innovation playground Idris Mootee

Media Disruption Is Not Slowing Down. Mobile Is Now The Center Of A New Ecosystem.

The media business is not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel yet. When people asked me about my magazine and the economics of that, they were saying why am I in publishing business. Well that is not my core business, just a hobby. It has been almost three years since the first publication of MISC and readership is growing nicely. We're now in 28 countries and we have have the digital version. I am getting a lot of positive feedback from readers from all over the world. Perhaps I should make the next issue the thickest one. This is the first cover that was shot in Milan. And the next cover will be shot in Shanghai.

The media business is certainly not easy with the never-ending technological disruptions we are experiencing and new behaviors keep evolving, we are nowhere near the end of it. The word social media makes no sense anymore as it is already main stream doesn’t matter how you look at it. Many traditional media types continue to cling to an old way of doing things, based largely on making minor adaptation to existing approaches and some are relentlessly experimenting with finding new revenue stream, largely still through advertising or sponsorship.

There aren’t many new opportunities for business model innovation if you take a strategic view, people are still thinking about advertising or sponsorship. Yahoo and Google are the same. The hybrid model of readers’ empowerment and buttoned-down professional journalism is already fullyoptimized. Media executives are spending a lot of time thinking about the future of their industry and what it will look like in 2020. 

Five years ago everyone is thinking about the online model and suddenly the tablets came and changed everything. And what’s next? Multiple screens device, new interactivity through voice, gestures and more external data sources, and glasses and watches etc. No one knows how content discovery and consumption model will evolve given the abundance of choice consumers have today. Neutrality is probably not the best interest for the media industry.

Media business is still suffering from an identity crisis, at least for another decade. The business model will not change, we will still end up paying for content through transactional, subscription or advertising models although there will be more flexibility on how we purchase them. With every person with a smart phone also has a video camera that can turn them into amateur journalists, news will become real-time and shows us different views of any event. And contextual bits will be consistently updated and events unfold. The Twitters of the world are the instant updates and these short bursts will create more noises than news value and readers need someone to break them down into manageable pieces.

Audience now lives in a multi-screens world. They can choose between raw news and organized news. The three key drivers of mobile disruption are hyper-local (geolocation), integration with home appliances and digital payments. The three together can put mobile at the center of an entirely new ecosystem. It is not merely another form factor. It is the biggest leap forward since writing first arrived about 7,000 years ago, which only impacted a tiny percentage of our population. Word of mouth was the only “information system” for most of humanity and now that will be turbo-charged by mobile as it unlocks an incredibly deep desire and capacity among us (humans) to share personally relevant information and feelings such as “I am waking up happy to a sunny morning” etc. These personal information is competing for attention with other news. And for me, I'd rather be reading what my friends are saying than the news. CNN is depressing.

Idea Couture Is Ready To Take Innovation And Design Thinking To The Next Level.

This has been a very tough two months for me in terms of time and I have not been spending much time writing my blog as much as I used to. It is getting a bit difficult to find the time as we were going through a reorganization, adding new offices, putting new management system in place and at the same time trying to finish my two books on the weekends which will be published in May and Oct this year.

I am excited about my new Design Thinking and Strategic Innovation book that I hope to fill a gap in the market place. And management of the company is taking more and more of my time. So the time I can afford to touch projects is shrinking, I think I only spend 25-30% on projects these days instead of 40%. And people think I spend a lot of time on my MISC magazine, the reality is it is less than 2% of my time. I have a great team helping me with that. I only pick the theme, cover girl and the designs.

We have always designed Idea Couture to be a company that is agile, high style and deserve great love. But we recognize this is an ambitious goal because we want style, speed and substance. Not everyone can make it. I remember someone said something like "Out of difficulties and impossibilities grow miracles." Perhaps we’re naïve. Idea Couture is not a place for small thinkers or people with big egos. It is place for people who believe in being AWESOME and won’t spend time fighting for excuses.

I take pride of seeing people that I mentor growing everyday. We’ve come a long way since launching what we called an innovation firm – whatever that means. It is not a design firm with MBAs; or management consulting firms with some designers or digital agencies calling themselves innovation agencies. We are built from the ground up to do what we’re supposed to do – we work with organizations to uncover innovative ideas that sustainably grow market share or create new markets through powerful customer experiences innovation. We are close to the completion of our reorganization and I am very excited to wait for more new people joining us every week.

Our technology team is amazing and we’re now adapting new methodologies so we can deliver better and faster cross-platform solutions. Our strategy team is growing and growing and have so much untapped potential (unsolicited resumes are flying in dozens everyday).

