Design_at_the_edge

Before the (design) journey decide where you (all) are

  Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk 
  Originally uploaded by James Gordon

Sir George Cox once said that British enterprise seems to have adopted the mantra

"Can’t Innovate. Don’t Innovate. Go Nowhere!"

Yet we are being exhorted to "Innovate or die!"
The problem with just creating new products and services without real thought to how they connect with both our consumers and our business is that we can end up being successful in the former without making a success of the latter, which may hand the proposition to a rival or even a new entrant. As I have stated elsewhere

"Brands are made in the mind. Products are made in the factory. Design connects the two."

I was unaware of it at the time but Janice Kirkpatrick delivered a thoughtful lecture entitled

 "Innovate or deteriorate. Design or die.The Role Of Design In Innovating For Business Success."

In it Kirkpatrick asks

"Why is it, that while the future looks so tempting, many businesses continue to live in the past rather than embracing the future? Why can’t they recognise that the world has changed? Instead they prefer to rearrange the furniture or stand still and gather dust. Are unable to face the uncertainty of innovation and become paralysed, doing nothing at all?

Perhaps these businesses have inherited a cynicism about new ideas. New ideas are often presented as mere ‘entertaining diversions’ from tried and tested ways of doing things. But the excuse that “we've always done it this way because it works” is no longer an option. What works today may not be good enough to work tomorrow. Digital modelling, rapid prototyping and a host of new tools for accelerating the research and development process mean that new rivals appear from left-field and make your company obsolete overnight.

Other businesses maintain a superstitious attitude to innovation. They regard creativity as dangerous, unquantifiable ‘magic’ and creative people as unpredictable ‘artists’; reckless, irresponsible individuals who over-excite employees and ‘rock the boat’ by asking uncomfortable questions with unfamiliar, unsettling answers. It should take comfort from the knowledge that creativity is nothing new, it’s been around since the beginning of civilisation. Even ‘design’ as we know it, first appeared in the 1830s. There’s no excuse for being suspicious of a tried and tested process that's been professionally practised for over 170 years."

Packaging system design was moving from being a merely functional component of the product to a consumer tangible expression of the total product. We were faced with taking people on a journey- a design journey where some people had been part of the way, some thought they had been part of the way and those that hadn't thought about making a journey, let alone setting out on one!

Karim Rashid viewing the challenge from his perspective wrote to me

“Remember, we live in a world where beauty is finally appreciated again and innovation, technology, are shifting our social life. A bottle is no longer a just a stylized bottle but an artistic instrument for engaging brand, a philosophy, and an experience, in our new global lifestyle.”

Picture uploaded  by gmarcos1. Used with thanks under CC.

We created a tool to facilitate people's arrival at a common starting position and an understanding of their role with respect to the other team members;in addition the role of the project and the expectation of its contribution to the organisational strategy and goals. It enables team to co-construct a vision of a winning product or service, driven by the motivating insight. It is called a Design Journey.

Keeping in context and flow

  search the light 
  Originally uploaded by doolittle1989

One of the most potent things we ever did was to adopt a  mantra of QSI- Quality, Speed and Innovativeness in designing. For instance concentrating on improving the speed of digital and physical prototyping to ensure that we "Put the right prototype in the right hands at the right time." had interesting side-effects.. including using prototyping in the search for solutions to design problems ("What do you think?"), not as prototyping to produce possible solutions ("Do you like it?").

Kevin Kelly's blog

Recent Innovations in the Method  reports on KK survey of scientific community; he asked

 

"What would you say are the innovations in the scientific method of the last 50 years? What has changed the nature of science in practice in your lifetime? I am primarily interested in innovations in the process of science itself, rather than the discoveries made by that process."

Recent Innovations in the Method aggregated the replies including one from Chris Langton

Search Engines -- One (maybe two) obvious things are the recent emergence of online pre-print archives, resources like Wikis, and sites like MathWorld, all of which show up from searches with Google or other search engines. This capacity has so reduced the turnaround time for finding the answer to a question that may emerge in one's research or thinking, that you can get an answer while the context that generated the question is still foremost in your mind. This has, I think, fundamentally changed our ability to think about complex problems, especially those which lead us out of our area of expertise - enough to qualify as a true phase-transition in our thinking and problem solving capabilities. The potential for a new idea to spread far and wide in a very short time, combined with the filtered-search capacity that allows us to quickly find a specific idea-needle in that enormous data-haystack, qualifies, in my mind, as a genuine advance in the scientific method. After all, it is simply an enhancement of the basic algorithm of the scientific method (evolution really): the generation and distribution of variant ideas combined with a strong selective filtering process. (CL)

Our M>W>D approach, I have realised was affecting what is encapsulated above.. in this sentence..

