schneiderism

Dan Wieden, founder of Wieden+Kennedy, said that line about being stupid when asked about his job by Polly Labarre of Mavericks at Work. I believe that the full quote was “My job is to walk in stupid every day.” His point is that there is no way he could know everything, that he is aware of the obstacle of expertise, and that he will not always have the best ideas. So, coming into work “stupid” keeps his mind open to ideas from anywhere, and open to valuing them when they happened. Clearly, that strategy has worked well for Dan.

I read that Dan Wieden quote at Mavericks at Work a few days ago and have been thinking about it over the weekend. I believe it is a very powerful attitude about how we could approach our work and maintain important perspective. I think there is tremendous value in, every day, going to work ready to learn, anxious for surprises, and anticipating the new. In coming to work looking for change, for improvement, and to challenge convention. We need to go to work knowing that ideas can come from anywhere, and should, and that those ideas should be acknowledged, encouraged, and supported… arriving every day with the intent of building this, of making it happen, of not standing in the way. Every day we need to know that somebody, somewhere is better than us… and that is totally cool because we want to learn from them. We need to come in every day hopeful, hungry, and focused on being in a different place than we were yesterday, on being in a different place this afternoon than this morning. We need to spend more time listening than talking, more time trying to understand and see from alternative points of view and work to avoid reaction and to lessen our reliance on instinct and instead give ourselves the time to own our decisions, and be thoughtful about it. We should spend as much energy on building our team as we do building our careers, and realize that our team is better when it is made up of people who just might be, and probably need to be, smarter than us. Instead of adopting the persona of an expert, we should try that of a student. Being a student was fun, everything was about newness and possibilities. Being an expert is limiting.

We all see the well-worn grain of company “culture” begin to show in ourselves and the others we work with. We see the behaviors that are counter to doing things better, to doing them the right way, and we allow this to happen. We see people who have stopped learning, people who no longer have wonder and curiosity and no longer have passion and drive. This is a form of giving up, or retiring from what is important. This is not an option. Dan Wieden nailed it.

In a similar vein, I found an excellent, direct and honest speech by Dan Wieden on the W+K London blog Welcome to Optimism, which I have followed for a long time. Both the speech and the blog are totally worth reading.

One company’s vision of the automobiles of the future. Volkswagen recently launched Volkswagen 2028, a website that explores VW’s perspective on a number of issues and how those issues might manifest themselves through design twenty years from now, a perspective rooted deeply in Volkswagen’s longer term brand strategy (read that as marketing). This is not so much about showing us futuristic concepts as much as demonstrating the response to different needs, constraints, and technologies. Responses that are increasingly important to people. Specifically, Volkswagen provides us with some detail in how, in the near future, they might respond to issues of sustainability, networked mobility, customization and personalization, and accident prevention. All of the concepts offer hypothetical technologies that either replace the traditional human-car interaction, or enhance it by steamlining and focusing the action of driving. It’s a good exercise, and I have no doubt that the issues and ideas addressed by VW here are the beginnings of some pretty sophisticated changes that we will see in automobiles. While I imagine that all automobile manufacturers are digging into these concepts, at least to some degree, it is interesting to see Volkswagen put it out there in such a cohesive and comprehensive way, though this is clearly as much about marketing as it is about showcasing advanced engineering thinking.

There are several components of varying complexity that make up any business. It is the quality of these components, and their unique combination (hopefully), that provide businesses with a competitive advantage in the marketplace. From the investment side, understanding the quality of an enterprise is very much tied to understanding the business model of that enterprise, and how it contrasts to its competitors - what advantages that business model creates for the business in the marketplace, and how those advantages will scale over time. Additionally, there is tremendous value in understanding at a deep level that the framework of a given business model gives an edge as companies survey the competitive landscape for strategic risk, and the opportunities inherent to that risk. It is common for businesses to take a very haphazard approach to analyzing, understanding, and building the foundation of their own business model, it is also common for businesses to miss the opportunity of conducting the same analysis of their competitors. This oversight with regards to understanding their own context in the marketplace is most likely due to myth of complexity as it relates to “putting the pieces together” and taking a hard look at the constituent components of the business in question.

I was excited to find the slideshow above, and the related posts, by Alex Osterwalder. Alex has put forth a model for analyzing, understanding, designing, and contrasting business models that is easy, straightforward, and, I believe, incredibly valuable. He provides detail for what actually makes up a business model here. There is a lot of writing in business pubs right now about business model reinvention and business model innovation due to the nature of the economy and the competitive environment of different industries. This is all good, but often what is missing are the practical matters of creating an effective baseline from which to engage in exercises and experiments into innovation and reinvention. I believe that Alex succinctly provides us the tools for creating this baseline in a way that is quickly revealing of problems and opportunities, and tied to creating understanding.

Take a moment to review the slideshow and then read Alex’s latest post at his blog Business Model Design and Innovation.

I don’t think this is an issue for most of the rest of the world, but for the United States this is a serious design challenge. This is mostly due to our long established culture of valuing big and fast when it comes to our personal transportation. In the U.S., we’re just catching wind of small and efficient, and this is being driven by our pocketbooks at the moment, and not necessarily by doing what is right. Whatever works to achieve change…

Being an absolute gearhead has presented some interesting dilemmas for me, personally, as I reconcile this fact with my work in sustainable design. I love cars, but I do not love the current range of high-mileage fuel efficient vehicles currently on offer. Yes, the Tesla is sexy and it is indeed fast. It is also around $100k and only six or so have been made and delivered (far below the pace for the 650 promised this year). More options are going to be available in the near future from a range of manufacturers, and these options will begin to push into performance territory while also delivering on great design.

