CPH127

As part of the recent AO2005 Innovation Summit, Morgan McLintic, a vice president and senior partner at Lewis Global Public Relations, interviewed David Kelley, the founder and chairman of product design firm IDEO and a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University. This is a four part post from that session.

From part one:

What are your thoughts about the state of innovation today?

Kelley: I’m happy to say that innovation is still playing as a
concept throughout the world. You know, it surprises me sometimes when
we sell innovation strategy services in different places: I’m always
thinking that innovation will have a pendulum effect, that it will run
its course and then come back. But the truth is, everybody is
interested in innovation. We had the slowdown in the economy, and now
if you look at where companies think they’re going, you’ll see that
they’re dusting off their old stuff and that they really want
innovation. If I were in some kind of fad business, I would be a little
concerned, but it seems like year after year people want to hear about
how they can become more innovative. I think the thing that has
changed a bit is that when companies come to me, they don’t necessarily
want or need a new product or service; they want to actually change the
whole innovation culture. They want to get so that they routinely
innovate in their culture. That, I believe, is a change—and a welcome
one.

McLintic: You’ve spoken in the past about fostering a culture of
innovation that becomes deeply embedded in organizations. If I were a
CEO, how would I go about doing that?

Kelley: I think the trick is trying to understand the barriers
to innovation in your organization. Some organizations are fear based;
others are focused on one aspect of the innovation equation rather than
the whole thing. The thing that’s interesting about building a culture of innovation
(and that I try to teach my students as well as the people who work
with me at IDEO) is that you need to have empathy for every aspect of
innovation. You have to be empathetic about technology, which we’ve
been very good at focusing on. And then you need to think about
business viability. As a techie graduating with an electrical
engineering degree, I was really irritated when I got out into the
world and found that businesspeople were driving the bus. I thought,
‘Well, jeez, it’s all about electrical engineering; if you don’t know
about semiconductors, you aren’t going to be important within an
organization.’ But it turns out that business viability is something
you must  understand. The same thing goes for human values.

Our bias—my bias and the thing I’m most excited about—is that there
exists a new way into innovation, which people are just beginning to
pay attention to. We know how you go in from a technological point of
view; we kind of know how you go in from a business point of view.And we’re now finding innovation by going in through a human-centered point of view.
Once you ask, What do people need?, you can pursue technical
feasibility and business viability from that point of view. This
human-centered view of innovation is just now starting to be funded and
valued in the innovation space.

McLintic: Is there a difference, then, between analytical thinking (the sort of logical left-brain way of thinking) and design thinking.

Kelley: Yes. What’s happened is that universities have been very
good at developing analytical thinking—making outlines, approaching
problems analytically—and I don’t want anybody to stop doing that. Now,
however, Stanford and other universities are beginning to focus on design thinking.
The reason for that is that if you take great analytical thinkers and
teach them ways to be better at design thinking, you get what we call
T-shaped people—people who have depth and an integrative approach to
thinking. This will lead to different kinds of innovations. We’ll be
looking in different places and finding different things.

In academia, we have these tall towers of knowledge, and mining those
towers of knowledge is really important. Let’s get more Nobel prizes;
let’s go as deep as we can. But I think that by putting different
people together and having them think in this integrative way, we’ll
achieve new kinds of innovation.

Read the whole series here.

STEEP
(Societal, Technological, Economic, Ecological and Political) was a new acronym I learnt at the Futuring 101 workshop on Friday, Sept 16th, the day before the Accelerating Change 2005 conference. A full day workshop, there were three lecturers, Dr Peter Bishop, Tom Conger of Social Technologies and George Gilder.

I was most impressed by Tom Conger’s presentation. He is a practicing futurist and founder of Social Technologies, a futures consulting firm based out of Washington DC. As he described his approach and methodology for future consulting, I could see why he had a client base like Nokia, Kraft and McDonalds. What I could not understand, however, is why aren’t those focusing on long term scenario building and forecasting for a 10 year span, as important, if not more than those consulting on short term, immediate return/profit innovation alone. While coming up with ideas for your next big paradigm shifting product is certainly valuable, the futurists take a longer term, holistic view and facilitate innovation in a more profound way.

Certainly, Conger shared with us the limitations of being a consultant and a change agent, the need for long term commitments to projects, and the sometimes off track requirements of Wall Street that business must meet. But more and more I could see how the work the futurists are doing can map on to the work the product planners, design planners and strategists do. Social Technologies is already hiring an ethnographer, in an effort to better understand the impact of the now on the future. I believe that both designers and design managers, new product managers and strategists, need to start taking a larger contextual worldview into consideration before recommending tactics for the short term.

NB: I found this blog post by Jon Udell which is an excellent and comprehensive overview of the conference.

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

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

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.

