innovation playground Idris Mootee

Some Celebrate Failure. Some Even Romaniticize Failure. The Best Strategy Is To Avoid It!

The new M/I/S/C Bounce Back issue is out in newstand.This issue is packed with great articles about how companies should deal with adversity. It is one of the best issues ever.

For the last few years, magazines have made failure romantic, and start-ups love their failure stories. It’s true, there are some great stories out there: at the top of the list is Steve Jobs who was fired from the very company he founded. J.K. Rowling took Harry Potter to 12 publishers; all of them turned her down. Walt Disney filed for bankruptcy in his early twenties.

And there was Bernie Marcus who was the son of a poor Russian cabinetmaker from New Jersey who got fired from his job working at hardware store. With US $2 million in capital, Marcus and a partner went into business and opened a different format store with hangar-size, no-frills outlets, friendly service and a huge selection of products, they called it Home Depot. For Marcus failing was about character building and part of the journey to excellence.

These stories are both motivational and inspirational. Magazines from Fast Company to Harvard Business Review jumped on the bandwagon, selling the message it’s ok, even cool, to fail. Some people take this as a ticket to push bad ideas forward. Sometimes people carry failure as a badge of honor. There was a guy who wanted to join our company; his resume read ‘six times failure, a proud veteran.’ When I asked him whether he had any confidence that he will succeed the next time, he said no. It sounds like Vegas to me. The organizations we design and operate are not agile enough to support smaller experiments and the bigger the company is, the harder it is to bring innovation to the market.

Companies are using the stage-gate approach, taken from product development, to the innovation process, which is a big mistake. They’re also applying the wrong metrics to measure innovation projects. But the fact is failure is a bad thing – if you can avoid it, avoid it. Instead of putting too much focus on those who ‘made it’, and their struggles and resilience, we should be really be focusing on teaching people how to avoid failure in the first place.

The problem is we should not encourage people to fail, but should not penalize them either. We should be encouraging them to take calculated risks. The danger I am seeing is when young people embrace failure in the wrong way. It almost seems like they’re trying to race through more failures to earn a badge, rather than trying the best they can to give the idea the best chance. This ‘failure movement’ is mostly supported by mediocre people who have few ideas and cannot execute. They continue to romanticize failure, to the extent that they start to expect it. We need to prepare for failure, but never expect it. The failure movement is growing an irresponsible attitude toward risk-taking and Design Thinking.

Just because you fail many times, doesn’t mean that you have a better chance of emerging from challenges unscathed. It gives people an excuse to think harder and learn to apply Design Thinking principles to model scenarios to avoid or minimize failure. Most innovation can’t avoid failure. In fact failure is often by design, it is part of the process of iterative development and market learning. I don’t consider that failure.

Prototyping and learning from mistakes can ultimately lead to a higher chance of success, but it also de-risks project mistakes that usually come from the weaknesses of our human mind, such as hindsight bias. We should be teaching people how to deal with those biases.

The failure movement often falls prey to both of these biases. How many people can you name that went broke while attempting various business ventures, and are still broke? Can you write a list of these people more easily than a list of successful entrepreneurs who overcame immense obstacles to succeed? I think we are giving ‘failure’ too much credit.

I can see why those stories sell, they’re comforting to read and somehow people feels closer to success. This is not the case. If you’ve failed 50 times it doesn’t mean you’re closer to making it. Let’s stop over-glorifying failure and avoid the pain. We know what it means when you have your fingers burnt once. The smartest way is to teach people to learn from Other People’s Failure (OPF). There is so much we can and should learn from it.

When I teach my strategy courses in master level programs, 80% of my teachings are around how companies fail and how to avoid it in the first place. For me, it’s called ‘strategy.’ There are so many free lessons our there, you don’t need to pay the price to feel the pain. Someone did it already. There is no need to romanticize failures, instead, we should learn how to best avoid failure and, in the worst-case scenarios, be prepared to bounce back from it. That’s what Design Thinking can do.

For the full story, pls see the June issue of M/I/S/C which is available in 26 countries and digital subscription is available through Zinio.

Apple's Magic Is Not Repeatable. Innovation Means Reinvention. Not Taking A Page From Someone's Playbook. Here's The Proof.

Apple magic is not repeatable. And even if you think by poaching senior talents from them. The same can be applied to many great companies large and small. It is too simplistic to think that stealing talent from great companies larger or small can help a company to repeat the magic.

Here is a good example when Ron Johnson, former head of Apple retail joined JC Penny as CEO, his plan was to reinvent the company. From when Johnson took the reins Nov 1, 2011, the stock price dropped in half. He received $53.3 million in compensation for 2011 and his pay package for 2012 was $1.9 million, no bonus after the company booked a $1 billion loss for the year. Yes a $1 billion loss!

Johnson's strategy to bring some Apple Store magic to JCPenney was not innovative or strategic. His strategy was to move away from price and he started by taking off any discounts and introduce a store-within-a-store design that emphasized experience over value. According to him,"Inherently, department stores have significant advantages compared to all other retailers." I don't agree with that statement with the exception in some markets such as China, Korea and Latin America.

