NextD Journal RERETHINKING DESIGN
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Organizational Innovation: Exploring Avenues of Approach
Dr. Bettina von Stamm FRSA Catalyst, Innovation Leadership Forum Author: Managing Innovation, Design & Creativity; The Innovation Wave
GK VanPatter Co-Founder, NextDesign Leadership Institute Co-Founder, Humantific Making Sense of Cross-Disciplinary Innovation
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1 GK VanPatter: Welcome Bettina. It is great to find a person who went to architecture school, teaching at the London Business School. I know you have been writing about innovation and design in the context of organizations for some time. Can you tell us how that research/writing journey of yours got started? Bettina von Stamm: I think the spark underlying it all is a desire to share my passion for innovation and design with other people. And by doing so to perhaps provide them with some insights that enable them to understand innovation, and design’s role within it, better. Innovation is talked about so much – but that’s just it, it is talked about, and so many organizations seem to struggle to make ‘the innovative organization’ a reality. It’s not only me saying this, several research studies emphasize the high priority CEO’s place on innovation while at the same time not being able to translate this into reality. (For example, two surveys from last year are by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Boston Consulting Group). But I think I am jumping ahead a bit. The question was, how I got started. I have to confess that I was not quite enamored with architecture. It was OK, but had certainly been a bad compromise between fashion design and computer science… Something I realized quite early on during the studies was that my heart was not in it. I did not really feel passionate about it – and that’s an aspiration I had: to feel passionate about what I do. So I completed my degree as quickly as I could and started working, all the while keeping my eyes open for something that would grab my attention. When I read an article about MBA’s in 1989 something clicked, and I decided to go for it. From my architectural degree I had learned an important lesson: never go for the second best, and even less so if the reason for it is convenience! With some rudimentary English and no French London Business School was my only target, and I wanted a two-year program to learn as much as possible, and then see where that might take me. During the degree I was lucky to be exposed to Peter Gorb and Angela Dumas – whom, I would have thought, many of the readers might know. They sparked – perhaps rekindled – my interest in design, and corporate identity. Whereby corporate identify for me is not about pretty logos or pictures, it is fundamentally about what a company stands for, what it wants to achieve, so its strategy and culture. When I completed my MBA in 1992 the job market was not exactly great – and there were not many companies sharing my view on corporate identity. So, having spent two years and a not insignificant amount of money, I decided that I would not take a job I did not really want, and started to work independently. Many people felt that was brave – but for me it would have been much braver to take a job I did not want! So I did project work, pretty soon focusing in on projects around design, design management and new product development. And from there it is only a small step to innovation. The nature of the projects I got involved in tended to involve research, and I realized that I really liked that. Going around, finding out things, making sense of them, sharing my insights with others. The desire to share my insights with others led to teaching and workshops, and in the process I also realized that I enjoyed writing. I am sorry, this was quite a long answer!
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2 GK VanPatter: Here at NextD we often talk about the need for next design leaders to move beyond the level of product creation and operate at more strategic levels of organizations...to think at the scale of organizational transformation. In your response I see you jumped quickly to the level of organizations. Where did that shift and awareness on your part come from? Where did you learn that? Bettina von Stamm: I think that if you come to design from the Corporate Identity perspective – at least if you have the view of Corporate Identity outlined above – there almost does not seem to be a different way! It is probably best described as a top down rather than a bottom up approach. Corporate Identity is something that should be monitored and managed at the highest level – and it should be understood as a means, not an end in itself. If you have found the right designers to work with you on Corporate Identity – and by ‘right’ I mean that they take a strategic approach, challenge your assumptions and want to understand about the company’s culture and ambition before moving on to the actual visuals and communications – you will have experienced the benefits of working with a designer. If you start from there you might come to think, where else can the engagement of design and designers create value? A bottom-up approach might be using a designer as part of new product development or for the design of company communications, e.g. the