My colleague Jeff Wordham gave this presentation at the recent Brandworks conference. It’s a smart take on how to think about — and organize for — launch, and includes principles for those thinking about the launch process (and those looking for ways to improve it.) The presentation includes persuasive examples from companies including Procter & Gamble, Hyundai and, yes, Apple and is well worth taking a spin through. Kudos also goes to Doblin’s Angelo Frigo, who was instrumental in putting it all together.
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.
Ask me anything
May 24, 2012
May 22, 2012
Radiolab’s Jad Abumrad on the Messy Process of Design and Innovation
Jad Abumrad also spoke at the 99% Conference. The founder of the experimental radio show, Radiolab, and winner of a Macarthur Foundation “Genius” award last year, Abumrad was simultaneously self-effacing and steely. In particular, he had a refreshing take on how he answers the difficult question of how exactly he made Radiolab into a success story: “In those moments I find myself bullshitting,” he confessed. “There’s a gravitational pull to talk about things in ways that are really not true.”
The desire to retroactively neaten up the messy process of design and innovation is understandable and pervasive. Yet Abumrad’s clear point was that there had been no clear plan in the early days of the show. How they would pay for the program, what the business plan was… all unclear. Instead, they were left with what he called “gut churn” and the existential angst that accompanies the question, “will I survive?”
Abumrad wasn’t advocating not considering the deeper facets of a problem, but instead was describing the “radical uncertainty you feel when you work without a template.” And, he added, “we don’t talk enough about how crummy it can feel to make something new.”
[Photo: Julian Mackler]
May 22, 2012
Nest’s Tony Faddell on Prototyping and Getting Projects Approved
I recently attended the 99% Conference in New York, a refreshing gathering whose focus is less on the generation of ideas and more on their execution. (The conference’s name is a riff on Edison’s famous quote about the need for only 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.) The next few posts will feature some of the highlights, with the sought-after accolade of My Favorite Speaker* going to Tony Faddell.
The former Apple designer (Faddell was responsible for the iPod) has recently been lauded for his success with the Nest “learning thermostat,” a simple-to-install device that helps people to understand how their home uses energy (and therefore set it to save.) Faddell was energetic, inspiring and utterly committed to the concept that it’s the team that makes the difference between a launch’s failure or success, not simply the value of the idea itself. And it’s clear that the curiosity he described as being present from his early youth is still an integral part of the way he does business.
Prototyping, too, is a key skill that he believes needs to be mastered by more than designers. As Faddell described, in the 1990s people would all too often come to him with a great idea for a “kitchen computer.” They’d tell him all about how it would work, how beautiful it would be and how people could use it to get recipe information. And yet, he’d reply to them:
“You understand the hardware, the screen, the internet connection… but you didn’t attack the real problem. You didn’t prototype the user experience. You prototyped the hardware to get people to say that’s cool. But you didn’t look at the hard, hard pieces of the puzzle: how will people interact? How will they get two touches on the screen? How will it work? Too often people go for the easy thing but it’s the hard thing that sets the schedule, the budget and whether it’s doable.”
His advice: “find the hardest thing… the thing you really want to change, and look deeply into that.”
I also liked his three necessary qualities for getting projects approved:
1. Passion. This includes both the passion of youth and team members but, Faddell described, what is necessary is a “thoughtful passion, not an egotistical passion.” This is about being introspective about what you’re trying to do and then communicating that effectively to the people you’re trying to get join your team or who can approve something to move forward.
2. Presentation. This isn’t merely about making something look slick, but about looking at all the details and anticipating concerns, questions or risks, especially those of importance to those outside a core team. “Make them a part of the process,” advised Faddell, and acknowledge the challenges ahead and explain how they’ll be managed. By anticipating difficult questions and having, if not answers, at least the ability to show that they’re considered, the quantiest of analysts can be brought on board an innovation project.
