innovation playground Idris Mootee

Design Leadership Is More Than Simplicity. It Is About Design Discipline.

El·e·gant, an adjective and define or characterized by or exhibiting refined, tasteful beauty of manner, form, or style. Marc Jacob? Chanel? Jil Sander? Hermes? All are unquestionably elegant by design in the fashion world. How about smartphones or interfaces? Can they be elegant? Or what about customer experiences? Can you describe a banking or customer service experience as elegant? Most people don’t.

Is elegant a word reserved solely for tangible product? The design world likes to use words such as “elegant”, “simple” and “user friendly”, many designers understand how to subtract in creating simple and elegant design solutions. Human factors usually subtract more than add. Good designers often take away complexity in objects or interfaces. Design is more than just making things simple. They appears simple but not necessarily simple. Design is the most complicated process but least understood.

Design should be strategic. Being strategic also means being human. 9 out of 10 designers barely understand what that means. Most are trained as design craftsman. There are very few design visionary and I only know a handful of them. They are also very few design managers. And that’s the reason why designers never made it to the boardroom and they complain they don’t have a voice. Because they are not strategic. Design becomes a competitive advantage for corporations when it is used strategically. At a meta level, design connects the dots between mere survival and humanism supporting by the underlying economics to make it feasible to produce and sell.

I have been hiring and mentoring designers (including some of the very best talents) for decades and can tell you which typology they belong in 5 minutes. It is very easy to find designers, it is not too difficult to find good designers, it is very hard to find design visionary. Because they are not trained in design schools. They need to be cultivated.

But there are so much business can learn from design. If the best design can be elegant, then can a business strategy be “elegant”? Or can a particular management style be described as “elegant”? Anything elegant is often simple; not everything simple is elegant. Things that are simple are often user friendly, not everything simple is user friendly. Sometimes complexity is needed. Simplicity has different meanings. Good businesses need to be simple and easy to understand, and that’s the investment criteria for Warren Buffet. Businesses are getting too complex these days and same for design. Long gone are the days where a few talented young folks sketching out ideas in a room. That's a mindset that stops designers from growing up to a highly complicated world.

Design process is never simple, it is often very messy as everyone has an opinion. Don't try to make it simple. But the result shouldn't be complicated. Design needs strong leadership and no different from other disciplines. Design never works in a highly politically environment and as a result you get design by committee – which is a recipe for disaster. Design management is to take the politics out and allow the essence remains. And the process is true to the mission - design to delight and make profits - not one but both.

Design needs strong leadership. Design never works if it is not managed. Best designers perform well in a professionally managed environment. Not the most desirable for many, but it is necessary. Apple design team is professionally managed and same for Mercedes and Burberry or BMW. There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence. Strong design leaders are never popular, because they need to cut out the non-sense that designers to hide behind. To force people to unlearn old theories of design.

Designers wants to remain small, fully independent and less disciplined and that’s why most design firms cannot scale beyond certain size and fail after a few years. They want to ignore the commercial complexities and stay pure. I appreciate that too but companies cannot afford it. Unless it is your own business and you don't care about making profits.

Design for elegance is better for design for simplicity. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said, “I wouldn’t give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Elegance is “far side” simplicity that is emotionally engaging, profoundly intelligent, and artfully crafted to be two things at once: simple and powerful. In today's super connected world, the proliferation of digital devices and experiences require designers to create new ways of harmonizing software and hardware with elegant connectivity – connecting humans in an elegant way. Industrial designers, human interface designers and mechanical engineers need to explore new theories for them to make physical products real and meaningful and elegant. Why elegance? It is not an elusive target? Industrial designers should stop thinking about functional ease and simplicity, that is an over simplify way of thinking design. Some times people love things that are not so easy. Think about your personal relationships, you don’t go for the easiest one, you go for where your hearts is. Design is the same. How do you put love in an industrial produced object? That’s our job.

The Come Back Of Hardware. Is Software Becoming A Commodity?

The world is suddenly obsessed with smart technologies and this time around it seems unstoppable. Our everyday electrical and mechanical industrial object will now be occupied and ran by software and connected to the cloud. It also means each object (as small as some smoke detectors and as large as automobiles) will now be equipped with tons of sensors and can be able to adapt to different environment and individual needs.

