CPH127

• V&A - Import Export: How Global is Design?
  (tags: jacob conference europe design globalization)
• Designing for Experience
  Details a complete re-design of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh “experience” both online and off.
  (tags: jacob design experience ux usability research presentations pdf interactiondesign)
• The definitive collection of idea generation methods
  (tags: jacob creativity idea brainstorm concept thinking methodology)
• The Rise of Innovation in Asia (HBS Working Knowledge)
  (tags: jacob article globalization asia innovation)
• Bang gnaB: Experience Design Blog’s
  This list of high quality weblogs about Experience design is good - looking forward to dig into it…….
  (tags: experience design blog hanshenrik)

While putting together a presentation, I found myself doing a Google Image search for the word Innovation. I was bemused with what I found; obviously a search for an image that represents a concept is a low-fidelity way of tapping the zeitgeist. I thought I’d share the first results of that image search, for your own consideration. What do you think?

I am trying to catch up here with some of the blogs that I subscribe to. I’ve been working hard on the wiki and therefore posting to cph127.com has been a lower priority. Now that has to change.

I wanted to point you to a blog post some weeks ago by Boris from the Corporate Innovation Blog on a HBS article on Operational Innovation. It features six steps:

1) Process focus - focusing your innovation efforts on
a very small area, means that you are also limiting the scope of the
benefits you’ll get from innovation.

2) Process owners -
Assign a process owner (a senior executive empowered to make the
changes needed) to own the process for the whole enterprise.

3) Full-time design team
- Use a full-time team to conduct the necessary process redesign rather
than asking team members to do this part-time. Then invest in them -
their education, methodology, etc.

4) Managerial Engagement
- Actively engage the senior management team in the implementation
process to make sure the projects don’t languish in limbo and to ensure
that departmental heads are released from their narrow focus to instead
consider the end-to-end implications.

5) Building Buy-In
- Engage participants throughout the redesign process so as to engage
and enable buy-in into the process as it is developed, and to reduce
the stress of future changes.

6) Bias for Action
- Develop a solution that provides most but not all desired
capabilities, get into the field quickly, and then enhance it over
time. This approach allows concepts to be tested, builds momentum and
credibility, and delivers early benefits that silence critics and sway
doubters.

Yesterday I attended a conversation on innovation hosted by MIG at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. It was a small informal gathering, and Victor Lombardi had kindly invited me to join the discussion. It was kicked off by Scott Hirsch, a principal of MIG with a definition of innovation he had found on the web. I’d link to it, I think it’s wikipedia but as there was no source given I’m not wholly sure. This is what he used,

Innovation: An implementation of a new or significantly improved idea, good, service, process or practice intended to be useful. [ I would add the words revenue or profit in there, for the business context, else why innovate?]

And then they opened the floor to all the participants to take turns to answer three questions 1. who are you? 2. What do you do? 3. What you think of innovation? I’m going to cover that discussion in detail later, perhaps in another post or on my own blog as there is much food for thought, but for CPH127, I want to focus on one of the three short formal presentations that were given.

Harry Max, who is responsible for the Intranet at Dreamworks Animation, gave a short talk on his thoughts on innovation. What I really liked about his talk was that he had divided the presentation into two parts, the first part, where he said he was still trying to define innovation but here were four things that it wasn’t,

1. Reacting - Innovation wasn’t reacting, that is, responding to changes in technology or the market
2. Dreaming - Innovation was not dreaming, that is, envisioning a better future as dreaming was not time dependent but free floating.
3. Planning - Innovation was not planning, as that was nothing more than structured dreaming, or creating a road map to achieve a goal or get somewhere
4. Designing - Innovation was not designing, as designing is making an idea or concept tangible, solving a problem or making something better.

He then went on to say, that whatever innovation was, and as you all know, we have been struggling with an "Aha, yes" definition of innovation here on CPH127, it was a process that could benefit from these five key things from Improv. These were concepts that were conducive to atmospheres that were inherently innovative,

1. Trust.
2. Listening & Self-Awareness
3. Accepting and making offers (Yes, And…)
4. Moving into action with full commitment
5. Staying nimble

There is a lot that can be said about each of these points but I believe that they are self explanatory for the most part. I will however expand a little on the "yes, and…" full commitment concept. This is the opposite of "No, but" which is a negative, or a thought breaker, in the brainstorming process (unless you’re Irish, in which case it’s illegal) whereas, saying "Yes, and …" taking the thought further with full commitment continued the forward momentum of the innovation process. The complete explanation of the key points of Improv are here, but I must add that I was also taught at The Second City when I worked there was "Rule #1" =  "Make the other person look good."

He ended with pointing to Wells Fargo, Yahoo,Foveon and Toyota as innovative organizations whose culture supported these concepts from Improv.