QUESTIONS
Q &A
An engineer/MBA and former Nike leader describes the power of a nonlinear approach to innovation.
Interview
by Karen Christensen
Your latest book looks at design thinking as a source of ‘nonlinear advantage.’ What do you mean by that?
In my experience, linear approaches to innovation and a lack of diverse input cause creativity to stagnate. In the book, I look at some of the tactics we might we use instead to create greater potential for natural serendipity, creative sparks and connections. As people navigate today’s forest of ambiguity in pursuit of innovation, I hope to provide some new vectors to help them find their way through what is destined to be a very nonlinear journey.
What do you mean by ‘vectors’?
Each phase or step you take in an innovation journey is what I characterize as a vector. It could be a push to learn more about a target audience, pivoting and changing course based on new learnings, looping back to retread old ground because you discover a radically flawed assumption, or moving
Are we ready to have our playbooks interrogated by folks who show up with uniquely different points of view?
forward to commercialize a new solution. Moving through the different vectors involves both the left and right brain, and the progression is further empowered by diversity. We need to ensure that our aperture is wide open in terms of how we perceive the evolving world around us.
Talk a bit about how DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] informs the design process.
The spaces and structures that we navigate every day are the way they are by design. They were all informed by someone. When given an opportunity, we have to unravel who was actually at the table in informing these constructs — and recognize the threads of systemic inequity that have persisted within them. Going forward, we need to ensure that the mix of folks around the table actually mirrors the world in terms of representation.
Too many self-proclaimed ‘world-class’ brands and organizations claim to ‘design for’ or ‘build for’ their customers. But when you peer inside their hallways, their team composition fails to reflect the diversity of our society. It’s likely even worse when it comes to their leadership pipelines and boardrooms. As a result, upon examining their understanding of customers and stakeholders, we usually find significant amounts of bias and blind spots between their offerings and what people actually need.
Within design, I find the low percentage of Indigenous, Black and People of Colour (IBPOC) professionals especially disappointing. Our future teams should mirror the beautiful tapestry that is the world. The question is, are we ready to have our playbooks and precedents interrogated by folks who show up with uniquely different points of view? Are we making them feel welcome to do so? What if they recommend different ways to engage with target demographics because they actually come from those demographics and can appreciate the cultural nuances at play? These are critical things to consider.
In the book you focus on two distinct types of insights: quantitative and qualitative. Let’s start with what you call ‘quantitative framing.’ Why is it so important? Creativity can’t be a free-for-all. In the context of driving innovation and new growth opportunities, we need to have
some constraints and boundary conditions. The data required to inform a decision is the type of data that states a matter of fact: ‘Gross margins need to increase by 50 basis points (or +0.5 per cent), from 34.5 per cent last quarter to 35 per cent this quarter.’ ‘From a market research perspective, the last quantitative survey showed our top decile of consumers spent $150 on average each month with us and tend to choose option C over options A and B with statistical significance.’
Ideally, we should always have good data like that available, to ensure we’re spending our time in the right places. If you’re focusing on things outside of that, the business is going to lose respect for design’s contributions. Facts like these help us understand the potential vectors at our disposal. But at the same time, the depth of insight they offer is actually very shallow. A fact is fact, and there’s not much more to say about it. The question is, then what? To engage with an opportunity, you need to have the richer, qualitative substance and depth of insight to shape new ideas and solutions.
Describe what qualitative insights look like and how they are achieved.
Nine times out of 10, what’s missing from innovation efforts is the thicker substance of what moves people — their attitudes, motivations, unmet needs, unmet aspirations and preferred realities. You need to get out there and find that stuff. Everyone is familiar with focus groups and surveys, but they don’t go far enough. I believe we need to spend more time with a limited subset of people to find the substance of what really motivates them. You need to know what drives them and comprehend the journey through their lens — and then bring that into the problem-solving arena.
So, quantitative framing comes first, then qualitative insights.
Yes. You need to have an understanding of things like the target audience from the quantitative boundary conditions that you unearth, and only then can you go digging for substance. I find it helpful to look for the ‘extreme’ folks. That includes early adopters, but you can also glean insights from the laggards — people at the other end of the spectrum, who have opted out of the opportunity for a given set of reasons.
I am certain of one thing: The human experience cannot be fully satiated with code.
You need to unpack what is going on with them. Paying attention to laggards also speaks to inclusion. Who is being left out here, and why? How can you bring those folks in and gain insights that help your cause?
This sounds time-consuming. Does it have to be? Often, speed is an implied authority figure in the room who tells people that they can’t slow down to address concerns and questions. But any company that is worth its salt should celebrate team members raising their hands and bringing up concerns. Because if your team members have a concern, you better believe your stakeholders have that concern as well.
Like a group of miners panning for gold, teams have to put in considerable work to scan, affinity-map, sort and codify the takeaways across workshop outputs, one-onone interview notes, video footage, photo observations and transcripts. Then, they need to translate their findings into effective syntheses and visual tools to help the team make decisions. In my experience, less-than-obvious patterns are often worth shining a light on, because they can lead to new vectors and discoveries of latent sources of opportunity to help you understand the target audience. You have to allow all of that stuff to bubble up — and that takes time.
The ideation stage intimidates lots of people. Why is that?
The act of creating a possible solution by combining qualitative and qualitative insights can be daunting — especially for those who are unfamiliar with it. It is imperative that the team be guided through this to put them in the right mindset. On the one hand, there will be ‘divergent ideation,’ whereby you’re trying to get people to generate as many ideas as possible and suspend judgment about what’s possible.
At some point, when you generate enough, you can turn the corner and facilitate people through what we call a convergent exercise. Here, you think through the lens of, ‘Is this idea desirable to the target audience?’ ‘Technically, is it feasible? And is it strategically aligned to the needs of the business?’ These are some threads of discernment that can help you converge and get to the fewer, better ideas that are worth pushing forward with.
Looking ahead, how do you see AI impacting the design process?
I am certain of one thing: The human experience cannot be fully satiated with code. Personally, my passion for software only goes so far compared to my peers in the tech industry. I see it merely as another enabler, the same way I view many other design ingredients — physical, spatial, services, content, etc.
The optimist in me says we can use our multidisciplinary brainpower to create physical affordances that prove themselves sustainable, regenerative and mindful of mitigating unintended consequences. I can foresee AI playing a role throughout many nonlinear steps in the creative journey (quant, qual, divergent ideation, simulation, testing, etc.).
Design will not save the world by itself. But by partnering equally with other disciplines at the problem-solving table, I truly believe we will have something. We will have a shot at using our collective creativity, diversity and nonlinear approaches to shake things up and inspire meaningful change. Different disciplines have not enjoyed a long precedent of collaborating together in one room. It was always the exception in most organizations, but moving forward, it must become the rule.
Engineer and entrepreneur Kevin Bethune is Founder and Chief Creative Officer of dreams • design + life, Head of Design at Invoy [a weight management device and program] and Co-Founder and Industrial Designer of Keevo [a crypto wallet.] His latest book is Nonlinear: Navigating Design with Curiosity and Conviction (MIT Press, 2025). Kevin is a board member of the Design Management Institute and a Trustee at the Art Center College of Design. He is also the author of the bestseller Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation