innovation playground Idris Mootee

Thank You Robert Downey Junior For The Nine Creative Short Films You Created to Celebrate The HTC M9. Honestly, I Don't Quite Get It.

Thank you, Robert Downey Jr, for the nine inspirational short films you created to celebrate our all-new HTC One M9. Honestly, as HTC's CMO and the client who commissioned you the project and telling everyone it is a great idea, I am really not getting it. At least not all of it. I just want to be honest about it.

I am considered a very creative person and, as a designer, I appreciate all kinds of art from surrealism to post-modernism. I understood the concepts explained to me by team RDJ before we started this project and I deeply appreciate all the effort and enthusiasm you put into this. It was a lot of hard work and you did it for love (I will keep that secret between us). Thank you RDJ! But I still don’t get it! Ask the Internet?

Yes, I have my official explanation captured in a video of these nine playful vignettes juxtaposing the sleek, color-changing attributes of the new HTC One M9 with timeless pop-culture inspirations, from The Prisoner to Andy Warhol to Charlie Chaplin. I believe you drew inspirations from the features that I explained to you before you started your ideation process, and I can see those connections. The official launch of the films at SXSW last week was a great success, and we received very good feedback from folks in the creative industries. Whether they are viewed individually or as a whole, these nine films are not only entertaining, but they get us thinking.  And hopefully they inspire us to go out and make something!

The important question for me is, do these very creative short films improve brand presence, brand preferences, and brand relevance for HTC? Those are the right questions, and I don’t have all the answers yet. To put it in context these are not expensive productions, so to get our ROCA (Return on Creative Assets) is not an issue. 

Let's start with the first one brand presence; with millions of people viewing these videos within the first 48 hours, and now spreading across the Internet, the first one is not a question after all. It gets HTC the awareness we needed without spending any money buying paid media on TV or social platforms. So, it is a very effective way for maintaining awareness in an already noisy world. It is a lot better than chest thumping to get noticed. We don’t want to be Tarzan. We’d rather be Charlie Chaplain.

The second question is, does it create brand preference for the HTC brand? This effort itself is no easy undertaking. To make a brand more preferred over others in a defined category (in our case, the smartphone) is an expensive and long-term undertaking, and there is no short cut. The most common approaches involve highlighting certain unique selling propositions to make the brand more attractive; focusing on incremental performance (such as battery life) or improved service (extended warranty programs, and so on) as differentiators. These things don’t change brand preferences at all, and even highly visible sponsorships, celebrity endorsements, and more engaging social media programs rarely change it. Shaping brand preferences is not an overnight thing.

The problem is that over-investing in advertising (beyond the minimum level) rarely changes the market share structure. Customers are less inclined or motivated to change brand loyalties in established markets – emerging markets are a very different story – unless it is a low involvement purchase. Over-spending on marketing usually hurts margins, profitability, and, ultimately, results in a decline into irrelevance. HTC made that mistake before with the big TV campaign. Internal numbers showed an increase of just 10 to 15 percent of improved brand awareness. In short, it doesn't do anything at all. It was a disaster and a laughingstock. Sony made the same mistake by pouring out big ad dollars in 2014. Sony overall generated $17.4 billion in revenue, but posted a net loss of $1.2 billion during its fiscal second quarter last year. Sony smartphone units saw revenue rise 1.2% year over year to $2.8 billion, but slid to a $1.6 billion operating loss and effectively wiped out all the profits Sony made from other business units during the quarter.

The average tenure for a CMO is very short. Samsung and HTC burnt through a few CMOs in a short period, and so do many other companies. For CMOs to succeed, they must sit at the top of an ASS – “Agile, Scientific, and Social” – marketing organization, and new capabilities need to be built from the ground up based on these new requirements. The art and science of marketing is advancing towards the ASS model. Advertising agencies are further behind the curve than clients, and clients are demanding more.