When he took over the job of the CEO, he said that successful retailers will be "the ones that start from scratch and figure out how to create fundamentally new types of value for customers" by asking "how do we reinvent the store to enrich our customers' lives?" Good questions to start with but did they end up with the right stategy? JCPenney’s business model needs reinvention, not just the retail format or taking a page from Apple’s playbook.

It takes more than that to transform a very out-dated business model. It was a bad idea in the first place to abandon the discounting that customers had come to expect, it’s a behavior they are not going to change. Instead they should embrace the idea of “discounting” and innovate around it. JCPenny wants their customers to feel "special" about discovering these discounts. And not getting rid of it. Reinvent it! Make it fun! Make it social! I can give you 10 ideas of how to innovate around the “discounting”. The backlash against this tactic was so strong that Johnson was forced to bring back sales and discounts last quarter. That was a big mistake. Innovation needs to be strategic. Design without strategy is useless.

JCPenny needs to rethink the needs of these middle-class shoppers that are shrinking in both total size and wallet. It should move down to aim at the expanding highest of the lower income group.This is where the opportunities are.

Retail is a tough business overall and there weren't a lot of innovation happening. Those giant interactive screens, talking mannequins and RFID tags are bringing the virtual into ‘real’ retail spaces and tablet computers are turning up at pos’ from independent boutiques to multi-national chains. There are also companies working on virtual ‘touch’ for users to ‘feel’ the texture of products they want to buy. While still in development stage, the innovation would address one of the main problems of shopping online. Shopping is as much a tactile experience as a visual one.

In a creepy addition to the tech enabled retail experience, mannequins may now be watching you as you browse. Via built in cameras and facial recognition software mannequins are now able to collect data on your race, age, gender and shopping habits to assist retailers in their marketing strategies. While it’s not quite new, retailers have been using in store cameras to collect data for years, the addition of facial recognition is making it a simpler process. Big brother/sister is watching you shop!

This Is Just The Begining Of The Mobile OS Battle. Plenty Of New Players Will Join The Game.

The mobile OS war is getting more interesting and the current market share battle is between iOS and Android will go on for a while. Will there be a breakout of it will be more like a Pepsi vs. Coca Cola market share battle that has been lasting for decades? Android is getting better momentum the last two years and I expect that to continue. I think the overall market share is stabilizing and the other two Windows and Blackberry will remain niche players. Newcomers will join the game and there are three in the US and they are Mozilla, Tizen and Canonical. There are a few emerging ones in Asia and they all worth keeping a close watch, especially those up and coming companies in China.

In China Android accounts for 86% of all new smartphones sales and there are three times as many Android users than the US. The business model is basically freemium, developers hoping to make money from in-app purchase. The Android ecosystem is growing like crazy as people find iPhone is getting a little boring and may be too restricted.  

There will be surprises that in the next 12 months perhaps cool smart phones from China that came from nowhere selling for half the price and have even better performance.  There was a private lab test done on the top 10 most popular smartphone in China a few months back and the result was 5 of the 10 most popular Android devices from local Chinese manufacturers perform better than the imports. They include the Lenovo A750 and the XIAOMI MI 1S.  

Apple is watching the market closely and also struggling whether to add a stylus for the next iPhone,  it will be a tough one as they have always been strongly against it and the Samsung Galazy stylus is nicely designed. There are no definite right or wrong in this business and the behavior changes so quickly.

Expect some big design shift for the next iteration of Android that leverages more of the Hybrid Card layout.  Android needs to jump into the next game in terms of user experience and it demands a shift in overall visual language from current Jelly Bean paradigms to something really different. The jump from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich was a big jump. I believe Android will be looking at gestures control beyond the screen, perhaps the back and even the side. Apple already has a patent filed 2006 relating to using gestures on its back and a recent Google patent might bring that concept to next generation of Android phones. The principle is as easy as touching the back casing of the Android device in order to interact with the gadget and that can drastically improve the user experience. Imagine back tapping to change page or call list etc. It will be powerful when combined with acoustic feedback. The battle of mobile interfaces design has barely begun. And Facebook is joining the party.

How Imagination Can Create The Future? Start With Those Old Comic Books and Sci-Fi VHS Tapes From The Flea Markets.

For centuries we show our human spirit with stories about our glories,hopes, desires and dreams for a better future, one filled with modern machines that enable us to do things we long to do from being invisible or traveling in flying cars or telepods (may be not telepods as I always worried that something would go missing during the transmission). These stories manifested itself in art, comics, fictions, movies and even science discoveries.

What was known as “futurism” is the artistic movement that began in Italy and Russia that fast-forward us to the future of the machine age into progressive state of mind. Futurism also championed speed, technology, science, youth and also a lot of uncertainties. It's mantra was that the answers to humankind’s problems lay in the future driven by technology – and not the past. The main literary work of the movement was Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, published in 1909, and generally considered the beginning of Futurism. I still enjoy reading that once in a while.

To invent the futures that we desire, business and government leaders need to see things in new ways that trigger their imagination to dream of new possibilities. Many of them are too "stuck" in the present. That’s when Design Thinking comes into play. Design Thinking is not just about understanding  people's needs.  It can also be used to bring people's imagination to propel us into the future. To see the future, Design Thinkers are equipped to creating guidepost for developing strategic foresight. It is called Future Casting.

