Design_at_the_edge

Why Design@The_Edge?

  204732267_758c1b4ed8_b 
  Originally uploaded by IC Pod

Design can be thought as disciplined creativity; creativity is just connecting things so the greater variety of things to connect with increases the odds of  a new design being truly innovative and facilitating a memorable experience for the customer/consumer/user. Preliminary design can be thought of as disciplined imagination that explores a wider territory to discover insights that lead to more radical products and services and therefore more memorable experiences.
The origins of Design@The_Edge go back to the 1960's when I began to train as an aero-engine designer and came to fruition in the late '90's when I was managing a design process and technology group in a global fast moving consumer goods organisation.
About ten years ago I got really frustrated that so many new product development projects were failing to make it through the funnel; one design house we worked with had been commissioned to work on 21 projects, only one of which made it to market and most of them failing well into the capability phase. In the period 1962-67, at college we were introduced to Burns and Stalker's now classic work on the management of design, very soon after they were published. I was training to be an engineering designer. and so their work was directly relevant to me. Over the next decade or so I met the theories of Maslow, Herzberg, Pugh, Morley, Csikszentmihalyi (chicks-send-me-high), etc., which combined with my experiences of design working across a variety of organisations influenced my thinking and behaviour.

The main insight I gained during this period is that process is important; changing process as new technologies become available is incredibly important and can free up considerable resource to create more competitive products and services. It is the fact that processes are not similar to procedures but are dynamic sources of enabling energy that can continually morph into new forms that gives them the potential to change the world. That is where I directed my curiosity and energies, fortuitously coinciding with the tangible manifestation of Moore's law. Or to put it another way.. by the time we had figurred out what we wanted to do the power to do it was within our grasp.

Recently I discovered Steiner's model (book here) that encapsulated my experience in the formulation that the actual productivity of a group equals its potential productivity minus losses due to faulty process.

Picture uploaded  by Neil Rickards. Used with thanks under CC.

In Steiner's opinion:

"How well a group can perform a task depends upon the adequacy with which member's resources meet task demands. How well the group actually performs depends, in addition, upon the willingness of members to contribute their resources to the collective effort, and upon the success with which members coordinate their individual activities. Actual productivity equals potential productivity when their are no losses due to non-optimal motivation or coordination."

Picture uploaded   by mallox. Used with thanks under CC.

With this rich soup of tacit and explicit knowledge I worked with a couple of collaborators to develop tools for the new millennium (I can say that now, but originally it was to address our dis-functional team working and the low hit rate of new projects).

Over a period of 6-7 months of working with various project teams we came up with the 4 tools of Design@The_Edge

Design Space enabled team leaders to ensure the right people were in the room at the right time to discuss and generate the right knowledge.. the amount of new knowledge created being some measure of the innovativeness of the new product or service.

Design Pyramid enabled the team to understand the needs of their consumer and to analyse how well they were doing at meeting or exceeding those needs. It enabled teams to identify an ideal (at that moment) consumer experience and identify gaps between the actual and ideal delivery.

Design Diamond helped teams to answer the question "What sort of project are we tackling?" helping the team and its leader to adapt their behaviour to the task at hand.

Design Journey is an acknowledgement that teams have to go on a journey of discovery; what is the vision of the outcome of the project? Where do we all fit in? How are we going to achieve the best outcome? How far have we travelled toward that goal?

Since that period of activity we have also added Design Fast Action which enables the team to rapidly create tangible (digital or physical) artefacts (prototypes) that ask questions to discover and validate the most promising routes to solve the problem and then ensure viability of the solution itself.

[draft]

James Dyson — inventor? inovator?

  James Dyson — inventor 
  Originally uploaded by Bob Naylor

You know the feeling when some everyday product lets you down. ‘I could have designed this better myself’, you think. But how many of us turn our thoughts into actions? James Dyson does. He is a man who likes to make things work better. With his research team he has developed products that have achieved sales of over £3 billion worldwide. Whilst at the Royal College of Art (1970) he designed the Sea Truck for Rotork.

This was intended to be the equivalent of a Land Rover, able to move equipment, stores and livestock between islands, etc.

The buyers/users of the Sea Truck tended to abuse the boat thinking its 6-inch draft made it indestructible... ( extracted from Against the Odds) "As a result they tended to ram it into rocks more often than was strictly good or wholesome.

As designers we knew that we could enhance the product by making it unpuncturable. And the best way to do that was to take our lead from those large plastic water pipes which will not even break if you hit them with a hammer..... the pipes would be bunged with what looked like plastic footballs,..

We bought a farmhouse.. in the Cotswolds. With drystone walls to be built.... I found myself spending a lot of time in the company of a wheel barrow... I discovered what a crummy piece of equipment it [ a navvy barrow] really was.

...It was off to France to test the Tube Boat - ....- where we needed to bung the polyethylene pipes, and where I learned how to mould unpuncturable low-density polyethylene into a sphere. And as I turned my first plasic sphere, I knew waht was happening and I said to myself "This is it matey. This is the answer to all my problems."  A revolutionary wheel.

