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.

Matt Dickman recently conducted a really interesting reader poll over at his blog Techno//Marketer to get a sense of what people felt the most influential medium might be. The results are presented in the graph above. I believe it is a safe bet that his readers skew massively to the internet, but I believe they are still representative of the paradigmatic changes that have occurred in the greater media landscape. The broader theme here, that the ways in which people interact with information is changing, is something I am actively exploring myself. What is absolutely not surprising from Matt’s survey is the incredibly low performance of newspapers and radio. The EBITDA of newspapers has been trending down for years, and many historically prominent rags are facing irrelevancy to their audiences. Audience preferences and expectations with regards to how they engage information is changing, this interaction is very fluid, and while some struggle to adapt to this reality others have been slow to respond and are suffering the consequences of a dwindling subscription base and shrinking advertising revenues. That spells doom for those newspapers. The same is happening in radio, and the EBITDA of radio is tracking similarly to that of newspapers. At the heart of this is the reality that we are increasingly moving away from having things pushed at us, and increasing moving toward technologies and mediums that allow us to engage media and information in ways that are dynamic and customizable to our preferences. Also, there is an informational frequency issue and newspapers, especailly, have struggled to compete with the 24/7 nature of the informational engagement model of the web. Those that have moved to a comprehensive web strategy have struggled to find an appropriate revenue model, especially one that can scale. We are watching media evolution and the survival of the fittest, of the most innovative.

Going back perhaps a decade, many newspaper publishers failed to appropriately survey the landscape for strategic risk to their organizations. As a result, they missed important opportunities to substantively investigate and innovate their business models. The web has moved incredibly quickly and efficiently in becoming pervasive in our society, in our culture, and many publishers now face the incredible challenge of trying to change a business model when it is absolutely too late.

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.

Click on the image above to enlarge the graph to make it more readable. It paints a picture that is probably not that surprising, but definitely attention grabbing. The United States faces a very different reality in the world today than it did toward the end of the 1990’s. Today we face a diverse spectrum of new players who are incredibly competitive, players who are in some cases much more disciplined, ambitious, and intensely focused on innovation. The elephant in the room is China which, again, is no surprise. China has been nothing but resurgent over the last decade and nothing tells that story as well as the graph above. China’s rise over the other 33 nations in the survey demonstrates a much changed world economic landscape in technology. Note also the ascendancy of Mexico, South Korea, India, Singapore, and Taiwan. We all owe Thomas L. Friedman of the NYT’s a small bit of deference on this matter.

The graph is the result of a study conducted bi-annually by the Georgia Institute of Technology that measures the technology standing of 33 countries based upon four key technology focused factors:

1. National orientation toward technological competitiveness
2. Socioeconomic infrastructure
3. Technological infrastructure
4. Productive capacity

From the intro to the Georgia Tech report on the study findings:

“…China may soon rival the United States as the principal driver of the world’s economy – a position the U.S. has held since the end of World War II. If that happens, it will mark the first time in nearly a century that two nations have competed for leadership as equals”

A friend shared The Alternative Productivity Manifesto with me. We’ve discussed the workplace of the future and productivity issues previously, especially as these relate to the tension between controlling your time, how you use it, and the pressures exerted by a production focused mindset in so many businesses. The Alternative Productivity Manifesto is an excellent response to the present realities of the 40 hour work week, a productivity system visited upon us in the 1940’s and not revisited since. This despite the doubling in worker productivity over the last sixty years. We’re twice as productive, yet real wages are going down as compared to a historical average. We’re twice as productive, but there is ubiquitous pressure to put in more time, not less, and to sacrifice more to productivity. When did productivity become equated with quantity of time? Why does the worker not also benefit from their own efficiency and productivity? This disconnection is partly driven by our own ignorance of and inability to exert influence over the value systems within corporations, and partly by the enormous industry that has grown to help organizations squeeze every ounce of productivity out of their workforce. Productivity is big business, and big businesses invest big money with consultants that help them optimize and maximize the people that make up these companies. Not only that, but there is an enormous productivity industry focused on individuals promising enlightenment through productivity. This, of course, is achieved through the reading of endlessly published productivity books, blogs and through the purchase of innovative new productivity products. We struggle with ourselves.