Building innovative nations implies building cleverly for the future by investing in the most desirable future for the majority. Inevitably, this translates into investing at a national level into education. The best likely outcome in terms of maximizing the potential innovation quotient in a society is achieved when resources and high levels of support from state, industry, community and individuals occur. This suggests a significant political weight in design and education fostering innovation and creativity. Agendas and societal values are brought to the foreground when examining this topic and this complicates the big picture dynamics in such discussions.

Why do we educate? How much do we value it? What should it provide? Can we shape positive societal trends with education? How does this align with the need to be innovative in a global economy? How can we use design and innovation to establish national/global agendas that benefit people [businesses are made up of people]. New forms are needed. Collaboration at student level globally is a potential seed for more positive outcomes for people.

If we accept Mc Luhan’s notion of a global village then we might speak of international innovation. Simple web technologies provide the opportunity to develop innovative design powered educational experiences that are characterized by collaboration and communications. By developing strategies that provide learners with the means to develop a global perspective, mediated through interpersonal interaction within a professionally discipline specific “deep” learning experience, design education can deliver significant potential innovation value to nations, societies, companies, communities, and importantly, individuals.

More broadly, design studies integrated into curriculum at all levels with supporting contextual studies expanding into participatory learning experiences as outlined above, offer a potentially valuable tool for leaders recognizing the social and economic potential in developing a more positive world direction through appropriate and timely education. Teach design now reap innovation later.

With reference to our recent discussions on national creativity, Richard Florida, what cultural factors impact innovation etc, I thought to share one section of this in depth interview with Florida, on his latest book "The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent" -

So what does it mean to create a genuinely inclusive creative economy?

What I have to say is that we have to think about this as moving from a creative, or technology- or knowledge-based economy to a creative or technology- or knowledge-based society.
The reorienting axis of that is this fundamental idea that each and
every human being is creative and has to be valued as such.

We’re,
at best, harnessing the creative capacities of 30 to 40 percent of our
workforce, and I think no more than maybe 20 to 30 percent of those
people’s creative faculties — because most of us are bored. The real
nexus of competition in the future will be those communities that
engage much more of that creative energy.

That’s where the book
kind of shifts gears. It says that it’s not enough to compete for
high-end talent, to keep your doors open to the best of the brightest
kids from China, India, Europe, or North America. The real economic
power, if you will, in our time is going to come to those cities,
regions, countries that can dig down very deeply and include many,
many, many of their own people and other people from around the world
in this creative economy.

To achieve this, we’ve got to do three
or four things, We have to massively increase our investments and
creativity, massively invest in science, technology, engineering,
culture. But we need to do so in a way that’s not only oriented at the
best and the brightest, but harnesses the energy of everyone. We need a
creativity GI Bill. And the way we get kids involved in these sports
programs, like soccer and tennis camps, we have to do that for their
creativity.

The third thing we need to do is we have to remain an
open society. We cannot externally and internally be viewed as a closed
society — it will be disastrous to us and disastrous to the world.

The
fourth thing we need to do is a challenge that virtually no one in
America is talking about. We have to understand that there are two
unsung and neglected areas of economic competition, of economic growth.
One I mentioned was tolerance and diversity; the second is cities and
urban policy. We need an urban policy that not only improves our
cities, not only makes them stronger, but makes them denser — an urban
policy that really focuses on building dense, thriving, vibrant cities.
Not because it’s a good or ethical thing to do, but because we know
that urbanization economies and density are fundamental drivers of
economic growth.

Tying the the points that Florida makes about focusing on a creative society, not economy, is this interesting research paper titled The Human Face of Global Mobility - International Highly Skilled Migration in Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific. I’d like to hear what others have to say on this, especially those of us discussing the impact of national culture and education on creativity.

….. and how they develop is critical for organizational change and innovation

Most developmental psychologists agree that what differentiates one leader from another is not so much philosophy of leadership, personality, or style of management. Rather, it’s internal "action logic"-how a leader interprets the surroundings and reacts when his or her power or safety is challenged.

Harvard Business Review had an article in the April 2005 issue about different styles of leadership:

1. Opportunist – Wins any way possible, Self-oriented; manipulative; ”might makes right”. Good in emergence and in sales opportunities
2. Diplomat – Avoids overt conflict, Wants to belong; obey group norms; rarely rocks the boat. Good as supportive glue within the office; helps bring people together.
3. Expert – Rules by logic and expertise. Seeks rational effiency. Well suited to managerial roles; action and goal oriented.
4. Achiever – Meet strategic goals. Effectively achieves goals through teams, juggles managerial duties and market demands. Well suited to managerial roles; action and goal oriented.
5. Individualist – Interweaves competing personal and company action logics. Create unique structures to resolve gaps between strategy and performance- Effective in venture and consulting roles.
6. Strategist – Generates organizational and personal transformations. Exercises the power of mutual inquiry, vigilance, and vulnerability for both short and long term. Effective as a transformative leader.
7. Alchemist – Generates social transformation. Integrates material, spiritual and societal transformation. Good at leading society-wide transformation    

Why is this important in a design and innovation context?

