innovation playground Idris Mootee

The New Battlefield Between iPhone, BlackBerry and Android Smartphone: The Keypad.

Apple iPhone has officially become the “defender” instead of the “attacker”. The battlefront so far has been on the screen and apps and now the battlefield is switching back to the keyboard. There are two camps: physical keyboard and virtual keyboard. I definitely belong to the group that I needed a real keyboard and therefore I use Blackberry. And there are those who can type at lightening speed on iPhone virtual keyboard.

Since last week, there were rumors that the next generation of Blackberry will come without a physical keyboard (which Blackberry CEO Heins reassured that RIM is not getting rid of its tried-and-true physical keyboard) and this is no easy decision.

One exciting new feature for the BlackBerry 10 is the redesigned user interface. The clean design features "cascades," which let users flip through apps with a simple swipe gesture, replacing a back key or physical button. It will also feature an intelligent virtual keyboard that takes touch-screen keypads to another level. It learns the words that you often use, your typing style and compensates for sloppy typing (I admit I am one of those sloppy typers). If they solve this problem, another good reason for me to stick with Blackberry. I currently have three BlackBerry and a Playbook.

There were reports that now Apple is considering offering a real keyboard for the iPhone 5. While this is highly unlikely, it will be a smart move for them to change the game again if they can completely rethink the design and engineering of a physical keyboard. The next competitive front will not be the camera, screen size or processor speed, it will be battle of the keyboard.

I speculate that RIM is betting (and committed) on winning the keyboard battle because they know it well, typing for BlackBerry users is everything and this is the last defense.  And now RIM is properly equipped with the smarter, faster QNX platform.

Let the battle begins…..and here's a few free advice:

• BlackBerry should seriously push the design front and explore the BlackBerry DNA and go against Apple’s simple design and opt for more sophisticated European asthetic.
• BlackBerry should turn up the keypad battle and bring in new function and keys to allow new document management capabilities. 
• BlackBerry should stop engineering creeps and hold back innovation on those features to reduce distractions.
• BlackBerry should drop the Apps race and give that up completely. Don't fight a battle that you cannot win.
• BlackBerry should turn BBM into an open software and get mass adoption including all Android phones.
• Blackberry should explore innovative features on “identity” management. I think there are lots of rooms to innovate here.
• BlackBerry should innovate around “security” features (not data security) but real security and design service around it.
• BlackBerry should leverage the 200+ million cars are on the road using RIM's QNX operating system and create the most sophisticated integrated features. Most BlackBerry users like me take calls in the car for hours everyday.

I can go on and on for hours and give BlackBerry another 100 ideas to compete for the future. The big strategy is to ignore “Apple”. I mean completely ignore Apple.

You Think Innovation Is Hard. Business Transformation Is A Hundred Times More Difficult. And In Fact It Is The Number One Barrier For Strategic Innovation.

People think innovation is almost just about new ideas. Funny how many think Blue Ocean Strategy is a big wake-up call when all it does is communicating the very the basic and simple idea of strategic innovation – how not to compete with your competitors in the same game and instead create a new game.

A strategist has the choice between getting back into the fight with existing competitors or creating a new space when there is no competition AND no proven customer demand. This is the hardest part - "no proven customer demand" and let's see what the board has to say when you tell them that your strategy cannot be validated quantitatively. New game strategy is extremely difficult to make happen for a number of reasons:

• It is hard to convince the board to bet on a market that has yet to exist
• Successful founders CEOs are stuck seeing things with an old mental and underestimaing the threats
• It is hard to change the minds of people who wanted (and have vested interest in) the old business to work and not willing to give up
• It is hard to make the switch as it requires new mindset, capabilities and organization design
• It is hard to be credible using the the current brand entering or creating the new market space
• There is the question of how sustainable the new value logic from a customer and market perspective

Looking back at the history of industrial revolution or our information or technology revolution, red oceans vs. blue oceans or a better way to describe it is “today cash flow" vs. "future cash flow" or "defender vs. "attacker" etc. Avoiding competitions in the red oceans give rise to innovation opportunities that create new market space and could triggers a new round of industrial transformation. The author did not address the dynamics of the industry transformation.

