innovation playground Idris Mootee

Is Design Thinking Built-To-Last Or Just Another Management Fad?

I have been teaching and practicing design thinking for business for the almost ten years and over the years I saw the growing interest of design thinking among both business and design communities. Take away the aspiration side for now including notion such as design thinking to change the world etc., design thinking in business is barely understood let alone bring practiced widely. This is the time when businesses have been desperately looking for the next big thing - think the management “wonder drug”.  Lets put some thought into this, is “design thinking" helpful or is it just a hype that is exporting the dogmas of design to business strategy? Design industry is having their own set of big issues.

What's Design Thinking? Design Thinking bascially refers to the methods, framework, tools and processes for investigating ill-defined problems, acquiring and visualizing insights, synthesizing knowledge, and imagining solutions in the design and planning fields. As a style of thinking or a method of creating solution, it is generally considered the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and ideas, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context.

While design thinking has become part of the popular lexicon in industrial design and engineering, its broader use in describing a particular style of creative thinking-in-action is having an increasing influence on 21st century education across disciplines. In this respect, it is similar to systems thinking in naming a particular approach to understanding and solving problems.

Buchanan’s (1992) paper “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking” shifted design theory away from its legacy in the world of craft and industrial production towards a more generalized “design thinking” that could be applied to nearly anything. I mean anything, whether a tangible object or a complex system. Drawing on Pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, Buchanan saw design as a liberal art, uniquely well-placed to serve the needs of a technological culture in which many kinds of thing are designed, and human problems are complex. It is basically instilling new perspectives to look at a problem and frame them in different ways to provide more options to tackle whatever the problem is.

And for Design Thinking in Business - The very core of many management theories are being questioned and “management” is close to a point of failure or needed serious reset. Business 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. Design Thinking brings a refreshed, revitalized, and rejuvenated approach to management and strategic thinking- but design thinking is far from a cure-all. Innovation, strategy and leadership are closely interconnected and to succeed you must have all three. Innovation is the ability to differentiate options for the future and develop a set of perspectives to guide them there. Strategy is the ability to connect customer needs and wants to the corporation’s core capability, economics and leadership is the ability to instill a sense of purpose for the organization and to mobilize everyone to work towards a common goal.

I don't think Design Thinking will end up like other short-lived management fads and it will eventually deeply embedded in what we called 'management' today and it will help connect the three: Innovation, Strategy and Leadership.

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'.

Tim Cook Has A Far More Difficult Job Than Steve Jobs. He Has Been Making All The Right Moves So Far.

Congrats to Tim Cook who is over one year into his tenure as CEO of Apple. Big shoes to be filled and now Apple is moving into a new competitive arena because it is now the industry leader (defender) - the primary target for attackers. Tim has two jobs: 1/develop a competitive business strategy to defend its market share from the low end and block entrants  2/an innovation strategy to find an industry/category to disrupt leveraging Apple’s core capabilities. There were a few bumps like the Siri or Googlemap etc., but those were unavoidable.

Sabotta, a former director of Apple's federal sales group, criticitzes Apple’s CEO Tim Cook in his Kindle book that he is afraid of being wrong, lacks leadership skills, and is a "lightweight" when it comes to understanding technology. According to Sobotta, “Tim will react to the numbers or his fear of being wrong quickly. Fear of being wrong is a managerial trait that runs strong and deep in Apple because of the way Steve ran the company. Even the appearance of being wrong when in the end you might be right is dreaded at Apple. Technology-wise, I think Tim Cook is a lightweight. I never felt passion for technology from Tim like I did from Steve and some of the great engineers.”

I must say I won’t judge Cook’s performance or management style based on these criticisms (Sobotta acknowledges early in his Kindle book about his experience at Apple and that he was asked to leave Apple in 2004.) Being a CEO or Apple’s CEO is not exactly an easy job.

The way I take his comment is actually positive. A technology “lightweight” is more effective and desirable in the case of Apple to avoid the most common mistake in this industry when the technology voice overpowers business and customers. Technology heavyweight is actually less desirable for the CEO job, it is not Apple business strategy for technology big bet.

In his blog, Sobotta is critical of Apple and its Jobs' style of management in many ways. Some titles of his posts include"Do Apple Employees Need A Witness Protection Program?" "Has Apple lost its soul?"  He is basically saying Apple used some of the worst management practices to build the world’s most valuable company.

Apple is what Apple is today because of Steve Jobs’ strategic and aesthetic arrogance, charisma and capacity for work. If there’s one thing worse than a leader who micromanages to the point of stunting the creativity of his team, it’s a leader who knows and feels that there is a better way to work but fails to act on his gut. That wasn’t Jobs. As the master of anti-subopimization, understanding how he and Apple achieved such greatness isn’t about compartmentalizing each facet of Steve Jobs – it’s about recognizing how his various CEO personas were symbiotically entwined so that, when they intersected at crucial points, magic happened.

