CPH127

DesignLondon will develop, research and deliver radically new practices, tools and processes to transform the way businesses innovate, and translate their creativity into commercial success.

- Simulator - Teach - Incubator - Research

This new venture combines creativity and expertise in design from the Royal College of Art, engineering from Imperial College’s Faculty of Engineering and the business of innovation from Imperial College’s Tanaka Business School. It was established following the Cox Review: Creativity in Business that highlighted the need to stir together the scientific, engineering, business and creative design communities to enhance business and public sector innovation. Design London has four main pillars: creating new teaching programmes, conducting top-level research, incubating new business ideas and pioneering the next generation of innovation technology. It will deliver integrated design and business programmes for MBA and Masters of Engineering students at Imperial College, as well as for the MA students at the Royal College of Art.The innovation triangle blends design (represented by the Royal College of Art), engineering and technology (represented by Imperial College Faculty of Engineering) and the business of innovation (represented by Imperial’s Tanaka Business School). It has initial funding of £5.8 million from HEFCE and NESTA.

Read more at DesignLondon. Via. Royal College of Art News

Larry Lessig tells here three stories about how the web has primed the return to a participative culture as opposed to a broadcast-passive consumption culture; and how the culture of control still holds on to control, contrary to common sense. Lessig argues that ownership and use of content on the web, and intellectual property is directly relevant to the adoption of participative knowledge use in organisations – and the resistance to that adoption on the basis of a need for control. Well, he discuss it

What do you think, is it?

A few months ago I almost stumbled over an article when reading a comment on the Google Transforming Group. Kamille  invited me back in September/October and I’ve been on and off in the discussion since then. I an highly recommend the group if you’re interested in the definition of the “new” field of design & innovation.

In October I came across this interesting article by Robert K. Logan and Greg Van Alstyne - Design Ecology: Designing for Emergence and Innovation II

What I find especially interesting is how they:

1. define the role of the designer, which not necessary is a designer…
2. see innovation and-what-ever-processes as adaptive complex systems - I definitely agree!
3. combine theoretical areas like Biology, Technology, Sociology and Ecology into a new decipline…

I don’t know about you, but as I see it they are up to something VERY interesting and  important to understand, if coping with the challenges of tomorrow. But maybe I look in the wrong direction?

We’ve been writing a lot about the impact of thinking the design methodology into business process. Now Businessweek has an article, which at it’s best could be called a recap on the importance of diversity in innovation.

The point is of course still valid - important. And of course it’s interesting to look ont how different knowledge domains get’s in play, but the hole discussion lack’s a discussion about the management/leadership implications.

Perspectives?

Last summer I attended a class at Wharton Business School about Peripheral Vision – it was part of a Leadership Development Program arranged by LinKS here in Denmark.

The visit was great for several reasons, and one of the outcomes from my stay here was some great learning points about acting on the unexpected.

My teacher was Paul Shoemaker – GREAT authority in the field of strategic planning.

In my daily work I advice clients on how to cope with uncertainty, creating innovation cultures and helping them to understand how they can use multidisciplinary approaches towards better product- and business development.

Since my posting here at CPH127 back in the early 2006 I’ve been struggling with how I could link design thinking to the use of social software. In Connecta we are heavy users of Social Software as part of our problem solving process

But few months ago I got it – I think. Like the design-thinking ingredient I began to realize that social software provide several aspects which I believe is crucial for good development processes:

• Multi disciplinary input
• Open processes
• Ability to prototype
• Democratized dialogue 
• Rapid development
• Improved timing in product launch

And by seeing that I think I got the reason why start blogging here at CPH127 again

If you know about Social Software, innovation and design-thinking which similarities do you see - if any?

“Don’t worry about other people stealing your ideas. If you’re ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” – Howard Aiken, IBM Engineer

This is my favorite quote at the moment, and it gets a smile from everyone. Why? Because we’ve all seen great ideas get squashed, misinterpreted beyond all recognition, or just plain lost in the bureaucratic cracks. The problem today is, there are lots of great ideas swimming around, the problem is spotting which ones are applicable to the business, and nurturing them past their seedling status to become concrete and actionable in a way that is broadly understood within the organization.