And the Ball Barrow was born

The frames of the Ball Barrow were sprayed with an epoxy powder which was then baked on. Much of the spray ended up on the conveyor and would be sucked onto a screen. Every hour the line stopped as the blocked screen was cleared. Our suppliers told us that big users had a cyclone installed to centrifuge the powder and collected at the bottom of a conical section.. but it was 30 feet high! And £75,000!

On the way home one night Dyson sketched the Cyclone on the roof of the local sawmill, climbed all over it to see how it worked,and used this knowledge  to construct one of his own. As Against all Odds describes.. it worked! And this also was the inspired solution for the vacuum cleaner problem.. The Dyson cleaner that was the end result of Dyson observing observing how quickly existing bag vacuums lost their suction when he was using one at home.

It is this technology that has proved to be the platform for the Dyson successful growth.

But it is intriguing how each nugget of knowledge has been re-used on other user problems. It is just making the connections that is a necessary start. As to whether we should call James Dyson Inventive  or Innovative....:

 

Inventive Merit... Relieves or avoids the constraints of existing ways of doing things
Innovative Merit... Changes the life of the customer. It changes the life of the customer in some way or the world in which the customer experiences things.
Conclusion.. both terms apply!
 

Hydroptere: extreme self-actualisation

  Hydroptere 
  Originally uploaded by egral

The Mail on Sunday included an article We have lift off: The quickest yacht in the world. Extract here:
Is it a boat? is it a plane? No - it's something in between, that also happens to be very, very fast. Ian Stafford goes flying on the quickest yacht in the world
"This is not a boat, nor a plane either. This is a magical flying carpet,2 says Alain Thébault, the man behind the Hydroptère, the world's fastest yacht.
There's magic in the air even as we cast off from the Breton port of La Trinité-sur-Mer, overlooked by the ancient stones of Carnac, France's own Stonehenge.
There's a flurry of strenuous hoisting and winding as the wind balloons the sails. The craft begins to accelerate.
It cuts the waves faster and faster, the nose begins to lift… and then we're flying.
It just keeps on going faster.
The only sound from the sea beneath is the single hydrofoil blade cutting through the waves like a sword.
Its far end shimmers underwater; thunderclouds of spray fill the air in its wake.
Hydroptère throws up more water than a hundred jet-skis, but in total silence – except when the crew whoop for joy.
This extraordinary trimaran is the result of 20 years of research, engineering and design, plus substantial backing from Swiss banker Thierry Lombard.
It's a yacht made from carbon fibre and titanium that rises up on to "wings".
Instead of ploughing through the waves, it glides over them.
Once up to speed, only one of two hydrofoils at the end of each outer keel actually touches the sea. The drag is almost negligible. This is why it has already set two world speed records, over a nautical mile and 500m, and why it'll continue to redefine yachting speeds as we know them this summer. Watch out for the reports.
and the article ends
Hydroptère is a personal obsession, a life's work born of one man's dream – but now that it's on the verge of breaking every record that matters, there are plenty of potential buyers.
Does Thébault know how much the project has cost? "No," he replies.
"With all the adjustments and innovations it's very difficult to say. I'd say many millions of euros."
Would he ever sell? "We have had a few people approach us, but I have not even waited for a price, nor offered one, and discussions never take place."
Why not? Thébault smiles and lets out another whoop of joy as Hydroptère nudges past 40 knots again and the Quiberon peninsula flashes by.
"There are some things in life no amount of money can ever buy," he explains, with a broad grin. "You cannot put a price on living a dream."

If we refer to Maslow we can see that the yacht is all about the satisfaction of Alain Thébault's need for self-actualisation. He is incredibly fortunate to have, since 2006, sponsorship from Swiss banker Thierry Lombard. As the official site puts it

Born in 1962, under the sign of Virgo, half-mad or half-wise depending on the tides, Alain Thébault once had a dream: creating a flying boat. In the sailing world, there are many Ulysses. Sailors are cunning people who know how to make it through the tempest and to use a bit of cunning with the technical and human elements in order to survive. But Alain Thébault is the only living Icarus among the oceanic skippers. He possesses a fever for invention, a scorn for danger and the need to burn himself under every sun. The skipper of l’Hydroptère, the “flying boat”, is a misunderstood person who likes nothing better than rile the crowds who doubt him. He is also a determined man who would fall 10 times and get back up 100 times. Finally, he is an agitator who has burnt his wings many times by provoking the anger in the political and business spheres.
Pilote d’un rêve (Piloting a Dream), Alain Thébault,
Flammarion  March 2005, Libération

Maslow can play out at two extremes- 

a utilitarian view:

“If the only tool we have is a hammer then we tend to see every problem as a nail.”

Or a symbolic one:

“Excellence is the result of

caring more than others think is wise;

risking more than others think is safe;

dreaming more than others think is feasible and expecting more than other people think is possible.”

[draft]

Don't wait, select your blocks and build!