3. Partnership. Getting the right senior leadership on board any innovation-related project is critical, Faddell advised. If conversations are starting with questions about shipping, product numbers or return on investment then as far as he’s concerned, you’re not working with the right person who will be able to give the necessary amount of air cover to your nascent idea. Instead, make sure you’re working with people who can be emotionally and rationally engaged in an idea’s worth. They’re the folks who will help you when others raise reasonable doubts.
Finally, a lovely, honest admission of the reality of innovation and entrepreneurship. “If it doesn’t feel like a rollercoaster day, you’re not doing something right,” said Faddell. “You need to feel that doubt every single day.”
* This is not a real thing.
[Photo: Julian Mackler]
May 21, 2012
"This year, the costs of dementia care will be $200 billion. By 2050, $1 trillion. Make no mistake, the purpose of long-term-care insurance is to help finance some of the greatest misery and suffering human beings have yet devised."
— A Life Worth Ending is a harrowing piece by Michael Wolff on the care of his elderly mother. As the intro puts it, “The era of medical miracles has created a new phase of aging, as far from living as it is from dying,” while the American healthcare system has become so systematically dysfunctional that “emergency rooms, the last stop for gangbangers and the rootless, at least in the television version, are really the land of the elderly,” with the aged charged hundreds of thousands of dollars (or, at least, taxpayers charged the same) for treatments and the chance to continue a relentlessly bleak life. I was also taken with his description of the “furniture of aging” — “its own horrid story.” There’s much here for those interested in innovation or design to think about and apply when attempting to help design humanity back into (the end of) life. And then the stark conclusion, where Wolff describes “the absurdity of where we are, here on death row, measured not just in our heartache but nationally in hundreds of billions of dollars” and details his plans for his own demise. Devastating.
May 21, 2012
"Risk aversion is a hapless approach for a company that’s hoping to develop new technology. It’s tempting in a downturn. But long-term research and development, expensive and often filled with failure as it is, is the only route to discovering it. By taking the cautious path, companies risk a drought of ideas. During the downturn we have doubled our team of engineers and scientists and ramped up investment in research and development."
— Sir James Dyson, founder of Dyson, outlines his approach to innovation, design and risk management, critical when the economic chips are down.
May 8, 2012
"The design community needs to move on from the incessant argument over the importance of design thinking and process. It is time to claim victory. Get over it. The argument is boring. Design is important. We stipulate that design is about more than sexy products. We get that design is about delivering a compelling customer experience. We know that business model innovation is fundamentally about designing new ways to create, deliver and capture value. Now, can we get on with putting design thinking and process to work to enable business model innovation?"
— In The Problem With “Design Thinking,” my friend Saul Kaplan goes a little nuclear on his designer friends. I actually think the discussion around design thinking (to which, I confess, I have contributed more than makes me in any way comfortable) has moved on, though I still think examples of those who’ve figured out how to implement its ideas effectively are few and far between. This is an excerpt from Saul’s new book on business model innovation, just published, and which I’m looking forward to reading.
May 8, 2012
"The apps were, in the jargon of information technology, “walled gardens,” and although sometimes beautiful, they were small, stifling gardens"
—
Why Publishers Don’t Like Apps is a great piece by Jason Pontin of Technology Review, explaining why apps haven’t proven to be the savior of publishing. The lack of linking and creation of “small, stifling gardens” is key, as are the economics of a business model that actually forced publishers to pay Apple for the privilege of selling single issues of magazines. Then there were the immense technical challenges, none of which mean a fig to the reader but which cause expensive headaches for the publisher. In short, the overarching question is simple but profound: what do users want or expect from their digital reading experience, and how do publishers provide that without bankrupting themselves? Clearly, providing a walled garden experience doesn’t cut it, and Pontin is searingly candid in his assessment of Technology Review’s own rather desultory experiments:
We sold 353 subscriptions through the iPad. We never discovered how to avoid the necessity of designing both landscape and portrait versions of the magazine for the app. We wasted $124,000 on outsourced software development. We fought amongst ourselves, and people left the company. There was untold expense of spirit. I hated every moment of our experiment with apps, because it tried to impose something closed, old, and printlike on something open, new, and digital.