The VW One-Liter concept pictured above appears to be one of these options, at least from the perspective of design. A concept car from a couple years ago, and not tentatively scheduled for production until 2012, the One-Liter seems to be getting more attention from VW. There are plans to produce limited numbers of this 282 mpg, two seat microcar (around 1000 vehicles) over the next year or so with planning being done around it being a mainstream production model by 2012. I like this car. I like the influences of mid-century automobile and aircraft design that doesn’t feel too retro. I like that you access it via a pop-up cockpit canopy, and that the passenger sits behind the driver. I especially like the interior, which looks purposeful and performance focused:

Engineers at VW made good use of materials like magnesium, titanium and aluminum to greatly reduce the weight of the One-Liter, down to a third the weight of a Toyota Echo. Carbon fiber also figures prominently in the design of the vehicle, and is actually a big reason VW is considering production much sooner for this car. The cost of carbon fiber has dropped dramatically much faster than VW had expected, making the production of the One-Liter much more viable. I want to drive one very badly.

via Wired via Garrick Van Buren (thanks Garrick)

CrunchGear’s Peter Ha spent some quality time with James Dyson at his company laboratories. Dyson talks about design and engineering principles, and the value in personally working his products over. The limitations of the blip.tv player prevented me from embedding my favorite video in the series above, but you can view it here. The video is of Dyson giving an impromptu product test, with mixed results. It is great to see such a design legend come across as totally human, and a little bit fumbly.

“Anyone developing new products and new technology needs one characteristic above all else: hope.”

James Dyson

More video from Ha’s visit here. I will say that the blip.tv video player is a TOTAL pain in the ass.

How many lost opportunities have there been from research projects that seem to have gone wrong, and were subsequently thrown out? Countless. Not so for Swedish chemist Saeid Esmaeilzadeh, who came to Sweden over twenty years ago as an eight year old with his family fleeing from Iran. Esmaeilzadeh’s work is focused on developing new types of glass and ceramics. During this work he accidentally discovered a new kind of ceramic, one that has strength superior to steel, when he inadvertently cooled ceramics he was working with too quickly. It would normally be thought that this compromised the ceramics, and they would be discarded. But Esmaeilzadeh decided to look more closely at his mistake, and in the process he discovered he had created a “Super Glass”. He has started a company to work with Super Glass, called Diamorph, and they are hard at work looking at various commercial applications for this material.

More support for the value in failing forward, taking risks, and looking at accidents. That is where innovation happens. Clearly, you can miss these opportunities if you’re not curious enough to look more closely.

I came across Super Glass at Core77.

There is a very good chance that drilling will begin in the coastal waters of the United States, and perhaps also places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This brings the possibility of environmental disasters due to accidents and spills much closer to home. There are arguments for and against doing this, and one of the more interesting arguments for allowing the drilling is that the United States has been outsourcing its environmental disasters for too long, and that the drilling off our coasts is inevitable. We have the technology and care for the environment to drill in a way that will minimize environmental impact and address accidents in a fast and efficient manner. I do not really agree with this logic, but knowing that the drilling is going to happen it is good to have technology on our side.

Enter the OSP robot, a concept by product designer Ji-hoon Kim, which is a modular, easily transportable, solar powered, oil spill containment solution. Once deployed the robots autonomously contain the spill with an inflatable barrier quickly minimizing the impact of the oil spill and supporting the successful cleanup and management of the accident by the cleanup teams. Response to a spill with these robots is swift, as they can be quickly deployed from special dispensers on board helicopters or boats:

This is one of many oil spill containment tools that should be investigated, and it would be good to not wait until we are drilling off the coast of the United States to do so. An environmental disaster in Africa or Asia from an oil spill has reverberations throughout the global environment, and establishing and mandating a response protocol would be a very, very good thing.

via Inhabitat

As construction crews rush to complete the CCTV tower in Beijing the systems for using the building’s surface as a broadcast medium are beginning to be tested. It was intended from the beginning with the original concept presented by OMA that the skin of the tower would be active and dynamic. This video gives us an idea of what that will be like.

via toomanytribbles

I came across this video this morning and it got my attention. Video is coming on strong as an interaction media, and we are only at the very, very beginning of how we will be able to interact with video. The direct manipulation of video as a way to navigate opens up a whole host of possibilities.

I posted about the Mazda Furai concept, pictured above, back in January with regards to how it manifests Mazda’s Nagare, or “flow”, design language. Last week I came across a ton of content at the Car Design Blog with regards to Mazda design and what Nagare means to the organization. Mazda views Nagare as the physical manifestation of their brand and brand heritage, and has put tremendous emphasis on Nagare as the foundation of a future looking design language for the company. Of particular note are the descriptions of Mazda’s design process and the admission by Mazda’s global head of design, Laurens van den Acker, that to realize Nagare they had to break the golden rule of design, which is to simplify:

“Everybody will tell you to remove lines until you have no more left to remove. We are adding lines, which is kind of counter intuitive, but if we do it well it looks natural and creates beauty.”

