CPH127

An innovation commons is a space (physical or virtual) that enables innovation through the mutual and interdependent creativity of its members. It has the following characteristics:

    * Open system (bounded)
    * Everyone contributes
    * Everyone can use the results
    * Members who don’t contribute are excluded
    * Fluid & flexible
    * An abundant resource system

Other names that people have used to describe this type of system are open source, open innovation, democratic innovation, inclusive innovation, peer to peer (P2P), smart mobs and free agent collaboration. I think that the innovation commons concept, whatever it ends up being named, is one of the most important developments in how people work together.

Some attempts at creating an innovation commons have been successful, but most have failed. Why? What are principles of a successful innovation commons?

Mr. Shumann’s effort working towards the definition of a Innovation Commons is interesting not only for the innovation community its self, but for organizations who want to take full advantage of their employees. I think many of the principles needed is to be found in design and new management principles – aka leadership.

To you and your organization work with the principles describes above? Anything missing? Suggestions? Wanna share?

Found the link through - Ideaflow

Since its from the beginning of August, some of you might allready have read this Business Week article written by Roger L. Martin, Dean of Rotman School of Management on what differentiates traditional companies from "design-oriented companies".

Martin has identified the key characteristics  of the design-shop’s approaches to problem solving and argues that to generate meaningful benefits from design, corporations will have to change in fundamental ways. This will help them work like design consultancies and thus get the benefit of design by embed design into - not append it onto - their business.

So Martins basic idea is that companies that want to exploit the full potential of design and design thinking needs to work like design consultancies. Or at least use them as a benchmark.

Design organizations vary significantly from traditional firms along five key dimensions:

1. flow of work life
2. style of work
3. mode of thinking
4. source of status
5. dominant attitude

That an internal design department can be inspired by this and organize themselves as their external counter-part makes good sense. That an entire company (also the departments not traditionally related to design) can transform the way they work, organize themselves, create incentives and basically the way they think, based on this model is challenging to say the least.

For a long time I have been arguing that design thinking can be used as an "opportunity identifier" and "problem-solver" on a more general level i.e. that its also a relevant way of life for companies in relation to traditionally non-design related issues (e.g. as a method to improve internal processess, as a way to create new business models, as a way to conduct market research, as a method to create business strategy etc.).

I believe that Martin are right in saying that these 5 dimensions are improved by design. I also believe that Design Thinking can help traditional business in a much broader sense then "only product & service development and marketing". Even though Design Thinking presents business with alot of new methodology and skills, the true value of Design Thinking is that it effects the whole company, starting with its culture. This is also the reason Design Thinking can help companies innovate - it all starts with how people work. All the design tools and methodology in the world won’t help you if you work the wrong way.

But if Design Thinking really can have an positive effect on corporate culture and thus build the basis for innovation - shouldn’t we include HR people in the sense-making around it? What do you think?

Here we go again! It almost sounds like an ultimatum.

I would like to share with you something I read in the newspaper yesterday – under the title “Innovate or Die”.

Innovation may be one of the greatest buzzwords of our time. We reorganise production and co-operations now more than ever, and in relation to this innovation is still very interesting. However the question is how and in what pace this renewal happens.

Last week Morgan Witzel from the Financial Times wrote, that gradual readjustment often seems to be much more fertile than radical changes. He explains, that the world is full of companies, which have been very successful without being very innovative or have made radical changes.

Dell, for instance, didn’t invent the PC, Airbus didn’t design the first jet plane with room for people, Campbells soup in cans wasn’t the first of its kind, nor did McDonalds invent the hamburger. And still they have all been very successful. On the other hand was Enron appointed as the worlds most innovative company for six years in a row until the total breakdown in 2002, which also resulted in one of the world’s largest financial scandals.

Morgan Witzel argues that the conclusion to ‘Innovate or Die’ must be opposite. The companies, which have stuck to their original business plan and products instead of reinventing the world, have to a great extent survived.

Innovation is necessary for improving products and working processes to meet changing customer expectations, but the most successful – and profitable renewals – are usually those, that happens step-by-step and along the way.