Innovation is currently the holy grail of many companies, but too often it is treated as an end rather than a means. Innovation is simply a tool, and as with any tool it can be used effectively and ineffectively, but simply having it doesn’t give you a competitive advantage. For the most part, I would argue, any company worth their salt has dramtically improved their innovation capabilities in-house, or they can easily acquire innovation from outside firms. Procter & Gamble until recently was not considered a particularly innovative company, but they executed better than anyone. Now they are ramping up their internal innovation capabilities, which when combined with their proven execution abilities, is making for a very powerful one-two punch.

This has raised the competitive bar significantly, and means that companies must work harder to identify new growth opportunities that will get them ahead of the competition. Everyone has improved, and all the "obvious" stuff has been done. This is why innovation is valued so highly today, but by itself it is not enough.

I’ll make a perhaps provocative statement: Innovation is not the hard part anymore, and we are in fact in a state of innovation surplus. The challenge now is less coming up with innovations, but identifying which of the available innovations best support new business opportunities, and seeing how those opportunities support top level business goals.

A common problem is that top-level business goals are stated so broadly or vaguely that they are less than helpful when trying to identify the best opportunities and innovations to pursue from a suite of available options. How do you decide if, for example, the top-level goal of “Create Growth” is best satisfied with a new technology that improves product performance by 20% and will allow you to take market share from your current competitors; or instead should you innovate new products or variants that will allow you to tap into new markets (though require new sales channels and brand positioning)? More clarity is needed.

At the About, With & For conference last October I gave a talk on “wicked problems”, which I’ve been thinking about recently as I believe they are what stand between accurately connecting top-level business challenges with selections of innovations.

I first came across this phrase over ten years ago in an essay by Richard Buchanan called "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking" (it originally appeared in Design Issues and was subsequently included in the anthology The Idea of Design. I was immediately intrigued, but over time forgot about the concept. I was reminded of it again about a year ago and started pursing the concept more vigourously, and was struck by the fact that a) with few exceptions such as Dr. Jeff Conklin, almost no-one had done anything with the idea, and b) that it had tremendous relevance to the types of problems I see clients grappling with in my work at frog design.

"Wicked problems" was a term first coined by an urban planner named Horst Rittel in the 1970’s, when he recognized a new class of problems arising from extreme degrees of uncertainty, risk, and social complexity. He was dealing with issues such as crime, poverty, and racial segregation that were the outcomes of the planned housing projects of the 1950’s and 60’s. He recognized that not only was there no clear answer, there was not even a clear understanding of the problem they were trying to solve.

This is in contrast to the other types of problems we are more familiar with, which Nancy Roberts, an instructor at the Monterey Naval Post Graduate School, classifies as:

Simple problems: Both the problem and the solution are known. Example: You have a leak under your kitchen sink. It’s obvious what the problem is, and two plumbers will likely agree on what the solution is.

Complex problems: The problem is known but the solution is not. Example: You need to design a higher capacity disk drive. The problem is clear (though defining “higher capacity” needs to be agreed on), but understanding how to solve that problem is far from clear.

Wicked problems go beyond these in terms of difficulty, largely because they are inherently social in nature. Rittel identified several key aspects which, once listed, you will likely recognize as features of your toughest business decisions (this is not an exhaustive list, I’m paraphrasing a bit):

1. There is no definitive statement of the problem; in fact, there is broad disagreement on what ‘the problem’ is
2. Without a definitive statement of the problem, there can be no definitive solution and therefore no “stopping rule” signaling when an optimum solution has been reached. In actuality, there are competing solutions that activate a great deal of discord among stakeholders
3. The only way to really understand the problem is by devising solutions and seeing how they further knowledge about the problem (thus reversing the normal flow of thinking: with wicked problems, a solution must come before the problem!)
4. Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong, merely better, worse, good enough or not good enough. There is a high degree of subjectivity and each stakeholder brings their own perception to the table, causing discord.