Maybe Steve Jobs was a perfectionist, not a control freak. Being in control is different from being a control freak. Those accused of being the former are often the victims of those who just don’t have the skin to stay in – and change – the game. Either way, new and extreme times call for new and extreme measures. Sometimes control is exactly what an organization needs. We see grand strategies that look good on paper and in the boardroom, but without an emotionally committed leader with vision, belief and conviction, the successful execution of idea into results won’t happen.

Armchair management critics will continuous to critique Jobs’ management style as ‘control’, even while every CEO from luxury goods to fast-fashion retail seeks to replicate his success. Ultimately, his example begs one simple question: Why aren’t more of us control freaks? Rather than decrying control, maybe it’s time to take the reins of our own ideas, innovations and organizations by studying the attitude, approach and micro-details that were responsible for transforming what those same critics once called a niche computer company into the $700 a share behemoth that everyone – including all those former PC fans – loves today.

As for Cooke, he has a far more difficult job that Jobs, Apple was an attacker and have nothing to lose to change the game. Now Apple is the defender and Cooke has to play both attacker and defender. It is a high risk game and he has every reason to react to the numbers or have ear of being wrong. That’s his job.

What Are The Least Understood Innovation Tools? Here Are The Results From Idea Couture Recent Survey (Part 3 of 3).

Here is a picture of our reception floor of our new office in the Idea Couture building. We're al least 4 weeks away before we can we are done with the place. This is the final of the three part series. We surveyed to find out what are the most popular innovation tools and the least understood innovation tools,  if you don't know about any of these tools on the list, you are not alone because there are many others like you.

Why are these the Top 5 least understood? Think about it, innovation is an emerging field. Therefore, at any given time, new tools are being developed, tested and refined in response to new kinds of problems, advances in technology, or as older methods are upgraded or mothballed. Other reasons include:

• Lack of exposure
• Newness of tool
• Has been recently adopted from another discipline
• Requires a unique skill set to execute successfully
• Requires rigorous adherence to a structured methodology

1. SIGNAL SCANNING Is a method of identifying and interpreting ‘signals’ from a variety of social, cultural, technological and/or business contexts to help inform, influence and inspire a product, service, marketing orother opportunity. Signal Scanning collects information, interprets information and gives meaning to information, thus helping teams build awareness, organize uncertainties, and re-orient perspectives and assumptions.

When to use it: Scanning is basic research that happens at the front end of any innovation engagement. It sits within the Insights and Inspiration Phase. It can be conducted in tandem with ethnographic and/or co-creation research. It help shape the kinds of questions that are explored in ethnographic and/or co-creation research. It can also be an ongoing process that increasingly builds internal knowledge and awareness on any specific field of research.

Why use it: Where most businesses are enamoured with watching and analyzing the trends of today, scanning provides a competitive advantage by helping organizations to better envision tomorrow. With a focus on the ‘emerging’, scanning empowers teams to more deeply, analytically and imaginatively consider the factors that might play a role in shaping future business opportunities.

2. CONSUMER CO-CREATION is a tool (it is a tool but also a research/design apporach) that directly involves consumers in an iterative process of designing and refining the concepts that will best fit into the context of their lives and needs. By acknowledging the value of customer input in the early stages of development, co-creation turns the top-down orthodoxy, of undifferentiated brand offerings on its head and offers a much higher likelihood of bringing relevant products and experiences to market. The reason this is not so well understood is that it is not a common practice for companies to include customers as part of the value chain.

When to use it: It can be used in the early stage of ideas generation to the final stage of idea validation.

Why use it: Like ethnography, Consumer Co-Creation should be used as a way to cultivate empathy for consumers. Co-Creation is used to:

• Better understand social, cultural and behavioural drivers of use & adoption when ethnographic research is not recommended or possible.
• Gather consumer/expert/lead user input into the design of a product, service or experience
• Explore potential tangible outcomes in packaging, ingredients, communications, display, retail, naming, CSR, service etc.

3. SENSEMAKING is the activity of framing observations and situations, and grounding them in meaningful ways, that help people understand and gain insight into an activity, behavior or system. In short, Sensemaking is the process by which people give meaning to experience. Many times problem spaces can be described as either informationally scarce, working at a deficit, or working from an overabundance of information. Ofthen there is  an overabundance of market research information, requiring a more focused and convergent approach to information and pattern definition. In both cases, recognizing and revealing the patterns are essential to developing insights and making sense of the research landscape.

The reason that Sensemaking activities are difficult because it is dealing with many conflicting and unstratucred data. Providing opportunities for people to Sensemake and infer meaning from unstructured information, allows them to hone their pattern recognition skills, contributing to their professional growth, and the professionalization of the organization.

When use it: Typically used as part of the opportunity mapping stage.