The third question is, do these films create Brand Relevance? This is a question for debate. These short films are irrelevant on their own at least for some, including myself. But does it matter? Apple and Samsung are known to everyone as two market leaders, and so they need to market to everyone. They need to appeal to their served customers. But HTC is different. We are definitely not selling to everyone, even though it is fair to say that our products are for everyone. The reality is that awareness is not the main driver in increasing brand strength and relevance; how relevant your product is in the minds of your customers, and how your brand is being perceived to be unique is more important. The world is desperately moving towards being more individualized and personalized. Mass advertising works based on appealing to the lowest denominators and it has its place. 

I believe in the market of ONE. Industrial economics may not (yet) allow us to produce highly customized smartphones, and mass media is the same. Even though social media is slowly behaving like broadcast media, it is hard to create customized messages due to the economics of content production. Here this is a good experiment to allow people draw on their imagination to create their own interpretations. I hope this encourage more brands to take bolder moves to co-create meanings with customers and not brainwashing the with a message and a reason to believe. That's so 80s.

If you are able to achieve greater customization (through messages and meanings), it will be very relevant to your customers and it will resonate with them. As a result, customers will specifically seek out that brand or product. This is the hypothesis the super short mini-films are based upon. It is an experiment; they are not ads, they are not viral videos, and they are not micro-films. I don’t know what to call them – just some very short films.

Transformative marketing has no cruise control or auto-pilot switch. It exists in an accelerating paradigm: more dramatic changes, more often. Brands of the future will take risks and lead change, not simply respond to it. As marketers we need to have the courage to commit to finding new and bold ways of doing things and being relevant. 

I’ll now take off my marketer’s hat and switch to an art critic’s hat. The literal definition of artist as brand (Robert Downey Jr) is “a creator who has become a unique star, symbol, icon, Mr. Iron Man,” but the idea goes deeper that that. I believe marketing can empower an artist’s authentic purpose, identity and creativity. When an individual’s core purpose and creative talent are synergistically aligned and amplified with a product's design philosophy, they can become “transcendent symbols.” This is not about fame. This is about creative power in the truest sense of the word. Know thyself. The world will recognize it too.

One artist + One phone = Nine visions.

Related articles

Watch Robert Downey Jr. In 10 Weird And Wonderful Very Short Films

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.

What Are The Unmet Needs Of The Future Of Workplace?

We can see it’s coming. The future of work in the next five years will be so different from the last 50 years. There are more than a few driving forces behind this: demographic shift, lifestyles of millennial, technology, organization design, nature of competition, and human capital flow etc. Management of the workplace used to be quite simple. All one has to manage are:

1. What is the direction in terms of how work is being performed?
2. What tools are needed to support the work? 
3. How much effort is needed to achieve the desired goals?
4. How much persistence should be applied to get better results?
5. What incentives are in place to motivate the individuals to achieve those goals?

Our work pattern is changing. You can no longer distinguish between the Travel-Worker pattern and Wherever-Worker pattern or the Whenever-Worker pattern. And there is the Whoever-Worker which is adding new challenges. These Work-Pattern Personas are not mutually exclusive and many traditional incentives won’t work for them. Actually, many of the incentives we use today make companies worse off. They encourage more short-termism as well as each optimizing for their own good rather than the company’s whole, which ends up in more politics and a lack of collaboration.

The best incentives are the intrinsic ones. These self-generated factors (self-responsibility, freedom to be creative, develop unique skills and abilities, interesting and challenging work, opportunities for advancement) all have a deeper and longer-term effect than monetary incentives. I guess for the millennial, the most effective extrinsic motivator is title. They just can’t wait to lead even though they are far from ready. It is like taking on a new PS4 game at the advanced difficulty for the first time and getting killed in 3 seconds. Intrinsic motivation is powerful. It comes from a person’s internal desire to be something…. to do something…. to make a dent in the universe. They are their own dream-makers. They are the best people you can find.

