What can we learn about innovation from fashion?

Standing out in the fashion industry is often a really challenging thing to do because there is so much innovation going on in it all the time. In an industry with no intellectual property protection, as the wearable nature of clothing makes enforcement impossible, new products are born off the backs of others, regardless of how well known, all of the time. It’s been proven that high intellectual property industries are far smaller than those that have low copyright protection, like fashion. Despite if you think most of the fashion innovations that flow from this industry are truly innovative or not, the industry as a whole demonstrates an amazing culture of innovation.

Newest to the fashion industry are its efforts to find innovative ways to grab the attention of the tech savvy consumers. Sometimes that applies to a brand’s marketing, sometimes to it’s designs. But either way, wearable technology is all the rage and its looking like both in the short and long term its going to be suer profitable too.

Juniper Research recently released “Smart Wearable Devices: Fitness, Healthcare, Entertainment & Enterprise: 2013-2018.” The study anticipates that the retail revenue from smart wearable devices, including smart watches and glasses, will reach $19 billion by 2018. High price points, combined with anticipated strong demand, will drive the growth of the wearable industry. According to another Juniper Research study, the smart wearables market is expected to generate $53 billion hardware revenues by 2019, compared to $4.5 billion in 2014.

Credit Suisse analysts currently predicted that within the next two or three years, the wearable technology market will balloon from the current $3 billion to $5 billion range to $30 billion to $50 billion. (To learn more about 2016 tech fashion trends click here.)

So what about the idea of using technology to make our clothes ourselves at home and never need to go online to shop ever again? This is certainly an innovative idea that 3d digital fashion designer, Danit Peleg, from Tel Aviv is exploring. Take 6 minutes and listen to her TED talk about how she came up with the idea to print her own clothes and embed her use of technology into every piece that she designs and you can co-create.