  Waiting for a Lego revolution 
  Originally uploaded by _Dusk_

The beauty of Lego is that it is a collection of various shaped blocks that can be assembled into objects the shape and function being limited only by the imagination of the creators and their skills in utilising the function of the blocks and the ability to acquire other blocks that are emerging of different shape and function... of course we can add Mindstorms to the mix and really open-up even more possibilities Those creative and executive skills enable our organisations to envisage ways to delight the user/consumer and using technologies (building blocks) familiar to us, and other technologies understood by collaborators, By assembling those technologies and then packaging them in ways that delight the consumer we can deliver a winning experience. In the 90's, as a design technology and process exploitation group we spent a great deal of time working on delighting our clients... the project teams that we were invited to partner. This book

"Design-Inspired Innovation" helps articulate what we were up to as collaborators with multi-functional teams. A reviewer of the book writes:

"This book defines design-inspired innovation in terms of three different, equally important aspects. Two of these, technology and needs (i.e., satisfaction), are well known in current practice. The third, however, summed up as language, is either disregarded or neglected. Language in this instance refers to the meaning of the product in the sociocultural milieu in which it is perceived and used: It is the product's emotional and symbolic value. An aim of design-inspired innovation is to achieve success through a high level of sociocultural fit.

A recent example described by the authors is the iconic iPod music player by Apple: a product that has revolutionized the way we listen to music. The creation of the iPod was, essentially, the combination of existing technologies in new ways. It was developed for Apple by Portal Player, a firm with design expertise in portable music players. Working with Apple's suppliers of five key off-the-shelf components, Portal Player developed a reference model that, with additional design input by Apple, became the iPod. However, it is not merely a music player in conveniently compact form. It has developed meaning and has become, virtually, an expression of its user's sociocultural fit in the same way that a BMW is not merely a car but is an expression of its owner."

A slide by McKinsey (in German) encapsulated the innovation dilemma. I can't find the source but adapted a few years ago to look like this

Basically this matrix nudges you in the direction of new products (and services) that have the potential to disrupt the market by deploying the building blocks of organisational infrastructure and technology you and your partners are familiar with.

To make this activity (seriously playing) more structured (and more challenging and fun) we created a tool called Design Space, a conceptual, mental, virtual and physical space to ensure that project teams take into account all significant factors in their creative collaborations. It never ceased to amaze me what we uncovered as cultural barriers to "doing the right thing", let alone "doing the right thing right". For instance, in one "Design Space" session we were trying to get a feel for costs of two or three different cap designs... the consumer group had ranked them on visual appeal from digital renders.. and thay were closely ranked.. so we were looking for other differentiators to help in our narrowing down of concepts to work on. The buyer (in charge of procuring this particular class of component) was extremely reluctant to even voice an opinion.. no matter it was time for dinner and then another session tomorrow. Over dinner I was chatting with the buyer and as the drink loosened all our tongues he told me the story of how as a trainee buyer he had costed something at x and it turned out when the actual order was placed it was 1.25x, and his boss had never let him forget his "failure". First thing next morning the team created a 'concept costing' that had no validity outside the meeting and gave relative costs for comparison only. Within an hour we had our 'costs' and it turned out that the concept rated second (just!) was 15% cheaper than number 1. As we were in a cost-sensitive market sector we knew which one to go for. Another time we were doing the same exercise on a less price sensitive sector and we chose concept number 1 as it was only 1.1x the cost of concept 2 but it was significantly preferred by consumers. So 10% was worth investing in. There is also a challenge if it was 100% more than concept 2 which may have meant the trad-off would go the other way... but in the absence of cost information at the initial decision it becomes incredibly difficult to stop the train and switch concepts...confronting the 'tyranny of trade-offs'; that is why the way we build conceptual models plays a key role in determining how we perceive and play with our building blocks..as Michael Schrage says in Serious Play:

 

The value of prototypes resides less in the models themselves than in the interactions - the conversations, arguments, consultations, collaborations -- they invite. Prototypes force individuals and institutions to confront the tyranny of trade-offs. That confrontation, in turn, forces people to play seriously with the difficult choices they must ultimately make. The fundamental question isn't, What kinds of models, prototypes and simulations should we be building? but, What kind of interactions do we want to create? The latter question aims at the heart of strategic introspection. Consequently, the design focus - the value emphasis - must be on the quantity and quality of human interactions that modelling media can support. Who should be working together? What should they be talking about? Who should see the model next?

Because previously there was a lack of a 'concept costing' building block buyers were regarded a cynics because we felt that any deviation from what we already produced to something new and conceptual was always met with reluctance and to misquote Oscar Wilde, buyers had the reputation of knowing

"the price of everything and the value of nothing".

A Design Space conversation changed that view for ever and opened up possibility in the minds of the team members. They knew that their ideas and opinions would be listened to...it would not be treated cynically. In the words of Ovid...

Picture uploaded  by berzowska. used with thanks under CC.

“A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip, and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.”

I was leafing through my old notebooks and came across this, written in January, 2006 (thought... did I write it or copy it... creative or karaoke?):

"The odds of success of a concept, but on the variety of methods used to investigate and promote the concepts. The rapid discovery and rapid design techniques move concepts along the process faster, but unless we constantly evolve new methods for executing the process we will not reap the benefits. Innovating faster means learning faster; somewhere at the beginning of the project we need an idea for the product or service, driven from an insight about the consumer and a story about how it (the product or service) would work, and what it would do to change the life of of that consumer."


Picture uploaded on by jurvetson. Used with thanks under CC.

So start playing (seriously) and have fun with your (and other people's) building blocks. The story can promise much; and that promise is delivered by the result of serious play.