Straegy is never that simple as red and blue oceans, organizations are increasingly inter-connected as they leverage brand, patent, talent, technology, knowledge, channels, products and services from each other often located in disparate parts of the world. These complicated inter-connections often prevent companies to reinvent themselves even the opportunity is obvious.

There are many hurdles and barriers for transformation including cognitive, resource, capabilities, motivation and political ones that prevent making a new game strategy implementable. Idea Couture Brand-driven Strategic Transformation goes beyond creating, communicating and maintaining a sense of identity and belonging for the employees, we bring foresights into the process and connect the align the brand with the business strategy and the strategic futures.

The brand is used like a savings account for emotional equity while we develop an engaging and energizing feeling of commitment to the organization by creating and co-creating a shared destiny; this is where it creates the highest impact. Conventional visioning and mission writing exercises often fall short to drive transformation. The idea is to get executives and senior managers in front line employees to move beyond empty, slogan-driven communications, which are more likely to lead to detached cynicism than to engagement, and to help them develop a clear personal commitment to an organizational purpose that will reflect in all aspect of managerial actions.

Business transformation is the execution of an integrated, corporate-wide program aimed at aligning the present and future as well as the organization, strategy and brand, it ensures alignment and internal consistency by reshaping the leadership, strategy, finances, organization and operations of businesses as a whole. It is not a Power Point, it is the energy flow of an oranization.

What Every Innovation Manager Needs To Know About Value Creation? Let's Start With Something Simple.

What is value creation? Something commonly used in strategic discussions but not well understood among managers as well as business or design school students. If a company needs to reinvent itself, they need put value creation first. If a disrupter wants to attack an industry leader, it needs to put value creation first. If your company want to grow your way to greatness, put value creation first. If your company wants to stay relevant, put value creation first.

There are many practical issues that affect value: from the nature of owners and investors to the shifting perception and behavior of the financial market, smart and foolish ways to invest, divest, reorganize and acquire etc. At the very core, it is about how companies create value by investing capital to generate future cash flows at higher rates of return than their cost of capital. And how different ownership structures and organization designs could affect value. Here I am talking about one level below.

For business managers, technologists and design professionals this means creating value with everyday decision. Value is the source of competitive differentiation. Here are a few ideas for you to think about:

• Every innovation manager needs to know or consider constantly how each new ideas will benefit consumers and in what way whether helping them to perform, produce, organize certain things or feel certain way. Value can be both tangible and intangible. Customer value needs to be created first before you can think about capturing them. Value creationn before value capture.

• Every innovation manager must understand and better than their competitors at understanding where, how and why value is created and destroyed within your industry and your company. Not only by business unit, by product, by customer, by channel, by market, by technology, or whatever that best reveal your formula that drives value creation.

• Every innovation manager needs to know how their decisions will enable the organization to create, deliver and capture new value from change and foresight. By bringing new perspectives, they can help executives to make better future-informed decisions that create value.
• Every innovation managers need to stay focused on the objective of creating value through purposeful innovation. Don’t be distracted by other management measurements and indicators that don’t build organizations (they are for managing organizations, not building them) and avoid the trap of spend time managing the lagging indicator rather than creating real value for the future.
• Every innovation manager needs to remember that creating value is also about managing expectations. They need to accept that even great ideas will fall flat and some mediocre ideas will be successful and timing can be a key factor. Avoid "short-termism" and confusing product extension is innovation. The best way we can build successful innovation that delivers growth is by putting value creation first.

A misunderstanding of “value” is causing many companies to be “recklessly cautious” or "creatively overwhelm" and forgetting that they are competing for tomorrow’s market and cash flow – not yesterdays. And by their “short-termism” they are passing up terrific opportunities to create long-term value. “Short-termism” is not good for innovation.

Apple: A Rare Case Of Successfully Building A Truly Sustainable Compeitive Advantage. It Is Definitely Worth The Current Valuation Premium.