Why use it: It is an effective way to synthesize information into somthing people can understand in terms of the what and how value is being created.

4. STRATEGIC FORESIGHT is about preparing, not predicting. It is about establishing well-informed future oriented perspectives that fuel, guide, and inspire innovation processes, planning and decision-making. It helps organizations better understand, imagine, anticipate and prepare for change by equipping their teams with the tools and resources needed to ask provocative questions, challenge dominant logic, test assumptions, rethink opportunities, reset goals, and explore meaningful alternatives.

The reasons why Strategic Foresight is difficult to understand and execute is that it requires rigor and adherence to a set of steps and methods, beginning with problem definition, and scope.

When to use it: It can be used at the front end of innovation as a way to uncover relevant and pertinent research questions and define the problem space. It can be used to fuel innovation processes, and as a post innovation exercise to extend future contexts or to verify validity of strategy, products and services.

Why use it: The process allows people to ask provocative questions, challenge dominant logic, test assumptions, rethink opportunities, reset goals, and explore meaningful alternatives, to many possible futures. 

5. CREATIVE COLLISIONS Gives research and design teams a tool to intentionally, creatively and playfully collide (draw inferences) different, product, service and consumer culture experiences that are not normally considered together. Innovation is often born where these normally disparate categories intersect; a deliberately counter-intuitive methodology, which forces people well out of their comfort zones and challenges them to override their left-brain, analytical bias in favor of a more open-minded acceptance of contradictory, illogical ideas.

When to use it: Opportunity mapping phase or before/during ideation 

Why to use it: To leverage zones of opportunity, flesh out sub-ideas, and to get you outside your ‘box’ or mixing 'boxes'.

 

What Are The Most Popular Innovation Tools? Here Are The Results From Idea Couture Recent Survey (Part 2 of 3).

Here's a photo of Idea Couture's Latin America (Mexico) team in our office. Lots of things to do ahead of us to build up our capabilities in Mexico to serve both local and international clients. I am excited about it.

Continue from the last post, this is part II of the series on innovation tools. Most of the innovation tools included on our survey are not rocket science but all requires some level of training to use them properly.  Most of the really interesting and effective tools and techniques for innovation, are fairly simple, they allow people to gain new perspectives and to look at its products and services in a completely new light. The challenge is synthesizing the information and make them actionable.

Take the most common tool - customer experience journey mapping.  This tool documents the lifecycle of a customer as they become aware of your offerings, become a customer, use your products, services etc.  Mapping their emotional state of mind as well as needs for information or other functional support sounds simple. It is a fairly complicated process but does require the collaboration of different functional expertise and representation. It is not a mechanical exercise, the quality depends on how much deep insight you can input into the process.

3.IMMERSION DAYS:  Immersion Days are the meat and potatoes of innovation inspiration.

They are semi-structured and semi-guided “journeys”, designed to expose team members to the kinds of people, places and experiences that can help make a concept richer, more real and more relevant. Immersion Days range from products and services in use, to local restaurant scenes and exotic markets around the world, they are meant to expose stakeholders to the social, interactional, sensual and human side of products, services and experiences.

When to use it: Immersion Days sit at the front-end of the innovation process and can be conducted in tandem, or as part of, ethnographic research.

Why use it: Immersion days serve two primary purposes. First, as a part of projects where contextual inspiration can drive concept ideation and development. Experiencing authentic contexts and gathering artefacts from them can provide invaluable raw material for innovation, in brand design and positioning, packaging design and emerging markets.

Second, Immersion Days can be a highly effective way to communicate opportunity spaces to clients and to socialize ideation and development. Helping to communicate the richness of experience generates the excitement required to get all stakeholders invested in an idea, there-by garnering additional support for early stage concepts.

4.  CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAPPING: Customer Journey Mapping is the process of mapping out the steps; stages and moments customers go through when they engage with a brand, product or service.  Customer Journey maps many times look and map the entire arc of engagement, beginning with a customer initial state of need or desire, through exploration and use, to the end of the experience with a product or service.

Journey Maps are also used to construct entire brand narratives, storytelling the emotional ups and downs consumers experience when engaging with a brands products and services.

When to use it: At the discovery phase, when trying to understand the customer experience, and as a way to socialize and share journey findings with the design team. Customer Journey maps can also be used as a visual narrative when communicating with clients and stakeholders.

Why use it: Gaining an understanding of the customer experience with a brand, product or service is crucial to improving upon and making those experiences better. Because Customer Journey Maps expose the full spectrum of use, interactions, and emotions with products and services, salient touch points can be discovered and identified, thereby providing an invaluable tool for optimizing the experience. Additionally, because of their synchronic nature, Customer Journey Mapping helps generate design solutions that address specific touchpoints, as well as identify opportunities for the entire experience platform.