This capacity has so reduced the turnaround time for finding the answer to a question that may emerge in one's research or thinking, that you can get an answer while the context that generated the question is still foremost in your mind.

We literally worked on reducing the time from a CAD 'sketch' to a physical prototype from a month to a week to a day. This had the effect of enabling the project team to collaborate across disciplinary and organisational boundaries to improve the quality of decisions.

Imagine the logistics of getting a model round, say Europe, for feedback from a group that had met for a day, a month ago; they return to their day jobs and loose focus and context of that discussion that launched the prototyping activity. Now imagine getting to 17.00 pm after a hard days work in collaboration with the core team covering the eight sides of Design Space. The CAD modellers spend another two hours 'improving' the model... before joining the team for a well-earned dinner. The modelmaker takes the file converts it for the rapid prototyping machine sla or sls (or....) then overnight a model, or models with variations, are created. Meanwhile the core team go for that dinner. Next morning the models are put in the Design Space (project working studio) ready for a 9.00 am start. The models provoke an hour of tough discussions leading to a combined design with the best attributes brought together and approved for exposure to consumers (to ask "What do you think?"). By lunchtime the team are on their way to meetings elswhere or aeroplanes home. The CAD modeller hones the digital prototype and by the day's end the file is Filed for access by the prototyping network.. within 24-48 hours physical models will be growing on machines around the world... next week we will be getting consumer feedback in all the major markets that can be addressed by this product.

Copyrighted picture..link

The Iterative Capital capability of rapid prototyping devices is very potent. Like any good capital manager we need to know what we have and how much of it. We also need to consider everybody and everything involved in an iteration, and how they might benefit from the IC.

Michael Schrage, in Hyperinnovation writes

"Tensions and Trade-offs

Consider this simple “thought experiment” to illustrate the tensions and trade-offs that digital modelling presents. A new rapid prototyping and seamless simulation infra-structure enables a manufacturing company to double the number of development cycles its product team can run. Under the old system, new product teams could perform 10 cycles during their 10-month development window. That is, the development team could do 10 iterations —or versions — of its product before the ship date. The new technologies now let the development team run up20 full iterations at virtually no extra cost. Think of those extra cycles as currency: Each additional cycle can “purchase” either a product improvement, a cost reduction, or a speed-up. Each cycle Is as valuable as any other cycle. Unspent cycles are monies saved. The hyper-innovation management challenge emerges. Just how should the team “spend” or “invest” those 10 extra cycles? What expenditure of this iterative capital will give the best returns? Should these innovation teams

:•Spend all their cycles on speed to come to market in half the time?

•Spend their cycles on improvements and come to market with a product that is 50 percent “better” after 10months?

•Spend their cycles on cost reduction to be able to cut prices by 30 percent?

•Spend all 10 cycles on the ideal blend of speed, price, and quality? Just what is that optimal blend? Why?

•Bet a couple of cycles on an intriguing but risky enhancement?

•Use a few cycles to test an alternate design approach?

•Save three cycles to keep the development costs down?

•Take those 10 cycles to develop an entirely new product concept?

There are no inherently right answers. Even worse, these hypothetical alternatives are far too simplistic. They lack the pain and menace that managers confront when hard organizational choices have to be made. Iterative capital investments, just like financial capital investments. There are no inherently right answers. Even worse, these hypothetical alternatives are far too simplistic. They lack the pain and menace that managers confront when hard organizational choices have to be made. Iterative capital investments, just like financial capital investments and human capital investments, create political and cultural conflicts for organizations."

Schrage continues

 

"For example, the development team has to decide whether to use those extra iterative cycles to focus on particular product features or specific cost reductions. Allocating the new cycles can create rifts: Should design get three; manufacturing get three; marketing get three; and the remaining one be held in reserve for emergencies? Perhaps the product manager should “own” the cycles budget. Deciding when key customers and suppliers can be brought in to help spend cycles is unclear. Some innovation champions may want them there at the very beginning. A more conservative management may prefer to hold their participation until the end. It’s also possible that doubling the number of cycles will have no impact at all on the way the firm manages its design relationships with suppliers and customers."

It is the behaviour of the teams around tangible prototypes, digital or physical, that ultimately determines how innovatively and effectively they use their Iterative Capital; and how well they progress on the road to becoming a Dream Team. It seems facilitating the right sorts of conversations goes a long way to  facilitating winning combinations of  'stuff' that delivers great experiences.

A peep into the future

A peep into the future
Originally uploaded by timtom.ch

'Virtually any technology that is going to have a significant impact over the next five to 10 years has already been around for about 10 years,' Bill Buxton said. So our challenge must be: how do we stumble across them?