design of a company brochure or the annual report. Unless a deeper understanding of design already exists, designers will often only be used right towards the end of a project, and just to ’make things look nice’. The problem with that approach is that the real contribution of design – the challenging of assumptions and the exploration of alternatives – cannot take place. Even worse, as most designers might have ideas or suggestions for changes, their involvement might lead to changes, which of course at that stage are expensive. And by the way, I very much believe that the use of designers at a very late stage of a project is one of the reasons that the use of design is often considered to be inhibitivley expensive. In my view using designers right at the outset of the project has at least two advantages, first, it allows them to bring their skills to bear when they are most appropriate and secondly, more likely than not, their involvement will result in cost savings rather than extra expenditure. One more thought, and it comes back to ‘design as means, not end in itself’. If you view design as outcome you are likely to have a different perspective on design than if you view design as a process and set of skills. With the former the contribution of design and designers is almost exclusively limited to tangible products. If you take the latter perspective, the role and possible contribution of design and designers shift considerably; it opens up the possibility to applying their process and skills to many other aspects of an organization. And I would argue that the use of such skills – challenging of assumptions and exploring opportunities – is a key requisite for survival in today’s climate. And that’s fundamentally what innovation is about. Having said that, I do not mean to say that design and designers are the solution to everything ailing in today’s organizations, but I believe that they have an important contribution to make, and that their role is often underestimated. And of course as with any profession, some are highly skilled, and some are pretty mediocre… Page 3 of 18
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3 GK VanPatter: Can you tell us about what you teach at the London Business School and how it connects to innovation and design? Bettina von Stamm: Ah, this is an interesting question, and one that brings out some of the issues facing design and innovation. I first got involved in teaching at London Business School in the mid 90’s, jointly teaching ‘Tools for Design Minded Managers’ with Angela Dumas. The aim was to expose MBA students to some design techniques and practices on an experiential level – I think that ‘feeling & seeing’ is one of the best ways for people to understand the benefits of design thinking. While I ran the Innovation Exchange, a networking initiative that was based at London Business School between 1998 and 2003, I developed an MBA course titled ‘Managing innovation, design & creativity’ which was structured around 10 case studies I had developed (published by Wiley under same title). The 10 case studies allow the exploration of topics relevant to primarily innovation, but also consider the role of design within it. I must say the hardest session I have taught was the one introducing the topic of design. While the link between design and innovation is utterly obvious to me, it became clear quite quickly that this was not shared by the students. After the session one of the students came to me and said, ‘Bettina, don’t worry, some people get it, and some just don’t, what ever you do’. Not that it made me feel much better but it’s something I probably have to accept. Just in case there are some who fall into the group of disbelievers, if you think what is required to innovate successfully: positive attitude to taking (calculated) risk, experimentation, prototyping, focus on the consumer (or end user), challenging assumptions. If you then think what managers in organizations are rewarded and promoted for, you will quickly see that the above are not likely to be part of it. Designers, on the other hand, are trained to do these things. That’s why I said earlier that designers’ skills are important for companies that strive to improve their innovation performance. The course ran for two years and as the feedback was just above average – people either loved it or hated it – and as the Innovation Exchange was being closed down around the same time we reviewed the course, we decided to discontinue it. My insights from that experience plus observing the rise and demise of the Design Management Centre at London Business School is, design and innovation are not considered core to business education. Programs integrating these topics, or even being dedicated to them exclusively, rely entirely on individuals, and their personal passion and desire to communicate about these topics. Once these people move on, the topics are dropped. Over the past years I have been involved in numerous discussions on design in business education. Occasionally design rears its head in the context of business education, only to disappear again, quietly, before too long. If you find design and management being taught in combination and over a sustained period of time it will be in design or art related universities – not in business schools. Why do I think that is?