 

Sinclair C5 and Innovation Nation

  Sinclair C5 
  Originally uploaded by adactio

“The biggest single failing in British innovation businesses is identifying true market need and specifying a product or service which meets that need. That is the biggest glaring gap.”

Martin Rigby, MD ET Capital.

John Denham, Secretary for Innovation, Universities and Skills launched his White Paper Innovation Nation yesterday, whilst his colleague Alistair Darling increased the tax burden on entrepreneurial companies! As reported in the Independent, He is planning an Innovation initiative for government departments.  Under the plan, all 21 government departments will be required to draw up an "innovation procurement plan" on how they will incorporate new technologies from smaller businesses..... "Some of it won't work. That's the nature of innovation," said Mr Denham. The potential of revolutionary technology far outweighed the certain failures that will also occur. He said: "You can't have the iPod without the Sinclair C5."

Worryingly we always refer to the Sinclair as an example of failure of British Innovation and iPod as a success... but hang on.... isn't the iPod an example of US success?
I also remember this quote from a presentation by Sir George Cox, “If Bill Gates had started in the UK he would now be the biggest software distributor in Guildford.”
I have been lazily keeping an eye on British innovators to replace the iPod bit of the above statement and my heart beat faster as I read about the sale of Bebo in the Independent over breakfast.... they are Brits and making a fortune.. well done.. no hang on, they live in California.

The biggest and best transforming ventures have been simple ideas with simple strategies.
-- John Doerr, Venture Capitalist

Their story is in the Guardian here and Ihave abstracted pieces below: yet again the Insight that drove their creativity was personal  Blog Early, Blog Often was created because, in the words of Michael Birch  "'I wanted it to be a place where I could exchange photos and keep in touch with my family in England,' Michael Birch's original internet plans were aimed at an older age group - thirty-somethings - but he soon learnt that social networking on-line depends on finding a focus based on more than age - a classroom, for instance, or a particular hobby.
'But you can't control who finds websites popular. Teenagers are always the early adopters online because they have more time on their hands and less money - and social networks are free.'

And so Bebo spread entirely by word of mouth in schools and colleges, to the point where his site now has 100 million page views every day. Bebo is just a refinement of Ringo, Birch's previous attempt at a social networking site that he built in 2003 and sold not long after it reached 400,000 members. And that grew out of BirthdayAlarm.com, a successful birthday reminder service using eCards that currently has 40m users. Birch bought the name Bebo from someone else. 'When we planned the site, all the cool, short names were taken,' he says. ' But after we bought it we invented an acronym for it: blog early blog often.'

It could be that Bebo and co have nothing much to do with social networking in the established sense. Duncan Watts, a sociologist at Columbia University in New York, recently told the New Yorker that it had more to do with 'voyeurism and exhibitionism. People like to express themselves, and they are curious about other people.' That is to say, it's just a basic human instinct.

On a practical level, the real reason Bebo has taken off so fast is because it can be mastered by a 12-year-old. There is no tricky programming to learn, no software to load. You click on a template and receive instant gratification."

Now what was that killer UK innovation?... and by the way Jonathan Ive is British... does that count?

Picture uploaded  by exfordy. Used with thanks under CC.

Perhaps we should actually be saying :

"Is the iPod the new JCB of the music world. After all the JCB is beautifully designed, available world-wide, changes the lives of people around it; uses the best components from around the world; is iconic and people do great things to music with it."

Picture uploaded  by Indigo Goat  . Used with thanks under CC.

So we need to start with a consumer insight and drive the ideas, concepts, prototypes and implementations from that POV- validity... viability enters the conversation later as we figure out how to make enough money from it to do it again, and again, and... we need to remember that products don't stand alone and may be part of of the armoury of a systems thinker. after all JCB's diesel record breaker is part of their effort of ensuring they have an excellent source of diesel engines... JCB, because Caterpillar, their great rivals, bought out Perkins, the diesel manufacturer to both. So they decided to bring some engine manufacture in-house... which meant developing a diesel of their own. So doing an Apple they looked for partners to enhance their expertise - Construction equipment manufacturer JCB announced plans to develop and manufacture its own 4 and 6 L diesel engines specifically for use in its line of off-highway equipment. The engines, which will comply with future worldwide emissions requirements, are to be developed in close partnership with (link) Ricardo, AVL, Cosworth and Krause.

So maybe we don't need or Sinclair C5's but will make do with JCB... and Ricardo, Cosworth, etc.

Go create: What from what?.

  Small Worlds... 
  Originally uploaded by Trapac

in the dim and distant, studying the Finite Element Method introduced me to the Dirac Delta Function.  Re-watching an episode of Atom it suddenly hit me that the Paul Dirac whom the presenter, Professor Al-Khalili was describing as the originator of a theory (1928) whose equations predicted the existence of anti-matter was the very same person who derived that delta function, and enabled me, and many others like me, to change the way we designed and developed products in the last quarter of the 20th century. As Churchill and Marshall McLuhan put it

"We shaped the tools and then the tools shaped us."

Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger for "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory".  Professor Al-Khalili  went on to say that eventually anti-matter was detected  in a cloud chamber by Carl Anderson in 1935. Ultimately the positron that Carl Anderson detected found use in PET scanners incorporated into MRI scanners for hospital use.