The Christmas edition of The Economist in 'Face value' writes about the accidental innovator Evan Williams; extracts below

"AT SOME point in the decade after he moved from the farm in Nebraska where he grew up to the innovation hub that is the San Francisco Bay Area, Evan Williams accidentally stumbled upon three insights.......

"So, having already had two accidental successes—one called Blogger, the other Twitter—Mr Williams is now trying to make accidents a regular occurrence for his company, called Obvious............

So Mr Williams started Obvious, determined to go back to good accidental stumbling. One of its side projects—Mr Williams loves side projects so much that his main projects seem to exist mainly as placeholders—was something called Twitter. If blogs were difficult to explain in 1999, Twitters are well nigh impossible. You might call them micro-blogs or nano-blogs, as Twitter lets users write only 140 characters at a time, albeit from any device, or using an instant message or text message. Twitter imposes another restraint: each post must be an answer to the same question: What are you doing?

.....All of this has made Twitter the third “next big thing” in Silicon Valley in 2007—after the iPhone, Apple's innovative new mobile handset, and Facebook, a social-networking site. The proof is that copycats have sprung up, that Google has bought one of them and that Facebook has made its “status” updates, in effect, internal Twitters. (Facebook also works with Twitter itself.) Exactly how to make money from Twitter remains an open question......He would like to make Twitter as mainstream as Blogger. But what he really wants is to make stumbling on accidents into a culture, habit, process or speciality. That is why he has spun the 12 people working on Twitter out of Obvious ......

The irony of trying to plan accidents, and orchestrate their frequent occurrence, is not lost on Mr Williams. So he tries mental tricks. One is to ask “what can we take away to create something new?” A decade ago, you could have started with Yahoo! and taken away all the clutter around the search box to get Google. When he took Blogger and took away everything except one 140-character line, he had Twitter. Radical constraints, he believes, can lead to breakthroughs in simplicity and entirely new things."

Depending on your point of view we too could have had the idea for Twitter if we blogged a lot and used SMS a great deal and saw that a lot of the traffic is about 'What are you doing?"' Our iPhone could then 'twit' at us.

The Economist September 2003 Technology Quarterly introduction refers to Carl Franklin (Why Innovation Fails) and Jacob Goldenberg and David Mazursky (Creativity in Product Innovation) and writes of how to Expect the unexpected citing the highest innovation success rate as Random event spotting (92.9% successes), whilst referring to several techniques including Evan Williams mental tricks referred to above.

Twitter is interesting as it has proved to be a valid idea (some consumers like it) whilst its overall success is not proven yet as it has not demonstrated viability ( will it make money-directly or indirectly- for its producers?). Winning products and services are a balancing act between validity and viability; risk taking is allowing valid ideas to travel long enough to confirm, or otherwise, the viability of the tangible outcome of that original energising insight or idea. Many established organisations would have killed Twitter by now, but look at the odds of success in Designs on innovation.

The challenge for successful actions energised by the discovery of consumer  insights that become winning innovation is not to look around us but to travel in unfamiliar territory, to look from different points of view, reflect on what we observe and recognise in other words as William Gibson put it

Picture uploaded by david.alliet . Used with thanks under CC.

"The future is already here. It's just unevenly distributed."

He finds small groups of people doing revolutionary things and then imagines what it would be like if everybody was doing those things.

So our 2008 challenge is going the location of what is unevenly distributed, and on reflection knowing we have been there!

Picture uploaded by Joe Shlabotnik . Used with thanks under CC.

Form follows communication or vice versa?

Understaning the Impetus Behind the Fan-Fiction Phenomenon
Originally uploaded by Curtis Castillow

The design dictum "Form follows function" was coined by Louis Sullivan, a US architect (1856-1924).  During the last century function began to have a practical or technical meaning best expressed in the work of modernism and began to be associated with 'boring'. This led to Frog Design's dictum "form follows emotion" and later to "form follows fun".

I am thinking that maybe another viable dictum is "form follows communication". What story do we want to tell through the form and function of our new product or service? What opportunity does our new product and/or service offer to the potential consumer... how easy is it for them to create their own stories?

At the weekend I went to the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester and walked through the exhibition called

The Uncertainty of Identity

The opening poster to the exhibition starts:

The Uncertainty of Identity

The Biographies of Things

Objects are part of our own lives, and also have lives of their own. Like people, objects have biographies. Inspired by the work of the anthropologist, Igor Kopytoff, this exhibition reveals how an object’s identity is not fixed but is shaped by contexts in which it is exchanged, owned and used. Most of the objects here circulated as commodities, with an exchange value before they entered the Gallery’s collection.

However, once removed from the world of commodities, they become 'singularised’ and are valued for their cultural significance rather than their market price. These changes in their lives reveal an uncertainty of identity.

