Yes, we all know: leading through innovation is easier said than done.

To most companies, the innovation process appears to be a black box. Scared of the supposed opaqueness of that myth-like phenomenon called innovation, they refuse to see that innovation is a skill that has gained transparency by in-depth research and professional debates in recent years. What companies therefore should start to bear in mind is that innovation is a capability that can be acquired and applied systematically in a wide range of business contexts.

Our latest Faces of Design Spotlight: an interview with Markus Müller, designer and inspiration for our Report "Sex Toy Design - Market Size Matters".

The Domaine de Boisbuchet is situated in the Charente region in the south-west of France. Every year during the summer months, participants from all corners of the world come here for a colourful array of design workshops.

The Liquid Fusion workshop has been an important part of the summer academy programme at the Domaine de Boisbuchet for the last five years. In pursuit of their mission to teach the contemporary design world about glass, the Corning Museum of Glass provide their GlassLab equipment, a container especially designed to transport an entire glassmaker's workshop.

There are few areas of design that still serve to polarise quite as successfully as sex toy design, yet it is a fascinating design area to look at: a sex toy is one of the products that will ultimately be closer to one's body than any other object, that is interacted with in the most intimate moments and ways, and which thus has to meet design challenges of the most extreme kind.

This article looks at the topic from two viewpoints: the Creative's, and the Suit's, and we believe there is an attractive window of opportunity for young designers in the mix as well.

Within our historical development of urban ecosystems and industries, we have generated a destructive environmental impact that symbolizes a dichotomy between the natural and the unnatural, the sustainable and the unsustainable, the organic and the inorganic. Today it would be a cumbersome task to envision a single design strategy that would bridge these dichotomies and centralize all of the disparate elements within the natural environment, the built environment, ourselves, and other animals.

This is a shortened version of an article published in Matter vol 6.1, a publication of Material ConneXion.

Material ConneXion is the leading global platform for material innovations and solutions.

Chatting over coffee one day, I discovered Claudia's background and decided to feature her here on Faces of Design. Claudia's background involves an unusual job profile in combination with a lot of aspects that we value highly here at Faces of Design: she's got an international, interdisciplinary mindset, as well as great curiosity and drive.

Monica Förster is one of Sweden's most internationally renowned designers. Her work is characterised by a strong sense of pure form combined with, and fuelled by, a never-ending curiosity for new materials and technology. Always working in a cross-disciplinary way, Monica invents and renews typologies within industrial, furniture and object design.

Monica has been awarded Designer of the Year, Sweden, 2006 and 2007; Excellent Swedish Design; Design Plus in Germany; and was awarded the FutureDesigndays Award in 2002. She has also been represented in the International Design Yearbook.

Once again, I've been able to enjoy the great privilege of visiting the Domaine de Boisbuchet for a week during the workshop season.

In recent years, Carina Seth Andersson's work has been displayed at a variety of international exhibitions. Her pieces are part of the permanent collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 1994, Carina Seth-Andersson was chosen to represent Sweden at the Triennale in Milan. In 1998, she designed a glass object for the collection Quite Simply, as part of the Cultural Capital City project.