The History of the PET device is reproduced here from the wikipedia entry

The concept of emission and transmission tomography was introduced by David Kuhl and Roy Edwards in the late 1950s. Their work later led to the design and construction of several tomographic instruments at the University of Pennsylvania. Tomographic imaging techniques were further developed by Michel Ter-Pogossian, Michael E. Phelps and others at the Washington University School of Medicine ^{[2] [3]}

In the 1970s, Tatsuo Ido at the Brookhaven National Laboratory was the first to describe the synthesis of 18F-FDG, the most commonly used PET scanning isotope carrier. The compound was first administered to two normal human volunteers by Abass Alavi in August 1976 at the University of Pennsylvania. Brain images obtained with an ordinary (non-PET) nuclear scanner demonstrated the concentration of FDG in that organ. Later, the substance was used in dedicated positron tomographic scanners, to yield the modern procedure.

PETNET Solutions introduction states

The first primarily used commercial PET scanner was introduced in 1975. In the 70s and 80s, PET was mainly used for research. During the early 90s, PET expanded into hospitals, diagnostic clinics, mobile systems and physician practices as more and more of the medical community began to realize the utility of PET.

From theory to useful practice has taken around 60 years.

Special Relativity was theoretically predicted by Albert Einstein in 1905 (Nobel laureate in 1921) and is the basis of Giant Magnetoresistance discovered around 1988, which enabled the design of such products as the iPod. France's Albert Fert and Germany's Peter Gruenberg won the 2007 Nobel Prize "for the discovery of giant magnetoresistance".

So why am I writing this... for two reasons

1. I read a copy of New Scientist for Feb 23rd in our local library... The article on Comment and analysis page caught my eye...

The article, on the Comment and analysis page, by Donald W. Braben ( new book) begins

"ONCE upon a time, economists thought economic growth came from the holy trinity of capital, resources and labour. Then in the 1950s, the American economist Robert Solow proved that this accounted for only around 10 per cent. The remaining 90 per cent he put down to "technical change" - technological progress and growth in knowledge. Science and technology, in other words. In 1987, he won the Nobel prize in economics for his discovery.

Today we seem to have forgotten Solow's insight. The key to scientific and technological productivity is to give creativity full rein...... etc."

Later in the article, he goes on to write of his leadership of  "Venture Research, a BP-sponsored enterprise which I founded in 1980 and ran for ten years, encouraged researchers with radical ideas to apply for funding. We created an interactive environment in which scientists could select from themselves. Almost all researchers chosen in this way had previously been rejected by the peer-review process. Many of them went on to be very successful. BP subsequently withdrew its sponsorship of Venture Research which became an early casualty of the obsession with short-termism."

2. The news that a nearby iconic landmark may be under threat.

Picture uploaded by jamie.lovelock. Used with thanks under CC.

Jodrell Bank is a highly visible artefact representing the UK's commitment to advanced research..

as Manchester University puts it here

"Any long-term threat to Jodrell Bank, with its high public profile, would undermine confidence in Britain's determination to remain at the forefront of science and technology.  The Lovell Telescope is undergoing a major enhancement and plans are well-advanced to upgrade MERLIN in order to provide British astronomers with a unique instrument ready to work with the Hubble Space Telescope and the next generation of telescopes in other parts of the spectrum. Jodrell Bank scientists and engineers can give MERLIN a dramatic boost in performance by making innovative use of optical-fibre technology.  As Jodrell Bank's Director Professor Andrew Lyne says: ``this is just the sort of IT-related development in which Britain should be investing, and was identified as such in PPARC's carefully thought-out Long Term Technology Plan.''

The Director of MERLIN, Dr. Philip Diamond adds: "the sums involved are not large -- 6 million pounds would transform Britain's home-based radio astronomy facility. This is a drop in the ocean compared with the 20 billion pounds the government is receiving for commercial exploitation of the radio spectrum for the next generation of mobile phones."

Any threat to Jodrell Bank would follow the decision to close down the major scientific facility at Daresbury only 20 miles away. If the plan outlined in the Sunday Times was to be carried through it would be another body-blow to science in the North West.  On the other hand the MERLIN optical-fibre development would involve close collaboration with the IT industry in the North West and hence mean new jobs in the area."

As the two example at the beginning of this entry illustrate it takes a long time for the fruits of scientific endeavour to filter through to societal benefits... but they are worth it... ask cancer patients and iPod users (who may be the same people). Unfortunately the politicians that set budgets for scientific research have 5-year horizons..... and commercial research funding may not be much better... a crisis will facilitate bottom-line cuts to maintain profitability as top-line initiatives are slower to filter through to profitability under conventional thinking.

I wrote about the three horizon approach that facilitates/stimulates dialogue about short and long term  innovative behaviours here; this is hard enough to put into practice....  To throw a light on the overall journey from a glimmer to the glare of success.........Do we need more horizons beyond these to cover basic research and technology knowledge acquisition?

Picture uploaded by Montrasio International. Used with thanks under CC.

Remember what Steve Jobs said:

Here's to the crazy ones.

The misfits.

The rebels.

The troublemakers.

The round pegs in the square holes.

 

The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules.

And they have no respect for the status quo.

