Michael Beirut wrote a thoughtful piece on "Innovation is the new black" at Design Observer, where he made a point, amongst others, that,
It turned out that the operant word at the symposium wasn’t design but innovation. Yes, innovation. Everyone wanted to know about it. Everyone wanted to talk about it. One of the panelists was Business Week’s legendary design advocate Bruce Nussbaum.
"When I talk to my editors about design, I have trouble keeping them
interested," he confessed. "But there’s a tremendous interest in
innovation." The lesson to me seemed clear. If we want the business
world to pay attention to us, we need to purge the d-word from our
vocabularies. That’s right: we are all innovators now.
I appreciated his take from the classical designer’s point of view, as it gives balance to the word "innovation" showing up everywhere, but more importantly, was this very insightful response by Larry Keeley of Doblin, on the subject that innovation is not equivalent to design and should not be used interchangeably. Larry’s kindly given me permission to post his comment in full here on CPH127, so here it is:
4 comments so far
Niti - It’s excellent you posted this. I saw this on Design Observer, and very much enjoyed Keeley’s comment, probably more than Beirut’s post.
I like Keeley’s confirmation that this might be a space that is here to stay for a while. But I question why has it taken ten years for it to surface?
Innovation as a topic, both from designers and management consultants, has been discussed for quite some time now. I ask this only to see if there’s something to learn from how this has come about, and perhaps if there is a history we can learn from.
I see this might be something of an extension on Keeley’s sentance:
“But at the same time, it would be good if thoughtful designers actively consider why this new field has arrived now, what it means…”
A debate on design, innovation and business
Michael Bierut of Pentagram argues in the piece on Innovation is the new black at Design Observer that corporations are uncomfortable with the term design and prefer to call it innovation. This provoked a very insightful response by Larry Keeley of Dob…
About Cheerleaders and Football Players
In Niti Bhans recent posting Fear of blogging shes describing the blogoshere as follows:
As with any large high school 
there are cliques and groups and popular kids and football players and cheerleaders and dor…
I’ve always been a more than a little discomforted by the way the design discipline frequently takes credit for being *the* discipline of creativity and innovation. The pose that we designers are the custodians of innovations comes across frequently in the press. And it is utter nonsense.
First, much of what is labeled design today is little more than style, and much that that is largely derivative. Scan through a community like core77 and you will see more talk about the latest shoe styling than about problem solving methods or design process. And second, there are lots of creative and innovative engineers, entrepreneurs, financiers and others in this world.
In other words, no discipline has a monopoly on innovation. Every discipline produces some innovative and lots of derivative work. The pretense otherwise that more than a few designers adopt is entirely dishonest.
Perhaps innovation deserves to become a new field. This certainly would provide a great opportunity for designers more interested in problem solving than style to distinguish themselves. Of course this sentiment could equally apply to professionals beyond the design discipline too.
Please don’t conflate design and innovation; they really aren’t the same at all.
Michael (et al),
Since I have been toiling intensively to separate innovation from
design for over a decade, no one could possibly be more distressed than
me to see it so over-blown, over-used, misused and abused than me.
Personally, I have absolutely NO desire to conflate innovation and
design, nor would it be my advice to any switched on design firm that
they cavalierly adopt this (perhaps already passe) "new" lexicon.
But at the same time, it would be good if thoughtful designers
actively consider why this new field has arrived now, what it means,
and how they can participate in it if they choose… Above all else NO
ONE should assume that this is just a change in terminology–for if
that is the only way you see it, then you are most decidedly missing
the point…
The roots of innovation as a field…
Large companies need innovation now because efficiency is no longer
enough. After 12 years of intensive effort to get process streamlining;
to outsource non-essential operations; to build supply chain
integration; to buy all kinds of digital tools to deliver greater
efficiency and economy of operations–all those tricks are now expected
and discounted by analysts. MANY CEOs call me these days to explain
that they are being criticized by analysts after pulling off what many
regard as miracles in complex, global markets, only to be told that
their firms are now efficient but now boring.
So they have iPod envy… Firms are seeing that Target, Pixar,
Google, Amazon, and scores of other cool companies simply have a faster
clock speed for bringing newsworthy stuff to markets, and making them
work…
Consequences for design and designers…
Most designers can do nothing
and still benefit from this trend–so long as your skills are great,
your firm is distinctive, and you are able to work well in teams. A lot
of the background interest in innovation is mostly hunger for
distinctiveness and stuff that is on the edge (witness the meteoric
rise of the signature architects Gehry, Koolhaas, Calitrava, Hadid, and
others). The great news for designers about the rise of a corporate
interest in innovation is that it recognizes, more than ever before,
the strategic contribution of design to product, service, information,
and environmental offerings. At Doblin we see this as a trend likely to
persist for at least the next decade.
But it is also possible to do more than nothing… If you want to
actively participate in the base ideas of the emerging innovation field
then you have to develop a keen interest in what works in marketplaces.
Of course great designers always have solid instincts about what is
likely to work in marketplaces (and these instincts, for my money, are
FAR more important than any known form of evaluative research). But the
innovation field per se needs to use MANY forms of
design, carefully orchestrated and integrated, to get beyond some
threshold level of activity–enough to get noticed, to make a
difference, to be strategic. Think about it: how many kinds of
excellence would Sears or Wal-Mart need to develop to be as cool as
Target? How likely is is that they will develop these skills
spontaneously? How will they learn what to do and do it with any
quality, subtlety, freshness, or uniqueness? It is easy for designers
to simply say: "they won’t." And odds are, you’d even be right (at
least about those two firms).
But here’s the deal, and it is novel, important and unprecedented:
nearly every firm needs to be smarter about this now than ever before.
I contend that this is a NEW field, not just a new word. I further
contend that it has its own methodology, complexity, and professional
demands. It will be VERY GOOD for the design field, but is not the same
as the design field. It is my fond hope that the better practitioners,
design firms, schools (including a rapidly growing number of business
schools), and desigers, will help to create the broad new capabilities
and professionalism that will actually meet the underlying need for
stuff, places, clarity of messages, and distinctive experiences that
human beings crave–and enterprises must increasingly learn to deliver.