So how do we go about creating a "consumer story" we can share with our innovation team? and how do we design our offer in a way that allows the consumer to narrate their experience of using our goods/services?

One model we used is to take the [strategy]>insights>ideas>concepts>prototypes>
products/services flow described here. Leaving aside the strategy aspect by assuming (big assumption) that our innovation project aligns with business strategy, then we can draw a diagram of consumer story development and technical solution as:

INSIGHTS

the penetrating understanding from which many ideas can be generated; usually a consumer benefit could be a technology opportunity.

IDEAS

a possible consumer story or a possible technology/business

solution that could become a concept

CONCEPTS (or Schemes)

a plausible consumer story linked to a possible technology/

business solution that could become a product.

PROTOTYPES

a valid and viable consumer story delivered by a

valid  technology/business solution. (modified from here to reflect recent experience)

PRODUCTS/SERVICES

a valid and viable consumer story delivered by a

valid and viable technology/business solution.

As the consumer story is interactively developed using Design Fast Action techniques, continually asking "Does it fit with strategy?" versus "Is the consumer motivated?" can help ensure more radical ideas can be supported by the business as they are engaged in the story itself, rather than thinking how different from previous stories this is.

Eventually we set free our creation and the consumer takes over and determines, through their own stories,

"how an object’s identity is not fixed but is shaped by contexts in which it is exchanged, owned and used"

Picture uploaded by matthewsim . Used with thanks under CC.

So maybe

"Form follows communication follows form...."

City Walls may be great for elites to exert control

Chester 2006: Chester Wall
Originally uploaded by orangeacid

Bruce Nassbaum has written here

"Look around and you see people putting up silos around social media. Invitation-only social networks like doostang.com and customized corporate vitual worlds are blossoming. FaceBook folks are putting digital "doors" on their pages, controlling who can enter and for what purpose.

Is the golden age of truly open social networking in decline, as the young race to hide their youthful digital discretions and the rest of us tire of communicating with the masses and return to our own social/economic/political circles?

Yes, I know Twitter is very hot and runs counter to this trend. Yet, something is happening at the same time. Walls are going up. Something is cooking."

I remember working in a company division that was going from a local, country-based organisation to a European-based one. It involved all departments along the value-chain from development through manufacturing and marketing to logistics and suppliers. One of the technology enablers for this change project was the first version of Lotus Notes, enabling groups to set up their own communication and database for each project and interest group. At the same time we were trying to rein in costs so the travel budget was cut.

Picture uploaded by DMBFreakNo41. Used with thanks under CC.

In a matter of months we went from a set of local innovation projects that involved interested countries who would meet regularly in centres around Europe to swap information on progress and discuss how they could contribute or lead part of the action to a city state mentality where if you were on the periphery of a project and it was not obvious you should be in the list of people who could access the particularly Notes Conference as we called them.. you were out. Whereas I would meet people from, say, Italy in my local (British) canteen and be able to join in the lunchtime discussion and offer the services of my group to help with their current problem, I now found out by accident when visiting a supplier who might mention the Italian job they were involved in. I would come back to base, phone around the italian company and eventually convince someone to put me on the authorisation for the Notes Conference. Eventually people gave up and projects increasingly went wrong which encouraged people to be less open but feel more in control; totally opposite to the intention of the technology, reorganisation and common sense.

It is almost as if the elite club of those who are in start looking in and exclude those on the outside. Also the perceived uncertainties of being open to (almost) anyone can be very great and without facilitation and moderation the reason for wanting to be in can be seen to be of less value than staying out, and avoiding the possibilty of conversations that might be less than useful. It reminds me of the model that Matt Taylor created for the knowledge management process here

and which helped me reframe my thinking about how Notes applications should be redesigned, which meant thinking about the overall innovation ecosystem.

Perhaps we should think of physical analogies to FaceBook, etc. Why do we go to social spaces like this?

Picture Uploaded by wonderferret. Used with thanks under CC.

We arrive at a pub or club hoping to have a drink, nibbles, company, enjoy some good conversation, learn something interesting, share something. If its not working out we can slide into another conversation or even go elsewhere. We might even find people come with us to hopefully discover something more interesting somewhere else......or they might choose not to take up the invite as they can't see the point

Does the system we use on the web help hinder or enhance this, what are the downsides? My gut feel is the systems are not complete enough to serve as a platform. A good pub is likely to have something or someone who is larger than life to act as a Strange Attractor - 'something unique that is also compelling'.

There is also a bit of bio chemistry of space that is necessary ..what Rich Gold called Wet Space (hopefully in his book 'Plenitude' just published,my copy not arrived yet; just arrived..no its not!).. In Rich's words:

"What is a “wet space”? Well this room ( in which Gold was delivering lecture) is a wet space. You can smell, touch, feel each other; Pheromones and hormones are swirling; Very “mammal” - pack formations, leaders; Lots of gossip."