5.  RAPID PROTOTYPING At its most basic level, Rapid Prototyping is about trying your ideas out as quickly and as tangibly as possible. Maximizing the rate of learning over time through repetitive and cumulative cycles of design, build, test, and refine. As an explorative tool, rapid prototyping is employed to discover, define and refine concepts with guided precision and speed to identify and mitigate risks early. These ‘rehearsals’ are done in order to avoid down-stream costs while also building up critical assets for internal and external communication and socialization.

When to use it: Rapid iteration is a product of innovation processes, specifically the practice of ideation or concept development.  The progressive steps of visual and physical fidelity cue different types of constructive dialogue, yielding value across the project timeline.  We continually use images and objects as communication and sense-making tools at every stage of the plan. The concurrent interplay of rapid visualization and prototyping as end-to-end process is critical to reaching inclusive, elegant and well-considered designs. 

Why use it: To learn fast, Learn Cheap and Learn Early – visualizations and prototypes are low cost de-risk mechanisms for exploring multiple options quickly. They are also used to dramatize interactions and actively anticipate and advance improvement.

To Socialize & Level Up – reach a richer caliber product through accelerating the pace and quality of design conversations by placing ideas within a visual or physical language everyone can understand, engage with, and contribute to. This allows us to track and evaluate through the progressive use of versions.

TO BE CONTINUED

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 ......

Sometimes Design Means To Achieve Timeless Deconstruction, Stimulating Unpredictability and Controlling Chaos

Designing something simple is easy, but adding elegance and substance requires a subtle complexity that not everyone can access and achieve. Design of elgance product is easy, becasue they don't have to deal with the complexity just as some other products. When you want elegance, ability to handle complexity and substance, that's hard.

When it was first introduced in literary criticism, deconstructionism aimed to question traditional assumptions about certainty, identity and truth, asserting that words can only refer to other words. Novelist and philosophy professor Rebecca Goldstein notes that, “in deconstruction, there is no meaning to be found in the actual text, but only in the various, often mutually irreconcilable ‘virtual texts’ constructed by readers in their search for meaning.” In other words, language becomes far more than the sum of its scattered, severed parts. In architecture, the finished visual appearance of buildings that exhibit the many deconstructivist ‘styles’ is characterized by a stimulating unpredictability and a controlled chaos.

As the deconstructive philosophy trickled down to other fields, particularly art and design, it further demonstrated how destruction could be commoditized. The fashion house of Comme des Garçon, as shepherded by Rei Kawakubo, reinterprets this aesthetic by taking clothes to their undoing by strategically dismantling them and then putting them back together. The show, White Drama, presented in Paris provided an unforgettable sensory experience – Snow White meets Victorian Lace. Rei Kawakubo is one of the most influential fashion designers and master of what I like to call ‘simplexity.’

Her signature style of modern simplicity reflects how imperfect beauty captures the complexities of the relationships around us. Kawakubo begins by actually creating the fabrics for each specific collection. Many of her ‘broken bride’ dresses are made from bolts of silk that she printed with intricate trompe l'oeil effects, which enriched the texture and shape of her pleated skirts without adding extra bulky fabric or thread.

Her deconstructive approach in cutting and sewing fabrics is deliberately compromised by design. Hems are left uneven; yarn is dropped mid-stitch in her knitwork; and clashing color threads hold the seams together. Final pieces seem to be the blueprint rather than the final product. Even the patents that inspire her initial work are executed in unconventional steps in an effort to fully divorce form from function. Her design philosophy further sets her apart because she doesn't design for any specific body type, allowing those shorter than 6 feet and larger than size zero to access her clothing. A truly refreshing concept in the world of fashion. At the end of the show, Kawakubo explained her inspiration for the collection by remarking that “all of life’s drama in a white dress.” Each one embodies the complex and contradictory relationships in our lives.

I hesitate to even describe her pieces as ‘fashion,’ because they are so uninterrupted by time and trend. They are artworks that free us to consider, create and embody our passions. That’s when you know that the work appeals to more than just fashion followers, and it is not meant to épater le bourgeois, but anyone who appreciates postmodernist simplicity and visual intrigue.

Design Thinking Can Make Strategic Management Simpler. But Never Simple. People Are Naive To Think That Management Can Be Explained In A Few Circles.

"Strateic Management" sounds academic. Should management be always scientific?  Since the publication of Frederick Taylor’s 1911 treatise, “The Principles of Scientific Management,” the field of industrial engineering has attempted to improve efficiency through ‘scientific management.’ At almost 100 years old, this form of industrial management is primarily based on a mechanical view of our universe as it relates to finding the ‘best’ ways to work.

Spurring powerful business models like the Ford assembly line, this discipline of speeding up productivity, controlling quality and minimizing cost remains the primary management modus operandi. Ever since then, scientists haven’t made much headway in scientific management.