Laurens van den Acker, General Manager Mazda Design

Chris Bangle is the sometimes controversial head of the global BMW Design Group, and he has worked tirelessly to move automobile design at BMW to a place where it can respond to both the demand for innovation and the needs of the user. He has put together a dream team of designers, engineers, and thinkers who challenge every convention of what an automobile is and how we use it. The most recent work from this team is the GINA Light Visionary Model pictured above. At the most base level, this dramatically effects the look of automobile design. At it’s most complex, it completely changes our relationship to this mode of transportation and brings out a level of emotion that I, personally, have not experienced in a very, very long time. I encourage you to watch this video presentation of the concept if you have any interest in the future of automobile design:

As far as I am concerned, GINA nails it by creating a seamless connection between form and function, by challenging every convention of automobile design, and by FINALLY bringing materials innovation to a point of influence that is beyond the shallowness of style. It is:

“Context over dogma.”

Chris Bangle - Head of BMW Design Group

Much more on this at Winding Road, perhaps the best automotive blog I have yet experienced.

Pretty incredible video of work in robotic prosthetics being done by Dean Kamen and his team. Knowing that prosthetic limbs have not really progressed much, technologically, in the last fifty years it is stunning to see the leaps that Kamen’s team has made. The initial prototype of the robotic arm was completed in one year at the behest of the Department of Defense searching for a solution to soldiers who had suffered the loss of their arms.

We are at just under four hours before Phoenix lands on the surface of Mars. I am checking periodically at the Phoenix mission control website in anticipation of this event. Martian weather is clear and the landing later today is green for go. I suspect there are a lot of very excited and anxious people at JPL right now.

The above animation is of weather on Mars around its north pole from 5/16 through 5/22. The small cigar shaped outline in the upper left quadrant is the planned landing zone.

It’s not just a big day for race fans, its a big day for science and space enthusiasts. In August of last year the Mars Phoenix Explorer left Earth to start its journey to Mars. Its mission is to arrive safely, land on the Martian North Pole, and dig into the soil there begin looking for the building blocks of life. It arrives today at around 4:45PM PDT. Arriving is the hardest part, as now the explorer has to successfully enter the Martian atmosphere (at 12,000mph) using parachutes to slow the rapid descent from 900mph to 250mph, and then fire landing rockets to prevent it from slamming into the Martian surface (see the video above). Its a complex landing, and the mission control team probably hasn’t been sleeping much these last few days, as the last five years of their work culminates today in about seven minutes of anxiety. That’s okay, though, as they have a number of ways they can distract themselves while keeping us updated on the the mission’s progress. For instance, you can follow the Phoenix mission on Twitter and get frequent updates and mission facts. The mission team also has a blog that is full of information and that will be used to post what the mission team is thinking and what Phoenix sees and discovers, as well as an information rich mission website.

So, the entire Phoenix mission is going to be captured for us via an array of online tools. This is incredibly exciting, and it serves to connect us to the exploration and science that NASA leads in a way that is not only meaningful, but also basically real time.

For some, that is an incredibly inflammatory statement. As inflammatory as saying that the workplace of the future is not about real estate, which it’s not. That is because the workplace that many of us already operate in is boundless, and is defined by where we are at any given moment. The workplace of now is our home, hotel room, car, airport lounge, coffee shop… wherever we are. The workplace of now is not a desk, chair and filing cabinet. It is our laptop, mobile phone, and other tools that support us in our tasks wherever we are. This is not a new development, but one that has been in motion, and gaining momentum, for over a decade. There are individuals in the workforce now who have never worked another way. This change has been driven by innovations in the ways in which we communicate, in connectivity, and in how we do business. The “virtuality” of business is not something that can be overstated, really, as so many tasks that required meeting in person twenty years ago are now completed without the involved parties ever needing to occupy the same geographical location, or ever actually talk to each other. That certainly devalues the importance of an office with regards to the effectiveness of business process. Or does it?

There is pressure on the office to change in ways that support this boundless workplace. The reality is that the office is not going away, and it shouldn’t as there are many circumstances where we need to work together in the same place, but how we use the physical space of an office environment is changing and evolving rapidly. As such, the ways that our organizations think about the office needs to change and begin leveraging notions of flexibility, adaptability, and customization to task. The physical office is an important node in our network for bringing us together for interactions that cannot be bested virtually, but this is very different than the typical archetype on which most offices have been built, which is the idea of warehousing workers to make operational control more efficient. Our work is increasingly defying the effectiveness of this archetype, and as a result we are experiencing productivity levels in the United States that are staggering. Organizations are learning that we can share a “mission and vision” without actually having to be in the same place at the same time. Some companies are way ahead in their thinking with regards to the boundless workplace, others are stubborn in the face of this change. The reality, though, is that there are many, many factors driving everyone to begin working in this manner and at some point the entire traditional 1950’s corporate office metaphor is going to collapse and be called out as an obstacle to effectiveness, productivity, and employee health and wellness.

That’s the point of the headline for this post. The office today is in so many ways defined by the furniture that fills it. This doesn’t really work anymore, and the office we increasingly require is one that supports business process, and that meets the requirements of being an effective node, one of many, for the ways in which we do business. There will be furniture in this office, it just won’t be defined by it.

Takashi Murakami is a master of the mashup, smashup, and mixing of ideas. A genius in the finding of inspiration. Murakami’s superflat is the liberation of the intrinsic value from his efforts. It is turning art into commerce in a way that Warhol probably envisioned, but did not have the chance to manifest.

It would seem that I am very much not alone in my utter fascination with the design and construction of the CCTV tower going up in Beijing. I recently came across a mother load of incredible images on Flickr that are expansive in capturing the progress of building the tower, and beautiful in the quality of the photography. Last night these images cost me close to two hours of sleep.

Recently I had the opportunity to enjoy another MX Conference put on by the team at Adaptive Path in San Francisco. It rocked and was absolutely full of great information, stories, and people all focused on the developing practice of effectively managing experience design teams. I’d say the rapidly developing practice. We are under a lot of pressure to perform and to deliver value, and often success is largely determined by the effectiveness of how creative teams are led. MX is a window into the practices that have led to success.

