Don Norman

Don Norman, IDSA | Nielsen Norman Group

WORK

Nielsen Norman Group
Co-Founder and Principal
1998 – Present

reQall
Chief Mentor
2006 – Present

KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
Visiting Distinguished Professor of Industrial Design
February 2009 – Present

WORDS

"Great innovations can come from anywhere, any place. Usually they come about when a new technology is unleashed upon the world and inventors and technologists scurry to find something they can do with it. Most of these attempts fail, but a few stick. The researchers come aboard after the technology has been unleashed. But this is precisely when they can be most effective, because it is now that they can play Pasteur's game, starting with a real need, figuring out what the scientific needs are, doing the science, and then feeding the results back to a practitioner community that is desperately awaiting the findings.

There is a huge gap between research and practice. To bridge the gap we need a new kind of practitioner: the translational developer. The gap is real, but it can be bridged."

Excerpted from The Research-Practice Gap.