In the mid-1980s, scientists used advanced computer modeling to seek order in chaos, creating mathematical diagrams at warp speed with the new technology. Though they found some fascinating data visualizations, they couldn't explain or understand the patterns. Like forecasting the weather, one could make educated predictions but never guarantee sunny skies. A decade later, some scientists stopped focusing on chaos and took a new interest in complexity.

Using advanced computer models to uncover the structure of life forms, a new approach was applied to business management. Comparing everything from beehives to genetic DNA to traffic jams to the hyperactive, complex properties of our technological and economical environment, they created many a compelling metaphor for strategic management. Still, these studies fell short of revealing any fail-proof practical applications. Today, Fortune 500s and other companies around the world still manage companies like machines – valuing profits before all else, maintaining authority with command-and-control management and relying on Six Sigma to improve quality, overreliance on the metrics on utilization, output and efficiency of mass production.

Thanks to Mr. Taylor,these practices suddenly serve to create a bureaucratic structure, distance executives from laborers and encourage them to manage rigidly and systematically. They do nothing to benefit companies that are looking to innovate in today's creative economy. If anything, it’s getting harder to weed out the chaos now that we’re bombarded with massive data and enterprise software, which forces managers to think in confining formulas. They get caught in a tangle of technology, complex processes, product portfolios and business units, and the straightjacket only tightens its grips. They watch in paralysis as these systems drain their financial and labor resources overnight.

Design Thinking is what Scientic Management needs to maintain its relevance. The only way to simplify management is to apply the voice we’ve lost touch of amidst all this white noise: our intuition. Intuition is anything but simple, yet it has the remarkable ability to bring clarity to strategic decision-making to light because it reveals a subtle qualitative and quantitative balance that is oftentimes needed for all the parts to click.

Sometimes we need to tune out the algorithms, the data and the consciousness. Sometimes it takes a white board, some weird field trips and a few crazt people to show us the world has changed and our business models have expired. We need to use our sense to get into the rhythm of disuptive competition. We need to free ourselves from the rational-logical-linear model that keeps us frozen or stagnant in a fast-moving and uncertain environment. We need a touch of finesse and the courage to wipe the slate clean.

Good Enough + Simplicity = Killer Strategy. What Is Considered Good Enough?

Many products out there are good and probably good enough. But strategists would say that companies need more great products with good designs to succeed as there are too man me-too products out there. It is half the truth. There are many kinds of good-enoughs and you need put it in a big strategy context. Read on and I will explain why.

I tell my people “good enough is not good enough," as far as what we do for our clients, but in the context of product strategy it can be a different story. It’s true that in today’s world, quality, speed, performance and convenience never stop improving. Pick up any product, and you have to admit that the qualities that make it high performance, revolutionary and unique are losing momentum with each passing day.Your competitive advantage last for 6-9 months most.

Many industries have been playing the Red Queen’s game, as observed in Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. Originally proposed by the evolutionary biologist L. van Valen, it involves following an evolutionary system where they must continually develop just to maintain the same level of fitness in their environment. A land where “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”

It’s time for companies to eradicate the notion that differentiation and low costs are mutually exclusive strategic choices. Both are needed to achieve and sustain not only leadership but also survival. This strategic framework is essential.

Here three ways for a company to compete:

• First, a company must choose to become the ultimate leader in a given product or service. Being the superior product leader can require more time to conceive of and engineer the best product, but time should never be wasted on over-designing. The product needs to be able to uphold a premium price point and deliver a credible value proposition.
• The second avenue is for a company to be a low-end disrupter. The strategy lies in creating a low cost delivery system to offer minimum features and performances that are required of a product, or reengineering the value equation so that a low-cost product can be marketed with a one-dimensional feature that offers matching performance, but nothing else. 
• The third option is choosing to compete with “simple and good enough” products. This includes products with just the right combination of price, performance and features, which closely follow the pulse of the market and customer needs. In this market, speed and agility are crucial factors, since R&D investments are limited. Profit and volume trade-offs must be constantly evaluated, and trends of convergence as other products add on additional functions must be monitored. Take Instagram for example. This instant success resists the temptation to offer a whole toolbox of features and is so simple to use that we feel no need to seek anything fancier.

Adapted from an article from the upcoming Sept issue of MISC- The Simplicity Issue which be available in newstand around the world in the third week of Sept 2012. To read the full article pick up a copy of the current issue of MISC magazine.

Thinking Usability Beyond Simplicity And Can We Really Afford Simplcity? Is Dieter Rams' 10 Principles Of Design Still Applicable Today?

Came back from beautiful Thailand speaking at the Design Is Opportunity event. Everyone is thinking about design not only as producing great products but also as a competitive advantage for creating new industries and as comparative advantage for countries. Met many people who are passionate in design and design thinking.

There are 16 remote controls that sit on my coffee table at home, and I have no idea what they are all for. It’s enough to make one think twice about turning on their phone, buying a new camera or downloading a new app. Looking around my surroundings, I’m struck with how overly complicated life is. Products that are supposed to simplify our lives now require a steep learning curve and possibly a special diploma.