At the conference I was asked to extend a pretty generous offer to the readers of schneiderism for the upcoming UX Intensive that Adaptive Path is hosting in Minneapolis, Minnesota from June 16-19. If you work in interaction/experience design in any capacity, really, I highly encourage you to check this workshop out. You can choose specific sessions or pony up for the full week. Adaptive Path knows what they are doing, and they are intensely focused on providing value to the people that attend their events. I speak from experience on that one.

Here’s the offer. If you register by May 31st and use the promotional code UXIM, you will receive a 15% discount on top of the early bird registration 10% discount. That is compelling. Here is a choice quote from the UX registration page:

“Three things I loved about UX Intensive: 1. presenters who totally know their craft and aren’t shy about saying it’s at least as much art as science, but that you can develop the art by first learning the science; 2. a room filled with smart, motivated participants who are expert in many things, some included in the conference topics and some not, working very hard with great joy, to everyone’s benefit; 3. the whole is totally greater than the sum of the parts.”

Laurie Kalmanson, Request Marketing

The phrase “The Agency of the Future” gets thrown around with some abandon (yes, I use it too…). This is partly because it is catchy, but also because it succinctly indicates we are in the midst of change with regards to how people engage media, brands, information and advertising… change mostly driven by the digital channel. This phrase seems to point to a mythical agency that has navigated this change successfully, but that I am not so sure yet exists. Things are very fluid.

I was thinking about this phrase recently and remembered reading the Avenue A|Razorfish 2008 Digital Outlook Report. In that report, on page 26, AARF CEO Clark Kokich writes a smart piece on “The Client of The Future,” noting that agencies are not the only ones who need to change. This is a fresh and smart perspective.

Basically, many client organizations have not evolved from an optimization model that found its inception in the 1950’s, and has been refined over time but largely left in place for the last fifty years or so. This is a model that subscribes to a linear “consumer purchase funnel” that begins at the top with brand building via traditional media, and ends with purchase usually driven by direct marketing or some such. Pretty ubiquitous, and increasingly irrelevant.

Kokich points out that this model is becoming more and more unstable, and this is both because of how consumers have changed as well as the level of specialization within client organizations, and the inevitable creation of silos based on that specialization each tasked with successfully managing a specific consumer touch point. Thing is, consumers don’t move neatly from touch point to touch point anymore. They surf, and search, and refer, and work information to streamline their own process of seeking. They seek truth and authenticity, and as marketers that is a really tough thing to put a finger on, to generate or control. We see a development that has rendered much of marketing, in the traditional message-based-push-sense, specious, annoying and/or dishonest in the minds of the consumer. This realization is not new, and thousands talk about this on their blogs every day. There are a number of agencies and marketers that are well aware of this change, and have changed the ways in which they work and how they engage audiences. To Kokich’s point, maybe now is a good time for the marketing orgs inside of companies to embrace this same change, and to begin thinking differently about how they set about communicating the value of what it is their company does or provides, to have new and clear expectations for what that communication entails and what the new relationship with the consumer really means.

Coming dangerously close to green washing, Bentley has put together a site to promote their team for the UK’s Greenpower-Electric Car Races For Schools, admittedly a very, very cool initiative. The first thing that got my attention was the minimalist soap-box-derby aesthetic of the Bentley team’s car design. The second thing that got my attention was that there IS actually a program in the UK to create electric racing car teams for schools to focus learning on engineering and technology as careers, the intersection of so many things that I love.

The Greenpower program actually has several categories for students, including both secondary and primary schools, as well as a corporate program. Honestly, this should be an international program and evolve into an entirely new category of motorsports.

I just came across this excellent video, via [paul isakson] that nicely ties together what I and about a million other people have been writing about with regards to social media and the ways in which we engage and share information. Not so much how things have changed, but how they are changing. It is definitely worth watching.

Having recently discussed the Beijing National Stadium it seems only fitting to also take a look at its immediate neighbor, the Beijing National Aquatics Center. This building is the manifestation of the winning designs presented by the team of Australian architecture firm PTW, Arup, and the China State Construction and Engineering Corporation (CSCEC). It is made up of a steel space frame fitted with polymer pillows allowing more light penetration than traditional glass while providing a potential 30% reduction in energy costs.

The rendering below shows the Water Cube next to the also very recognizable Beijing National Stadium, or “Bird’s Nest”.

It is a gorgeous building, and for the Olympics will hold 17,000 people for the swimming, diving and synchronized swimming events. After the Olympics it will be converted into a community recreational center. The facade can be lit and animated, adding another level of dynamism to an already dynamic design.

I found the following video via toomanytribbles, a favorite blog of mine by an expat living in Beijing:

Many of us have used some variation of capturing meeting/brainstorming content with a large pad or whiteboard. At the MX Conference this week a team from Adaptive Path worked diligently behind the scenes capturing the content from the various presentations through graphic recording and reflected it back to us via boards like above (thank you for doing that!). You can see all of them here on Flickr. I am pleased to say that these boards map mostly well to my notes, but I prefer the boards created by the Adaptive Path team. They seem more complete and my notes are sometimes too linear. The above board is essentially an overview of all the main points discussed in an effort to address four key challenges facing us as we embrace the emerging discipline of managing experience through creative leadership:

1. How do we lead in a changing environment?
2. How do we sell experience design to our organizations?
3. How do we balance our new jobs with our old responsibilities?
4. How do we keep what doing what we have to and still do what we must do?