Here's the cover model for the coming issue of my M/I/S/C magazine. We shot the cover in London and here is a picture of her taking a picture of me. The concept seems surrealistic. The next M/I/S/C Design Thinking and Customer Experience Issue will be in book stores Sept in the US and a bit later in Europe and Asia/Australia. Now I am working on the Dec issue which is Design Thinking and Creativity. I am thinking of who to invite to write for this issue. BTW this is a picture below of Idea Couture's latest window display. I am liking it.

If you've just upgraded your iPhone you will not be happy if Apple is bringing out a new one in a few short months. In addition to launching both iPhone 5 and iOS 5, there will be the new iTunes 11 bought to you from the Cloud.

Expect a very clean design and iCloud will be closely integrated with iTunes. iTunes Store is actually turning into a browser (funny without we seeing it that way) and it will actually be integrated into the entire app. Your music will be backed up by the Cloud and everything will be fully synced.

It is harder and harder to beat Apple with its deep integration between apps, OS and devices. It is reported that iCloud will be offered for free initially, and at some point users will be charged $25 annually for subscription of the service. That’s another way to get another recurring revenue stream just like MobileMe service.

Apple has finally locked-in deals with big record labels Warner, EMI, Sony, and Universal. With 30% of revenue from iCloud’s music offering with the major lablels, 12% with those holding the songwriting rights, and the remaining 58% for Apple to keep. That’s a good profit margin. Not only it is helping with the bottom line, it is further stenghtening the Apple fortress with all these integration.

Apple is building a fortress around its suite of product/services/experiences and it is almost impossible to break that. It is not only around music and devices. They have just filed a patent application that an iProjector that I believe is in the making. It makes perfect sense, a minisize slim projector that sells for $600 to $1,000 and most of them have problems with setting up. And you thought it should be easy. I will not think for a second of getting one if it is fully integrated with my MacBook or iPhone or iPad. With interactive presentations and sharable contents between devices.... and not to mention a really good looking Apple design.

The patent application "Projected display shared workspaces" was filed in February 2010 and it is basically a system for taking what's on screen and projecting it onto a nearby surface such as a wall etc. The true innovation is that about the system proposed in this filing is that it can combine projections from multiple devices into one screen, in what's dubbed the "shared workspace." So you can simultaneously show power point from your computer, a video from your iPhone and notes from your iPad. No switching between apps anymore. Called it a “presentation canvas”?

Apple’s horizontal integration strategy across devices and channels and vertical integration strategy from chip design to software and retail is creating a truly sustainable competitive advantage that is hard to replicate. For that reason alone, its valuation skyrocketed. This is a brilliant example of classic business strategy theory at work.

Every single Apple products complement (compete) and complete each other. Get an iPod, and you can download content via iTunes and access them trhough iCloud and use that to move content to iPad or other devices. The sort of control over the entire user experience or process, from hardware to software, strengthens customer loyalty and provide lock-in. You cannot leave Apple once you’re in. It is becoming the consumer equivalent of IBM for business.

Strategic Innovation And The Quest For Breakthrough Ideas

Innovation is now a very hot topic at the C-Suites. I have speaking a lot on the subect the last 5 years. The funny part is I am talking about Strategic Innovation and many still talk about Technology Innovation as if it was the sole source of innovation. People are very interested in my interpretation of Build-to-Last and the idea of Build-to-Fail-Fast. (Photos by Anddres Ahues)

Every large companies is thinking about it and most have little idea how to integrate that with the organization’s strategic intent; how to make it work within certain organizational structure; how to decide which project to fund; how to create a balance between reenergizing the core and attaching white space; what types of people to staff the innovation function; or simply what capabilities gap are needed to fill.

We just finished a comprehensive study of 42 top companies across 5 industries to understand what challenges and barriers that exist as well as little success stories. Generally speaking there are less success stories as we dig deeper but it is fine since they are at the early stage of the learning curve. We codified the knowledge in lessons learned as well design and implementation options as well as capabilities gap and how to fill them. It is not a 50,000 ft view but a very pragmatic understand of the situations and every company can learn from it.