 

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,

disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.

Because they change things.

 

They invent. They imagine. They heal.

They explore. They create. They inspire.

They push the human race forward.

 

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

 

While some see them as the crazy ones,
We see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.

All we need to do is find space for them! They will do the rest! Is that space in the Secret Garden of Frances Hodgson Burnett:

“At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, and then they hope it can be done, then they see it can be done - then it is done and all the world wonders why it wasn’t done centuries ago.”

Is that four horizons or phases? (see also here for 4 phases- are they also the Secret Garden?)

I could load my iPod= consumer satisfaction

  my first iPod 
  Originally uploaded by velorowdy

Musing on the success of the iPod in its first five years Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies said (in Oct, 2006) "It's so intricately tied to an ease-of-use model for acquiring and accessing content, but also being able to play it and distribute it among other devices." Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies.

Another eighteen months on and Umair writes

"Macbook Air: iPod or Newton?

Remember what the conventional wisdom was regarding the iPod when it launched?

That it was pretty, but was easily outcompeted by other mp3 players offering better features - more memory, bigger screens, etc, etc - and so it was doomed to fail.

The iPod got slammed on it's release - because almost everyone failed to understand that Jobs wasn't playing an orthodox game of feature-based (aka price) competition.

Apple wasn't trying to incrementally improve a failing value proposition - but to blow it up entirely, and open up new strategic trajectories for an almost entirely moribund consumer electronics industry.

I think it would be wise to place the anti-hype surrounding the Macbook Air firmly in that context."

we can see that that is still true for the iPod... but is it equally true for the MacBook Air?

The comments to Haque's post are intriguing... here are extracts:

" ...  yes, but...

"cool" also has a shelf-life, and can cause a whole lot of problems, from labor conditions to landfills..."

and...

"It's not a new product category, and it's not a major strategic shift.

It's just a sign that Mac sales have improved to the point where there's enough volume to support more niche products like the Air. It's a bit like the ipod shuffle vs. the ipod."

It certainly seems that a sustainable innovation strategy must be based on consumer/customer/user insights to drive the search for value creating opportunities (VCO). VCOs that are also sustainable seem to be based on a robust platform that can be reused to build different outputs in the form of products, services, processes and alliances that continually recreate the possibilities for people so that innovation by design conforms to Kevin Roberts definition of innovation:

 

“Innovation is something that changes the life of the customer. It changes the life of the customer in some way or the world in which the customer experiences things. That’s innovation” (from Lovemarks)

Moving music on mobiles- iterating to perfection?

  musicstation 
  Originally uploaded by IC Pod

As Bill Buxton pointed out in Sketching User Experiences it took 3 years and 4 iterations for the iPod to become an overnight success. A few days ago I wrote (opaquely) about rapid prototyping and iteration as a way of achieving successful products, where a product is the outcome of the Design Journey. I referred to Charles Arthur's critique of the Vodaphone Live music download service available to mobile phone users and the shortcomings of this offer. Charles commented there
"Yes, Vodafone Live is a pain - but you should look at tomorrow's paper, where I review MusicStation - which really does do music to the mobile, properly. It's fantastic."

His review of Omnifone's MusicStation in the Valentine's Guardian. Arthur wrote:
"......It's a music subscription service, and you'll surely find yourself listening to more music, even if you don't actually buy more as a result....
It's very, very slick. There are 1.5m tracks on offer which does include jazz and classical,.....
In just a few days of testing I tried out a far bigger range of music than I'd ordinarily come across in a month. That's because it's subscription.....

Pros: Intuitive, cheap, good range of tracks, "community"

Cons: Sucks up batteries: your phone needs regular recharging"

So  why do I talk of iterating to perfection? I have mentioned the concept of Iterative Capital (It is a resource that gives companies the ability to play seriously with more and more versions of various ideas in less and less time says Michael Schrage)- the capability to design>build>play>reflect>redesign>... in an accelerating process that gets to the successful product much faster than trying to do it perfectly first time of trying.

If an organisation cannot spend its iterative capital wisely then other organization's innovation teams will and act  to  improve the offer.  In the iPod example Apple iterated to the tipping point  of success itself ... in the case of music on your phone it seems the iterations are passing between organisations... so iteration I1 seems to be the Motorola+iTunes offer- the ROKR E1- September 2005

I2 might be the Vodaphone Live

I3 could be MusicStation

so will we have an Iteration 4 and will it take the three years too launch THE SOLUTION... and yes I've deliberately left the iPhone out... The point I am trying to make is that getting the solution nearly right gives you a chance to try again but you have to have 2 capabilities: that of reviewing your own products and saying "could do better" and the capability to quickly act "better for us to do better rather than let our rivals do it for us".... or to put it another way

"Good enough is rarely good enough; excellent is usually better.. and the consumer is the arbiter."

Designing and presenting essentials- 2 creative zens

  Twisted 
  Originally uploaded by Conor Lawless

Janice Kirkpatrick wrote in Innovation—the politics of change, Sept, 1996

"The creative process, the process of designing, is an excellent ‘tool’ for analysis, synthesis and reconstruction of the world. It reveals the ideologies that motivate us and excite us. This gives us clues which we can then use in developing an innovative strategy which may yield a future which will be appropriate: familiar yet new, challenging yet supportive."