Over the course of the conference there were some excellent and successful attempts to provide answers and directions to these challenges. I still think that the best line came from Cordell Ratzlaff of Oracle when he said “Sometimes you have to kick some ass.” There was the well known story of Steve Jobs making an example of an executive at Apple who clearly leaked sensitive product information, and whose ass Steve figuratively kicked.

Conference content aside, the results of the graphic recording really have me thinking, and also rethinking how I capture information during meetings and work sessions. There is a visual mapping of information here that is incredibly efficient and useful, and ultimately creates a more complete picture than the note taking technique I have employed essentially since school. This begs the question… really, how often do we investigate our practices in business? How often do we really look for better ways to do things? Ideally, this is all of the time but I suspect we are all guilty at some level of getting stuck in the protocol of habit. I think sometimes you have to smash the system, sometimes you need to throw some stuff out. Sometimes you need to kick some ass.

I encourage you to check out the graphic recordings for each of the presenters. There are valuable ideas and practices there.

That is essentially the view that I’m looking at right now. The MX Conference that I am attending here in San Francisco just wrapped and I am now sitting at the top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel Intercontinental enjoying an incredible glass of wine and an incredibly full brain. Truly amazing conference, and my compliments to Adaptive Path for putting it all together. This is my second year attending MX. I’m back again for a reason. I really enjoyed the conference last year, which was the first MX put on by Adaptive Path, and found the spectrum of speakers and the topics discussed immensely compelling. I met a lot of great people that I still maintain contact with, several of whom have become valuable resources for me, and a few of whom even read schneiderism. This year’s MX pretty much kicked serious ass, and was a dramatic add to last year’s event. The speakers were all excellent and the subject matter presented was of a nature to keep me actively engaging it for a very, very long time. That’s value.

The first day of the MX Conference was spot on and full of great presentations by smart, dedicated people. I ended the day tired, inspired, and full of ideas. I was also excited by how well much of what was presented mapped to ideas presented here on schneiderism. There is synergy, and most probably because these ideas and issues are real, face us every day, and have significant impact on our organizations, our clients, and our industries. There is synergy around supporting innovation, creating the cultures of innovation, and of the obstacles we face in our work presented by legacy notions of practice and by a reliance on outmoded tools of measurement. There is synergy around the foundations of strategic thinking, and the importance of execution to the success of strategy. It was invaluable to me to hear the experiences of those who presented, of what is working and not working.

Additionally, it was interesting to see themes develop over the course of the day from the various speakers, despite their diversely different ideas and presentations. An overarching theme was the importance of simplicity in everything we do, that complexity is an obstacle to success. I think that every speaker had a perspective on simplicity and its value to their work. The first speaker was Chip Heath, and he focused us on what it takes for ideas to be successful.

Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die - Chip Heath

Chip started with the point that in order for ideas to be successful they must persist and cross boundaries, they must navigate complications. He introduced SUCCESS - Simple/Unexpected/Concrete/Credible/Emotional/Stories as a way of testing ideas for success and set us on the path of ruthlessly prioritizing our message. He had a great quote, that “if you say ten things you say nothing.” Highlights on SUCCESS:

SIMPLE - Focus on the high concept pitch for your idea and the one or two most important things to convey. Hold the rest.

UNEXPECTED - To get attention find a pattern and then break it.

CONCRETE - Avoid abstractions, say what you mean and eliminate jargon.

CREDIBLE - You have to believe in ideas for them to be successful.

EMOTIONAL - Feature sets is not the answer. You need to connect with people, you need to focus on what you can do for people and not on what you can sell them. Find the WIIFY (What’s in it for me), convey the WIFFY, and you will connect with people’s emotion.

STORIES - Make your idea portable. The best ideas are stories, and as such can be carried everywhere. Stories are flight simulators for the brain, and can be effectively used to overcome setbacks and challenges.

Chip also talked about the curse of knowledge, something discussed here as the handicap of expertise, and he used this to contrast the differences between innovators and experts. Innovators focus on simplicity, experts on complexity and nuance. Innovators focus on concrete realities, experts on abstraction. Innovators tell stories, experts make flow charts.

The second speaker of the day was Rachel Hinman of Adaptive Path. She has been focused on the mobile platform and how the emergence of this platform has dramatically changed the ways in which we interact with information.

The Emerging Mobile Mindset - Rachel Hinman

First, Rachel is a fellow Iowan and it always pleases me to encounter Iowans in cool places doing cool things. Instant credibility for Rachel in my book having grown up in Iowa myself. With her presentation Rachel sought to impart to us what we need to understand about mobile, and that mobile is an indicator of future expectations around computing and information access. She talked about the PC legacy in technology, and how the metaphors of how we work with information in a PC context are broken by a mobile context. 2007 was a watershed year for the mobile platform with the introduction of Apple’s iPhone and the mobile platform Android from Google. This watershed forces a rethinking of how we engage information via the mobile platform, and that it is not really about being “mobile,” but more about mobility, about transferability of information in a way that is effective. She had three killer points when considering mobile and to eliminate the friction between the current mobile experience and the promise of mobile technology:

1. Design for partial attention and interruption

2. Don’t give people URL’s, give them information and make it easy

3. In most cases mobile platforms are cobbled together, so improve the cobble

As in anything, identify the real needs and provide people with a tool that helps them better manage their identity. Make it simple, take the large page structures we are familiar with in a PC context and break them down into pebbles for mobile technology.