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I have recently been involved in the development of and recruitment for an MBA Management and Design (www.zollverein-school.de http://www.zollverein-school.de/). The initial plan was to recruit 50% of people with a design background and 50% of people with a management/ business background. As it turned out, only very few business people were interested in this course – for what ever the reason (lack of awareness, not seen to be important, what ever) but people with a design background were very keen. From the interviews it became clear that the designers felt quite strongly that they needed to get a better understanding of and insights into management if they wanted to be listened to, and to be allowed to contribute to what they felt was their potential. There was definitely a perceived need or ‘pain’ on their part. Managers, on the other hand, do not have this burning desire; unlike designers they are not aware that they might be missing something. The boundaries they come against are much more subtle and if they perceive them they are probably not aware that design thinking might be able to help them. Again, this does not mean that every designer should become a manager – this would no doubt lead to a dilution of their specific and valuable skill set. But what is required is what I often refer to as ‘translator’, i.e. design managers who are versed in the languages of design as well as business and can provide a bridge between the two groups and create a shared appreciation for each other, while at the same time allowing each group to contribute what each of them are best at. Perhaps one last comment on the teaching of design and innovation. Both are crossdisciplinary; both require the input from different functions. This is particularly true for innovation – innovation is not just about technology, innovation is not just about marketing; innovation is more about a frame of mind. But while innovation requires cross-disciplinary universities (there may be exceptions) most are organized around functions, and run by people who have a deep expertise and are often a reluctance to venture outside their boundaries. The first time I ran the MBA course I invited faculty from a number of different departments to contribute, as I felt quite strongly that their input was very important, and perhaps best delivered by themselves. However, I felt that very few made the effort to adjust their material to reflect the relevance and role in creating an innovative organization. More often than not it was the delivery of their standard lecture on the topic. Achieving the potential benefits of cross-functional collaboration is difficult – probably even more so in universities than in business. In business it is often a matter of survival, in universities it is more likely to dilute your focus, and make it more difficult for you to publish in the highly specialized journals.
4 GK VanPatter: Thanks for sharing that behind the scenes story. I can see a lot to think about there. In the course of our NextD Journal work we see many types of patterns emerge from conversation to conversation and we are often racking our brains to connect the dots in meaningful ways for our readers. One thread that I see here is Page 5 of 18
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about what we call the Soft/Hard model merge phenomenon. Another thread is about what we call Multiple Starting Points. I am also trying to think in mid-air about what might be meaningful to you and I here. Perhaps I could share a story or two that might be useful to you in your innovation/design/management journey? A good jumping in place might be around Multiple Starting Points if you are interested? Bettina von Stamm: Sounds great. What do you mean by ‘Multiple Starting Points’?
5 GK VanPatter: Well it is nothing earth shattering, just a small construct that we use to help make sense of what we are looking at. Sense making and pattern recognition seems like a big part of what we do as Innovation Architects today. Off the top of my head I can think of at least two variations of Multiple Starting Points as it applies to the subject of design as management. Lets imagine four parallel activity realm time lines with each progressing at a different pace and in different ways: • • • •
Graduate Business Management Education Business Management Practice Graduate Design Education Design Practice
Version 1: Multiple Starting Points / Same Discipline is rather like a time warp taking place within one activity realm or discipline. Say for example I have three conversations going on simultaneously today in the activity realm of Graduate Business Management Education focused on the integration of design into business management. One conversation is focused historically on what occurred when the initiative was launched 10 years ago, one is focused on an initiative that started five years ago and one is focused in the present discussing an initiative being positioned as new and cutting edge right now. In the realms of business education and design education we often see this occurring. There often seems to be little awareness, even within the same discipline that a similar initiative has already occurred elsewhere within the same activity realm but earlier in the time line. In this version of Multiple Starting Points we see several starting points along the same discipline, all of them were and are positioned as something new. What we end up with is a kind of time warp thing going on which sometimes makes understanding what we are looking at in the present difficult. I can tell by your story above that you no doubt experienced and learned many things in your own innovation/design/management journey that began numerous years ago. That knowledge would no doubt benefit those who are just starting similar journeys at business or design schools today. Version 2: Multiple Starting Points/Across Disciplines is another kind of time warp that we sometimes see taking place across one or more activity realms or disciplines. In this version, current leading edge models in one discipline are, for unknown reasons, being Page 6 of 18