In his last book (of lectures to be delivered in 1984- he died in 1983) "Six Memos for the Next Millennium", Italo Calvino wrote of literature values he felt should be passed on to the next millennium:
1. Lightness- a reaction to the heaviness of life.
2. Quickness- should not be confused with measurable speed; it is about mental agility.
3. Exactitude - a planning process; creating a clear, memorable image; language with nuance.
4. Visibility- making complex relationships understandable and definable.
5. Multiplicity- a system of systems; interpretation at various levels
which he completed and left the title for the last:-
6. Consistency- clarity of content and aesthetics; holistic sustainability

Garr Reynolds writes on pages 31 & 32 of his book Presentationzen

"Creating presentations is a supremely creative process.....

...Once you realise that the preparation of a presentation is a creative act, not merely the assembling of facts and data in a linear fashion, you'll see that preparing a presentation is a "whole-minded" activity that requires as much right-brain thinking as it does left-brain-thinking......... the translation of your content into presentation form will require that you exercise much more of your so-called right brain."

On p.104 in the section on Simplicity Garr refers to the term being "essentially synonymous with clarity, directness, subtlety, essentialness and minimalism." which also maps onto the 6 Memos

If we pull all this together, we may see that the creative processes that gave us something to talk about are the very same ones that will enable us to create the story we wish to tell, and the audience want to hear! They both deserve the time to do a great job of designing the material, as in most presentations we are asking our audience to think innovatively and consider doing something differently. For as Bill Buxton says:

“You have to spend as much time directing your innovation and creativity to fostering a culture of creativity and a receptiveness to innovation as you spend on the ideas themselves.”


Picture link.
So we must remember to plan time and space into our schedules for the creation of a great presentation... as well as great products, services, experiences. Our audience deserves nothing less!

Opportunity for strong robust growth 2008

  7042_image(3968) 
  Originally uploaded by IC Pod

I was an academic in the recession that hit the UK in the late 1970's.
One summer I did some research on Design Process and Analysis with a sponsored student from an engineering company that made hydraulic pumps and valves for everything from taps in a home central heating to industrial steam raising plant. They had a highly skilled but compact factory workforce and highly professional design and engineering teams. They had invested heavily in automated manufacture and so were a relatively lean operation. Orders were thin, so ,what did they do? innovate. Even then they realised that India would become the heart of iron and steel casting and finishing industry so they started to prepare for that day.

So in that recession they made some key strategic decisions:

To move simple casting and finishing work to India (e.g. domestic tap assemblies and central heating pumps and valves:-

To invest in a new range of superior industrial pumps and valves incorporating the latest material, machining, manufacturing and fluid dynamics knowledge;

to simplify designs so that manufacture was more straightforward ( and one day when India's manufacturing quality had developed to the necessary level- move production there- joint venture business model);

to retain and improve the skills and competences of their staff to handle the interactions and pressures of collaborative working across internal and external interfaces. This implies the acquisition of new and different tools and technologies.

It strikes me that as resources get scarcer driven by economic imperatives the same approach will pay dividends, wherever we are starting from. But if you are a control freak this approach (involving letting go), will drive you mad.. if you are a process freak then this period is going to be great fun!

So let us start by adopting a radical approach to equity release.. where the capital we  want to  exploit is iterative capital... the process way is to go looking for M>W>D. Releasing budget committed against time for a project so that it can be used in other more effective ways, remembering Michael Schrage's words in Hyperinnovation:

 

“Networked Iterative Capital is like networked financial capital: its velocity and impact increase as it hurtles towards opportunity.”

It is this effect that multiplies the advantages that come from adopting and exploiting M>W>D.We could start by noting the interactions that are needed to move the project forward at any given point vs. the way we decide now... do we do them together or in series.. and which takes longer. If we are a team distributed in time and space (i.e globally distributed) what tools allow us to be (virtually) in the same space interacting creatively and decisively?

Picture uploaded on by harald_kirr. Used with thanks under CC.

logo ono: the long tale of iteration

  logo ono 
  Originally uploaded by IC Pod

To deliver effective experiences to a mass audience we really have to consider both the validity of a concept and the viability of the demonstrated prototypes derived from the initial insight.

IN the IHT Alice Rawsthorn has written in

 

iPhone's magic touch becomes design's gold standard for 2007

 

"As for the design debacle of 2007, what else could it be but the London 2012 Olympic Games logo? Like the iPhone, it's the only serious contender in its category, but for all the wrong reasons."

I wonder whether the initial concept sketches were shown to ordinary people early in the process or whether the unveiling was the first time. The key to innovative behaviour is to iterate fast and often, with the right people, to ensure feedback initially for understanding of the challenge and later for confirmation that we have interpreted the feedback sensibly. in other words to ask to questions:

Initially: Is this a valid idea? Do I get positive responses? How does the reaction vary across a range of ideas made tangible?

and later, much later: Can we sell enough? Can we make money from this?

I remember seeing a concept model for new packaging that just did not feel right, but it had a beautiful profile. The designer strongly defended the concept and the marketer, the project leader, accepted his defence. We built another model dropped in on a tea-break of a consumer panel down the corridor  and asked them to assess the model. "Its all wrong," they said. "But it is a pretty shape." we said. "Pretty useless." was the reply. We changed the design to another ergonomically acceptable shape, still embodying the aesthetic and it was a success.