Creating The next iPod - Cordell Ratzlaff

Bad title for a great presentation. Cordell is the Director of User-centered Design at Cisco but he is widely recognized for leading the team at Apple that created OS X. We’ve been hearing some version of “create the next iPod” from our clients for years now, whether they’re in financial services or waste management. This is indicative of a shift in focus for businesses to design, but they are fixated on the end product, not on the culture that forms is. This focus on the end product is what often leads to failure as design typically reflects culture. Ratzlaff put out three conditions necessary for the change to a design culture:

1. A critical business need - Design is the application of creative expertise to solve problems, most often the problems of people with money. Design needs to be connected to a business problem, otherwise it is fine art.

2. A committed leader - Change takes time, and people will resist. A leader needs to champion this change and defend it. A leader needs to be focused on overcoming corporate inertia. A leader needs to be the most committed to the vision and set the example for the culture.

3. A compelling vision - Setting a clear end goal helps in getting people to move towards it. You cannot expect different results from doing things the same way, so separate from the status quo with a compelling vision as a launch statement. Convey this vision by building a “prototype,” something that people can see, that they can touch and interact with, and that they can use to share the vision and focus people int he same direction.

There was a great quote by Satoru Iwata, the CEO of Nintendo and who championed the Wii despite a tidal wave of doubt and which has obviously brought Nintendo tremendous market success:

“If you are simply listening to the requests of your customers you can meet their needs, but you will never satisfy them.”

Satoru Iwata, CEO of Nintendo

A significant piece of Cordell Ratzlaff’s presentation was around successfully driving cultural change. The critical elements:

- Top management must show visible and consistent support for change

- Over communicate and reiterate the change, the value of this change

- Reward steps in the right direction and stand firm. Make an example of somebody. My favorite quote from the conference so far:

“Sometimes you need to kick a little ass.”

Cordell Ratzlaff

- Be a rebel, it’s hard to change in the face of conformity so follow the pirate’s code:

“Those that fall behind get left behind.”

Pirate’s Code

- Set and enforce high standards

- Show, don’t tell and use the power of prototyping.

Essentially, if you want to create a great product or a great experience, create a great culture. Focus on fewer things and on doing them really, really well. Focus means getting good at saying NO.

The Ascendancy of Customer Experience - Secil Watson

Secil leads the 100+ strong Internet Strategy group at Wells Fargo Bank. Her group is responsible for the customer experiences of 11 million Wells Fargo customers and is resolutely focused on creating positive customer experiences for these people. Her presentation, and what she has accomplished at Wells Fargo, was simply amazing. And inspiring. When she started at Wells Fargo her first challenge was figuring out how to manage sideways and up to ensure that the customer experience (CX) was appropriately influencing strategy. She created a guide to CX management, and presented a four step process:

1. Establish credibility - CX needs to be an equal partner at the table, but that place must be earned through success.

2. Establish CX as a competancy - Everyone must know the CX mission/methodology/language.

3. Prove the value of CX - All CX initiatives must be linked to business partner value, to business value.

4. Champion CX - Good CX is everyone’s goal, it influences strategy.

She summarized by highlighting the importance of creating simple and engaging customer experiences at every touchpoint, that this will drive usage but only by “doing it right by the customer.”

The Manager as Tailor - Margaret Gould Stewart

Margaret leads the Consumer UX team at Google, and is an excellent presenter. She dug deep into what makes an effective manager in creative disciplines, and used the metaphor of a custom tailor to make these points about being an effective manager:

- Custom fit to needs and to the specifications of the client

- Assume that one size does not fit all

- Provide multiple fittings to get it right

- Work tirelessly to make others look great

Self-awareness is the first step to being a great manager, and this self-awareness is born out effective needs analysis, a smart leadership plan, a shared vocabulary with your team, and open communication with a multitude of ways to do so. Building self-awareness is absolutely critical, and is essential for:

- You as a manager and a leader

- The individuals on your team

- The team as a whole

There is tremendous benefit in working through needs analysis and self-awareness together, as a team, and there are great tools (a couple provided to us at the conference) to facilitate this understanding. She presented the “Super Friends Model of Leadership,” which simply states we cannot all be good at everything, so find out what each person is great at and magnify that. Find out what each person sucks at, and make that work with the team. Don’t just tolerate difference, explicitly value it.

Design is The Future of Business - Nathan Shedroff

Nathan is the program chair in the newly created MBA program in Design Strategy at the California College of the Arts (think Dan Pink, 2004, “The MFA is the new MBA…”). Innovation is critical to organizations, but typically companies only look at legacy path’s to growth that are not sustainable like operational efficiencies, asset sell-offs, M+A, rebranding and IPO’s. These are incredibly limited int he value created. Innovation creates better solutions, creates better processes, and creates better organizations and in so doing creates better value in things that are sustainable and meaningful. Nathan gave us a hard look at why organizations cannot innovate effectively:

- They don’t have the context for innovation.

- They rely on market research instead of market insight.

- Marketing is not PR & advertising, marketing is the inhale and PR/advertising is the exhale.

- They don’t have the culture.

- They don’t have the creativity

- They don’t have the courage.

- They don’t understand sustainability (IP/Finance/Environmental/HR).

- They don’t understand meaning.

Design is the process of meaningful innovation, and design-led strategy is probably the best approach.

Interactions & Relationships - Richard Anderson

Richard presented an incredibly sharp spectrum of approaches and ideas as they relate to how successful managers and executives have addressed critical interactions and relationships. Below are quotes from executives who were part of a course taught by Richard. He moved quickly and I was not able to capture who said what:

- Learn how to work the system. Think like an executive.