Our design team is world class and I personally make sure they will remain the best all the time. They not only produce great work, but also open minded and egoless, and fun. At Idea Couture, design is at our very core, not the surface. Design here is under transformation and it is not done within a studio, it is done in the real world in future tense. Design is where technology and art breakeven and where love and logic intersects.

Our insight team is AWESOME with all capital and it is our intellectual powerhouse. When the company advanced forward to a new stage, our foresight capability was not meeting the standard that I required both in terms of strategic knowledge and professionalism. So we needed a full upgrade. Now we have a new global team and a plan to fully integrate that into our innovation process.

We have no time for amateurism. People are committed to giving their best. We just launched our idea couture culture page, which is my personal most favorite part of our site that best represents us. It shows us who we are as individuals which really what this company is all about. People are here for a reason, not for a job. They find their best and it is our job to bring out their bests. It is not always easy. It is how they find meanings. There is a strong correlation between job satisfaction and meaning.

We refuse to act like a "grown-up" company; however at times the company and will always want to think we’re small even though we have 6 offices around the world.

We refuse to act like a “think tank" as we don’t just think, we do.We don't just produce report, we ation on them. We use visual output for sensemaking and mobilizing change that increases organization adaptability and agility.

We refuse to act like we "know it all" but we believe we are equipped to find the best available solutions.

We refuse to accept any "best practices" as we are the one who invent “next practices”.

We refuse to accept that “amateur foresights” is better than no foresights. Actually it is better to have no foresights than wasting time on amateur futurists.

We refuse to accept that "ideas are everything", in fact ideas don’t worth much. They are cheap. There are no shortage of people with ideas and can never execute anything. The art of jump starting innovation is strategic commitment and it is more valuable because nothing happens until someone do something.

We refuse to accept people with "big egos", it is simply not part of our culture. But there is one nice thing about egotists is that they don’t talk and think about other people at all.

Idea Couture is a working prototype and will remain a working prototype in time to come.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forget About Being A "Manager". You Need To Become An "Innopreneur". There Is A Huge Demand For Corporate Entrepreneurs / Innovators Everywhere.

The time for New Year resolutions is here again, not sure if we're all up for the challenge as we can expect more intensified competition, more uncertainty both in politics and economicsl and more disruptive re-organization for all big companies. It is the time for self-reflection and thinking about what do you really want to accomplish this year and what how to bring out the best in you.  If you’re an emerging manager or young leader you should read this.

Drop whatever idea you might have of "what is a manager" in your mind. You don't want to be a "manager". Manager is really not the right title although “managing” is part of the job but a smaller part of it. You are a manager, a knowledge worker, a leader and an entrepreneur. It is easy to learn the skills of being a manager, but very hard to be a great leader and an entrepreneur.

Let me clarify. An entrepreneur doesn’t mean you should be running your own business or start-up; what I am talking is a state of mind. Look around you, do you find a lot of “entrepreneurs” around you? Is your team comprised of people who take ownership of any project or task that comes across their desk or inbox and apply design thinking skills to accomplish them? Do they embrace complex challenges, team skills, and take personal responsibility – for successes and failures alike? Do they think about the good of the larger them than optimzign for their own career gain? Do they provide leadership even they do not have the formal authority?

Corporate entrepreneurs are basically innovators. These “innopreneurs” are hard to find and it is far more difficult to be a corporate entrepreneur than a start-up person. It is relatively easy to say let’s have your start-up and honestly most of them are no more than just an excuse or a way to escape. Entrepreneurship is not about proving a job for yourself, it is about aligning your passion with the right capability and resources that link that to a big idea that create economic value. And not afraid of the challenge of working with the elephant.

A corporate entrepreneur s someone who works in a large corporate setting and his/her job is to create new growth opportunities from coming with the big ideas to launching/managing a corporate venture that is distinct from the parent company either at an adjacency or something that could disrupt the corporate parent. He/she needs to be creative about how to leverage the parent’s assets, market position, core capabilities, brand, channel or other resources. I am estimating that less than 1% of corporate managers are corporate entrepreneurial material or has the quality to sustain as one.

“Corporate innopreneurship” requires the following attributes: (1) a leader that are comfortably to act without authority; (2) a design thinker that enjoy solving complex business challenges with limited information; (3) a manager who understands his everyday job is to resolve dilemmas and not just dreamers; (4) an explorer who can navigate even there are changes in scenarios; and (5) an organizer who can manage people and resources in an agile manner. Every company needs a few of these to achieve innovation-led growth.  Everyday I look around me and try to identify them. The difference may be not only the way they think and self-motivate, but they way they’re being nurtured.