So what would be the communication and collaboration technologies needed for the future workplace? This is purely anecdotal but we do have a lot of research in this area, which I can’t share. The emerging needs for a worker is not being more productive, as most are very productive already and with these little devices that we carry around, we are all working 24/7 (at least myself). Here are a few ideas:

1. Idea Mapping Networks. As the knowledge workplace is more reliant on creative ideas and often innovative new ideas rebuilt on top of each other. The future workplace will have a solution to map the origin of ideas and link them to those who improvise on them while not losing sight of the sources and the associated mental models that it derived from. This 3D visualization will link all important documents and work performed and will be the starting point of any creative brainstorming session.
2. Blue Collar Special Forces Central Comand System. Blue-collar field workers are often less motivated and often see their job is meaningless. Taking a page from the special forces and using augmented reality technologies (virtual glasses and dual-comm bone conduction headsets etc.) will not only improve their ability to handle onsite problems but make them feel they are part of a special forces that they are out there solving complicated problems. They can act and feel more professional, working and talking to the command center with people who support them to perform their tasks.
3. Emotional Management Systems. Emotional management in the workplace is often a performance issue. This is often too personal for your colleagues or even managers to deal with. If it is taken care by technology that is a different story, because the system won’t judge you. They are there to help. With biosensors to monitor your level of stress and frustrations, perhaps they can activate some breakers to help you to cool off. Marily Henner was right she said “Being in control of your life and having realistic expectations about your day-to-day challenges are the keys to stress management, which is perhaps the most important ingredient to living a happy, healthy and rewarding life”.
4. Virtual Work Bench. Imagine a share desk that a team can work together on even when they’re in different offices. It takes the idea of a share bench (desktop) further and allows sharing and real time editing of moving of documents or any objects. It is available when people are assigned to a team and you can always switch back to your private desk with a wipe gesture. Imagine one real-time synchronized virtual desk.

I have a few more but I have to get back to my day job. I realized I have not written a blog post for almost two months (probably the longest since I started this blog 7 years ago). I was jetting around the world running meetings with 3 hours of sleep every day and often I almost forget where I'm at. Sometimes I woke up ending up at our Shanghai, London, San Francisco or Mexico offices. Here you go, another unmet need for the new workplace – please tell me where I am at now.

Exploring The Four Biggest Myths of Creativity. Design Educators Take Note.

The party at Idea Couture London office last week was a fantastic event. Get to meet many young talented people there and looking forward to work with them on projects. My work takes me around the world and it is hard to get to know everyone in different offices. I enjoy talking to creative people from creative engineers to designers. And I have a very different idea of what "creative" people means. Idea Couture is a creative powerhose and it is creativity in the deepest and most systematic sense, looking at challenges from new perspectives but achor in a highly logical manner. That's our creative algorithm and it is rooted in every IC office.

Design educators take note. Design schools have built up an expectation that they can equip students to tackle complex problems through the power of creativity alone. They can’t. They don’t. And they continue to fool themselves with four big myths about creativity.

The first myth is that creativity and design are inseparable. Here, we have led ourselves down a garden path of consensus where many of us believe that because designers are designers they are creative. But design is not creativity manifested, and creativity is not the exclusive to the design mind. One can be creative without having any design skills or sensibility, and there are many skilled designers who utterly lack in creativity. Design doesn't = creatiivty. It needs creativity.

The second myth is that analytical people are generally not creative people. Here, in subscribing to the popular oversimplification of human complexity that there are right-brain thinkers and left-brain thinkers, we assume that those of us who lean towards analysis, process, logic and science are – admit it – a little uninspired. As anyone who understands what goes into big and small leaps of science knows, this is rubbish. The analytic and the creative can, and often do, live side by side in the same brain.

The third myth is that, when it comes to design, creativity must be unbound from the laws, structures and processes of the day-to-day world. Bound up in the long-standing mythology of the artist as a visionary or hero who must be free to do what he/she – and he/she alone – does best, this can sometimes be little more than an excuse for the fact that the artist or visionary lacks the ability to apply his creativity beyond his own imagination. Nowhere is this more prevalent than at the intersection of business and design where many creative people prove themselves incapable or unwilling to grasp (and design for) the realities of what a company does and how it operates.