Do you agree?
Is it a question of either or? Maybe Dell didn’t invent the PC, but the way they designed their distribution is in my opinion rather innovative.

• Boxes and Arrows: An introduction to user journeys
  This article does not only apply to webdesign, it applies to most business decisions IMO
  (tags: jacob business design primer article usercentric)

Some of you maybe already know Cheskin. Darrel Rhea just posted about the value of meaning – interesting and something we’ve posted about earlier here at CPH127. In fact my post was about a book from the same Darrel

I haven’t had the opportunity to read the book yet – but I will.

What I think is interesting is his thoughts and linkage between costumer demand and value creation…

… despite a general recognition that what does work is to offer products that have greater value for customers – that is, that the products deliver meaningful experiences to them -corporations often get side tracked by focusing too heavily on creating internal value. Yes, corporate initiatives…

Isn’t that the problem? Corporations don’t get it. What I’ve been thinking about is if it’s a marketing problem – meaning that company’s internal ”market research” really doesn’t understand the market needs, or is it an even more fundamental problem – company culture?

In many cases I think there is a huge problem linking the radical speed of change in the market with the internal ability to deliver the right suggestions to customer-needs. Again, meaning delivering products and services that matters in the marketplace, not only producing what you think or what you are able to produce.

Where do you see the problems, if any?

Btw. Few month’s ago I’ve asked the Vice President Denise Klarquist of Cheskin to join our flight. She is very busy, but responded positively

I’m looking forward to read her insights and perspectives on things…..

I’ve always had this curiosity. I’ve often not known what to do with it…often it leads me to ask uncomfortable questions - possibly just to see the reaction that it brings. In some ways it has become a sort of catchcry for me

Looking back at my posts at CPH127 I notice I seem to use the word regularly…

"As a design professional, one cannot help but be curious about how far the business
world will take this new - found love…"

"I’m becoming curious about how the motivation behind the desire for innovation
affects the outcome…"

How curious is that?
What am I doing? Playing with words I guess…

We’ve all read about T shaped people…

They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T
– they’re mechanical engineers or industrial designers. But they are
so empathetic that they can branch out into other skills, such as
anthropology, and do them as well. They are able to explore insights
from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behavior
that point to a universal human need. That’s what you’re after at this
point — patterns that yield ideas.

These teams operate in a highly experiential manner. You don’t put
them in bland conference rooms and ask them to generate great ideas.
You send them out into the world, and they return with many artifacts
– notes, photos, maybe even recordings of what they’ve seen and heard.
The walls of their project rooms are soon plastered with imagery,
diagrams, flow charts, and other ephemera. The entire team is engaged
in collective idea-making: They explore observations very quickly and
build on one another’s insights. In this way, they generate richer,
stronger ideas that are hardwired to the marketplace, because all of
their observations come directly from the real world.

<>

I’d argue that this process is a serious kind of play. That notion of identifying patterns and turning that into ideas interests me. I recall a moment many years ago when a senior colleague said, while looking at some photography I had created,"…oh, you’re a pattern maker…" At the time I had an uneasy feeling that the comment was a veiled put down. These days, I am very happy to be a "pattern maker". In this context I want to come back to the idea of play however…

What I liked about this article at Fast Company is the first of the 7 steps to "personal brilliance"…

1. Think Like A Child
2. Look Beyond the Obvious
3. Fire Your Inner Critic
4. Vary Your Daily Routine
5. Identify the Most Impossible Solutions
6. Work Like a Detective
7. Try New Things

Think like a child…it reminds me of a recent post by Hans that started to hint about the value of play in the creative process. The notion that play can engender work…good designers know this - some others

I suspect will never "get" it. It seems perverse - work is not meant to be fun - is it?

I wanna write more on this

That long wonderful list of creative thinking techniques posted recently [can’t find the link :-|] is like a compendium of games…opportunities for play!

Let’s get curious…

Oh, I got the lead from the Creative Generalist

Joyce writes about the importance of Sustaining a Culture of Innovation. I agree with her and the link to Mr. Schein is "right-on".