Social applications are not Wet Spaces but are what Rich called Damp Spaces..and maybe  occasionally Dry Space.... in his words:

"Dampness is new, only since the telegraph (though I get arguments). You are alone in your room; But you are connected via mediating technologies to one or more other people. Hence it has both wet and dry properties......

Damp spaces are “prophylactic” in that they don’t allow everything through. This makes them MORE and not less valuable than wet spaces. The communicative act itself becomes more designed and can actually become art. "

So where does this leave us with respect to social networks? Like being in a pub, the users want to be in control of themselves and who they socialise with. They don't expect the pub owner to tell people at one end of the bar who they have heard about at the other end. When the social space owner decides to broadcast everything heard to anyone they run the risk of everybody uprooting and moving to another pub where descretion is the norm. Webbed social applications need to remember how damp they need to be to attract and retain customers- its the total experience that counts.

The interesting thing is "Do we have two or more personas, say one for work projects and one for private activities? Or do we just decide to be 'me'"

Martin Varsavsky has some thoughts on social networks here and his site is an example of openness?

The Timesonline article Lecturers intrude in MySpace includes:

".... prospective undergraduates feel underwhelmed by efforts to communicate with them via online technology such as MySpace and YouTube, according to a survey of sixth-formers by Ipsos MORI. Students regard the virtual world as a place for entertainment, socialising and information-gathering. “[Young people] seem to take the view: ‘This is our space - don’t invade it’,” says Charles Hutchings, market research manager for the Joint Information Systems Committee that commissioned the survey. Students have an “inability to see how things like online social networking can tie in with learning”, he says."

At the end of the day it seems that context is important -same as it ever was...same as it ever was.

I guess my context is I am interested in how we design more innovative innovation networks;  but hang on Rich Gold stated

"Design is the most successful social science ever created."

[since writing this Bramble this interesting blog from Dave Pollard has appeared]

So, how do we improve our innovation hit rate?

19715838_9b976f2f86
Originally uploaded by IC Pod

Whenever we read about innovation, be it in the technology sector or FMCG we are told that 70% of our launches are withdrawn within a year as they fail to meet expectations -either as a valid offer for the customers (do they love it?), or as a viable product/service (Have we made money doing it?).
The interaction of global communication, speed of change and competition all ensure that incremental improvements are no loger enough for long-term survival and growth. But the rate of improvement of technologies also means we have the potential to radically improve our innovation and design capabilities, activities and results. I wrote here of what I regard as the five technology clusters that we need to master and exploit in order to have a shot at substantially improving our innovation performance.

The evolution of the list came from considering the process and what participants needs will be.

We wrote of the top level process as 3R's and 6D's so

We will have our 8 Design Space stakeholders working as a dream team to create new knowledge as they move along their Design Journey at each stage of their journey they will need representational tools to make their ideas, concepts, models, prototypes tangible to each other and all other interested parties. In otherwise we need to be able to visualise the design at any stage on the journey with the right fidelity to catalyse the right conversation. Show a potential consumer a beautifully finished realistic physical mockup and they will assume it is a finished work; show them a rendered sketch and they realise it is a rough concept and respond accordingly. We can tabulate 'things' we want to do at each stage.. this is just a quick stab at a list:

We need to embrace an iterative "fail forward-cycle back" approach to maximise learning

 

which means we have a great deal of sketches, illustrations, feedback data, etc, etc, to create and manage... we might therefore look at the activities from another (Design Space) point of view:

In Design Space it will be great if we can represent our thoughts, insights ideas and concepts using 2D and 3D sketching, drawing and modelling tools... we then need to visualise them in an appropriate form (e.g. rendered 3D model), but we also need to simulate how we will use "it" how we will make it, distribute it, etc.etc. and visualise the appropriate results. We will need to manage this cloud of data, information and digital artefacts we are generating and collecting. It will be great to make things tangible in a physical sense too. We also need to keep everyone up to speed on this project seeking and accepting critical comment from people wherever they are located. This implies we need to build a collaboration infrastructure.

So we now have 5 strategic design technology imperatives:

1. Digital Design Modelling

2. Design Simulation and Visualisation

3. Physical Modelling and Prototyping

4. Master Data Management

5. Collaborative Infrastructure

first mentioned here.

It is worth remembering that the models we build and visualise, digital, virtual, physical are what can drive our innovative behaviour. Michael Schrage put my thoughts into words in his book 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?"

So how do our 5 meta technologies support such activity? And how do we exploit them more effectively?