Several times I’ve experienced that teams lead by to much control, to heavy linear thinking, tends to be less innovative and with heavy slow-down in speed. And while managers seeks for the holy grail trying to find out how to manage chaos, a discussion is going on either the leader of tomorrow is an MBA-kind-of-guy or a more like a green-haired-art-educated-philanthropy-kind-of-type.

In “ancient” times where changes happened with slower speed the world was less complex, and Managers ability to manage a company or a process was more dependent on knowing the system, act in the system. Linear thinking.

Nowadays speed and radical change is two very important factors when leaders try to find ways to lead – dynamic complexity and the ability to cope with exactly “Chaos” is what I see is the difference between yesterday and today.

What kind of management/leadership do you think is needed – any of the above, other?

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

To this end I’ve begun to contemplate how different organisations have approached the task of innovation, and how the organisational context and agenda have been reflected in the kind of observable results.

Here are three real examples [no names] of divergent organisational scenarios, each with equally divergent products I have had experience with:

1. Innovation for the Community
An information technology training centre partly funded by government bodies.

-Management/Operational Style:
flat hierarchy, staff encouraged to develop own projects and to “own their own process”, open-plan configuration of work space, rapid embrace of new technologies.

-Product / outcomes:
Training for participants in hardware/software, office technologies, basic design, DTP and multimedia

-Innovations:
Free/subsidised open-learning for disadvantaged in the community, Think tank style support for entrepeneurial but unemployed/under-employed people.

* This environment is very conducive to innovation that directly assists people. the management style fosters and encourages workers to take risk and to experiment/fail in order to push the envelope.

2. Innovation for Profit
An international design and business college focussing on the Asia region.

-Management/Operational Style:
Hierarchical/Autocratic, staff are viewed as cost centres, fiercely entrepeneurial, aggressive, highly visible marketing approach, educational as business approach.

-Product / outcomes:
Accelerated learning, diploma & degree level qualifications, links to industry through internship programs, validation through western universities [UK, Australia]

-Innovations:
Design and business education in developing countries [e.g. China, India], supply of “qualified” design graduates to emerging local industries, prestigious, glamorous image in local market.

*The innovation here is “the vision”. A unique product that has little/no competition in the marketplace.
Innovation from staff is possible within the strict confines of the management processes and sometimes occurs despite management, in secret.

3. Innovation in reponse to government/state agenda:
Vocational education provider primarily funded by government sources.

-Management/Operational Style:
Hierarchical, highly beauracratic, systems orientated, governed by awards, government policy, unionised labour, structured along lines of command, agenda driven by government policy and economic needs, increased pressure to deregulate and develop commercial products.

-Product / outcomes:
nation-wide accredited training and qualification framework, targeted programs [e.g. disadvantaged, disabled, indigenous, community]

-Innovations
Programs funded via alternative funding sources, more commercial [user-pays] products

*Innovation in this environment is very difficult and often frustrating to those with ideas that don’t fit within the governemt guidelines. Staff often innovate by finding ways around “the system”.

In all three scenarios the motivation behind any innovation is related fundamentally to the nature of the organisation. The kind of innovation possible is dictated by the structure and culture of the organisation. The motivations of staff may not be/are often not aligned with management…

What motivates your organisation’s innovation?

Tofler’s prediction of the producing consumer, the “prosumer” certainly seems to have become reality. Look at the phenomenal proliferation of bloggers as a pertinent example.

There is an interesting angle here. Although many utilise the medium of the blog to foster business networks, largely, it seems to me, the process is one of non-monetary exchange. The blog is an act of production, and an exchange of views, of information, and of value. It is the creation of the Tofler’s prosumer.

The barter, in this case of information, is of interest in this context because of the obvious potential for innovation to occur out of the linking of concepts from previously unrelated sources. This topic comes up in Bruce Mau’s book Massive Changein Hazel Henderson’s discussion of global markets.

Henderson [p 137, 2004) alludes to such transactions [barter] as being “…the bedrock of all the world’s economies…where we have six billion people sharing the planet, there are still about 2 billion people that will never see the inside of a bank or even get a microloan from the Women’s World Banking or ACCION or the Grameen Bank or any other of these micro lenders. And so, barter is important because it allows communities that are completely sidelined from traditional banking and economic networks to match their own needs and resources, to create sustainable livelihoods outside of the money circuits…” (Massive Change, p137, 2004)

From the above text we can form a nice analogy with the blog I think, and food for thinking about the value of such forums [blogs] within our own communities, be they virtual or real…