- There is no ultimate design. There is only the best solution given the resources available.

- Don’t be treated like a service.

- Be opportunistic. Take every opportunity you can.

- Be the glue that binds. Work collaboratively. Bring people together.

- Get others to originate ideas themselves, and ideally your ideas.

I’m currently in San Francisco for the MX Conference that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. This week will be exciting and busy with two days at the conference and then two days of meetings and site visits as part of my Innovation Tour 2008. More on that later.

Today’s lineup at the conference is incredibly interesting and diverse, and is being kicked off with a keynote by Chip Heath. I am planning on posting a recap of today’s speakers and the ensuing discussions this evening.

I cannot help but be riveted by the concept of network science, actually an emerging scientific discipline that combines interacting physical, informational, biological, cognitive, and social networks… and in a way that scares me a little bit. It seems that the Department of Defense shares my fascination, but not my hesitations. The Pentagon is devoting resources (now up to $7.5 million in research grants) to what it deems a priority area of investigation and research in the effort to understand complex and variable networks. This is directly related to how the Pentagon and related constituents can then work on an understanding of the structure of the diffuse networks employed by our nation’s enemies. An underlying goal of this research is the ability to anticipate who might join such a network, which takes threat assessment to an entirely different level. So, network science would seem to be a holy grail, of sorts, for the abstract goal of developing predictive modeling. Again, very interesting and very scary, and surprising that it only garners $7.5 million currently. I suspect that will be increasing once efficacy is established. How does the military view network science:

“Initiation of a field of network science would be appropriate to provide a body of rigorous results that would improve the predictability of the engineering design of complex networks and also speed up basic research in a variety of applications areas.”

That’s from a 2005 report by the United States Army, which I have excerpted from a post at DangerRoom, Wired’s national security blog that pretty much gets my attention every day, and where I first came across this story.

I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker this afternoon that was essentially an analysis of what we can do to effect change for our organization in the marketplace. It was a quick strategic assessment of what was realistic, and what was not, with the focus on what we felt we could achieve if we mobilized the organization behind it. It was a great discussion, definitely focused on our client audience, and reminded of an article I had read recently at Forbes by Dr. Saj-nicole Joni about exactly this topic.

Often, organizations undertake major strategic initiatives with goals of market penetration, diversification, growth, and perhaps all at the same time. All too often, these are challenged to move beyond an internal analysis. Also, there can develop groupthink when leadership teams begin to get down to strategic direction, and that groupthink often loses touch with the reality of what is actually strategically possible. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as initiatives are connected to operational realities, and it is typically born out of the passion and energy that thinking about possibilities, innovation, and the future can instill in people. These thinking processes can be energizing for a company, and deliver tremendous value to both directional strategy and team building.

While there is a strong element of truth to the point made in the article by the CEO of A.T. Kearney, Paul Laudicina, that strategy is more about the journey than the destination, I believe that can set a difficult and dangerous organizational precedent. If strategy is not directly linked to a strategic objective, to a destination, we run the risk of expending time, resources, and valuable thought on exercises that are not linked to value creation, that are not directly related to organizational goals. Perhaps this is an argument for incremental strategy, I’m not sure and I am not entirely convinced of that myself, but I am incredibly weary of creating strategic plans that sound good in the conference room but are unbelievably difficult to execute. This sets up failure without purpose and is not good. I am cool with failure, when there is a purpose. That’s called learning.

Where I believe that Paul Laudicina nailed it was in relation to A.T. Kearney’s customers. He put his company through a valuable strategic risk assessment exercise, something discussed here before, but not for the risks posed to his company. His team assessed the risks to their clients, and then organized their efforts around how best to position to help them. That is the sort of audience/customer focused vision that is incredibly difficult to sustain when you operate in a competitive environment, but if you can will bring great opportunity to your team. It begs the old adage that your customers problems are your problems, or you won’t have any customers.

There is a struggle underway inside the marketing teams of many high profile and recognizable brands. It is essentially a two-sided struggle. On the one hand are the traditionalists, usually those that cut their teeth on marketing methodologies in the 1970’s, 80’s, and in some cases the 1990’s. On the other are the change agents, those that are not married to methodology and understand the power and impermanent nature of the new channels available for interaction. In the center, between these two sides, is the idea of innovation.

I just read an excellent post by Idris Mootee at FutureLab that very clearly puts all of this together, and strongly counters the assertions of the traditionalists. At the core of his post, Idris reacts to a line in a recent article in AdAge (sorry, subscriber only…) from the esteemed Al Ries who states:

“Innovation should be seen as a tactic, not a business strategy.”

Al Ries

Al makes some interesting points in his article. He points out that a strategic focus on innovation will potentially undermine the brand position of a company, and confuse customers. Al, representative of the traditionalists in this schism, argues for brand focus in place of innovation, and on the traditional efforts around brand strategy believing that success comes from a narrow focus on an attribute or market segment. The traditionalists will point to endless case studies of this being so. They want to protect what is working. They want to protect their well worn methodologies.