The most common mistakes fell within the following:

• Focus too much on break-though ideas or staying too close to the core
• Not focus enough on creating break-through ideas and results in only incremental ideas
• Using existing (advertising and market research) vendors and infrastructures as well as toolkits that are not designed for innovation but apply them anyway and not getting the results desired.
• Fail to articulate the core purpose of innovation and how it is driven by the strategic intent and value creation
• Totally don’t understand the concept of ‘whitespace mapping’ let along the sense-making process behind it, and just called it ‘brainstorming’
• Fail to create a space that allow people to play and experiment and fail safely. A physical space that people with shared interest to play with ideas.

The idea of an innovation space is a good one. Even Microsoft has a space called Garage, a place opened last week that gives their staff access to tools such as a soldering bench, a laser cutter and a 3D printer to make prototypes and connect people with shared interest.

The Garage is in one of the oldest Microsoft buildings in campus but lots of windows. They filled the building with new "pods," basically temporary work spaces where teams of 2-6 employees can set up shop to collaborate on projects for a couple of weeks.

It is an attempt to create a safe place to fail. Fail as much as you like that and you wont get demerit points. Like all large companies, any good idea can get lost quickly because the initial market size is too small or it is threat to the core. Every company should explore having a space like this. Or they can house them in one of our offices that are even better.

The New Game Of Strategy: Applied Design Thinking In Business Innovation And Transformation

Just when I thought I can have 2 days in an office then I realized I have to be In NYC tomorrow for a few days. I am writing this post on a flight after missing my connection in Houston, and just finished teaching a three days Strategy graduate course with a focus on strategic innovation and design thinking. What I did was bringing the Harvard Business School case study method of teaching and apply it to design thinking and innovation, it is really interesting and probably an innovation itself because innovation means going against the conventional analytical thinking.

The shift from teaching competitive strategy to strategic innovation changes how the case studies were originally written for. I am using the same teaching material but instead applying atotally different pedagogical focus – which is how to avoid the very obvious and how to develop and apply ‘New Game’ in strategy making. It was intense for the students but they were liking it. I theorize, practice and teach these concepts and so for me, it is not academic, it is real.

Strategy is never that simple as picking the right competitive positioning, segments or competing on different dimensions. It is often complicated because it involves changing of mindset and mental models – mindsets that inspire individuals and teams to think imaginatively, to take risks, to seek out, and to expand the boundaries of a business or redefining customer value. It is hard.

Then there are structural, systems and processes for sharing of ideas, sense-making of data and working together. This includes developing new perspectives and collaborate on ‘white space mapping’ which was never taught at business schools. The very nature of competitive advantaged has changed and I challenged anyone who tell me if they really have a real and relevant competitive advantage that they thought they have.

The information revolution continues and is enabling companies to easily (and sometimes cheaply) match current competitive differentiators and rapidly create new ones. The result is that competitive advantage is evolving from simply focusing on differentiation, low cost or focus. The idea is to do all, the stuck in the middle can be a desirable position if you understand the underlying economic forces. Most business school students and even professors hardly understand how to apply the Five-Forces properly and let alone adapting it to a very different business environment where speed, empathy and community become key strategic elements in addition to bargaining powers and competitive dynamics. We need a new framework that takes into consideration the use of community in business strategy development. I’ve used cases including Method, Microsoft X-Box, Loco Motor and a few others to illustrate the concepts.

I think I should start developing teaching notes based on the original case study but with a different teaching emphasis. Classic views on strategy include Joseph Schumpeter focuses attention on innovation and entrepreneurialism. He suggested that bigger the company the more resources and diversification one can bring to R&D and as a result get better return on innovation. Michael Porter, following Alfred Chandler, focuses attention on business organization and competitive strategy and introduces the concept of cluster to explain competitiveness.

Today’s the nature of strategy and competitive advantage is drastically shaped by strategic innovation -- powered by customer co-creation; desire of consumer to change the status quo and powerful social innovation networks; integrates customer deep into business organization; demand chain into supply chain and contrasts inter-firm relations in terms of market, and closed or semi-closed and open-networks.

The attempt to develop competitive advantage is only the first step. It is sustaining the advantage that is far more challenging. How often companies invested millions and millions of dollars to create barriers for entry only to find out they lasted only for a short a few months. Waking up one morning seeing that your industry value chain was being reconfigured and the expiry date of your business model was last week is not exactly a fun thing. If you find that every six months you have to innovate on something the market will embrace is too exhausting, it is time to embrace design thinking.