Technology trails to discover

Red Arrows British F1 8 July 2007i009
Originally uploaded by Martin Pettitt

When the first manifestation of a new technology makes its debut it is usually in the form of a device. A device is technology that doesn't quite work properly for a generalised sample of users but fascinates the geeks among us; a kind of alpha test for feasibility, but certainly not for viability, and maybe not even validity. The trajectory unfolding as the technology is refined can be perturbed by a timely injection of a potential customer's needs perturbing the technology trajectory from a near miss opportunity for the device into a valid product programme; If other customers also buy into the basic concept the chances of a viable product increase considerably. It is the inability to empathise with emerging indicators of needs of that early market that leads to a high failure rate, or as Martin Rigby , MD of ET Capital puts it:

“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.”

We also need to understand that technology is not an end in itself but an enabler; to quote Dave Rogers

“Technology changes how we do things. It doesn't change what we do. Ain't no technology that's gonna do that for us. Wanna better world? Be better people.”

In Marketing the Unknown: Developing market strategies for technical innovations Paul Millier talks extensively about this and includes a diagram that I've adapted here:

So if we have a technology worth pursuing the sooner we connect with potential customers the better. As Seth Godin puts it in this video  "...good technology gives you a shot at marketing."

But as Paul Millier points out a good way to lose a great deal of money is to develop a device and then improve the technology some more without really doing anything about the utility of the device. At the end of the day when we account for our innovative acumen it is the words of Michael Schrage that count:

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

Or to put it from the customers' perspective

Picture Uploaded by Lloydyidau. Used with thanks under CC.

So how can we deploy Design Technology to help?

Failure of concept, not a failure of design

8-Inch Cube
Originally uploaded by ydhsu

It is important not to get carried away with design. Innovation is more than design. Think of Roberto Verganti spotting that Italian [Milanese] innovation is driven out of conversations between executives who are leading that innovation process. It is the management of design that turns those conversations into winning products and services. So we are looking for better ways of "leading innovation and managing design".

The rather wonderful Cube is a thing of beauty but suffers from lack of expandability. As Steve Jobs put it himself

"[The G4 Cube] was not a failure of design," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "It was a failure of concept. We targeted the Cube at a professional audience. We thought they would rather have something small on the desk than expandability and we were wrong. It was a wrong concept "fabulously implemented."

Of course it doesn't mean we will expand the computer on the desk but professional Apple users like to feel they can if they need to. If it had been a Wintel box the response of the potential users might have been different.

Most products and services that have failed in the marketplace probably failed much earlier in the process and it wasn't until the consumer said "Don't like it" that the organisation could deal with that failure. It is the lack of "up-front homework" that leads to such high failure rates in the marketplace. If the foundations upon which you are building are soft then do not build too high until that foundation has hardened. In other words spend more of the resources at the beginning understanding the people who will ultimately use the product and service and what experience they would like to have. In the case of the G4 Cube it would have been worth spending time observing people working at their desks.. what did they do.. would more space make a difference? would more space make enough of a difference to make a trade-of with expandability; could we have a second cube that went underneath/on top that would allow expandability.. we could offer it so people are reassured that expansion is there. And how would we have these conversations?

http://www.theapplecollection.com/Collection/sketch/

Firstly we can sketch some boxes on desks and ask people what they think. With the questions we ask we can remodel and ask more people [not just any people but articulate, creative people who will be able to project themselves into the future and have a point-of-view]. This enables us to create a "valid" design concept, one provides answers to the questions "Is it a valid concept? Does someone like it?"

But before we go charging off to implement it we need to "test" our concept against another set of criteria, namely those that answer the question "Is it a viable concept?", "Do enough people like it to make it worthwhile spending more time and effort on it," Will we make money on it?" In fact it is time to increase the fidelity of our model, in fact, time to create a CADmodel that can be more widely shared with  people by presenting it photorealistically rendered catalysing a wider dialogue.

This leads us on to physical prototyping  and testing to demonstrate the viability of the team's thinking

picture link.

Finally we can say we have got the story right, the product or service is both valid and viable, and we can ramp up and launch

Steve Jobs shows it off here.

And finally, but most importantly, what does the buyer think? ...when they unwrap it

picture link.

... in use (after a couple of months)

and finally, when it is obsolete can we find sustainable tasks for it?

picture link

So it is simple really. Go on a Design Journey and answer two questions:

Is our solution valid?

Is our solution viable?

Small Ensemble 2 create great things?