Which leads me to wonder whether the concept of ‘usability’ means anything to designers and manufacturers anymore. Are they not concerned with alienating a large part of the market with their constant stream of complexities and change? Are they so sure that we’ll loyally follow them to the ends of the earth, syncing our lives to their products? Only a handful of companies are doing it right.

Usability springs out of a discipline called Human Factors, which has deep roots in military strategy. Crucial during wartime, when soldiers needed to design tactics to easily and accurately protect themselves while defeating their enemies. In the most intense and critical moment of one’s life, human factors mean the difference between survival and death. Many are confused over the difference between Industrial Designers (ID) and Design Engineers (DE), let alone between Industrial Designers and Human Factors Engineers (HF).

Industrial Design (ID) is an applied art whereby the aesthetics and usability of products may be improved. Depending which school of design you come from, you can be an artist or a designer that follows most if not all of the 10 principles of good design from Dieter Rams. Design Engineering (DE) on the other hand is a discipline that creates and transforms ideas into a product definition that deliver on customer needs.


The key difference between the two is: ID is an applied art, whereas DE is a discipline. This means that industrial designers' job is to dream up products and design engineers' job is to make it work. Dieter Rams is both a indistrial designer, artist and human factor engineer. He wants his product to be usefil, elegant and easy to use. Sometimes an indsutrial designer performs all three roles.

How did human factors come into design? WWII launched the starting point for electronic systems with user interfaces that were controlled by human operators. At the time, industrial psychologists like John Flanagan discovered that reducing the amount of clutter, such as buttons, switches and knobs on the control panels of aircrafts could dramatically improve operator performance. New models became increasingly streamlined, such as the P-51 Mustang fighter, “one of the conflict’s most successful and recognizable aircrafts.”

Aviation and weapons designers must consider a myriad of human factors, including how to prevent accidental firing, decrease use fatigue, withstand climate conditions, and equipment maintenance, to name just a few. Perhaps the most important factors that guide design involve the human condition. In short, the design must take into account those that will operate the equipment. The degree of automation and ease of maneuverability also play a role. Usability is all about transcending human limitations to achieve the upper hand.

The concept expanded when computers came on the scene. The evolution of the computer, from military technology to personal use, spanned many decades but it finally reached the hands of the public. For the first time, employees could have personal computers, but during this first introduction there were little to no instructions or guides. Despite this, software designers continued to assume that their users were knowledgeable and competent enough to understand the technical lingo and structure of operating systems to not only use the systems but also troubleshoot errors. Such implicit assumptions proved unacceptable, especially if computers were to achieve mainstream success. Today, we expect them to accommodate our limitations, intuition and even emotions.

Adapted from an article Usability Beyond Simplicity from the upcoming Sept issue of MISC- The Simplicity Issue which be available in newstand around the world in the third week of Sept 2012.

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.

Smart Phone And Health Impact Warning? It Could Take Decades To Fully Understand The Risks.

There were been suggestions for years about health risks regarding using mobile phones. The city of San Francisco is legislating retailers to give outhealth warning material. CTIA attorney is fighting back asking the judge to freeze city ordinance requiring phone retailers to disclose possible health risks. The city stands by its law and believes people should be educated about ways to reduce risk.

The law was adopted two years ago and retailers need to inform mobile buyers the risks. Due to the rise of smart phone adoption in our everyday lives, there have been several questions posed on the safety as a result of radiation as well as heat. Mobile phones use electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range and people believe that this may be harmful to the health of human beings. There are large bodies of research involve both epidemiological and experimental and both on humans and non-humans but no definitive conclusions.

Back to the ordinacne, funny they call it a fact sheet. Is it really a fact? Not until we can prove someone die from radiation as a result of talking too much on your cell phone, can you make that claim now? We are used to health warnings that may not be truthful but of good intent, on the other hand it is hard to have definitive evidence and often scientific studies can prove either way. It could take decades for us to understand whether the risks are real or not.

Lawyers gave an example from Starbucks, which has to post a warning since a chemical produced in the coffee-making process is known to cause cancer. If we use this standard, we will be getting 100 “fact sheets” a day from drinking, eating, reading and simply walking into a store or getting into a car. May be someone can develop an app for that; there’s the unmet needs. The other innovation opportunity is for a low radiation and shielded smart phone, Motorola, Samsung, Blackberry, Nokia.. anyone interested?

I think we get more harm from watching TVs, it is the number 3 activity following sleep and work. According to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers, prolonged TV viewing was associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and premature death. The study first appeared in the June 15, 2011, edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. I think this conclusion has a lot more merits. I think all TV programs should have a health warning including physical and mental health implications. I think many programs can reduce our ability to think if you know what I mean.