Future Casting is how people from the past thought of the future. I remember visiting an exhibition in Prague where artists from the former USSR were imagining how the future was like with its futuristic art of space vehicles. Those Russian Futurists were fascinated with the optimism, speed, and restlessness of modern machines and urban life. They were actually performing Future Casting for the public.

I grew up watching Thunderbird and Ultramen and as a boy and they were the only things that were available for me that I could use as a guidepost for imagination. Funny enough, Ironman is like an unfinished prototype based on Ultraman design with the same battery problem. Ultraman highlighted the bottleneck of all technologies decades ago which is the battery. From iPhone to the latest Boeing 787 we still have not solved the battery problem.

We have always tried to look into the future and try to figure out what comes next. Sometimes we create fictions, fantasies of what may come. Will some of these fictions ultimately become real? There is no scientific evidence for this, I suspect the percentage of fiction becomes real is way higher that some thought our research based predictions that never made it close to become real. These materials open a window into the past and in term a perspective of the future… how the future should have been or their fears of how they were afraid it would turn out.

The realities of tomorrow are the fictions of today. If you want to have good strategic foresights, don’t hire designers or futurists. Hire Sci-Fi writers! And pair them up with behavioral economists and anthropologists and you will get good foresights.

The latest issue of MISC The Gadget Issue which has a special design feature Project 2020 about the future of sex, social and beauty. There is also the main feature How New Technologies With The Power To Evolve, Disolve, Disrupt and Democratie Industy which is fun to read. MISC is now in bookstores in 26 countries. And you can get it from Amazon too.

Strategic Foresights Is Used To Make Sense Of Patterns Of Threats And Opportunites. Companies Barely Understand How To Use It.

“Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.”   ― Alain de Botton

What's the future of interactive glass windows, interactive eyeglasses and 3D mirrors etc? Via a pair of glasses information and apps can be projected into the air and controlled by gestures and eye movement or just a thought? It is hard to imagine what's the future of Nokia, Ericsson or even Blackberry. What does strategy mean to these companies when there are so much unknowns?

Strategic planning is changing and many organizations are not designed or equipped for the changes we see happening. And with many business models going out of date in such rapid mode, every manager is trying to find ways to see the future. And they must adopt a different approach and mental mindset as it tries to embrace disequilibrium. The ability to imagine, analyse and prepare for the future is becoming very important. It does not only apply to technology or biotech industries. It is about survival for every business.

Preactivity basically guides all approaches to future studies, forecasting, scenario planning and strategic foresight. Proactivity aims to bring about the desired changes by means of strategic planning to effectively deal with not just the speed of change but also complexity, uncertainty and paradox and that's the reason why Strategic Foresight goes hand-in-hand with Deisgn Thinking. The future arises from a constant stream of individual, organizational and policy decisions, strategies and commitments that have to be made in the present, with as much understanding of risks, possibilities, wisdom and foresight as possible.

Strategic Foresight is not a tool kit. Or some wild card ideas.It is not fancy (and useless) diagrams or algorithm. It is both a process (transformational) and an outcome (results in knowledge and artifacts for, from, and about the future). Strategic Foresight is not about predicting the future. Rather it is more about framing, reframing, informing, opening up minds, and inspiring strategic dialogues about possible futures. You still need a good understanding of industry economics in order to apply it. It is not a design exercsie.

Strategic Foresights is still in its early stage of adoption and takes a while before it comes a core part of strategic planning. It enables companies to use weak signals to identify opportunities and threats. Weak signals are defined as poorly understood drivers of change and/or signals which are currently unconnected with a trend, industry or market and appear irrelevant on the surface. The identification and correct interpretation of weak signals can be vital to the success or survival of an organization.

An executive team equipped with powerful foresight capability will be able to make sense of, and respond to, the emerging pattern of threats and opportunities, and to use this understanding to manage risk and capitalize on opportunitie. It is not just about keeping the bad from not happening, afterall business is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual reframig and reshaping your plan.

3 Paths Towards A Creative Life. It's Not The "Aha" Moments Or Being Perfect.

You want to be more creative? Sometimes it is not about trying harder to act creative. I see a lot of people trying too hard. Sometimes it’s not just about giving one the space to be creative.  Sometimes it is just being strategic. And sometimes it means apply a healthy dosage of common sense. 

Strategic creativity is more valuable than creativity.  Not everyone needs to be “creative” the same way as other think you should be “creative”. It is not about ideas. It is an attitude. Everyone can live a creative life and be creative how he/she sees live. It seems that when creative people (artist) with certain carft try to solve a problem or achieve a certain end result, particularly when the goal is related to their craft or specialized skills, they have an advantage. But when the problem is too big for them, it takes strategic creativity on a more sophisticated level.

Creativity is in such demand today and it is not the years of schooling or what art schools you attend. The word “Creatives” is used in advertising world to describe those who work on creating advertising campaign or providing craft for production. People in these roles like to believe that they are more creative than others. It is not the case at all.

Creativity is not a job title, crafts, capability or skills. Creativity is state of mind, which you can use in everything you see and do. People should live a creative life rather being creative. By living a creative life and having that state of mind, one naturally becomes creative. Creative is independent of discipline, culture and tools.