It is essential that the next wave of industrial revolution will make us more efficient and empowered (and more human I hope), and data will be at the heart of this revolution. That's another big conversation. All the Nest, GoPro and Beats received multi-billion-dollar valuations through private investments or acquisitions and everyone is wondering why these hardware companies suddenly in such high demand. Because hardware and software are going through different commodity lifecycles and now software is becoming a commodity. They used to be difficult and expensive to develop and even to deploy, that that is changing. It is hard for software company to get into hardware much as hardware companies struggle to get into software. Hardware cannot be done by a few geeks in the basement, and involves massive R&D and specialists including megatronics engineers, electrical engineers, industrial designers, wireless engineers and usually takes a longer time to develop.

Software you can fix it with a download, and hardware you can’t. They are massive supply chain challenges when it comes to logistics and component supplies. The value of firms who can marry software and hardware will have a competitive advantage over their competitors. Essentially everything we use today will be fitted with some sensors, processors perhaps, and may be a screen and will recarnate and become of Internet of Things. For the last three decades, software engineering has advanced to a state that sophisticated codes can be embedded into machines. And the availability of cheap sensors and super powerful processors is powering this cycle of data revolution. All of a sudden, software, hardware and communications infrastructure are advancing us into a new era. Old world manufacturing + low cost computer processing + ubligious computing + cloud = smart new world and many cool products.

It sounds like the Apple story all over again, does it? The hardware and software integration capability of Apple, the ecosystem, the brand and user experience are now not only inspiring consumer gadgets company, not it’s influence is beyond its own industry. I know this is an overused story, but he Apple influence is still here, and perhaps it will be here for a long time even when the company stop creating great stuff one day. Microsoft ex-CEO Ballmer saw that coming in 2012 in a letter to shareholders. "It's important to recognize a fundamental shift under way in our business, we see ourselves as a devices and services company." Microsoft had the strategy right but couldn’t execute it fully with the exception of X-Box. Microsoft’s future revenue will still be coming in from software and it isn't going to change anytime soon. The transformation from software to hardware is harder that you think.

The idea that hardware is now the new software is pretty real. There is a business model implication here. These hardwares are mostly priced between $100 to $250 and they a gateway and great way to sell software. We are seeing a revival of hardware and this time, it is hardware first and software and then date on the cloud, it will bring new technological advances in cloud-powered hardware that boosts productivity, efficiency and manifests as beautifully designed objects that fit into our hands and homes.

What Is Happening To Sony? Can Sony Be Saved?

2013 was a good year and a very busy one for me. Having been on the road for over 120 days; delivered some great projects and worked with some of the smartest and most creative people around the world was all fun and also exhausted. Now is the time to think about what the future holds?

I really don’t know what to write these days, I want to write about a lot of things from economics to politics and from luxury brands to consumer electronics and from rethinking management to education, so much to do and so little time. I hardly find time to write for my own magazine these days.

2014 will be a year of big change or beginning of one for many.. We’re seeing most dominant designs of our everyday technologies reaching the end of the S-curve and it will hard to see any breakthrough unless we change the way to look at the industries. Some big innovation is needed to create demand. Not speakers and headphones and other accessories although it helps retailers a bit.

Innovation is hard to come these days and most innovations today are mostly incremental in nature. In the world of consumer technologies, from smartphones to tablets and PCs or digital cameras to TVs, everyone one of them is facing serious challenges whether you’re the market leaders (defenders) or followers (attackers). It is hard to drive new behavior and predict on their adoption rate and the low end is flooed with commodty players. On the other side of the coins, opportunities are plentiful. Microsoft, Sony, HP are all in the process of rethinking their business strategies.

Sony was once the most loved and most innovative company. The company is both strategically vertically and horizontally integrated; once designed and produced the best TVs, video cameras, music players, home audio systems and game console, today they are struggling on all fronts. Sony was my no. 1 brand for a long time. For many, Sony is already dead or what turned into I call a zombie brand. It might seems like an overly pessimistic view given the size of the company and they still have a lot of good products, strong brand (in some markets) and a lot of technological innovation, but then what went wrong?

Sony used to be the synonymous with Japan and innovative products. They even considered buying Apple at one point and decided it not worth acquiring (Can't imagine if they've done that and there would be no Apple today). In 2012, Sony’s net loss of almost US$6 billion mainly came from heavy losses in its TV business. Of all eight divisions, only music and financial services units managed to boost a little profit from a year ago.

When I visited Sony stores the last time a few weeks ago, they were so 1990s even though some of the products are pretty impressive. In fact, I was very impressed with the latest camera line-up and I use a RX100 along my Leica M. I am not sure if good products are enough these days.