Small Ensemble 2
Originally uploaded by celesteh

When I hear leaders say they want their project teams to "produce the iPod of.....[their industry] I wonder if it they would actually be better off exhorting us to become "the Li & Fung of our sector"

I read in the Daily Telegraph that "Marks & Spencer's biggest shoe supplier is being taken over by the Hong Kong-based group Li & Fung in a deal that will pave the way for it to act as a consolidator of Europe's supply chain management industry."
The name Li & Fung took me back to around the turn of the millenium; when I was a structural packaging Design Technology and Process Manager, creating effective ways of delivering world-class plastic packaging on a global scale. We (the team) had realised that the packaging value creation process encompassed the suppliers of enabling technologies, the packaging convertors and their toolmakers, etc,, design houses as well as all the internal functions of the company. The scary thing about the packaging activity in an organisation operating on a global scale is nobody in the organisation questions why you are knocking on their door. Truly world-class packaging activities affect, and are affected by, everyone associated with brand-delivery. We had a pragmatic way of handling this situation but lacked a robust business miodel to explain to other people... fortunatley enough of them took it on trust that we knew what we were doing for us to 'stay in business'.
It was about this time I went to New York to "sit-at-the-feet" of Gary Hamel in one of his workshops. Part of the workshop involved understanding the interaction of musicians and the conductor; including the opportunity to attempt to conduct a piece of music played by a guest pianist. This enabled us to explore what happens as you orchestrated in different ways.

I realised that this helped us understand what we were upto at work: orchestrating a large number of diverse skills to deliver an experience for the consumer. John Hagel had begun to write on the effect that web based services would have on business processes that were pulled together in an article Leveraged Growth: expanding sales without sacrificing profits in the Oct, 2002 Harvard Business Review. The summary stated: 

The traditional growth strategies of organic expansion and acquisition require up-front investments in additional assets, with an uncertain payoff. So the pursuit of growth almost always narrows margins, for a time or, in the worst case, forever. But another kind of strategy--leveraged growth--doesn't require companies to trade profitability for growth. That's because instead of owning assets, a company leverages the assets of other businesses operating at many levels of the value chain, capturing value for itself as a knowledge broker. The Hong Kong-based trading company Li & Fung, for instance, owns none of the facilities involved in processing raw material into the finished goods it supplies to European garment retailers and designers. It does, however, have privileged access to some 7,500 companies around the world that possess specialized production and distribution capabilities. Li & Fung uses its knowledge of the apparel market to leverage those companies' assets, using whichever companies are most suited to making whatever goods its customers demand. Orchestrating such a process network is one way to leverage other companies' assets. Another involves aggregating their resources, as Charles Schwab does when it makes the services of many related companies available through its web site or IBM does when it sponsors user groups. And Microsoft and Intel engage in possibly the subtlest of the leveraged growth strategies--shaping an economic web--by placing themselves at the center of a vast, ever-shifting group of companies that build on the Wintel computing platform. In a world of leveraged growth, the key question becomes: Which of your assets would give you the greatest power over other organizations? The company with the most powerful assets will have the greatest growth potential.

Returning to today's DT the article continues

In addition to M&S, the deal will see Li & Fung become a supplier to some of Britain's biggest high-street names, including Next, Boots and The Body Shop. It intends to use the acquisition as the basis for a string of deals that will enable it to construct a $1bn-turnover business in the UK and Europe.

The takeover of PBI illustrates the growing scale of Asia-based sourcing and supply chain-focused enterprises and the opportunity for acquisition-hungry players in a fragmented industry.

"The proposed acquisition will provide a unique platform and infrastructure for the future development of our European onshore business," said Bruce Rockowitz, president of Li & Fung (Trading).

Mr Rockowitz was speaking as Li & Fung unveiled a 41pc rise in operating profit to about £76m and predicted it would meet its target of recording $10bn in sales this year.

[In 2002  Li  & Fung had a turnover of $3bn]

In one of his Working Paper series Orchestrating Business Processes : Harnessing the Value of Web services Technology, John Hagel sets out the benefits enabled by exploiting the value of web services technology that comes from adopting different ways of doing things. Many of the benefits come from having a loosely coupled business process, orchestrated by a "process-owner" who takes responsibility for delivering a world-class performance. In another working paper he outlines how Li & Hung can rapidly reconfigure the "orchestra" to reflect the work they are performing for various clients.

These papers gave me retrospective  underpinnings to the exploration and exploitation that became part of our everyday jobs. Especially the paragraph on p.7 in the harnessing web services paper:

"Loosely-coupled business processes, because of their flexibility, create the potential for much more frequent and significant performance improvements. By focusing on milestones, orchestrators of loosely coupled business processes can provide continuous benchmarking capability rather than infrequent benchmarking more typical of hard-wired business processes."

But we have to beware the pitfalls of managing these loosely coupled processes as we once managed "ordinary" ones or even conventional outsourcing. As Hagel puts it

"This loosely coupled design for collaborative business processes calls for a very different management approach. The primary differences can be summarised across three dimensions: roles, rules and renewal."