Design Thinking And Growth: What’s The Connection? Why Do We Need Growth?

The Harvard Design Thinking Semina was a great one. High quality particiapants and great turn out with beatiful New York City spring weather. Lunch on the rooftop is way better than a banquet room or a faculty's dining hall. No place on earth can beat the view of New York City. So much energy and creativity. Many participants came all the way from China, Argentina, Mexico and Korea. Thinking of the nex one outisde US, perhaps somewhere Europe and Asia?

Growth is a funny word and often misunderstood just like other words such as strategy or innovation. I have heard from people from 25 year old young smart people to 45 year old seasoned executives and often they struggle with the idea of growth. Why we need to relentlessly achieve growth and what growth means?

Growth is often perceived as a proactive (not defensive) strategy, as the Red Queen says in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, “Here it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” We're at a point that you can't run faster anymore and is close to the physical limit of how fast we can run. Both organizations and even economies. We ned to develop out talent pool to match the economy of the future and harness the full capabilities of the our human capital and technological progress and to reverse the damage we've done to the environment. Now it's time to reinvent the wheels.

Growth is perhaps the most important word on CEOs’ minds, small companies or large enterprises. Small firms want to get big and big firms want to get bigger.  Scale brings resources, market power, improving employees’ standard of living and it gives you currency to acquire.  Today, quality growth is hard to come by, and responsible growth is more difficult. Every company needs a grow strategy or you are waiting to die to be acquired or planning to exit. It is like swimming up stream a river, there is nothing call stay put. Either you swim to go upstream or washed down the river.

Philip Crosby, author of  The Eternally Successful Organization says that growth is unavoidable, "if for no other reason than to accommodate the increased expenses that develop over the years. Inflation also raises the cost of everything, and retaliatory price increases are not always possible. Salaries rise as employees gain seniority. The costs of benefits rises because of their very structure, and it is difficult to take any back. Therefore cost eliminations and profit improvement must be conducted on a continuing basis, and the revenues of the organization must continue to increase in order to broaden the base."  When a person ask you why do we need to grow? Ask him or her whether he or she is preparing not to have any promotion, personal development and increase in income and responsibility for the next 10 years.   If a company stop growing, there won’t be opportunities for everyone. Period.

The challenges are 1/ How to grow responsibility? 2/ How to grow purposefully? 3/ How to ensure your growth is sustainable? That’s where design thinking comes into play.  Design thinking can help create a compelling story of the future, anchored on the needs of customers (and societies) and bring a future orientation on strategy development and an empathetic manner to how company think about its customers. Through storytelling, we can unveil the aspirations and natural inclinations of an organization and we can get a sense of what feels right. The story of a company is what can truly determine its value, and the right story will always be more substantial than the right strategy. This is primarily because strategies are susceptible to the ingenuity of competitors, disruptive industry shifts and bad luck, while stories are impervious.  

Spreadsheets and power points don’t tell story. The Design Thinking approach believes that stories are fantastically useful in their ability to bring people onto the same page (unify attention), organize information and present it in an efficient and easy to access manner. Stories help organizational stakeholders access and understand the logic, reasons, motives and intent that surround a potential vision or context for growth. Stories can help reveal the choices presented to an organization, its possible behaviors, courses of action and their potential outcomes. Perhaps most importantly though, stories significantly improve cognition and comprehension. A well-crafted story or narrative can help make contexts and strategies for growth more accessible so they can be questioned, debated, shared and recounted.  

So what’s your growth story? Not only your company needs one. Amercia needs one. And every country needs one too. Design Thinking can help goverments and cities to rethink growth and development which mostly comes from productivity growth, which reflects multiple factors — but the biggest factor is technology.Yes tehcnology is the key driver of grwoth.

Indeed, the dominant role of technological development in economic growth has been well-documented ever since Nobel Laureate Robert Solow published his seminal paper in 1956, “The Economic Record,” which demonstrated that technological progress drove at least 80% of economic growth in the United States between 1909 to 1949. That's why I have faith in the US economy because the US is still the most technologically advanced country in the world. At least for now.