That last phrase holds the key. As long as publishers attempt to shoehorn the old into the new, it proves they still haven’t understood the shifts to their business.
May 4, 2012
Great chart that unpicks the difference between a “well-organized” conversation and one that is actually well designed. This might seem like a little thing, but I’d go so far as to argue that, as human beings are essentially the most critical element in any innovation initiative, this is precisely an area in which we should all invest much more attention and care. It’s likely the topic will get more attention soon, as my colleague, Chris Ertel is working on abook about designing strategic conversations at this very moment—along with Lisa Kay Solomon, who teaches the MBA in Design Strategy course at California College of Arts. For now, take a look at some of their early findings (and other charts of this ilk) in this piece they wrote for the Design Management Review. Well worth the read.
May 4, 2012
"There is no single right answer or path forward, but there is one right way to frame the problem."
— Nominally a book review, Clay Christensen’s Life Lessons is really more of a lyrical spin through the acclaimed Harvard Business School professor’s life and works, with a nod towards his upcomigng title, How Will You Measure Your Life? It’s a really lovely profile, featuring a guest appearance from Doblin’s own Larry Keeley, playing the role of merry contrarian, as per.
May 3, 2012
I’m still of the old school way of thinking that technology is a fantastic, amazing tool that works best when harnessed in the name of a really good idea. So I can do without the trend for turning everything and its cousin into an app. But this one is pretty smart. The Pain Squad app is designed to help sick children collect critical health data about how much pain they’re feeling. Turning pain management into a game, complete with leveling up and encouraging words for the kids via celebrity videos just might help the patients imagine that they’re not on their own in dealing with their illness. And the exploitation of the touchscreen functionality of the iPhone helps get around the real problem with data collection: getting people to do it consistently. Of course, not every patient will have an iPhone, or a smartphone of any kind, and it would be sad to eliminate the poorer sections of our community because of this absence, but this is well put together and hopefully, just a bright beginning.
[via Brent Choi]
May 2, 2012
"From climate change to spiraling healthcare costs, from global poverty to food and water shortages, wicked problems and their ramifications also impact organizations and their employees. As a result, the broad solutions we need might just come from market-driven companies seeking to out-innovate and outperform their competition. If companies challenge themselves and their competitors to seize advantage and momentum, the result might just be genuine disruption and transformation."
— Wildly self-promotional post, as I co-authored Help Wanted 2.0 with Doblin’s CEO, Bansi Nagji. The piece was just published in Rotman Magazine. In it, we attempted to outline the practical ways in which people can think about wrapping their hands around the much buzzed-about topic of open innovation. Let me know what you think!
May 2, 2012
![Thoughtful piece by Timothy Egan about e-books and the threat of Amazon on the livelihood of publishers and independent book store owners, pointing out that despite the howls of “o me miserum” and fraught hand-wringing, “we have more books, more readers, a bigger audience for words, on pixels or paper.”
I’ve wondered before about those consumers who are less focused on bargain basement prices and who might want to know that a percentage of their money is going towards those actually producing the content (so I’m a writer, color me biased.) But the fear of innovation and transformation from those who wish things could just stay as they used to be is potent, dangerous and, ultimately, irrelevant. It’s useful to remind ourselves that markets shift, worlds change, whether we like it or not. Or, as Egan puts it:
Publishers need to reinvent their own future. They could offer packages. They could partner more with communities of interest, from environmentalists to religious conservatives. And, most important, they could start believing in tomorrow, instead of being afraid of it.
[Encyclopedia image via Stewart; Story via Maria Popova]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3eh0soFTB1qikpxao1_1280.jpg)
Thoughtful piece by Timothy Egan about e-books and the threat of Amazon on the livelihood of publishers and independent book store owners, pointing out that despite the howls of “o me miserum” and fraught hand-wringing, “we have more books, more readers, a bigger audience for words, on pixels or paper.”