So how do you live a creative life? Here are three specific ways that can help you to live a creative life.

1. Be Bipolar. A little madness yield great artists, designers, inventors and scientists. The evidence is growing for a significant link between bipolar disorder and creative temperament and achievements. Seeing the extremes of both sides of anything help you to understand the spectrum of choices and options.  Go to places you don’t normally go and use that space. It is not available for everyone.
2. Be Foolish. Be lazy. Everywhere people are telling you rules and the right ways to do things.  Be acting silly and even lazy can sometimes help you to see easy paths to complex problems. Agatha Christie wrote, “I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.”
3. Be Strategic. Most people see this as the opposite of creative. This is total rubbish. Being strategic can also be creative. And being strategic you need to be very creative. The best strategists are often most creative people who can apply creativity in the context of a specific problem. They don’t’ dress in a funny way or even trying to act like artists. They may wear suits and even a tie, but they could also be the super creative types.

Creativity is not just about “aha” moments or interesting ways to look at things. Creativity is about putting empathy to work. Creativity is not about perfection. Weisberg and Csikszentmihalyi both talked the importance of motivation in creative performance. A notion of Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of creative flow is that reaching peak performance is “autotelic”, meaning it is enjoyable for its own sake. So the ‘creative person’ is simply someone who enjoys creativity and therefore does it all the time, even with no reasons and gains nothing from it. Someone just want to be creative all the time. That's different from peope who are strategic in applying creativity. Nothing good of bad. Just two very diffferent creative types.

Creativity is not about opening new doors because something said creativity people have no doors and doors are for those without imagination.

Can Gadgets Save Healthcare? What's The Next Big Disruptive Technology That Can Reinvent Healthcare? But The Fact Remains That Our Health Care System Sucks, And Will Continue To Suck.

I like the lastest Bond movie and the only thing I missed is smart gadgets. Bond needs to have latest tech toys. I don’t want to see Bond becoming Jet Li. Half the fun of watching a Bond movie is reveling in the odd ingenuity of the clever devices. Bond needs all the tech innovation he could use. Her Majesty's government is not investing enough in innovation for sure. Mi5 has a lot of catch up to do. Perhaps they should retain Idea Couture to develop an innovation roadmap? I might get a call from Sir Jonathan Evan!

In Bond's world, the smart phones have access to intelligent databases; miniaturized radio homing beacons operate on their own encrypted frequencies, the cars come equipped with bullet proof glass—semi-autonomous or remotely controlled—and become invisible to the naked eye. Implantable, traceable RFID chips confirm your identity and carry your medical history. And a smart scan to show when enemies are nearby too. And no, Bond does not need speed dating gadgets at all.

Bond gadgets may have once seemed far-fetched, but in our tech-addled age most are at least possible, if not realized already. In 2009 Harvard Chemists collaborated to successfully develop a low cost micro-fluidic "lab-on-a-chip" (actually it was on paper) solution to identify various biomarkers related to the AIDS virus. This idea of a miniaturized bio-chemical lab is a solution currently being funded and developed by DARPA to get ahead of the bio-weapons curve.

In Casino Royal, a similar device helped save Bond's life after he was poisoned. After plugging into a cell phone, the data from his blood sample was transmitted in real-time back to HQ for analysis. A dedicated team of medical professionals including molecular biologists; immunologists, neurologists and virologists provided advice on how to mitigate the sticky situation of being infected with a designer biological agent from half a world away. The biggest idea here is this can become the premium health service for those who can afford it, specialists are all standing by and all one click away to saving your life. That’s an innovation.

Today, self-diagnostic technologies in tandem with the hundreds of personal health and wellbeing apps have emerged to take advantage of our over-connectivity. We are all a click away from massive global expert networks for information and advice related to described symptoms. Our helathcare economics is not working doesn't matter becasue the cost is too high and doesn't matter who is paying for it. The biggest opportunity for smartphone is not smartphone, it is Personal Health Device. That’s a $20 billion plus industry from the start. We need geniuses and mad scientists and designers to make his real and affordable.

“All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards thier goal. The great scientists, the philosophers, the religious leaders - all maniacs. What else but a blind singlenee of purpose could have given focus to thier genius, would have kept them in the groove of purpose. Mania ... is as priceless as genius.”

                                            ― Ian Fleming, Doctor No

This is anexcerpt from an article co-written with M. Lincez to be appeared in the March issue of MISC magazine the Gadget Issue.

Now I Can Read Your Tweet On Your Dress. Or You Can Program Your Dress For Any Special Occasions.

It was at least 10 years since I was talking about wearing technology and fashion in conferences and 10 years later we don't see any mass commercialised products out there. It is another example of innovative technologies usually takes way longer that we imagine for diffusion for a number of reasons. May be this is the year we start to see it coming.

There are a few out there working hard to make it happen. CuteCircuit is one of them. It is a wearable technology and design company based in Shoreditch, London. Founded by Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz, the company incorporates LEDs, telecommunications, and smart textiles into fashion, bringing a sense of style and tech fun to wearable tech. I visited their studio a month ago and talked to them about the challenge and opportunity.

