IB Design Technology 5.7 Innovation, Design and Marketing Specifications Questionbank

Some villages near Siem Reap in Cambodia have problems with waste, in this case plastic bags, polluting the landscape.

Salin and Michael of the Treak Community Centre near Siem Reap have developed an innovative way of dealing with the issue of plastic bag waste.

Plastic bags collected by the Treak community are placed on a bed of sand that is heated by a fire. This shrinks the bags and makes them stiffer. The bags are then shredded into small chunks with scissors, see Figure 10. The shredded plastic is then used as a substitute for aggregate in concrete which is mixed by hand, see Figure 11. This concrete is then moulded into bricks, see Figure 12 and Figure 13, that can be used for construction.

40% of the bricks used for the Treak Community Centre were made using this method. The remaining 60% of bricks are standard clay construction bricks.

A start-up company enters a market with a simplified, low-cost alternative to a complex medical device. While the device initially lacks the high-end features of established products, its ease of use and affordability eventually allow it to capture the majority of the market from the established leaders.

Which type of innovation does this scenario describe?

Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of a well-defined marketing specification?