Design Thinking Has Inspired Multi-disciplinary, Interdisciplinary and Trans-disciplinary Approaches To Problem Solving. This Is Just The Beginning Of A New Discipline.

Prague is mystical with a mix of medieval, Renaissance, and Art Nouveau architecture and the design scene is slowly taking shape. You still see traces of history of what communism had done to the city even after these buildings are completely restored. It is where Renaissance meets neo-Gothic and the baroque structures from the 18th centuries.

You can see shadow of cubist touches, which thrived in Bohemia more so in the neighborhood near Vysehrad Park. The public housing or “rabbit huts” as they called it, cheap but highly functional (the Walmart of architecture), provides a stark contrast to the Bohemia style. It is the featureless nature but with modern plumbing and heating were once considered the politically correct way to live. Or at that time, politically sustainable living as I would have called it.

I stayed at the Hotel Josef, a nine-year-old modern boutique hotel that was one of the first in Prague and still the most popular one. It is centrally located in the old Jewish quarter and right next to the Parizka Street. I don’t like the word boutique hotel, as it doesn’t mean much other than small and not part of a big chain. I rather use the word design hotel.

I was really impressed with the design and how it holds up over the years – now that’s design at its finest. There was not a thing to make you feel that it is getting out of fashion, in fact, the hotel design concept is to provide guests with a break from the fascinating baroque architectural surrounding the hotel and give them space to step back and relax in a soothing, and luminous environment. I enjoyed the hours and hours I spent sitting in the lobby lounge doing work with my Macbook while occasionally looking out the windows.

When you’re in Prague, you can’t avoid talking architecture. I’m not trained as an architect but always fascinated about the design process as well as the visual artifacts architect employs. Architects are considered designers and probably fair to say that they required the most rigor training both in art and art history compare to other design discipline such as graphic, fashion or industrial. They probably attracted a very different type of design mind than those of other design disciplines. I wonder what would happen if first year MBA students were required to spend 3 to 6 months studying the history of architecture and design, at the same time learning some basic drawing skills. I think that would drastically widen their perspectives as well as picking up some drawing skills that they can use for life.

Today, most MBAs can’t even draw simple diagrams. The pre-MBA studies are mainly statistics and accounting. There is plenty of time for accounting later in the program. The abilities to communicate using simple diagrams are extremely useful for business problem solving, strategic communications and visual sensemaking (strategic modeling and business model design). Architects use diagrams to explain their visions, elements and relationships between them. Business people can use abstract visuals to show business model options, new value chain design or customer interactions. Once business persons/design thinkers are supplied with visuals to making connections, they can see the relationships between different components better and in return easier to see something otherwise too complicated to express.

Visual sensemaking is quietly changing decision theory, it is also influencing design thinking and theories of design-oriented problem solving as a manifestation of pattern recognition. It is hard to say whether sensemaking is influencing design thinking or system thinking is influencing design thinking and in turn influencing sensemaking. It is a fact that design thinking has inspired multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary approaches to problem solving. I will explore the application of this in my coming Design Thinking for Creativity and Business Innovation seminar organized by the Harvard Graduate School of Design in NYC this month. 25% discount for early registrations and affiliates of a list of design and business schools. Now hoping on a train to Wien.

The Harvard Graduate School of Design "Design Thinking for Creativity and Business Innovation" Seminar Is Officially Open For Registration. Spaces Are Limited.

I finally have started on designing for the new executive program for the Harvard Graduate School of Design - Design Thinking for Creativity and Business Innovation. I have been getting a lot of request to speak on this topic and beyond curiosity, many are interested to see how they can apply these concepts not in product development or design but in complex problem solving. After three years of practive devopment and finally put them all together in one seminar. Plan to take this to Europe and Asia later in the year. This is what powers a Senior Designer/Desigh Thinker/Creative Professional to gain a seat in board level stragetic discussions.