Rosella's background is in fashion, having worked at Valentino and Esprit, while Genz was an artist and anthropologist. The pair met while studying interactive design at the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy in 2001 and began to collaborate almost immediately. The first collection Rosella and Genz designed, called TransforMe, was based on the idea that garments could change shape, color or illuminate during the course of the day in response to the mood and activity of the wearer.

The most well known piece from the collection is the Kinetic Dress, a dress with embroidered electroluminescent fibers that light up in response to the wearer's movement. The dress features Victorian style mutton-sleeves and a train, and is made from black elastic that creates a sleek, body hugging silhouette. And their famous “Aurora Dress”  which was designed for an opera singer, features 10,000 LED lights and hundreds of Swarovski crystals.

The fashion industry’s manufacturing system has been using the same supply chain design for many years, disrupting this process, even slightly, has to be done slowly. Facing the manufacturing process has helped refine the products and streamline designs, and has given the opportunity to create viable products. Like any other industry innovation, the biggest barrier is always the supply chain. The industry needs a new flexible supply network to achieve scale. Perhaps in another 3-5 years. May be more. I can't wait to see when we all have a "smart" wardrobe.

 

More Gadgets..Smarter Devices...CES Doesn't Want Us To Stop! Where Do We Go Next?

In Vegas for the CES, it is exhausting. I skipped last year but didn’t feel I missed anything. I was not a fan of 3D TV and not impressed with the Microsoft / Ford automobile operating system. It has been a crazy first week this Jan with lots of management stuff to get done as well as finalizing the March issue of MISC magazine to print. It is the GADGET issue. Very happy with it and couldn’t wait to see it out in bookstores and newsstands in eight weeks.

Here I am prepared to be exposed to all kinds of crazy gadgets once I set foot on CES, as usual many are useless and hopeless. There is distinction between the two. “Useless” is product that does not answer to any customer unmet needs, it is just novelty. “Hopeless” is me-too product that tries to compete on price. I hate to think how many tablets will end up going to the landfill. With no Apple presence, it is like everyone here is try to compete with Apple. It is the world against Apple.

Many of these consumer electronic gadgets solve our problems. Problems that we know and problems that we know we have. Often they create new ones while solving the old ones. Humans are supposed to be good at problem solving but we’ve become so reliant on the gadgets in our lives that there are problems we find ourselves unable to solve without them. Sometime in the not too distant future gadgets will not just respond to our commands, they will be able to understand our mood, read our minds and learn our preferences.

When I was sitting at Starbucks, my mind was trying to visually map all those data exchanges between Macs, tablets, mobile devices, watches, cameras, and people. The visual just blows my mind and we forgot how crazy and connected we are.

Never before we have that much access (and speed) to information and knowledge at the palm of our hands and we can almost (yes almost) live our lives without thinking. We tether our brains and other senses to our smart devices and relying on them to tell us when we’re sad, confused, tired, hungry, where to go and what to buy. How far are we before we’re ready to raise the white flag and formally “surrender” to our cognitive independence? What about humanity?  

We are living in a technology-addled age, our gadgets are necessity. I wonder what’s the average number of apps for iPhone users? And how many of them they rely on in their everyday lives? We are becoming lazy. We do less walking because we have cars. Now we do less thinking because we have smart gadgets. Your brain is like a muscle. If you stop using your cognitive skills and instead rely on gadgets to do the thinking for you, in time, those skills will start to atrophy. For me, I used to be able to do complicated calculation looking at tons of numbers and within a few minutes come to sense of what it is telling me. Now I can’t even add up a restaurant bill without a calculator (app). I used to be able to map out the route mentally when I drive from one place to another, now I just listen to the command of my GPS. I used to be able to spell and thanks to auto correction, my spelling is worst than when I was 12.

May be the next innovation is not a product. Just like we’re try gin to think of ways to encourage people to walk or bike to make us more healthier and do less damage to our environment, we should be thinking about applying design thinking to help us to use our brain more – and use less gadgets. What does computational humanity means? Time to get back to the show.

 

I Am Not A Gadget! Or Am I Becoming One? How Close Are We From A Full Blown Computional Culture?

Sometimes I feel like I am a gadget. We all performing various specialist and general tasks everyday and somehow you feel each of these tasks are not related. And the worst part of our job is to perform something that is so tedius and doesn’t really require any creativity, analytic and imagination. And you wonder why this work cannot be done by a gadget. Or if I am doing the job, does it mean I am a gadget?

There are over 600,000+ personal pocket gadgets out there for whatever purposes and over 700,000 apps for iPhone 7000,000; Android and 99,500 Blackberrys to turn your smartphone into a gadget. There's an app for almost anything and someday my resume will look like my iPhone and people will look at how many apps I have to decide whether I qualify for that job.

Human is supposed to be good at problem solving. Or at least we think we are, I am not getting into that debate. There are differences between the different types of problem solving from pure creativity to system level thinking or analytical processing.  Creativity requires periodic, temporary “encapsulation” as opposed to constant calculation or recalculation. You need time for working privately as well as times for group ideation. Encapsulation is what allows for the possibility of self-testing that enables a quest for excellence.

The big question is will the proliferation of gadgets push us towards a more creative culture where our time is better spend on the creative side while our gadgets take care of the rest or in another scenario where these micro-computing machines (gadgets) will take over and we will be pushed towards a computational culture?

