to help promote and initiate the manufacturing of this handbag. The exciting part for us is that we are going to give portions of the proceeds from the sale of each bag to our favorite charity, Dress for Success Triangle! Look for this innovative collaboratively designed handbag in 2013!

Here is another interesting take on collaboration. After a record breaking number of women were elected for our 113th congress,  Diane Sawyer, of ABC news sat down with 20 women of the senate to discuss women in leadership.

The segment that will air sometime in January (here’s a clip) included discussion around my favorite word: collaboration. During the interview, Sen. Susan Collins said, “What I find is with all due deference to our male colleagues, that women’s styles tend to be more collaborative.” Then Sen. Claire McCaskill, from Mo., mentioned that "by nature women are less confrontational and more collaborative."

I think I have to agree for the most part; however, I know and have worked with many, many men that are very collaborative in their nature as well. I think I have always targeted collaborative men and women to work with throughout my career, whether I am designing handbags or solving global optical communications problems.

xoxo, Gigi