If last year wasn't a great one for you, don't think back. No one can go back in time to change what has happened. So work on your present to make yourself a wonderful future. Happy New Year!

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.

What Is The Right Organization Design For Your Corporation? And What Test To Use To Know If You've Got The Right One?

Innovation effectiveness is closely linked to organization design. In the past, most organization design objectives were driven by a need to improve efficiency, resource sharing and improving focus. It is not common to see innovation as the core driver or organization design to improve speed, creativity and agility. Many organizations struggle to 1/designing the organization and available options 2/understand the implications of different design option 3/making the decision among different organization design models. So what are the factors that should guide the choice (and criticality) of organization design?

There are many rules of thumb about things such as spans of control / empowerment and cross functional/business units reporting relationships and revenue and cost allocation.  There are many theories on organization design but not very useful in guiding organization design decisions. Even if you’ll have 2 or 3 different options on the table, you still need to figure a way to make the big decision? What I advise companies is use the following test when prototyping organizational design. It is both a logical exercise as well as a creative exercise and requires serious prototyping, not moving boxes in a power point.

The Future Test: Does that design reflect the needs for how a company thinks and tthey plan to compete in the future and not just replicated an existing org design taken from another company.  And how does the org design help create some competitive advantage? How future proof is the design?

The People/Culture Test: Does the design adequately reflect the motivations, strengths and weaknesses of the available managers and staff and the organization purpose?

The Competitive Advantage Test:  Does the org design allocate sufficient management emphasis to the strategic priorities in any specific product/market spaces or chosen boundaries?

The Corporate Parenting Advantage Test: This one applies when there are multiple business units and each unit is being looked at individually before holistically. Does the design allocate enough attention to the intended sources of added value and strategic initiatives of the parent or holding company?

The Power Test: Does the org design provide the desired allocated power to groups/individuals that is linked to the strategic value of the unit or functions? Or does it leverage the strength of groups/departments that can positively drive performance beyond its direct influence.

The Agility Test: This addresses whether the org design provide the adaptability and increase speed to respond and allow having the agility to adapt quickly to future changes?

The Market Perception Test: This address how the investment communities perceive the motive and benefit of the redesign. It is important (for public company) that investors and analysts buy into the needs as well as the outcomes.

Organization design is not a pure rational exercise. What is a good organization design?  You won’t know when you finish designing; the prototyping of organization design is tightly linked to employee engagement, strategic futures and organization purpose. It takes some experimentation before getting it right. At the end, its goals are to improve all of the above. The tests provide a good starting point to look at organization design requirements. That’s where Design Thinking comes into play.

The Five Rules Of Business Reinvention: What You Can Learn From Burberry?

The word ‘Reinvention” is a beautiful word. It links people to a path of hope, dreams and possibilities. It is a point when people or organizations are ready to claim and design a new defining moment that will cause a major transformation in their lives and in their organizations.  It takes commitment, reflection and action and in the process removing distractions, making peace with realities and sometimes completely letting go of the past.

Business historian can come up with a long list of great names of firms that failed to adapt and change with the times. For every Apple and Jobs; IBM and Gerstner; and GE and Welch, there are dozens of firms - many of which once held great status in households around the world - that are no longer great, good or even exist. 

Companies that have reinvented themselves successfully typically have some combination of factors on their side. Committed leadership, a deep sense of trust among employees and the courage to throw away irrelevant legacy systems are but a few. The new issue of MISC Magazine is the Big Reinvention Issue. The cove feature story is Burberry – the Reinvention of a British Icon.

So, why are some companies successful in reinvention while others fail? To begin to answer that question, consider the road taken by the company that can arguably claim the biggest success story of the past decade, Burberry. What's the difference between Aquascutum and Burberry? Both are famous for their trenchcoats but while Burberry's success is the luxury brand equivalent to the iPod, Aquascutum's is the MP3 player. Here's an excerpt from the article Burberry: Reinvention of A British Icon. You can download the full article here.

So, how did Burberry do it? While its secrets are woven in and out of the ideas, experiences, inspirations and actions of Ahrendts, Bailey and their senior executives, here are five ways that the iconic British brand has reinvented itself over the past six years.

Rule #1 - Reignite The Passion

Too many organizations attempt to spark a reinvention with an over simplified vision or a strategic statement like "double sales by 2015" or "achieve an ROI of 15% by 2015." These goals may be achievable, but they're uninspiring. At best, they provide a measure to evaluate strategic outcome. At worst, they are more suited towards pursuing efficient operations than encouraging innovation.