Another innovation opportunity is to have breaker to limit how each individual spend in front of a smart TV. And it will point you to the gym once you’ve spent more that you are allowed and will monitor your exercise through your iPhone. Isn’t this a cool idea? Need to go to sleep. 5am tomorrow heading to the airport.

It Is Time For China To Think Real About Innovation And What Policies And Practices Can Propel China Into The Next Century When Labor Cost Will Double In A Few Short Years And Intensified Talent Shortage..

It’s election time in the US and everyone is talking about China. China bashing happens before the election and after it’s over, people will be back to business as usual. The fact is US trade deficit is due to domestic factors and not Chinese policy and we need to address the very core of "structural competitiveness" rather than these nonsense talk. We should be focusing on innovation on a large scale and reinventing industries of tomorrow. US will always procure from low cost countries whether it is China or others.

China is an integrated part of the US (and the world) economy and no one really has any idea of the true implications of rising Chinese labor costs and what does it mean for China, the US and the world? I’m traveling across Western remote China (I was in India last week) this week and visited dozens of companies and trying to understand development even in the remote provinces, so it’s the perefct time to write this blog post about innovation in China.

Labor costs in Guangdong province (in the southern part of China which is sometimes called the factory of the world) have been rising at 13-15% a year and with rising costs for logistics will at some point make China less attractive. China has tremendous competitive advantage even with rising costs.

First, the extreme flexibility and scalability of workforce is unmatched by any other country in the world. For them, if they need to ramp up a factory in 2-3 days with an additional 1,000 workers that are prepared to work 14-16 hours a day to meet a production deadline, they can do it.

Second, it’s a tightly integrated supply chain eco-system, the main reason being that companies are not moving their factories inland to save costs is the speed-to-market. Consider that a strategic innovation in industry structure by design.

China are constantly “playing” with the idea of “process innovation” by incrementally improving the way they make things and adapt to market needs. It is a matter of time that they will start to think how to capture high value opportunities going up-stream in the value chain, which resides in the design and technology development. Currently designers, engineers and marketers are the ones who create and capture most of the value from innovative products. Policy makers in China understand this (no surprise) and are pouring massive dollars into research and development. The five-year plan calls for “indigenous innovation”, which the government thinks it can foster by subsidizing “strategic” industries and strong-arming foreign firms to transfer intellectual property to budding national champions.

And smaller companies are happy to copy and learn from whatever they can get their hands on by working with their customers. The question is can China truly develop its own innovation capability beyond absorbing know-how from international companies, which are under pressure to protect their IPs, and trying to bring in as many jobs home as possible? Can innovation be orchestrated by the state? And is the education system and workplace training support the needs? China does not understand innovation. It is just way too difficult for any Chinese innovative ideas to move from the lab to the marketplace, there is a lacking of complete view of market dynamics and infrastructure.

Policy makers in China is taking a very short-term view and they need to balance between research and development as well as lack of market orientation and design capability. And they have no clue how the system works in the Valley and government bureaucrats will not tolerate the complete free market system that works in the Valley. “Favorism” is still the dominant way of big investments for obvious reasons and antitrust and competition laws are clsoe to non-existan or not-enforceable.

So that alone creates big barriers for start-up challengers. I don’t think China has done enough on new product innovation alone, not to mention strategic innovation on a larger scale. Product innovation is often the most important driver of growth. In most cases over 50% of the growth of many categories from snacks to drinks and electronics came from just a single new product.

China is a far friendlier place for product innovation than the developed markets because the cost of going to market is not as large and consumers are more forgiving when innovation products are on constant beta. And when products fall into grey area of regulations, China is the best place on earth to launch products and don’t need to wait for permission, and they might never need to. Combine with a big domestic and uneducated markets, this creates the ideal environment for innovation.

It Is Time For India To Think Big And Stop Their Obessions With Jugaad. What They Need Is Bigger Asipirations And Design Thinking Competencies.

I wrote a blog post about two years ago titled “Is the Age of ‘Indovation’ and ‘Chinovation’ Becoming Real?” and it was very popular piece and I’ve got a few publications calling me including Knowledge@Wharton and others seeking out my point-of-view. Two years later and I am writing this post in India and will be in China next week, perhaps it is time for an update.

Let’s start with the question around innovation in India and is it really happening? Or happening enough? Well the answer varies depending who you talk and what industry sectors you’re referring to.  For the Indian pharma industry, it is not without trying but there were no commercial or very little success so far. For the auto industry, there are moderate successes but I won’t call it breakthrough innovation. For IT mainly software, there are hardly any effort and it is not because of there’s a lack of money or talent. These tech companies understand the risks and it is easier to just write codes and make money. 

Was this due to a lack of aspiration, unwilling to commit or was it due to the lack of ability to execute successfully?  In my opinion, India doesn’t really get innovation and seriously lacking robust innovation capability. And I don’t mean R&D. Their world-class engineering capability was not put to use solving problems that yet to exists – unknown and unmet needs of customers. 