The fourth and final myth is that which surrounds the recent and very popular theme of ‘design for social change’. While the output of many such projects is little more than a poster and a campaign, not an actual solution, most of us would agree that such work starts with the best of intentions. Here, as in the third myth, the challenge is that designers are generally not educationally or experientially equipped to identify the social or cultural genesis of a problem and are typically blind-sided by the economics of an issue. The result is that many develop ideas (not really solutions) that are irrelevant, unsustainable and, in some cases, lead to further problems. They were one minute inspiration and not sustainable change.

If I was to start a design school (not sure I would)  from scratch tomorrow, the program would be based on Movement, Intuition, Structure and Complexity. These would be the “subjects” that would become the permanent vocabulary of every graduating student for one simple reason: we need to train a new breed of professionals that can live up to the promise of how design can change the world. Only by balancing the ‘general’ with the ‘specific’, the ‘whole’ with the ‘part’, the ‘abstract’ with the ‘concrete’, and the ‘indefinite’ with the ‘definite’ can we prepare young people for the increasingly competitive job market, the stakes of what it means to be a citizen of design in the global community, and the what it means to be a human being who enjoys deeper forms of beauty, meaning and purpose while understanding economics.

Adapted from an article in Dec 2013 issue of MISC magazine.

Creativity In The Workplace. It's Is More Than Just Colorful Furnitures. Yes, The Space Matters But There Is More.

For all those cash-rich companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook, there is a race to hire celebrity architects to design their headquarters. Google headquarters consists of nine angled buildings connected by bridges. Reportedly, the idea was based on data collected from Google employees’ behavior which then translated into some kind of architectural algorithm that should produce “casual collisions” to make innovation happen more often. I am not buying this, well they are. I guess when you have too much money to play with. When 3D virtual conferencing technology comes to market, these companies will be the early adopters. Expect cool walk-in facilities outfitted with wall-sized screens that project 360-degree views of video conference participants from different offices or countries.
The last time business attempted to reinvent the workplace was during the dot.com days when many companies switched from cubicles to open offices in order to improve collaboration and encourage impromptu problem solving. Today, millennials demand more personal workspace flexibility (actually they demand many things too) – the ability to adapt a workstation or stand at their desks. Standing work is happening everywhere as much as working on a couch. In addition to personal storage and personal expression, companies need to accommodate for this preference. At Idea Couture, standing desk is becoming so popular (not sure I remember who in our office started that) and now I see people standing, jumping while typing (wearing their Fitbits) and talking on the phone.

I really can’t wait for the day when we start banning standard cubicles and those headache-inducing white fluorescent lights. Those light scan literally gives me migraine. I wish those standard cubicles would join the ranks of the fax machine and the time-punch clock. It just might happen, thanks to Google, Apple and Pixar and others who have started to embrace the idea of cool workspaces designed to stimulate creativity and inspire innovation. I don’t mean those that put up colorful wallpaper and a few beanbags; that's no better than a cubicle. Workspaces can be stressful environments and it is important to think about how we can design to reduce stress, not just create colorful eye-candy.

Most workspace stress can come from any physical conditions that you perceive as irritating, frustrating, uncomfortable or unpleasant. Common sources of workspace stress include poor lighting, noisy backgrounds, lack of fresh air and poor climate conditions. But the biggest potential stress is other people. Difficult people can cause so much stress, particularly with the demand for team collaboration. Can a cool office space solve this problem? Perhaps to a certain small degree.

Physical workspaces have a profound impact on increasing not just productivity but also team creativity and collaboration. That’s part of the reason why Google and Facebook designed their offices with people sitting side-by-side and no partitions between them. An open environment radiates a sense of community where creative spaces calm people down and remind them there is a creative solution to any problem. Cubicles remind you that the office is a machine and you must processes and procedures.If your company isn't thinking about how workspace design can improve collaboration, chances are you are stuck in the 80s. This is a good forum to debate on this subject on how creativity is endangered in New York Time.