The seminar allows participants to learn how to apply the framework and cognitive processes of Design Thinking to connect with your own creativity, frame specific problems, generate innovative ideas, and convert those ideas into tangible business opportunities. In terms of pedagogy, Design Thinking is a lot more than just a human-centered, rapid prototyping design methods, in fact Design Thinking should be less about design, more about thinking.

The program is designed to show how Design Thinking are used by a remarkably diverse range of global organizations across all industry sectors in creating tangibility in insights, foresights, meanings and strategies. Design Thinking is gaining popularity for many reasons. Mainly corporations are facing crises on several fronts and not only from the obvious such as low cost competition, disruptive technologies, economic sustainability, and social development.

Business executives,non-profit and government leaders are also experiencing a profound crisis of trust and legitimacy and all these factors have triggered a loss of confidence in traditional ways of planning and doing things. The very core of many management theories are being questioned and “management” is close to a point of failure. These 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. Large established institutions have been battered by system level economic failure, extreme uncertainties, and the failure of traditional forms of leadership and management. These wounds have left businesses gazing hopefully towards design thinking as a new management wonder drug that will help them make sense of what is going on and secure their next big bonus or promotion.

Design Thinking comes just-in-time. Design thinking is bringing a refreshed, revitalized, and rejuvenated approach to management and strategic thinking- however, design thinking is far from a cure-all. You can register here for The Design Thinking for Creativity and Business Innovation Program, please make sure you check if you qualify for affiliate discount. It will held at the Harvard Club in Newe York City third week of May.

This is for executives (both creative and management professionals) who wish to learn how to apply Design Thinking methods beyond the noise and cliché and many of which are myths that are simply not true. It is my pleasure to have Dr. Scott Robiner (Assistant Professor at the School of Design Strategies at Parsons and holds a Doctorate and Master Degree in Design from Harvard Graduate School of Design) as a guest speaker. He brings his perspectives of Design Thinking from a cross-discipline designer perspective and will faciliate an interesting dialogue among participants.

More next few days. Need to board a plane to Frankfurt.

Do You Practice Intuition? If So, Do You Know Where It Comes From? Do You Keep It Secret?

Do you trust your intuition? And if so why? Intuition is most practiced and least understood. And why some people are betting at it and some not? Can intuition be rational and strategic? Is there something called ‘strategic intuition?’ What makes your intuition strategic and mine not?

Most see an interesting connection between innovation, imagination and intuition. Often intuition may even exert a paranormal or even magical influence on everything new and unknown. What do we mean by intuition. In Educating Intuition Robin Hogarth describes various ways we can improve our intuition. He points out two notable impediments to the education of intuition. One is the presence of confusing or “wicked” environments where feedback is unreliable. The other is the limited scope or “domain specific” nature of intuition. Intuition can therefore inhibit innovation because such obstacles exist.

• A person who has a giant database of ideas and insights and supported by fast access to those information as the brain processes these knowledge in a non-linear way and as a result the person is more likely to guess correctly in a more educated than others who do not posses the data points and fast access. In another word, a large database, faster access like a SSD drive and better classification of data.
• A person who has a strong theoretical or philosophical understanding of why things happen through life experiences or as a scholar and therefore can quickly draw on those theories and associated metaphor and as a result can look at these very complex problems and not overwhelmed by its complexity. Getting right to the core and a possible decision pops out disguised as intuition. They perceive wholes and compress much into a flash. Philosophers and prophets are often intuitive. It is wisdom secretly disguised as intuition.
• A person who has a strong logical and deductive reasoning capabilities and it to eliminate the impossibilities and therefore left with the more realistic options and by probability the person is in a better position to conclude. This can be dangerous as the person can be very wrong if the answers lie outside conventional logic. But in 90% of the time, the guess is correct due to the narrow nature of the problems. It is fast logic disguised as intuition.

Intuition is a very general word, it is not taught in school (may be art school) and we don’t know what prompt some rely more on it more and some completely ignore it.  The value of intuition is not celebrated in the world of scientific management but commonly practice in the world of design thinking. Many CEOs made important decisions based on it but won't admit it. In the world of data-dominance, it is not easy to find a place for intuition, you can still use it discreetly. Or just call it innovation or sense-making.