Remember Michael Schrage's pithy definitions:

 

"Innovation isn't what innovators do....it's what customers and clients adopt." , and secondly
 

"Innovation = Reaction to the Prototype."

So the sooner people are exposed to tangible examples of the ideas, concepts and prototypes the sooner we can understand the emergent value of our offering. In other words rapid iteration of a concept based on the best knowledge we have at that point in time is better than pursuing perfection as we understand it and taking a long time to get there. There are three quotes to bear in mind:

Michelangelo said:
"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."

The Red Queen to Alice, in Alice in Wonderland,  

“It takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”

Samuel Becket observed
 

No matter; try again; fail again, fail better

Picture uploaded on by Daquella manera. Used with thanks under CC.

From-Experience: the best projects start with the consumer

Experience
Originally uploaded by jeffmcneill

I am not apologising for repeating the definition of innovation that Kevin Roberts wrote in Lovemarks:

“Innovation is something that changes the life of the customer. It changes the life of the customer in some way or the world in which the customer experiences things. That’s innovation”

So an innovation is as great as the insights that inspire it and as poor as the weakest link that delivers it.

Reflecting on this a business group president observed:

“Understanding our consumer will of course produce product ideas. Good understanding, logically will generate good ideas. But in our battle for share at the margin good ideas alone are not enough. Success will come from something more than an idea. It will emerge from insight. And in my view insight derives from an intimacy of understanding. So we have to become expert in, indeed competitively the best in, sensitive observation of our consumer and his or her world.”

More pragmatically, we can define a consumer insight as the discovery of something interesting or enlightening about the consumer's needs, beliefs or behaviour. This penetrating understanding can provide hooks or clues to help us to identify opportunities to address the needs of consumers in new and competitively superior ways. 

One of the challenges is to observe our consumers through a new lens

Picture uploaded by MegElizabeth_. Used with thanks under CC.

What are they discussing? Is it relevant to our strategy of bringing new benefits to the cleaning task? If I am a surface chemist does it inform me in any way? If I am a tool designer? a marketer? Deconstructing the whole experience over time might be revealing! But what are they discussing?

In Insideout: Microsoft in our own words p.78, the author wrote

"Second-hand information has its charm, but gossip and expensive French cheese are about the only things that get better the farther you are from the source.

If you want to make sure that your customers are happy with your products, you have to communicate with them directly: get out of your office, go to the place where they use your software, watch them, and listen to them, and listen to them. Plus, there's nothing like a change of scenery to clear your head and make room for some astonishing new insights to move in and take over.......

Listening to customers is rewarding in so many ways. That's why we go to great lengths to do it."

But listening to customers mean thay talk of now which can limit our horizons if we are innovating for tomorrow.

Jane Fulton Suri, notes in her book Thoughtless Acts? :

"Directly witnessing and experiencing aspects of behaviour in the real world is a proven way of inspiring and informing [new] ideas. The insights that emerge from careful observation of people's behaviour . . . uncover all kinds of opportunities that were not previously evident."

So, ideas are potential ways to respond to a consumer insight.

The problem is that, in our highly pressured global environment, organisations find it too tempting to view a reflective way of working as time-wasting and so significant opportunities go unrecognised until an upstart organisation, suddenly destabilises the market with an offer that allows existing consumers to move their attention and purchases to something more exciting and in keeping with their aspirations.

"Everything you see and touch was once an invisible idea until someone chose to bring it into being. Any powerful ideas is absolutely fascinating and absolutely useless until we choose to use it." [Richard Bach]

Ultimately, we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we design are the "things" that we sell, rather than the individual, social and cultural experience that they engender, and the value and impact that they have. Design that ignores this is not worthy of the name.

[Bill Buxton] See here for more thoughts on this.

The academic, Mohan Sawhney, defined insight ans consumer insight in this fashion:

Insight – Conceptual definitions

• Grasping the inner nature of things intuitively

• Clear or deep perception of a situation

• Clear (and often sudden) understanding of a complex situation

• A feeling of understanding

Consumer insight

A customer insight is a fresh and not-yet obvious understanding of consumer beliefs, values, habits, desires, motives, emotions or needs that can become the basis for a competitive advantage.

– A not-yet obvious discovery

– A unique and fresh perspective

– A penetrating view of the obvious

– A competitively-advantaged idea

– Grounded in consumer understanding

– Not a number, a fact, or a quote from a consumer

A colleague once said "discovering insights is like fishing...

Picture uploaded by jurvetson. Used with thanks under CC.

you can sit there all day and not get a bite; or only land a tiddler. Another day you might catch a big one in a matter of minutes or after several hours. Insights are like those big fish... they are worth discovering but it can take time." But we need to find that time.

HMV and trajectories of change: the industry rules

HMV
Originally uploaded by Carolyn Coles

The cover notes of How Industries Evolve states "OVER THE LAST DECADE, many companies have failed to generate substantial returns on their investments in innovation. Executives lament that the pace of change is too fast, forcing companies to make uninformed and often costly decisions. But Anita McGahan argues that there is a di