These days everyone wants to collaborate with each other (those who can't are pretty much considered unemployable); the average employee actively participates in at least five different ad hoc teams simultaneously, and we can expect that number to rise. Creative workplace design that supports collaboration will be part of the new productivity index. And you don't necessarily have to spend a lot of money, perhaps let's start with a policy for pets ... creativity starts here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Design Thinking Is A Cognitive And Intellectual Process That Balances The Rational And Emotional. Not Included With Your MBA.

What is Design Thinking? Because of the word “design” and many automatically associate it with the craft of design or design as a profession. Actually it is less to do with “design” and more with “system”. There are many ways to define "design thinking" and this list is not exhaustive:

• A way to instill customer-centricity and empathy
• A framework for exploration and experimentation
• An approach to sense-making and problem solving
• A methodology to foster exploration and experimentation
• A design buzzword to tell you a designer can do more than design
• A management buzzword sold as the “next” strategic tool
• A marketing slogan or tag line
• A self-gratifying term for those who think they are creative

The term “design thinkers” implies that designers are craftsmen and not thinkers, which is NOT always the case. It is also a stretch for traditional industrial or brand/graphic design firms to claim to be able to use "design thinking" to solve complex strategic issues. These firms need to go through a radical transformation and close a big capability gap before they can even attempt to implement it for others.

Today, "design thinking" is frequently compared and contrasted to business. This is often an over simplification that forces us into predetermined roles along with their associated rules, conventions, behaviors and formal expectations. It Is important to recognize that "design thinking" is NOT exclusive to designers or unattainable to those in another discipline. Design thinking is natural and inherent in all of us who are smart and creative.

"Design thinking" is a cognitive and intellectual process that balances the rational and emotional – in effect combining left brain and right brain thinking. When applied, it harmonizes with other modes of thinking and closes knowledge and information gaps, creating order and refining meaning. Because "design thinking" is a dynamic, constructive process that is iterative in nature, developing ideas requires ongoing definition, redefinition, representation and assessment.

To achieve those tangible outcomes, you need to open the process to multiple participants and socialize the process and outcomes, visualization is a very critical part of the process, not an outcome. Even the Department of Defence recognizes the needs to train "design thinkers" that are capable of critical and creative thinking to plan operations in dynamic environments with fast-changing uncertainties in extremely complex conditions.

People who are capable of using "design thinking" to identify and develop different military response options within the context of a big strategy are crucial to successful military operations. The development of such skills requires a shift in their focus from the operational and tactical environments to the strategic environment. This is an extremely challenging undertaking given that many military officers spend the majority of their career starting at lower levels and their advancement depends upon how well they perform tactically. This is very much like managers in large organizations who were promoted based on their ability to execute tactically.

To develop senior commanding officers with "design thinking" capabilities require DOF to train them new skills including analysis as well as synthesis. "Design thinkers" possess the ability to think critically on a "system" level; break concepts into simpler parts and mapping out their relationship and system impact before rearranging the elements into a new whole; in other words, to produce something through imaginative skills and quick experiments. And yes, imagination is always needed.

Design Thinking And Creating Social Capital. Here's An Example From Tampiquito, Mexico.

Creativity happens everywhere. Not only in design firms or creative agencies. And you can easily find the results of creativity all around you; you don’t need to seek out a gallery. People think creativity only happens in art schools and innovation don't usually happens only in a lab. Design Thinking and Strategic Creaitivty is all around us and funny enough many don't it Design Thinking. In fact, they happen more often than in a design environment. Design is not Design Thinking.