Sony have made a lot of mistake including alienated smaller retailers, limit itself to internal innovation capability insteadn of using outside consultants to come up with new ideas and heavily rely on local markets (30% of their sales) and as a result ignore what’s going on out there. Sony CEO Kaz Hirai has proclamed that Sony must chart a new course, his quote: "I believe Sony can change." So far it is not happening.

This Japan's technological prowess, wowed the world with the Walkman and Trinitron TV and PS2 and PSP is now struggling to stay relevant. Is it just Sony or "Japan Inc." that is in trouble?  They missed the while digital music wave, missed the smarphone wave, missed the tablet wave, missed the social face and now probably will miss the next whatever wave. Even Google missed the social wave and left the door opened for Facebook and Twitter, but they do have a few wins such as Android.

And for Sony, my advise for you is to stop behaving like a Japanese company. Adopt new practices and move fast. Speed kills. The world has changed and you need to wake-up. Play catching up is not enough and you’ve been doing a good job producing a decent tablet, a nice phone and a set-top box, a not so smart smart watch and whatever, does it matter?

You don’t have a strategy. You want to win in every product category and that's impossible. You should get rid of at least 50% of your product lines. And at least make 10% of your product spectacular ones - iconic. Rethink if you want to play in the smartphone game, may be you should exit it for now.  Your strategy of “One Sony,” will not work, it is an ideal strategy only on power point or paper. Apple works with “One Apple,” but if you consider the context of Sony's situation, it may not be the best move for now. Sony needs to think different and should not make the mistake of try to replicate Samsung or Apple, those two companies are unique in their own ways. The two will own the market (already did) and eat you dinner, since they already took your breakfast and lunch. 2014 is a critical year for Sony.

Today Is The Launch Of My New Book "Design Thinking For Strategic Innovation".

“Design Thinking” has gone beyond fashionable in the design industry, but now quickly getting into management circles and even boardrooms. B-schools are tapping into this new trend and but many are yet to understand what it means and its applications. The idea of management that we teach in B-schools was originally designed for a set of very different kind of needs - managing repetitive tasks, improving economic efficiency and labor productivity and maximizing scale. Today the needs expand to managing complexity and extreme uncertainty that is part of our everyday environment and this is where “Design Thinking” can change management forever.

I am having lots of conversation with B-schools Deans and professors to explore how we can bring this into MBA core. My new book “Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation” is now officially available this week and it has been 15 months in the making and based on extensive research and field practices. Many traditional proven and popular management tools and technique are being questioned for their validity and my book explains why.

My book shows how “Design Thinking” can be used to deal with some of the most common challenges in business today from competing for the future to managing change. This is not an update on our management operating system; this is about rearchitecture of our business designs. Today every business needs a new operating system. And even the world needs a new operating system. “Design Thinking” brings strategic agility and empathy at its core. That demands a totally different level of thinking.

All concepts in my book can be effectively applied in the context of managing radical innovation as well as business model redesign. For over eight years, I have been advancing these ideas into the practice of strategic management; this book is a great opportunity to share them. Let's get beyond the overly simplified views of "Design Thinking" and make that part of any professional practices. These ideas transformed companies and individuals and I hope it can do the same for you. Please share your thoughts.

Why Traditional Apporach To Business Transformation Don't Work Anymore?

Over 60% of companies out there are operating on a dated buisness model and 20% operating with a mental model that had expired for more than 5 years. There are little reasons for those 20% of companies to survie another 5 years or even 3 and for the other 60% they have a short window of opportunity to design and orchestrate their transformation.

Rapid changes in external environment, consumer behavior, global economics and disruptive technologies are throwing off the most rigor business strategies and the best trained managers. Although everyone expect to see big changes ahead but people reacts differently to change.

Many people become accustomed to the status quo and don't want to alter the way things are being done -- regardless of the potential benefits or the disruptive threats from emerging competition. For many, fear of the unknowns and the concerned about the ramifications on their careers are barriers to acknowlege the need for change. People don't like change. And winning belongs to those who thrive with change.

Success for operating in a neck-breaking speed and unknown environment often comes from the ability to drive the proper (or mulitple) transformation at different critical points -- for industry breakpoints. “Business as usual” simply means "end of a business or an industry." Being able to reimainge and reinvent offerings and models are critical to addressing economic volatility and staying on top of the market.

Business transformation traditionally takes the form of unfreezing to refreezing and briding the gaps in capabilities, mindset and performance. And these changes which can take the form of business strategy, management style, culture, organization design and business processes.  One most popular model is the classic model proposed by Lewin which argues that the process of change involves three stages 1/ unfreezing, 2/ change and 3/ refreezing. This model was valuable in recognizing the importance of not only new learning, but also “unlearning” old attitudes, habits and behavior patterns. Today many question the practicality of this model suggesting that a “refreeze” implies a resistance to future change and partucular the future is uncertain.