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combined with old models from the other discipline. We often see this around design where initiatives from outside of design are linking into design as it existed 10 or 15 years ago rather than aligning the current models of today from both activity realms. As in the case of design as management, we sometimes see both Version 1 and 2 of Multiple Starting Points occurring simultaneously. That’s a mind bender. All of this can make sense making, especially for young people, extremely difficult. In some ways, Multiple Starting Points is almost like an academic community version of the old ‘we don’t know what we know’ thing that often occurs in giant companies. For organizations there is considerable interest in the reuse of knowledge. In the realm of academia I wonder sometimes if there is also a little we don’t want to know what we already know in the works there as well since the pressure for academics to publish and appear innovative within their specialty is considerable as you referenced earlier. This leads to a kind of circular re -reinventing the wheel picture. It’s a rather odd picture fit since most academics take pride in their knowledge of research orthodoxies. In any case I’m hoping that others will reach out to you as they conduct their fact-finding in preparation for embarking on their own initiatives to bring a sense of design/innovation to graduate business schools. Bettina von Stamm: I see what you mean with Multiple Starting Points. And regarding the duplication of knowledge and the reinvention of the wheel over and over again, I could not agree more. In fact, it was something along those lines that stimulated my PhD. One of the reasons I embarked on the journey was that reading a lot on success and failure and best practice in new product development, I found that things written in the 60’s did not differ that much from those written in the 90’s. So what was going on? Why did people not take heed of what was being said? Another eye-opener was the presentation by a representative of a large organization at an innovation conference in the mid 90’s who portrayed teamwork as the latest and greatest insight into improving new product development performance. I was flabbergasted. What was it that there was so much insight around, but so little was applied in practice? I have come to believe that there are several reasons for this; some are at the very heart of the struggles with innovation. But let me start with the less philosophical. First of all, I think that people in organizations are under a lot of time pressure. There is little time to explore, read, find out and broaden ones knowledge. Second, once a project has been identified, it is all cylinders go. No one challenges whether the question addressed is the right question or takes time to gather information – and by the way, a lack of investment of time in the early phases of new product development is one of the most frequent causes of failure. So what I am saying, there is often no effort to find existing knowledge because people feel too pressured to get started. Third, there really is a lot of knowledge out there – just have a look at all the journals, website, books. So how to find what is relevant to you? Particularly if you do not have much time. Somehow that reminds me of the story of the drunk and the lamp post: it’s dark, a drunk is looking under a lamp post for his keys, a passer-by joins him to help; not finding the keys he asks, where have you lost your key? The drunk points into the darkness and answers, somewhere over there, but the light is better here. Page 7 of 18
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What I am saying is, we tend to look in the obvious places, the places we are familiar with which means that we are getting more of the information we are already aware of. We are not looking outside our familiar sphere. Aluminum bonding is something that has been used in the aircraft industry for years – but only recently has made it into the automobile industry – used with great success for the Lotus Elise. There is too little knowledge transferred between domains. Though saying that, in the area of innovation and even more so design management there are not that many ‘obvious places’, as this field is still emerging and so the places where relevant knowledge can be found are rather hidden and dispersed. But I think underlying much of this is basic human nature. As Anaïs Nin said so aptly, “We don’t see things how they are, we see things how we are.” Too often we see things through our own particular lenses, not seeing what is really there but what we believe to be there. That again is something that prevents us from transferring insights from one domain to another: we can actually not see when something is actually different.
6 GK VanPatter: Let me turn our conversation back to something that you said earlier. You mentioned ‘feeling & seeing’ as one of the best ways for people to understand the benefits of design thinking. It strikes me that you might be approaching the teaching of innovation skills very differently than we do here at NextD. I was not sure in your story if you were teaching innovation process outside of the design process? I was not sure if you were starting off by telling students that they should learn design and then teaching innovation within the context of the design process? Bettina von Stamm: It is rather the other way around. I think that most companies today have realized the need to innovate – I have already indicated that earlier. Annual reports are full of statements that innovation is a high priority, and that efforts are made to become more innovative. There is a nice quote from management guru Gary Hamel who stated that, “When we look at annual reports and other corporate documents we find that about 90 percent emphasize the need for innovation. But this has not translated into being a core competence and not many people on the shop floor would know how to describe the corporate innovation system.” So there is a need or ‘pain’ in the business: they know they need to do something but don’t know how. Offering them design thinking and design processes as one possible tool that can help them address that problem creates a much greater openness towards design than if I’d start by praising the values and virtues of design. As with all change – and taking new concepts and thought processes on board is about change – unless there is a perceived need or threat people tend to say, “Why should I bother with it, I am doing quite well as it is.” I always feel that you are most likely to get an ‘open ear’ if you start at a place the audience is familiar with or, as in the case of innovation, has a definite need to which what you have to offer is linked, or even a solution. I’d also like to make clear that for me innovation and design are not synonymous. While I sometimes define ‘design’ as ‘a conscious decision making process’ I view ‘innovation’ as ‘a frame of mind’ which means that innovation is primarily about values and behaviors. Or in other words, innovation is an output, a consequence, of creating
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the right climate and encouraging the right kinds of values and behaviors. Design/design thinking offers process tools that can help to facilitate innovation. Does that actually answer your question?