But it is not working. Markets are changing. Customers are changing. The way we make decisions is changing. Consumers move quickly, and the value propositions that drive this movement can change overnight. This is not because we are fickle, it is in fact because we have become smarter. We are armed with information that has raised our expectations and are increasingly dissatisfied with product or service status-quo that does not perform. We also talk to each other, and network around interests and affiliations sharing our perspectives on all manner of things. This is a really big deal. If a product or service does not speak to us, if it is not meaningful, and if it does not do what we expect it to do… we move on. And these days there are a myriad of choices in each category that are differentiated by innovation, by thinking differently about how we use a product or what we need it to do, that brand loyalty is increasingly directly linked to the effectiveness with which something meets or exceeds expectations. Increasingly, though, we also talk about the fact we are moving on, why we are moving on, and what we are moving on to. This is good, but it is putting incredible pressure on companies that have historically dominated their categories or markets. Think about the changes in the automotive business over the last twenty years. Where has the center of innovation been? Not in Detroit. Think about the cleaning products category. Companies like Method have shaken the stalwart brands to their core, and Method came out of nowhere. Think about airlines and the last flight you took. I am guessing you hated the whole experience. How long will we take that until we demand access to the airlines that get us, those that are innovating in that category? We already are.

The net result here is that we have a growing passion for innovation. We, the consumers, seek out innovative products and services that meet our needs and provide us value. This is not about attributes, it is about effectiveness and the value created by this effectiveness. This is as true for B2B companies as it is for B2C, and we should all pause a moment and think hard about the marketing stratagems that we have in place. Are they relevant? Do our customers really care?

In February of last year I and a co-worker had an excellent time at Adaptive Path’s MX Conference held in San Francisco. The speakers were solid. The cool, smart and interesting people-to-meet quotient was quite high (including Adam Richardson of frog and Brooks Protzmann of Dell). I immediately became an advocate, have blogged about some of the speakers here, and continue to relate back to the experience and what I learned. The theme of the conference, “Managing Experience through Creative Leadership,” is one that is clearly industry agnostic, focused on creating successful and engaging audience experiences, and stands to benefit a multitude of businesses and teams regardless of their proximity to or intersection with a stereotypically “creative” business. This stuff should matter to all of us.

I’m going back again this year, and those that know me have already heard this about a thousand times. I have sent out invitations to join me at the conference. I am attending with a co-worker and friend, who also is a participant in our yearly “Innovation Tours.” This year’s tour begins with the MX Conference, and then we are scheduling tours and information sessions with a number of companies and organizations in and around the Bay Area. This should be an inspiring and invaluable trip, and an opportunity to make some great connections.

I received a confirmation email from Adaptive Path, and in that was something that I thought to be incredibly cool. They are paying a lot of attention to the time we are not at the sessions, and creating opportunities for all of the attendees to cross paths. There are the obligatory end of day cocktail receptions, and daily lunches scheduled as part of the conference, but it is the reservations for tables of eight made at restaurants around San Francisco that struck me as especially cool. As an attendee, just decide where you want to eat and show up. The reservation is already made and you have no idea who you will be dining with, which presents all kinds of happy accidents. It’s a dining/conference mashup, and a service for those not familiar with the city to get them out and meeting others.

So, yeah, I’m looking forward to this conference. I’m planning on live tweeting (inspired by David Armano’s tweets from the AdAge event a few weeks ago) the interesting things that I learn, and will try to recap at the end of each day here on schneiderism. You can follow the conference on twitter by following me.

This interview with Hugh MacLeod by Shel Israel, which I came across because I follow Hugh on Twitter, is reinforcing of a conversation I had last evening about how companies might begin thinking about social media, and how social media might be helpful in building strong connections with their audiences. Specifically, we were discussing a company that produces outstanding content that people pay for, that when they find they generally love. Content that stands qualitatively above comparable content from most all of their competitors, but content that is ultimately difficult to find unless you are specifically looking for it. This company has no active digital strategy, that I can tell, and has not begun considering the benefits of meeting their audiences on their own turf. Imagine if they did? The really cool thing here, for this company in particular, is that there is virtually no risk and minimal cost for beginning to experiment with this. But there is a tremendous amount to gain, and to be gained in a way that is authentic and meaningful for those who seek such a connection and value the content that they create. That’s cool. And exciting. And potentially a wasted opportunity.

I don’t care what business or what industry you are talking about, innovation matters big time. I get this, and my investigations into how you cultivate a culture of innovation is an ongoing theme on schneiderism. I find it really interesting that companies like Toyota (as well as BMW, Porsche, Audi, Tata, Nissan, VW, Mazda…) continue to receive coverage with regards to the success of the innovative internal cultures they have supported, and the measurable benefits of those cultures in terms of market success, while essentially the entire American automotive industry struggles to find itself, let alone perpetuate a culture of innovation, let alone even THINK about market success. Many, including myself, have looked closely at how Toyota’s long history of creating and supporting innovation wherever it sets up shop. In many ways, innovation defines Toyota. Recently, Fortune took a similar look at Honda and revealed another deeply innovative company culture. It also revealed the demonstrable benefits of that culture.

For Honda, innovation is equivalent to excellence, and excellence clearly pays. The article states that since 2002 Honda’s revenues have grown close to 40%, approaching $94.8 billion. Most interesting to me is that Honda’s U.S. market share has risen from 6.7% in 2000 to 9.6% in 2007. That is partly because of American manufacturers LOSING market share, but is also because Honda continues to provide smart, affordable and innovative products that people WANT. Badly. Honda, along with Toyota and BMW, are the only automobile companies to make it into Fortune’s list of the top 20 of the World’s Most Admired Companies. Apple is number one, by the way.

So, how does Honda make this happen? They let people experiment and explore. The culture encourages this. Leadership wants it. More specifically, they encourage their engineers, especially those who drive R&D, to be entrepreneurial in their pursuits. The kicker is that at Honda not only are employees typically paid less than at the competition, but their opportunities to move up in the organization are pretty limited. That’s because Honda is very, very flat as an organization… and it is this flatness