From smart shareholders to employees, people being told about a reinvention in the works need stories they can get behind. While never losing sight of how to make the firm more competitively effective, Ahrendts and Bailey clearly understood that Burberry needed bigger aspirations and goals powered by passion. They achieved this by making brand the core focus and announcing to executives that art, not business, would drive major decisions. In doing so, they reconnected employees around the world to the legacy of the iconic 150-year-old British brand, enabled strategists, to planners and beyond to experience the real spirit of their industry and inspired everyone to design beauty into every facet of the business.

Rule #2 - Refresh the Brand Core

Having a globally recognized brand is one thing. Making it magical is something very different. In failing to understand meaning, purpose, promise and history as defining features of a brand, too many companies hope to spark reinvention with a new logo, tagline, communications strategy or other 'brand' sleight-of-hand. With years of what some critics suggested was irreparable neglect and damage to the brand caused by copies of its trademark tartan, mass-market designs produced by franchises and a dearth of product presence in discount outlets, Burberry could well have fallen into this trap. It didn't. Instead, since 2006, its comeback has been elegantly executed with constant brand refreshing, courtesy of Bailey and his design team charting a sustainable growth path through collection after collection. Surprising and delighting customers with every new handbag, jacket, trench or dress, Burberry keeps the magic alive by reimagining its spirit of 'disheveled elegance' with every season. From the latest collection inspired by the color and energy of Henry Moore's textiles to the opening of its more causal Brit store in London's Covent Garden, surprises are always around the corner.

Rule #3 - Reinvent The Brand Experience

Companies often think about customer experience in a very limited sense and are often far too conservative in adapting to and using new social technologies. And luxury companies have, arguably, been the most reluctant to embrace and adapt to the new. To reinvent its brand experience, Burberry brought a redefined promise to life by designing a customer experience that was truly global, true to its core and what other luxury houses at the time could never have imagined and would never have implemented: democratized access to luxury. With an agnostic and borderless approach to social media, Burberry gave customers total access to the brand across any device, on multiple platforms and anywhere, anytime. As a result, it's the dominant luxury brand on Facebook. With a belief that fashion is for everyone - not just the press and industry elite - it opened the locked doors to the runway by livestreaming each season's show and then allowing customers to order pieces for home delivery before collections arrived at stores. The result is excitement, interest and loyalty among consumers who are not yet even customers.

Rule #4 - Reinforce A Balanced Culture

Creating a results culture requires not only producing the right results but also producing the right results the right way. For too many companies, that means relentlessly promoting a single way of thinking, working and doing. At Burberry, where 'balance' is one of the key words in the company's vocabulary, there is no single way of thinking, working and doing. Instead, by hiring people with an EQ as high as their IQ, pursuing cross-disciplinary collaboration between right- and left-brain specialists, and encouraging informal mentorships across and between various departments, tacit knowledges, divergent processes and asymmetrical personalities are shared. The result is that ideas are born, decisions are made and designs are discovered in ways that are more organic and holistic. It's not a formula; Burberry recognizes that maintaining balance is not an end game, it's an ongoing practice.

Rule #5 - Reimagine The Future

Making the right trade-offs between investing in today and investing in tomorrow can be one of the most daunting challenges for any organization. Performing well or not, every company feels the short-term pressure that often forces managers to make bad trade-offs. Very few have the capabilities or the culture of trust that empowers management to make the right trade-offs to balance the need for long term strategic health, cash flow and shareholder expectations. Burberry does. In addition to a clear, creative vision at the top, a Strategic Innovation Council pools the interdisciplinary and intergenerational wisdom and experience of some of the company's best and brightest to consider, examine, feel, see and sense what might be ahead. Stacked with Millennials who live and breathe the kind of cultural shifts that are or potentially will be relevant to the industry, it's a place to challenge assumptions, imagine solutions and, ultimately, dream about what this iconic, 150-year-old British brand could become in the years ahead.

(Disclosure: Burberry is a client of Idea Couture)

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

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. I can tell you 5 ways you can improve the keyboard typing experience.
• 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 add voice to BBM and that will be a killer app.
• Blackberry should explore innovative features on “identity” management. I think there are lots of rooms to innovate here.
• Blackberry should innovate about live document sharing. Talking and reviewing a word of power point doc is another killer app.
• BlackBerry should innovate around “security” features (not just data security) but real security and design service around it.
• Blackberry should design a business mode and a personal model so the phone switch personality. We don't want to carry two phones.
• 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. And all you need to do is to do three of the above right and that earned you the right to play. Next step is to attach and fight back. Go RIM Go!!!