7 GK VanPatter: Yes. I am beginning to see the parallels and differences between us. I noticed that your book The Innovation Wave was focused on innovation in the context of organizations but there seemed to be no reference to design. Why is that? Bettina von Stamm: Ah, guilty. I think the main reason was that I had not made that connection sufficiently at the time. Some things are too obvious to see! In the German language there is the great word 'Betriebsblindheit' which is impossible to translate but is a bit like not being able to see the woods for the trees (if I got the English saying right...) It was really while writing the case studies for my second book (Managing Innovation Design & Creativity) that I finally began to see what is now only too obvious to me: that design, or better, design thinking, offers some hooks into an otherwise somehow elusive concept: innovation. I am saying 'elusive' as survey after survey reports that companies want to become more innovative, but declare openly that they are not very successful at achieving that ambition. I was very interested and intrigued to read in a recent Business Week about a course on the MBA at INSEAD, France, that brings designers and MBA students together. It is not remarkable that it happens - when I did my MBA at London Business School in the early 90’s I had the privilege to take part in just such a course, but what is remarkable is that there is a one page article in Business Week about it.
8 GK VanPatter: Yes I saw that article. There is a lot of interest in design over at Business Week. Bruce Nussbaum will be appearing in an upcoming issue of NextD Journal. For some time the folks at Business Week have been talking about how graduate business schools are ill-equipped to teach innovation and design. As a business magazine they are looking outside of themselves, while talking about their own business community, while talking about the need for change. Lets take note that they are openly talking about that need. Likewise we are, at NextD Journal, looking outside of design, while talking about our community, while talking about the need for change. The truth is that the selling of design as a force of innovation is in full swing around the world. Something that we grapple with here at NextD is Yin, Yang of being honest about the degree to which design education needs to change in a BIG way to better sync with the cross-disciplinary innovation world while at the same time promoting the value of next design leadership.
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Walking that fine line between the Yin and the Yang is probably the most difficult part of what we are doing here. It is no secret that there is a whole lot more Yang going on in our own community then there is Yin. The reality is that there are several high profile design school leaders out there promoting design as innovation and leadership who have no cross-disciplinary innovation skillbuilding going on in their own schools. It is a rather bizarre picture but the business magazines (and even some traditional design magazines) seem to not yet have caught on to that important detail! The strategy there seems to be promotion without the internal change, promotion without transparency, the Yang without the Yin. As you can imagine, those particular educational leaders tend to avoid engaging with NextD Journal! Here we seek to provide authentic views into design and design education. We are here as advocates of more than promotion. We are advocates of real and substantial change in our own community. While the promotion of the existing status quo approach is often most comfortable with design educators it is not rocket science to figure out that route is unlikely to lead to a meaningful future for design. We are early in that cycle so at this time it is unknown where the all Yang and no Yin strategies will lead the community. As we both well know, all initiatives eventually lead to a need to deliver something. Bettina you have been very frank in this conversation. I’m thinking that we should get together in person as there is obviously lots of common ground between us and too much to cover in one session. With the time remaining I would like to hear about how Managing Innovation Design & Creativity differs from your first book and then perhaps I can share with you a different perspective on teaching innovation in the context of business organizations. Bettina von Stamm: I would most certainly be delighted at an opportunity to meet in person, let's see how we manufacture that! I agree entirely with what you say about design education - promoters of change find it often rather difficult to change themselves. 'Doctor, take thy own medicine' - wasn't it ever anything but that? About my books, whereas the Innovation Wave was a book directed mainly at managers, 'Managing Innovation Design & Creativity' is more of a textbook, directed primarily at post-graduate studies. The 10 case studies, which I wrote especially for the book on companies such as the BBC, Black & Decker and the car manufacturer 'Lotus', have each two chapters associated with them to explore topics relevant to innovation in more detail. These topics include, 'strategy, new product development, teams, globalization, collaboration, cultural and industry context, market research, collaboration, the physical work environment - and others. They reflect the topics that I believe organizations that want to become more innovative need to understand. These additional chapters contain my own thoughts, but probably more importantly, also summarize what other people have said about these topics, and what might be useful to know in the context of innovation.