The Idea Couture Brand-Driven Transformation Model has a strong future oritentation and focused on bringing strategic foresights and organization insights to reimage futures. It uses a lot of Design Thinking principles and makes the process very tangible and collaborative. It is a process of organzation co-creation which people put their stake on what shared destinies they wanted to particiapte in creating and thus releasing energy in the process. It will take 80 Power Point slides to illustrate the process, a high-level view of this model is captured by the following formula: Successful Brand-Driven Business Transformation = P+N+C+M+I+F

• P = Develop a perspective of the future(s) informed by strategic foresights (both customer and technology contexts) and deep organizational insights;
• N = Develop a co-created brand narrative that inspired people of possibilities and put purpsoe at the core of the story;
• C = Develop a compelling case for the need for change developed and shared by all executives, investors, employees and B2B business partners;
• M = Develop a practical means to tie innovation (roadmap) and projects to the desired future(s);
• I = Design an incentive systems that are aligned to identify and encourage appropriate behaviors compatible with the desired future;
• F = Develop feedback mechanism for each stage of the process to monitor progress and provide input for continuous improvement.

Any Business Transformation process is painful. The way many organisations manage change or transformation using existing model is facing the challenge of speed. They are too slow and by the time they refreeze, the market has shifted and they need another transformation. The other important issue is key decisions are made in isolation and the change piece comes later which I argue often is too late. The future of Business Transformation is a co-created one.

The Economics of Co-Creation. Can What Happened To Microbrewery Happens To The Auto Industry?

A lot of talk and interest around the concept of co-creation. It is no question that this is going to have asting implications of how products and experiences are designed, developed and marketed. In 3-5 years, customer co-creation will be the part the norm of everyday business. Much like early days of ecommerce when people struggled with the legal, technical, operational issues. Slowly these issues will work their way out and we would look back and say “that’s simple…. makes perfect sese.”

What’s a great example of co-creation? Let’s first try to define it here as sometimes people refers it to anything from idea crowd-sourcing to technical expert groups to simple product/service/marketing customization. One good example of real co-creation is a company called Loco Motor.

I met Jay Rogers (founder and CEO) at the PDMA Co-creation Conference when I was moderating a panel. He was hosting the event and I was extremely impressed with what he is trying to do and has achieved to date. It is the first co-creative automobile design and purchase experience in the world. Just as the auto industry is dying for new ideas and change and Detroit needs a new strategy and it is more than making a better car. There are many structural issues to deal with and it is complicated. Jay is attempting to disrupt the auto industry by using co-creation as the strategic core.

The people in the car industry that have tried to innovate in the last 100 years and mostly fail, what makes him think he has a chance? Perhaps Detroit should concentrate on redesigning the business model and the whole experience before redesigning cars.

The first product Rally Fighter sells for just under $60,000. It’s an incredible car that looks like a life size HotWheel and gives me fond memory of my childhood. Remember the Hot Wheels yellow track?

The Rally Fighter is designed by the online community and ismanufacture at the microfactory in Phoenix, Arizona with a sustainable and highly efficient process. Jay wanted to build cars all his life, after raising $10 million seed capital, he launched the company with a simple idea that is extremely difficult to pull off. Loco Motors hosts a passionate online group of car-lovers or fanatics who compete to design vehicles for some regional communities in contests that run about once a month. The winning designs is then produced and sold to the communities.

There is more than to the flexible and customizable micro-factory, the concept here is when you give people tools, a strong community network with shared passion, some inspiration, small incentive you are in game. In fact, he is reinventing the customer co-creation experience for automotive. There are more than needs to be done in order to reinvent the economics of the industry. I think every business should look at Loco Motots and see what is relevant for their industries.

Will Loco Motors remains to be a niche business or eventually springing into a platform that supports a auto-cottage industries I don’t know. But we also need to think how we reduce traffic including rethinking local supplies network for certain products and cutting down unnecessary traffic.

An example is to look at how we replace pizza or UPS delivery with perhaps flying delivery drones – pizza right through to your windows. I am not sure if someone has thought about flying delivery drones man by 14 year old part-time students that doesn’t even have a driving license. The military drones can be converted to do the job. It is more realistic than flying personal transport, because in the event of an accident the worst is you don’t get your pizza. May be this is another idea of Jay, his Marine Corps background can be very useful. A central drone delivery operations theater that supports the nation’s takeout industry.