Microsoft's Next Big Innovation: Google Maps Meets Grand Theft Auto

What's new with GPS? There were the 3D maps, then traffic information with live refresh every two minutes so to help others to avoid heavy traffic jams and GPS watch? What’s next?

Surprise the next big innovation will come from Microsoft. It is Grand Theft Auto meets Google Map. The company just granted a patent that is designed to make its maps more pedestrian-friendly meaning not only just when you’re driving, even walking. I think this is a truly innovative idea. This feature is designed to help you t avoid certain dangerous area. You know two blocks can make big differences in many cities.

This "mind-the-ghetto" feature will be killer applications in future Windows phones. So while you’re roaming the streets of LA or Chicago, your smart phones will send GPS into to a system that maps the crime statistics as well as nature of crime, day of time happened and frequency. Not sure how this will impact real estate prices or retail rent.

And they may allow you to do a trial run in the neighborhood as downloadable scenes in Grand Theft Auto on your X-Box? I am sure there is a disclaimant that you need to click ‘accept’ meaning if you do get mugged in what was identified as a safe area would not be their fault.

It is definitely a useful feature for parents to make sure the kids are not allowed hanging out in those areas and it will prompt them and send a message to the parents? If you use a little more imagination, there is so much untapped innovation with LBS and GPS.

GPS is not legal everywhere. Apple will be selling its iPhone in Egypt, people there will have to go without one of the star features: GPS navigation. Yes, because GPS is illegal in Egypt (Can you believe this?) and I think it is the only country in the world but I might be wrong. Apple is forced to take out the feature because there is a ban on the import of all GPS-enabled devices into Egypt. The ban has been in effect for years.

The Egyptian govertment considers GPS a military-grade technology that can be used to help pinpoint the location of government facilities. But if you so happen to be travelling in the desert, you’re advised to buy one, but only from the black market which you need a GPS to locate.

On Building The Creative Culture And Learning How To "Forget" Creatively.

We had our Idea Couture Christmas staff part last week. Looking back there were a lot being accomplished and a lot more to do. What started as a little experiment bringing multi-disciplinary design thinkers together and now becoming a key driving force and intellectual engine advancing the practice of design thinking in innovation and business applications. Idea Couture is where multidisciplinary thinkers come together with shared purpose and where creativity flourishes. I am looking forward to have our London and Mexico City offices running in 3-6 months. I feel I have the right people in place and that's a great start.

At Idea Couture, creativity means more than just novelty ideas. It means new ways to frame problem, using new lenses and developing new perspectives. I am so happy when I see happy people in the company doing great things. I am happy to see people growing and that's gives me tremendous satisfaction.

At the end of the day, we're in the business of producing the non-conforming super smart and creative thinkers and doers. I am pushing the envelope everyday and so far no one is complaining. Heartiest thanks to my management team who did a great job of putting togther the first Idea Couture Award.  You guys rock!

On the road this week and spending time with people hearing them talk about their innovation challenges and how they apply design thinking. Lots of great meetings. We're aware of the big changes coming ahead. Every business, government and instirutions will be impacted. Change does not creep up on us every 10 or 20 years, it is an ever-present business and organization phenomenon that is disrupting industries and causing firms and industries to disappear. Although the degree and velocity of change is unprecedented.

Everyday we’re dealing with more and more unknown and unknowable, but decisions still need to be made. Many of the challenges today are unique and have few or no precedents, so textbook solutions (and no guru don’t waste time buying whatever best sellers) or trying to find aHarvard Business School case study. Past solutions do not necessarily apply today. The external environment is constantly absorbing shocks from technological advancement, cultural change and systems failure.

Creativity is needed everywhere to rethink and reimagine products, experiences, companies, processes and even industries. Top executives are looking everywhere for new thinking and solutions that are outside the routine of orthodox strategies and old paradigms. So where can you look for new ideas? And how can you design an environment in which creative people can survive, thrive and flourish? We can begin by asking, how can you make people creatively forget what they know in order to reinvent the future? This is where sensemaking comes into play.

A big part of sensemaking is creative “forgetting” and it is first thing you must do. We all create our own environments and then constrained by them. Being able to aware and realize the impact of our own behavior in creating the environment in which we’re in is a very important first step. Forget who we are is something worth practicing. There may not be any scientific evidence to suggest that those who know what to forget can think more creatively about the future, but in the formulation of business strategy, creativity can be seriously constrained if it is burdened by the past. The problem lies in the notion of “core competencies,” which suggest that companies should stick to what they know best. If that’s the case, then why many of those once great companies should still be around.

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.