Because they are so difficult to identify and define, wicked problems tend to go unaddressed, even if there is an underlying sense that something needs to be done (though about what exactly no-one can say).

So how do you deal with such intractable problems? In my AWF talk I followed the theme of the conference - work and play - by using sports analogies to identify a number of capabilities and states of mind that are valuable in addressing wicked problems. These are:

• Having wide peripheral vision to spot opportunities and threats at the edges
  Using pattern experience to sense the shape of wicked problems before hard proof is available
• Treat solutions as questions
• Have a high panic threshold and don’t be tempted to "tame" the problem prematurely
• Treat wicked problems as a full contact sport - get the whole system in one room and hash it out, and stay close to your customers

My plan is to do follow-up posts on my own blog to explore each of these in more depth.

Since the very beginning of CPH127 my main interest has been on the organizational side of what innovations is all about. And yes, the design discipline has a lot to offer in that respect.

I have – and a lot of the other pilots at CPH127 too – mentioned several different approaches toward how innovation can be approached.

Back in December I wrote about Open Sourced Leadership – in that post, among others, I described the “term” pull as a factor – as a mindset – for growth, innovation, value-creation, future business development.

Last weekend I read a very interesting piece “From Push to Pull – Emerging Models for Mobilizing Resources” and it stroke me that everything I meant back then is written down in that article. Not that my mind was all set, is all set, but it’s very good put and definitely a worth read.

John Hagel & John Seely Brown seems to have set the lens on a “new” model for mobilizing resources. Rather than “push”, the new approach focuses on “pull” – creating platforms that help people to mobilize appropriate resources when the need arise.

2 X John state further that pull models emerge as a response to growing uncertainty. Did anyone say complexity?

They also state that pull models treat people as networked creators, even when they are producers or customers purchasing goods and services. Did anyone say weblogs, social software or Web2.0?

Read the article – it’s a good one

Talk by Stefano mastrogiacomo this thursday afternoon in geneva…

I apologize for the style but its hard to translate powerpoint presentations in text
Designers follow certain principles when they create objects which is also true for interfaces. What about the organizations that we live in, what are the principles that we follow? Organizational design is looking at the structures of enterprises and how labour is divided. The discipline is very difficult because noone has seen an organization, it is an abstract notion. The only way to understand the relevance of your work is to look at the output. We are also dealing with people, who are unconnected,

Large organization’s design today are a mixture of legacy, inappropriate elements to perform our work, establish relevant processes to perform work. The aim of this area is to look at the inappropriate and try to reduce it as much as possible and increase relevant design processes.

(A brief history is presented: eg:
in 1870 large enterprises began to take place with the industrial revolution.
planning grew out of Gantt charts created in 1917 to plan war production )

Now the model is that we are educated people , who are mobile and have a fast and efficient way of life.

The functional division of labour of the 1920’s create a great many problems because we have to manage a great amount of complexity.

Apathy in organizations is a behaviors being adopted because they don’t feel they can change the system, and might as well take advantage of it.

Business plan are used to get a budget and create job openings but are stored afterwards. So without context these mean nothing, structures should be created in context for people to understand what needs to be done. The process of co-creating together is more valuable than the result.

Because there are obscure structures where logic doesnt seem to apply there is a lot of depression that develops in employees of organisations.

What would be the shape of an organization so that they become a tool for the people we are.

1- You can’t manage what you can’t measure

2- you cant measure what you can’t describe

3. For a and b to coordinate both must be mutually recognize and understand the problem.

The solution is to develop a semantic network of shared and private objectives that can be visible to all.

Verb+Adjective+Nouns

action+ description+result

The personal motivation is at the centre of it then test out if this can give effective and efficient processes and if these can produce satisfies clients.

The best organizational design is not a series of functional diagrams, but a co-creation process. Mutual understanding is the key. Go for consistent and integrated management by objectives.