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A point where it certainly differs from the Innovation Wave is that design was much more on my conscious then, which means that references to design are pervasive throughout the book. If I had written it today, I would probably have made more of 'design thinking' than design - but, hey, the learning continues! My next book, which, all going well should come out later this year, we will talk a little more about that. But enough about me, tell me more about the different perspective on teaching innovation in the business context!
9 GK VanPatter: In covering a lot of ground here I can see that we have not given your new book its due. I will look forward to checking it out in more detail. Perhaps we can discuss when we get together in person. From our dialogue here I can see that we seem to have many of the same goals. We are talking about some of the same issues but using slightly different language. It does appear that we also have some differences in approach, in how we think about design and in the teaching of innovation skills. I will talk a little about the way we think about some of these issues and then turn the floor over to you for final comments..:-) It might be useful to clarify that while here at NextD we are focused in our own design community, this is very different than the focus of our InnovationLab practice at Humantific. There we teach cross-disciplinary innovation dynamics in the context of all kinds of organizations. You may be surprised to hear that in such settings we are not in the room to teach the language or the skills of design in the traditional sense of the term. At least that is not where we start the conversation. This gets a bit tricky as design itself is undergoing transformation. So at the moment there are a multitude of ‘designs’, not just one floating around in the marketplace. In addition to the fact that there are hundreds of disciplines using the term ‘design’ there are an equal number of variations in terms of the nature of the activity. We use the terms next design and next design leadership to signal that we are not talking about the old models and traditional ways of design practice. We are talking about design in the broadest sense of the word. Old design was more about responding to small, framed challenges where ‘wave the wand’ (hidden) process skills were all that was needed. Next design is inclusive of framed challenges but also includes the sorting out and framing of complex fuzzy situations in what we have named the B4Design strategic space. Humans now face much more complexity in the world and this has changed the nature of work. Next design recognizes real world complexity where more than wave the wand process skills and tools are now needed. That’s the short explanation. This is one of our favorite quotes: “Design in its broadest sense is the most important mental operation for the future. Judgment thinking is not enough in a changing world because judgment is based on the past. We need to design the way forward.” Dr. Edward deBono
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At its core design is about human-centered intentionality, deliberate change making, pattern creation and pattern optimization. It is about generation as much as decisionmaking. If the activity of deliberately moving from one state to a more desirable one is design activity then design covers a lot of ground! Of course there are many others in the community working hard on the reconstruction of design. Some are in practice, while others are working in education. Here is the way that Dr. Charles Burnette of IDesign is describing design to children today: “Design thinking is what people do when they pursue their goals. Everyone focuses their thinking in order to satisfy wants and needs regarding a particular situation. They recognize and define information relevant to their purpose, consider alternatives, decide what to do, do it, determine if they are satisfied with the results, and if not, revise their approach until they are successful, all while learning through the experience. This is designing. It is a process of creative and critical thinking that allows information and ideas to be organized, decisions to be made, situations to be improved, and knowledge to be gained. Purposeful thought and action is the basis for all human achievement and is found in all subject disciplines.� With all of the hard work occurring around the reinvention of design it is likely that future generations will think about it quite differently. Even with all of the progress, reconstruction and forward motion at numerous levels we must still grapple with the realities that exist in the marketplace today. As you well know, organizational change intervention is about the here and now, not the ideal model future vision. Organizations face real challenges and opportunities that must be addressed NOW! In business organizational settings we are working with several generations of adults who were educated over the course of the last 20-50 years or so, before the new operational dynamics arrived on the scene. "The central issue is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people." John Kotter, Professor, Harvard Business School
Probably the best short-form way for me to talk about this in the context of organizations is to share with you a few key assumptions, by that I mean assumptions that we do not make. We don’t assume: 1. That the challenges and opportunities of organizations are sitting there preframed, clearly defined and ready to be addressed. 2. That the challenges and opportunities are organized according to the logic of disciplines. 3. That a single individual in an organization can alone adequately address the complex opportunities and challenges of today. 4. That the skills needed for individual work, and intertribal work are the same as those needed for cross-disciplinary work. 5. That designers already possess cross-disciplinary innovation dynamics mastery.