I’ve wondered before about those consumers who are less focused on bargain basement prices and who might want to know that a percentage of their money is going towards those actually producing the content (so I’m a writer, color me biased.) But the fear of innovation and transformation from those who wish things could just stay as they used to be is potent, dangerous and, ultimately, irrelevant. It’s useful to remind ourselves that markets shift, worlds change, whether we like it or not. Or, as Egan puts it:
Publishers need to reinvent their own future. They could offer packages. They could partner more with communities of interest, from environmentalists to religious conservatives. And, most important, they could start believing in tomorrow, instead of being afraid of it.
[Encyclopedia image via Stewart; Story via Maria Popova]
April 26, 2012
Jay Doblin’s Seven Levels of Design
While we think about design thinking as being something of a modern day phenomenon, it’s really as old as the hills. I’ve recently been combing through Doblin’s archives—and I came across a piece written in 1978 by the company founder Jay Doblin. In it, he lays out how the changing levels of design give different opportunities to innovate, and uses the redesign of a gas pump as an example. Check this out:
- LEVEL 1: The designer accepts the pump’s performance but shortens and cleans up its form.
- LEVEL 2: Performance improvements are made. Either money, gallonage, or fillip can be punched directly. Inserted credit card automatically bills the customer.
- LEVEL 3: Changes the basic mechanism. The station is like a parking lot where hoses are pulled from trap doors below ground. All the controls are on the nozzle.
- LEVEL 4: Involves products which are outside the company’s control. No liquid fuel is pumped; pressurized cartridges are inserted into the car. One cartridge fits all cars (like sealed beam headlamps), a one-price sale.
- LEVEL 5: The service performed is changed; there are no more gas stations. Fuel cartridges are bought anywhere, like beer.
- LEVEL 6: The service is eliminated; cars never need refueling, they run indefinitely on atomic power.
- LEVEL 7: Transportation is eliminated; all human contact is by telecommunications.
So, apart from making me wish I’d had the chance to meet Jay, what does this mean? Well, it means that 35 years ago, designers were thinking about increasing their scope from object to system, about how to elevate themselves from beyond providing the superficial aesthetic appeal of a product to considering its strategic consequences, even its point of existence. And honestly I think it’s telling and somewhat depressing that we’re still struggling with this whole discussion today.
April 26, 2012
"Most people actually have to leave their offices to get coffee. While wandering out into the real world, we unfortunates tend to do a lot with our mobile phones."
— Enjoyed reading this NYT piece gently ribbing huge tech companies for their perks—and making the more serious point that perhaps such luxury actually ends up stifling innovation.
April 23, 2012
"These DIY methods disrupt the traditional triangular relationship between the designer, the manufacture and the consumer – because now you can be all three."
—
An interesting, provocative review of the Furniture Fair (Salone) in Milan from The Guardian’s Justin McGuirk. In From Handicraft To Digicraft, Milan’s Furniture Fair Looks To The Future, he looks at the influx of DIY types wielding Makerbots and Arduino-fueled products galore. Or, as he puts it, rather more eloquently: “All over Milan, this tension between mass production and self-production, between handicraft and digicraft, was to the fore.”
I confess I stumbled slightly over his later assertion that hackers have traditionally been “outlaws”. Maybe I’m wrong, but I always thought of the original hackers (the Woz types and those attending the Homebrew Computer Club back in the day) as those who were willing to share just about everything and “hacked” purely for the joy of learning and understanding… very much in line with the spirit of these present day hackers. It was only in the interim that a more nefarious splinter group of hackers arose, with less idealistic goals at their heart. Anyway, I digress. The killer point of McGuirk’s review comes at the end and any would-be innovators would be wise to pay attention:
This was not a particularly strong year for innovative products, with many companies playing it safe or re-upholstering old classics. So let’s just accept that there was a more compelling story to tell. This groundswell of participative design, rapid manufacturing techniques and hacking is starting to challenge Milan’s design orthodoxy, making us forget about products and think about processes. Because the furniture fairs of the not-too-distant future will be for exhibiting new services and technologies, not just objects.
Now that’ll be a furniture fair worth attending.
1 of 14
Next page