I think that we all can agree that the 21st century organization is enormously complex and difficult to
understand — and even more difficult to manage. A volatile mix of
dynamics are triggering changes in the workplace:

    * growing international competition
    * expanding industry deregulation
    * increasing diversity in the workforce
    * shrinking product life cycles
    * rapidly evolving communication and information technologies

As the complexity increases, effective managers must have a strong
knowledge of the people in the organization and the tasks they perform.
And they must have the skills to use that knowledge in practical and
flexible ways.

The importance of factors such as strategic organizational design,
informal networks, leadership styles, negotiation skills, and cultural
diagnoses cannot be underestimated. Each has a pivotal impact on an
organization’s performance.

So, take a look at this very interesting book. It was part of my readings last year – part of my Master Thesis.

And do I dare to ask? How do you cope with those difficult matters?

Read the rest of this entry »

I came across this research paper, "Crucial Challenges Facing Contemporary Global Corporate Strategies" by Camila de Sousa Braga and Hélène Bertrand and am posting their posited Model of Global Strategic Thought below.

1. Strategic actions need to be thought through using a rational and deliberative process, based on the corporations global objectives and targets, in order to encourage the collective learning process in complex organizations, but without being excessive to the point of putting the organization’s growth at risk.
2. The figure of strategist represented by the central command should coordinate the formulation, implantation and control of strategies. As organizations contain many potential strategists, the central command should be open to ideas and information from local units. This enables the organization to achieve a fit between external opportunities and internal capabilities, and retro-feed the system, in order to gradually acquire the characteristics of transnational corporations.
3. There should be a concern with content, focus, a sense of direction, integration,context and strategic processes, without however foregoing the quality of the creative process involved in the formulation of strategy;
4. Central command should be able to promote strategic changes, without losing sight of consistency, of the organization’s recourses and competencies, and preventing the organization’s life cycle ruptures from destroying it;
5. Perfect strategic management techniques, including the environmental analysis of competitive, technological, political, economic and social impacts and risk dimensions of capital markets;
6. Develop plans, standards, positions, project, economic feasibility studies, analyze needs of demanding consumers, manage information in complex environments and the entry into new markets, considering organizational strengths and weaknesses, and making the necessary adjustments;
7. Possess a group which is specialized in risk management focused on developing risk and return simulation techniques, in order to seek financial diversification in capital markets and also protect the organizations total value, faced with financial market imbalances and disintegration;
8. Use teams of catalyzers, including expatriates who move around the local units of the global organization, and who have planning expertise to stimulate different types of strategic behavior by encouraging insights, creativity and fresh syntheses, and seek to mediate conflicts and promote organizational integration;
9. Promote the integration of functional areas with networks between firms, with strategic alliances with local partners, with a value chain of key suppliers and key manufacturers and distributors, linked by data, so that together they are able to discover better profitable solutions and enhance their competitive position, as well as monitoring their competitors’ moves.

While the entire model is valuable for deploying and maintaining a transnational’s global strategy, I would like to point out No. 3 and No. 8 as particularly valuable from the perspective of continuous innovation as a globally competitive corporate strategy.

7-8 years back I bought a fantastic book – at that time “Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities” was THE book for me and my business when dealing with consultant practices and business development in my company back then.

CPH127 is a virtual community - isn’t it? - and some of the learnings from back then is definitely in use here

Mr. Hagel is now living his book – with Edge Perspectives he is blogging about innovation. I hope that I’ll succeed when inviting him to take part in the conversation here at CPH127. What do you say – okay? Other important passengers we should invite on our flight?

We are having a great deal of success here at CPH127, and a lot of that is due to you - the users/readers/contributors. Now we want to ask you for one more favour, could you please go to our wiki, download some posters, print them and give them to your friends? Maybe put some up at your employer or university. Do with it as you like. Posters are in A4 format and can be downloaded here.

Oh and I almost forgot, if you do put it up somewhere please take a photo of it and share it with us using our new Flickr photo pool.