Stories, moments, people and ideas of interest from within the worlds of innovation and design, spotted and written about by Helen Walters, writer and researcher at Doblin, a member of Monitor Group. Attitude, errors and opinions all the writer's own.
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Open innovation is a hot topic du jour and certainly seems to presage a seismic shift in how companies go about their day-to-day business. Examples abound of companies recalibrating their internal philosophies away from the idea of battening down the hatches towards fostering more open, transparent type of business dealings. And let’s be clear; they’re not doing this because of some long-forgotten but deep-rooted sense of altruism. They’re doing it because it’s the only feasible way to sustain value in a global economy.
Earlier this year, Michael E Porter and Mark R Kramer published a piece about Shared Value in the Harvard Business Review. It’s full of examples and stories about businesses rethinking their approach to account for societal impact as well as short-term effects on the bottom line. And it includes some useful questions that anyone in any field would do well to ask:
Could our product design incorporate greater social benefits?
Are we serving all the communities that would benefit from our products?
Do our processes and logistical approaches maximize efficiencies in energy and water use?
Could our new plant be constructed in a way that achieves greater community impact?
How are gaps in our cluster holding back our efficiency and speed of innovation?
How could we enhace our community as a business location?
If sites are comparable economically, at which one will the local community benefit the most?
Ok, so perhaps not everyone will be troubled by the question of where to locate a new manufacturing plant. But these questions provide a useful lens for thinking about building business differently. And, as Porter and Kramer conclude at the end of this list, “If a company can improve societal conditions, it will often improve business conditions and thereby trigger positive feedback loops.”
"Embrace the tension between old and new and foster a state of constant creative conflict at the top."
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The Ambidextrous CEO is a smart piece in HBR looking at how leaders should think about innovation. The authors studied management teams at 12 major companies and outline three principles to help leaders balance the demands of balancing investment in the new with sustaining the existing:
Engage the senior team around a forward-looking strategic aspiration.
Explicitly hold the tension between the demands of innovation units and the core business at the top of the organization.
Embrace inconsistency by maintaining multiple and often conflicting strategic agendas.
With some interesting examples and great stories (Ray Stata, CEO of Analog Devices, built a soundproofed room off his own office for shouting matches between his leaders!) this is a smart analysis and useful checklist for thinking about innovation.
"Customers give better, more genuine feedback with low-resolution prototypes and an explicit invitation to contribute thoughts to the development process."
— Frederick S. Leichter is the Chief Customer Experience Officer at Fidelity Investments. Given his title, you might have expected him to be a firm supporter of the idea that the customer’s experience should be at the heart of any new project. To read this HBR piece, How Fidelity Used Design Thinking to Perfect its Website, you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Nonetheless, after working on an experimental project with some students at the d.school program at Stanford University, Leichter and his team were encouraged to approach their work differently. “We now begin projects with customers, to incorporate their thinking earlier and more effectively,” he writes. So let’s give the man his due. Clearly, experiencing design world techniques and ideas has made a difference to how he thinks about approaching business. Whether you call that design thinking, design, or something else altogether, this outcome can only be good for the design community at large—and customers everywhere.
Back in August 2010, innovation expert and professor at the Tuck School of Business, Vijay Govindarajan wrote a provocative piece on his Harvard Business Review blog. What, he mused with co-author Christian Sarkar, might be a new way to tackle the issue of 5 billion people living in slums? Applying some of the thinking around reverse, or “trickle-up” innovation that Govindarajan had developed while advising Jeff Immelt at GE (see this report, How GE is Disrupting Itself), they wanted to apply a new lens to an old problem. The rest, in hindsight, is somewhat predictable: The concept met with a whole boatload of enthusiasm, persuading the two authors to try and move their idea off the drawing board and into reality. And so, the $300 House competition was born. Some eight months later, the deadline for entries to the competition is now looming; there’s $25k prize money while winners also get a two week trip to Alabama to build prototypes. Yes, all the usual caveats apply. Billions of the world’s poor may still be living in slums for some time to come. A $300 house might remain a fantasy. But the idea has challenged people to approach the problem in a different way, and has brought together a heavyweight group of interested parties. It’ll certainly be worth monitoring the submissions and activities of the initiative once the deadline has passed. And, as Govindarajan himself says, the dollar figure is beside the point. “This is about thinking audaciously.”
"It’s time to get lethally serious about failing bigger cheaper."
— The “fail fast” meme has been wildly misused and misunderstood. Failure isn’t something to be specifically aimed at, for heaven’s sakes. It’s just that if you aim high and happen to fail, you will almost certainly have learned something useful as you pick yourself back up and dust yourself off. That’s useful—and common practice among entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, this is a useful HBR post from Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Lab, who argues that *not* allowing large institutions (Detroit, banks) to fail actually represents “a titanic roadblock” obstructing our path towards a “more authentic, enduring prosperity.” As he concludes, “The future’s not predicted—it’s created. So create it. Fail bigger cheaper.”