See p.3 here for more details. And I will write a note on how we absorbed all this knowledge to help our packaging creation processes to take us on a Design Journey across the Design Space.

Ice Cream Man...and a sweet success

Ice Cream Man
Originally uploaded by dogfrog

The Economist this week has two articles on Italian champions. The first is on Italian firms dominating the world of eyewear, describing:

"A cluster of family-controlled firms in the area, such as Safilo, Marcolin, Marchon, and De Rigo, produce the vast majority of the world's sunglasses. Although many Italian firms are struggling to cope with cheap competition from Asia, compounded by the strength of the euro, these eyewear-makers are doing well. The biggest of them, Luxottica, had sales of €4.7 billion ($5.9 billion) last year.....

“Ten years ago, sunglasses were a functional device,” says Andrea Guerra, chief executive of Luxottica, which is more than four times bigger than its nearest rival, Safilo. Nowadays, fashion takes precedence.......

But Mr Guerra attributes Luxottica's success both to the strength of its in-house brands, and to its control of the retailers where they are sold.....

In June Luxottica announced the purchase of another portfolio of brands with the $2.1 billion takeover of Oakley, a California-based maker of sunglasses."

Now the interesting thing about Oakley is that thay have a very simple philosophy

Make wicked cool products

Have fun making wicked, cool products

Make enough money to carry on doing 1. & 2!

which is a very good innovation mantra.

The second article focusses on ice-cream:

A maker of ice-cream churns takes a rocky road to world domination

WHETHER cone or cup, soft-serve or gelato, the odds are good that the ice-creams bought by sweltering sight-seers and beach-goers across the northern hemisphere this summer came from machines made by Carpigiani, a private Italian firm....... The firm has won around half of the global market for ice-cream makers, according to Gino Cocchi, its managing director.....operating profits exceeded 20% of its revenues of €130 million ($163m) last year.....

But Carpigiani's success has not always been assured. It stagnated for much of the decade after the death in 1982 of Poerio Carpigiani, a smart marketing man and one of two brothers behind the firm. ...

Mr Cocchi, who was brought in from a sister firm that year, resorted to the sort of overhaul that many struggling Italian companies now face. “We had to relearn the importance of customer-service, of quality and of being ahead of competitors with new products,” he says. He cut costs and simplified the Carpigiani's structure by cutting its 1,000-strong workforce by half. He scrapped television advertising, always an extravagance for a machinery manufacturer. Carpigiani also resorted to outsourcing. Its four factories (two in Italy, one in Spain and one in America), which produced about 40,000 machines last year, are essentially assembly lines, as few parts are made in-house anymore.

The introduction of a system for quality control also helped get Carpigiani back on track. It was the first firm in the business to win ISO9001 certification. A renewed emphasis on research and development was especially important, since poor materials caused many of the firm's problems. Carpigiani's technical department had 10 employees in 1990 when the payroll at its factory and headquarters in Anzola Emilia was 300; it now has 50 out of a payroll of 250. Its Gelato University teaches the nuances of ice-cream making, and collaboration with traditional universities reinforces its internal research. The university in nearby Bologna, for example, is helping it to develop special steels, composites and plastics.....

Cost-cutting, quality control and technical innovation, in turn, have helped Carpigiani fend off cheaper Chinese rivals, many of which have copied its designs. It is even building a new factory in China, to make machines for the local market. Globalisation may have subjected Carpigiani to stiffer competition, but it is also helping to propagate a taste for genuine Italian ice-cream among China's swelling middle class.

What is the theme that runs through both articles? Roberto Verganti has studied Italian producers and writes in HBR:

The products’ originality, aura, and prestige are the outcome of a process that is based in Milan but embraces participants and notions far beyond it. Indeed, the process transcends the discipline of design. What Alessi and its local brethren have devised is nothing less than an engine of innovation. What’s more, although Milan is famous as a center of fashion and high style, the maestros of this process are executives, not artists or artisans. Thus any kind of consumer-goods company, located almost anywhere in the world, could adopt the process.

The theme is that Italian companies are driven by a different philosophy ... neither a "technology push" or "market driven" approach but a design-led one. The companies are orchestrating networks of specialist groups and individuals, orchestrating a process that ensures high quality, unique consumer-value and longer competitive advantage. But they are open with each other, having conversations about "where the word is going" so that they can take what they know, research what they don't know, combine and recombine to create winning products and services that satisfy our material and social needs and our desire for personal growth.

To paraphrase Verganti: we start by thinking about forming new meaning and use our design, technology skills and networks to produce artefacts that catalyse that formation. That Design Journey will take us into unfamiliar territory so our existing tools and techniques might not be the best for traversing the terrain.