All these micro devices, bit data-warehouses and pervasive communication facilities are now omnipresent in our daily activities. The way we live, work, play, communicate and interact with each other is in permanent flux due to the influence of these cool gadgets. Historically speaking, technologies are developed as a result of the need for faster means of calculation to achieve the unachievable before the world emerging into a full-blown computational culture. Emerging in its modern form in the seventeenth century after the introduction of typography, that culture, it is here argued, remains dominant today.

Can future gadgets evolve to a point that they understand our feelings and not just commands and preferences? As part of our extended mind and heart and algorithm that can add feeling to an otherwise mathematical, non-physical, and consequently non-aesthetic, thought? This is the theme of the next issue of MISC for March. Look out for the big Gadget Issue.

Introducing The 4P’s of Management: Peanut, Peter, Penis, and Perfection.


I used to interview between 200 to 350 fresh MBA grads a year, and many barely understand the basic principles of management let alone strategy and organization design. Most people developed some functional skills attending B-schools but most fail to develop a senior management perspectives despite those case studies method of teaching. Here’s the 4Ps that they need to teach in B-schools.

Here’s the Management 4Ps which I invented to train young managers: The Peanut Effect, The Peter Principles, The Penis Theory, and The Perfectionist Syndrome. If you have not heard all or any one of them, don't worry.


The Peanut Effect can be best described when referring to the lottery. The main reason why so many people play the lottery is because they place disproportionate weight on small probabilities. People don’t realize the true cost of a lottery ticket is a “peanut” and they don’t realize how the cost adds up over time. The same can be applied to buying snacks, coffee, magazines and other “cheap” items. If you are marketing your product or services, what you can learn from this is that you need find a way to emphasize the big benefits even if the probability to reap them is low. This can apply to bringing a vision to the company. Think big. Think possibilities and not only probabilities.

The Peter Principle is a belief that, in an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success, and merit, that organization's members will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. The principle is commonly phrased, "employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence." In more formal parlance, the effect could be stated as: employees tend to be given more authority until they cannot continue to work competently. It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise. Make sure you promote people to a job that is beyond their level of ability no matter how they try to justify the case. It doesn’t matter how long people have been on a job, sometimes younger manager can rise to the challenge in a shorter time. Experience helps .. but not always.

The Penis Theory is about finding your core. Penis envy in Freudian psychoanalysis refers to the theorized reaction of a girl, during her psychosexual development, to the realization that she does not have a penis. Freud considers this realization a defining moment in the development of gender and sexual identity for women. In contemporary culture, the term is sometimes used metaphorically to refer to women who wish they had a penis – lucky you don't need one to succeed in business. What you can learn from this is that too many marketers are spending too much time trying to be someone else. Often companies try and emulate the “big-wigs” and try to be like Apple, Amazon, or even Google. These companies however are spending too much time and too many resources trying to be something they are not.  It is more productive to understand who you really are – and what’s your core?

The Perfectionist Syndrome is common among high performance workplace. I have come across many high performers who are perfectionists – but not perfectionists in the true sense because when you look at their work, it is evident that they are too afraid to make calculated mistakes. And as a result, they often reach a performance ceiling. Perfectionism muffles our ability to hear, listen and learn and what you can lean from this is that perfectionism is impossible.

Let me tell you the dirty secret of management – forget about in search of excellence. There’s not a business anywhere in the world that is without problems or a business model that is perfect. Business is complex and imperfect. You can make a spreadsheet perfect but not the financials. Every business is managed by imperfect human beings and exists by providing a product or service to other imperfect consumers. Empathy makes up for the imperfection. Business is not a machine.

Can We Stop Talking About The Knowledge Management Nonsense Please? Knowledge Is Not Power. The Ability To Act On Knowledge Is Real Power.

The concept of knowledge management is purely an academic topic and has very little relevancy to the real world. When consultants start promoting it as if it is the central piece of strategy or oganizaion, I have a problem with it. When companies are thinking to hire a Chief Knowledge Officer to do the job of managing knowledge, we should first consider Chief Culture Officer or Chief Common Sense Officer, Chief Foresight Officer, Chief Politics Bashing Officer or Chief Human Factor Officer. These are more practical.

If the job of a CKO is to be the chief librarian or chief facilitator, then a company will have 100 chiefs. Some are suggesting CKOs can take a more strategic perspective, scanning across the enterprise to discover how they might improve processes and customer relationship management as well as promote employee learning. That’s called organizational design.

Some even suggest that in complex organizations where cross-business and cross-functional interventions aren’t likely to happen unless someone from the top team takes express responsibility for them, appointing a CKO would seem to be a good idea. That’s unrealistic. No P&L ownership means no influence. We need a better reason to justify another chief.

Forget a knowledge-management strategy, this is what the snake-oil salesmen/consultants invented to make them look good. Why we keep calling many things something they are not. Everything we are talking about is called “management”. If we take strategy, organization, knowledge, innovation away from management, what’s left in management? Perhaps for some management means the art of doing nothing. 

Management is a systematic way of ensuring carrying out of all activities is smooth and well aligned. It is different from leadership. Yes, now should I propose companies should add another chief – Chief Leadership Officer? Unless someone tells me knowledge is more important than leadership.