Creativity is everywhere and you need the eyes to see them. One example is PARK(ing) Day, an annual, worldwide event that invites citizens everywhere to transform metered parking spots into temporary parks for the public good. The beauty of these guerrilla installations is in their ability to engage and energize people. If all advertisers take 5% of their ad budget and use it for street installations, I think it would be a very valuable addition to their media mix. Imagine using this space for activation in creating social capital?

Meet Luis Alvarez who is an engineer by training and owns and runs a car repair shop, Autocity, in Tampiquito, Mexico. Luis also run an art gallery and an Artist-in-Residence program that aims to engage young local and international artists in projects for the development of the neighborhood’s social capital. Both the Gallery and Art Studio are located within his auto repair shop. Yes, people create art to the sounds of auto equipment and mechanics shouting, the entire process blends into a performance all its own.

It is a first for sure. And It brings me to the question, why doesn’t this happen in other spaces? In other places of business? What about shopping malls? This is one of the most creative ideas I’ve come across this year and I think Luis’ idea has legs. So far, two Artists-in-Residence projects have started up in Tampiquito. In 2009, the urban artist Eltono came to Tampiquito, stayed for two months, and painted the facades of about 50 houses in the neighborhood.

In 2010, Luis and his friends, El Narval, invited the Colombian sculptor Ana J. Haugwitz to join them. She also stayed for two months and worked together with the neighborhood’s craftsmen. The result was a collection of nine works of art, which were exhibited publicly in the neighborhood. Each work of art reflected the young artist’s collaboration with the talent she found in the workshops. I think art itself needs innovation more than anything else. It should get out of the studio and galleries and be part of our everyday lives. We can use a few more Luis in every neighborhood.

Let's Be A Little More Creative About Creativity. And What Does Collective Creativity Means?

What is creativity? According to Wikipedia: Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new (a product, a solution, a work of art, a novel, a joke, etc.) that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs. What counts as "valuable" is similarly defined in a variety of ways. BTW the above picture was taken at the annual Sausalito Art Festival just this weekend.

Scholarly interest in creativity ranges widely: Topics to which it is relevant include the relationship between creativity and general intelligence; the mental and neurological processes associated with creative activity; the relationship between personality type and creative ability; the relationship between creativity and mental health; the potential for fostering creativity through education and training, especially as augmented by technology; and the application of an individual's existing creative resources to improve the effectiveness of learning processes and of the teaching processes tailored to them.

Creativity and creative thinking are studied across many disciplines from psychology to cognitive science, art, education, philosophy, technology, theology, sociology, linguistics, business studies, and economics. As a result, there are a multitude of definitions and it all depends how you use it. What’s the motivation for people to be creative? Or people just want to be creative because they are creative? Sometimes this is the case and sometimes people are motivated by problems that need to be solved or jobs that need to get done and conventional approach is not effective.

Creativity comes in all shapes and sizes. Often we are not creative enough about what's creativity is or who is considered a 'creative' person. Sometime people can just pull an idea out from nowhere; and sometimes people scan for alternatives and quickly come to what they believe the best idea. It is sometimes a quality game and sometimes a quantity game - good idea versus lots of ideas. When creativity requires analysis and other more qualities of thinking, such as flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity or unpredictability, is that still consider creativity? Or it should be called 'Design Thinking?' Does creativity be just novel or it is not enough for it to be novel; it must have value, or be appropriate to the cognitive demands of the situation and the context.

The creative domain is basically nested in culture - the symbolic knowledge shred by a particular groups, society or by humanity as a whole (visual arts, performance art, craft-based professions etc.) and then there are gatekeepers (curators and producers). The person who involves in the act of creativity includes musicians, engineers, designers, architects, business strategists etc. But being in one of these professions, does one automatically qualify as a member of the ‘creative class?’ This one I am not sure.

Creative people have a great deal of energy; an urge to look at things differently but they also have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility. The best creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy on one end, and rooted sense of reality at the other. And what about ‘collective creativity?’ We need to be more creative about what's creativity? What about creativity and co-creation', that’s a topic for another post.

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.