They need to stop thinking innovating only at the bottom of the pyramid but start to build aspiration for innovation for bigger ideas.  Instead of engineering down products to fit the needs of the limited buying power constrained mass markets, they need to start thinking engineering up for products that shape industries in the developed markets.

India needs to develop high value industries and actively transform itself from a low-cost software and outsourcing economy to global innovation test bed. How can India learn to overcome the fear of failure? And how do they move away from thinking small hoping it will grow big?

Conversations about innovation in India with anyone always start with jugaad. Jugaad is a Hindi word that loosely translates as "the gutsy art of overcoming harsh constraints by designing an effective solution using limited resources." For them, Jugaad is an antidote to the extreme complexity of Indian societies: a country with pervasive scarcity of resources and infrastructure and good policy. Over the years it has developed a way to fixing things that are broken and mashing up different products for different usage.

Jugaad is not unique to India and they should stop putting that at the core of innovation for India. The future of innovation in India is solving bigger global problems. India can help the world to search for new solutions that do more with less for more. That is to say, they should provide more value using less energy, material, effort or time, and serve more consumers.

To be fair, it’s not just the Indian companies that are grappling with this issue. Companies in UK, US, Canada, Finland, Japan and Korea all grappling with this. Every country has a different need for innovation and needs a different strategy for innovation and not everyone needs to look at frugal engineering. Some have a steeper climb in brining design into the engineering process. By bringing together different sectors of society to think and talk about innovation in a structured manner, India can bring about a new and higher threshold for innovation thinking and practice.

Reinvention Lessons From Karl Lagerfeld That They Don't Teach You In B-Schools Or D-Schools.

How many other people do you know with teddy bear replicas of themselves? Karl Lagerfeld is not only the creative force behind some of the top names such as Chanel. He is constantly reinventing with each collection he creates – something that gets harder, not easier, with time. What he did for Chanel with tweed is incredible, his explorations in sable fur were stunning and his creations, for example that signature unfinished trim is endlessly copied and replicated. Sometimes you wonder how can someone reinvent himself season after season and still good at it. Here's a few lessons.

The man’s an art-making machine and his public persona is unequivocally all about making women look radiant. Working quickly and creatively, he enjoys the exploration of art as much as he does the execution. Last year, after a TV appearance with Lady Gaga that ended in an impromptu photo session, the king of couture sent the queen of pop culture a signature Chanel bag featuring portraits of the two of them embellished with Crayola-color.

Growing up in Hamburg, Germany, Lagerfeld learned to speak French, English, and Italian as well as his native German language fluently. At 14, he moved to the fashion mecca of Paris, and by 17, he confirmed his unparalleled talent by winning first prize in a sketch contest organized by the International Wool Secretariat. In 1983, Lagerfield became the art director for Chanel, and launched his debut clothing line, Karl Lagerfeld. With the assistance of Gilles du Four, his Chanel ready-to-wear collection was an instant hit. At the time, Chanel was losing steam, failing to attract young customers with their tired line. They needed a glamorous re-haul,—nothing short of a brand reinvention.

Lagerfeld’s magic touch transformed the conservative fashion line into a timeless label with contemporary style, while preserving all the glamour that Coco infused in her classic pieces. In the studio, Largerfeld is an artistic powerhouse and hands-on with every step of the design process. It’s no wonder that the press refers to him as Kaiser Lagerfeld.

He does everything from designing to shooting the fashion ads and commercial campaigns. In the fashion industry, it’s not just the clothes that go out of fashion with every season. Hyper-competitive designers are always trying to claw their way into the business, and with little to no guarantee of customer loyalty, it’s harder to stay ‘in style’ than get your foot in the door. So how does someone like Lagerfeld reinvent himself every season for over 50 years? Here are four lessons that you can apply in your work:

Lesson One: ALWAYS FOLLOW YOUR INSTINCTS “I’m not a marketing person. I don’t ask myself questions. I go by instinct. Be politically correct, but please don’t bother other people with conversation about being politically correct, because that’s the end of everything. You want to create boredom? Be politically correct in your conversation.”

Lesson Two: CREATIVITY CAN BE AN UNLIMITED MACHINE “People who do a job that claims to be creative have to be alone to recharge their batteries. You can’t live 24 hours a day in the spotlight and remain creative. For people like me, solitude is a victory.”

Lesson Three: DON’T OVER ANALYSE “I never analyze my collections. I do eight collections for Chanel each year — they overlap. Sometimes I work on two collections at the same time. But I can separate my mind, I’m very organized. In fact, I’m a computer. Also because I don’t use cell phones and computers. My computer is my brain.”

Lesson Four: INVENTION IS LIVING “I like to reinvent myself — it’s part of my job.”