It is time for us to re-emphasize different aspects of 'management.' 
 Its task is to make managers and staffs capable of having shared vision, joint performance, to make their weaknesses irrelevant, says the Management Guru Peter Drucker. It creates harmony in working together – equilibrium in thoughts and actions, goals and achievements, plans and performance, products and markets

Lack of ‘good’ management causes inefficiency, disorder, confusion, low morale, delay, and negatively impacts company performance. Managing knowledge, money, people, processes and materials in the best possible way is the most important and essential factor for good management.

Knowledge is not the power. Power is power. The ability to act on knowledge is real power. Knowledge is useless when people can make sense of them. The ability comes from leadership.  Many managers in marge organizations do not have the ability and courage to act on the knowledge they possess even though by not doing so will cause the company to suffer or fail. It is not about knowledge. It is about leadership. End of story and please stop selling useless nonsense. Let's get back to work to improve 'management'.

What Are The Most Popular Innovation Tools? Here Are The Results From Idea Couture Recent Survey (Part 1 of 3).

Our new headoffice is slowing coming together with containers of furniture waiting to be unloaded. It will take another 2 months before it is picture ready. It is looking like a boutique hotel as I've heard. We've got lots of projects rooms, big windows, big space for development team and lots and lots of open space for parties. But no one has time for it.

People talk about innovation some refer to strategy, organization, process, culture and many just think of toolkits and tactics. Innovation strategy is more important today than it was 10 years ago; rapid market changes and the need for growth requires a clear articulation of answers to the following three questions:

• Is innovation part of out core business strategy or something we want to keep on the side to explore new opportunities?
• Where (product scope and geographic scope) do we focus in terms of innovation efforts? What types of innovation do we need?
• Product innovation; service innovation or business model innovation?

Innovation does not happen with Power Point or Excel. They are decision support and communication tools. Innovation requires not only the right strategy, environment but also the right tools. Choosing the right tool can be as complicated as the problem it needs to solve. Executives must select the tools that will lead to breakthrough ideas, which can be brought to market effectively and ultimately create a sustainable competitive advantage.

Last year we conducted a global survey amongst executives of our Fortune 500 client base to determine their levels of awareness, understanding and usage of the tools used in the innovation process. We have broken this list of 15 tools into 3 categories and will share here some of the results as a two part series:

• Top 5 most popular
• Top 5 most effective
• Top 5 most misunderstood

Here are some of the results:

THE TOP 5 MOST POPULAR TOOLS

1. CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
2. ETHNOGRAPHIC SHADOWING
3. IMMERSION DAYS
4. RAPID PROTOTYPING
5. CONSUMER JOURNEY MAPPING

THE TOP 5 MOST EFFECTIVE TOOLS

1. ETHNOGRAPHIC SHADOWING
2. PERFORMANCE AND PERCEPTION MAPPING
3. RAPID PROTOTYPING
4. CONSUMER JOURNEY MAPPING
5. VALUE CURVE MAPPING

THE TOP 5 LEAST UNDERSTOOD TOOLS

1. WEAK SIGNAL SCANNING
2. CONSUMER CO-CREATION
3. SENSEMAKING
4. FORESIGHT
5. CREATIVE COLLISIONS

THE TOP 5 MOST POPULAR TOOLS and why are these Top Five the Most Popular?

• Many people have heard of them before.
• Have been popularized through books, articles and business gurus.
• Easy to access, and easy to use.
• Can be easily integrated into existing workflows
• Easy to migrate over from adjacent disciplines

CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY: Contextual Inquiry is an ethnographic research method that reveals how people think about, talk about and perform activities in the context of their daily lives and actual environments. It is used to observe existing consumer/user habits, and to gather feedback on prototypes, and in the process gain a deeper understanding of consumer motivations, attitudes, preferences, needs and ideas. Contextual Inquiry helps research and design teams understand how to better execute on the less tactical and more social, cultural or contextual elements of a concept.

When to use it: Should be used in conjunction with Rapid Prototyping phase Why use it: To gain reliable information that is relevant to the End User. To access tacit knowledge and uncover insights into user behaviours that were previously unarticulated. To gather detailed feedback on successive prototypes, and to use that input to refine designs.

ETHNOGRAPHIC SHADOWNING is a research technique used to understand a person or group of persons behaviors and interactions related to product use, service interactions, and the processes involved in achieving tasks. Shadowing is a real-time exercise that focuses on particular events and tasks people engage in as they take place. The nature of shifting contexts and use scenarios, make Shadowing a valuable technique for uncovering unmet, and unarticulated needs, as they unfold over time. So as to achieve authentic, and honest insights into end user behaviors, Ethnographic Shadowing sometimes requires that the research subjects be unaware of the actual Shadowing.

When to use it: Insights & Inspiration phase, at the beginning of the innovation process. Ethnographic Shadowing also helps inform the journey mapping process. 

Why use it: Ethnographic Shadowing is key to understanding and cultivating the consumer empathy that should guide each and every stage of the innovation process. Where surveys find data, focus groups reveal opinions and traditional market research creates speculation, Ethnographic Shadowing fuels innovation by identifying the unmet, unknown and unarticulated needs of consumers. 