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You can see how not making those five assumptions takes us to a very different starting point. I will expand briefly on the above as follows: 1: Having worked with many types of organizations we are well aware that the challenges and opportunities are rarely sitting there preframed, clearly defined and ready to be addressed. In the old model of design processes and tools engaged when challenges were described and framed in client made briefs. Today organizations seek help understanding and framing up what their challenges and opportunities really are. This has direct implications in terms of the skills and tools needed. We find that it is still not widely understood in many disciplines, including design that tackling fuzzy complex unframed challenges and opportunities requires a different set of skills from the traditional skills geared to addressing challenges already framed. Today much of the heavy lifting and the setting of strategic direction takes place upstream in the B4Design space. So we are there as next design leaders providing skills and tools that allow many disciplines including designers to engage farther upstream where fuzzy situations exist rather than clearly defined opportunities and challenges. At NextD we call this DeFuzzing the Future. 2: There is no assumption on our part that the challenges and opportunities now facing organizations are organized according to disciplines. Although many of our academic institutions remain organized by vertical siloed disciplines this tidiness is not found in the real world. There, challenges and opportunities tend to be rather untidy and expansive, most often involving multiple constituencies. In addition many, large Fortune 500 global companies are seeking to work and innovate across vertical silos which translates to working across disciplines as they endeavor to integrate their global organizations. 3: Two dynamics that are common to virtually every industry in the marketplace are rising complexity and compressed time frames. It is likely blatantly obvious to most in the organizational change consulting business that a lone CEO or any other single individual in an organization cannot alone adequately address the complex opportunities and challenges of today. In response to these two drivers; rising complexity and compressed time frames organizations are adopting the cross-disciplinary approach to addressing challenges and opportunities. At the same time they are moving from linear processing to parallel processing. These two fundamental shifts have enormous impact on skills and tools needed for everyone involved including designers. While in the old linear processing days designers were often brought in as form givers near the end of the cycle, today, in the parallel processing model there are new opportunities and responsibilities for everyone involved including designers. With new opportunities and responsibilities comes the need for new skills and tools. 4: We do not assume that the skills and behaviors of individual working and intertribal working are the same as that of cross-disciplinary work. We find that it is still not widely understood in many disciplines, including design (and business) that the arrival of the cross-disciplinary way of working changed the universe of innovation interaction dynamics. I say that in the past tense as it has already happened. To a significant degree it is a completely new world of behaviors, values, dynamics and skills. To operate optimally in that world, new tools and new skills are required. Page 13 of 18
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Organizational Innovation
5: There is no assumption on our part that most disciplines in the room including the designers are already masters of the cross-disciplinary skills we are there to teach. In most instances, they certainly are not. What that means is that in many organizational settings we have designers sitting in the room as workshop participants, along with folks who have business, technology, engineering, science and many other backgrounds. This approach is very different than telling everyone in a workshop or organization that they should learn how operate like traditional designers of the past. Now it might very well prove to be the case that the designers gravitate towards what we are about to teach but that is very different from assuming that they already have these particular skills at this point in time. How could they? Lets be honest, the reality is that none of these disciplines, including the designers really learned in their respective undergraduate, graduate or postgraduate schools how to work, solve complex problems and communicate with other disciplines. For the most part our educational institutions remain focused on teaching vertical intertribal skills. So business folks learn how to communicate with others in their tribe, the same holds for those emerging from technology schools, design schools etc. Still today, very few educational institutions do any kind of serious innovation dynamics skill-building across disciplines. This continues to have enormous implications in the marketplace.