TO BE CONTINUED ......

Apple Vs Samsung - The Verdict Is A Wake-Up Call And Shaping The Very Nature Of What Competitive Strategy Means.

Here I am the first day in our new office - the building is officially named Idea Couture Place and I took the opporunity to talk about who we are and what are really good at to our people. There are still a lot of people that don't quite understand what a strategic innovation firm does and why it is not just another industrial design, strategy firm or creative house.

Now the move is over but it will take abother 2 months before we are really settled as many furnitures and equipment are still shipping from Italty, Belgium and China. I can't wait to see the fully finished office. For now, everyone is really happy. The roof top patio will look like a boutique hotel.

What exactly does Apple’s victory means for many other companies? The overwhelming patent infringement victory over Samsung is shaping the strategies of many and everyone is getting a wake-up call and now they need to revisit how they approach strategic innovation.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook told his employees about how Apple values originality and innovation and pour their lives into making the best products on earth. They do this to delight their customers, not for competitors to flagrantly copy.

The result of this court case actually shapes the playing field of competition and the very nature of competitive strategy. Samsung, Motorola (Google), HTC, RIM, HP, Nokia, RIM, Microsoft, Xerox, Sony, Amazon and IBM . All have quivers full of patents and armies of retained patent lawyers ready to go to court to protect their interests and raise the barriers of entry for new players.

If you look at any new or old product categories, product and user experiences will become more andmore similar over time. Look around you and you realize a lot of cars looks the same and drive the same way. And over time, most phones, laptops or tablets will have similar designs and behaviors, just like TVs, cameras and typewriters. Switches and buttons whether they have rounded or rectangular corners or whatever shaped icons and the overall look and feel aren't likely the key points of differentiation. It has always been part of the commoditization process and companies will continue try to innovate with new ideas.

Every great innovation attracts copycats and it is hard to say whether we are promoting innovation by offering protection or deterring innovation by raising the barriers. There is no easy answer to this one. What’s next? If you’re a small start-up you will have a hard time to make it big as once you gain some attention and market success, you will then discover that you may be infringing on patents even though you think you’re not.

Can anyone realistically come up with an idea that can past the patent test of Apple/Google(Motorola)/Cisco/Xeorx/RIM/Sony/Microsoft and Intellectual Ventures (the world's biggest patent troll) when everone is waiting to collect royalties for what you were pretty sure was an original idea or invention.

I can’t wait for a day when Apple is suing Google and Google is suing Nokia and HP is suing Apple and Samsung is suing HP and everyone is suing everyone – one hell of a party. In the end, it's more likely that these crazy entanglements will result in more cross-licensing agreements than to massive payouts – one big happy family and everyone is getting a check.

As for now, my phone hasn’t stop ringing as every company needs to “out-innovate” and wants Idea Couture to bring Design Thinking to them. Now no one is safe. Welcome to the crazy world.

Strategic Innovation And The Quest To Reinvent Management.

I spoke at a number of conferences the last few weeks on the same topic of Strategic Innovation in the Age of Reinvention. Reinvention is the word as every individual, practicing professional, multi-nationals, non-profits, education institution and government ought to be thinking about “reinvention”. We desperately need to “totally reinvent ourselves” in order to transform our economy, organizations, politics and societies.

Corporations adopted strategies 20 years back to outsource their production and resulted in loss of ability to innovate and compete. Many corporations cannot even define their core and what they are really good it today, their perceived competitive advantage was merely channel assess and a warehouse of intellectual property and patent documents.

Business leaders and governments are also experiencing a profound crisis of trust and legitimacy and all these factors have triggered a loss of confidence in traditional ways of doing things. The new world of reinvented strategic management requires applied design thinking across all management functional disciplines.

Today the very core of many management theories are being questioned and “management” is close to a point of failure. Leaders are looking to find something new to grasp onto in order to make sense of what’s going on and are looking to organize for a future of unprecedented uncertainties. Companies that fail to make the transition and missing industry breakpoints will be forced to play catch-up or risk being irrelevant or extinction.

One of the problems is we are still training our managers (MBAs) based on theories developed in post-Wold War II which was adequate when there were very little competition and technology was not a key drivers of competitive advantage. The M-form organization design is functionally oriented and the idea is every manager should manage a piece of the business as if optimizing each function means optimizing the whole. They are specialists and as as a result everyone is sub-optimizing the whole. Resulting in turf battles, lack of collaboration and unhealthy internal competition that causes satisfactory underperformance.

The strategic process occurring when the organization already realizes that it is facing an immdiate crisis, usually leads to strategic plans in the way of drastic cost reducing changes - closing of plants, cutting down of manpower, cancellation of investment plans or a change in their direction. These actions can only help them temporary. These are no changes in the present cognitive frame of the organization and these efforts may only enhance the sliding of the organization toward its doom.

The new world of reinvented strategic management requires applied design thinking across all management functional disciplines. The very core of many management theories are being questioned and “management” is close to a point of failure. Leaders are looking to find something new to grasp onto in order to make sense of what’s going on and how to organize for a future of unprecedented uncertainties. Companies that fail to make the transition and missing industry breakpoints will be forced to play catch-up or risk being irrelevant or extinction.