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Organizational Innovation
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Organizational Innovation
We might differ in some of our definitions as well. The Humantific definition of innovation is deliberate change that creates value in the context of business. Integral to continuous innovation is the notion of two innovation personalities; Pattern Creating and Pattern Optimizing. Equally valuing both is how we construct inclusive circles of innovation. The reality is that there are many types of innovation and we recognize that innovation can occur without designers sitting in the room. We consider design to be the way to construct human-centered innovation. We consider design to be a form of humancentered transformation, inclusive of problem finding and problem solving. Having said all of that I will tell you quickly that we recognize there are multitudes of innovation tools, techniques approaches and models in the marketplace including Six Sigma, Triz, Total Quality Management, Continuous Improvement, Appreciative Inquiry, Six Thinking Hats, Reflection in Action, 24/7 Innovation, Transformation Thinking, Emotional Thinking, the Innovators Solution, Mind Mapping, Bubbling, Spark Soup, Creative Abrasion, Design Research, Ethnography, Strategic Planning, Participatory Design and hundreds of others. In addition there are also a multiplicity of proprietary delivery processes to be found in organizations that are facing a multiplicity of challenges and opportunities. How does one make sense of all that? Embracing that complexity we find it to be most useful if we can provide what we call a MetaRoot toolkit and skill set that can be used to make-sense of and navigate through that complex mindscape on a continuous basis. It is a toolkit and skill set that is adaptable to unframed and framed challenges or opportunities. In essence what we teach is both a way of thinking/seeing/sense-making and a way of action/collaboration/innovation. In doing so we focus on the DNA or root level of innovation. We teach the logic that is, in one form or another, underneath all of those organizational delivery models, underneath what all folks do in real organizations everyday. We teach that root logic as a common bridge language across all disciplines. It is an innovation logic that includes transformation, opportunity finding, problem finding, problem solving, pattern creation and pattern optimization. Ironically the root level knowledge also becomes the Meta level knowledge needed to operate in the discipline agnostic space of B4Design. (This is better explained in a workshop setting.) We find that once participants master MetaRoot they can easily make sense of all kinds of complexity conditions. This MetaRoot knowledge becomes the centering, grounding system, viewing lens for leaders needing to continuously navigate mountains of complexity and fuzzy situations. It can be used not only for complex problem untangling but also for looking backwards or forwards at strategies, processes, tools, models and all kinds of fuzzy situations. We find participants bolting this new MetaRoot skill on to their present skill-set. Many find that MetaRoot knowledge supercharges other tools and processes from other knowledge fields. For many this is an AHA! kind of skill-building that they have not found in their discipline specific graduate or postgraduate programs.
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It is possible that the way we think about our overall mission is somewhat different as well. We are not there to fight for a seat at the product design table for product designers. Again we start in a different place. The levers that we focus on connect to a broader innovation universe. We are there to reconstruct that universe in more inclusive ways, using deliberate models. Our focus is on how we are going to maximize the brainpower in the group, team and organization.
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Organizational Innovation
We find that today organizational leaders seek to maximize the brainpower of everyone in their organization not just the designers and for a multitude of reasons in addition to the creation of products. Of course there are always variations depending on the specifics of the organization, but simply stated we often focus on these three fundamental things: 1. Reconstructing the circle of innovation 2. Providing the MetaRoot toolkit 3. Providing MetaRoot skill-building All of this means that we are in a hybrid role. We are designers designing innovation using a hybrid toolbox. We are there in the room as next design leaders reconstructing the universe of innovation rather then being there as traditional designers teaching the old ways of wave the wand design. From our perspective next design is a form of human-centered, visually modeled cross-disciplinary innovation. Engaged in that kind of activity next design leaders not only help organizations defuzz the future, they begin to shift the dynamics and the thinking about what designers do, and how designers bring real, tangible new strategic value. I have enjoyed this conversation. Lets talk more when we get together. The floor is all your for final thoughts Bettina. Bettina von Stamm: Not sure I can add much to that! Your answer sums up much of our conversation, acknowledging and understanding the past and pointing a way to the future; both are necessary. Perhaps just one thing, we tend to go from one extreme to the other dropping something useful in the process; people tend to think in ‘either or’ rather than ‘and’; but just that, the ‘end’ is key in the world that you have described. So therefore it is important not to assume that the role and contribution of the ‘old’ design(er) does no longer exist. We still need people with deep expertise – be it around a particular design discipline or any other specialization. AND we need those who can help organizations to reconstruct the circle of innovation, the synthesisers, the catalysts, the cross-fertilisers, those who push the boundaries. I would be delighted if we found some opportunities to explore and push those boundaries together.
NextD Journal RERETHINKING DESIGN
NextDesign Leadership Institute DEFUZZ THE FUTURE! www.nextd.org Questions: Please direct all questions to journal@nextd.org Follow NextD Journal on Twitter: www.twitter.com/nextd
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