In response The Growing Life has put forth The Alternative Productivity Manifesto to provide some perspective, and perhaps challenge the status quo. Here are just a few tenets from the manifesto that resonated with me:

• If your productivity increases, but your pay stays the same, then you’re effectively taking a pay cut (same goes if you begin working longer hours for the same pay).
• Productivity should be designed around our lives, not the other way around.
• The societally scripted routes to success via productivity are failing us.
• Hyperfocusing on productivity often gets in the way of the messy, circuitous, and discursive routes of personal development.
• Massive value creation often happens during times when no work is ostensibly being accomplished and productivity levels are ostensibly nil.

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

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 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?

I am fascinated by change in organizations, by what drives it, what leads it, and what makes it happen. There are a number of businesses that are in a struggle right now, and this struggle is driven by their inability to previously anticipate market conditions and the realities within which they operate. Some are quickly and effectively reinventing themselves. This is exciting, and as business culture, irrespective of industry, can be prone to many legacy notions of practice, process and value creation, we know that through effective leadership and strategy legacy thinking can be overcome. Most of us would acknowledge that we can literally see change in business on a daily, if not hourly basis. How we work, and the markets within which we operate, are subject to exponentially increasing change as it relates to communications, globalism, competition, continuous improvement, consumer/client need, collaboration, user experience, teaming, talent… I could keep going, but imagine that you get the picture. I have posted about this a number of times, but I want to elaborate on some of the broader principles that I am beginning to consistently identify:

1. Nothing motivates change like the “near-death experience”

There was a great post back in October at Mavericks At Work that touched on this issue without really revealing any conclusive answer, but that got me really thinking. Why is this? Does it take a brush with disaster to shake people out of stasis? Is change fear based? My current observations are that this is often the case, though it does not need to be. However, people tend to be lazy and comfortable, and change is hard, dedicated work. Change is often also very entrepreneurial, entails risk, and not everyone is programmed to approach business in this way. But when the survival of the company is at stake, people suddenly perk up and pay attention. They become focused. This is an opportunity. Effective leadership seizes on this opportunity.

2. Leading change is clearly identifying what needs to happen, and then executing

We have all sat through too many meetings where somebody in leadership makes a compelling case for change, and then you never hear about it again. Change is war. Change requires thorough and well-thought-through strategy and the tactics to achieve that strategy. This is a fundamental rethinking of a business, of process, and of market relevance, and a fundamental reformulation of how a business navigates these successfully. This is then followed by action, by execution. There needs to not only be next steps, but next steps to the next steps, and the right people need to be in ownership of the direction and management of the business course in support of this direction. Otherwise, you just sat through another hour you will not get back.

3. Effective change leadership requires a strong connection to operational reality

Given a situation where an organization needs to undergo some fundamental reassessments of business model, practice, and market relevance, it is imperative that those leading such assessments be grounded in the contextual reality of the organization. You cannot set the bar impossibly high out of optimism. You need to set incremental targets that are reality based and mostly achievable with hard work and focus. I am a firm believer in the benefits of failing forward as a way to test concepts and ideas, but if the goal is an unattainable target you will do a better job demoralizing your team while also undermining the larger goal of moving the organization forward. Respect the need for action, but take the time to plan effectively. Base your assessments of problems, current conditions, and even future possibilities on hard data, when possible, and avoid the mistake of presenting baseless assumptions as actionable strategy. Manage goal setting very, very carefully and tie those goals directly to the expertise and resource required. Also, consider an exit strategy for goals insofar as your team understands that if Plan A is not successful, that Plan B very quickly goes into action. I think that the I Ching nails this with the idea of “wind over wind,” which presents the approach of “…gently overcoming any impasses that are in your way by being consistent and having well defined goals to focus on. This way changes and will have long-term and far-reaching effects.”

4. Passion can be an effective motivator of change, but you have to authentically show it

While it cannot be the sole catalyst for success, passion can certainly get you far in creating energy and impetus behind a strategy. However, it needs to be bolstered by awareness, connection to reality, and a deep knowledge base. Without passion, though, you face a much more challenging process. Let’s face it, change should be exciting for an organization, and it is an opportunity to bring everyone together for a unified purpose. This begins with passion for the power of an idea, for the importance of an effort coming from the top. Consistently. The more directly this passion is communicated, the more resolute your support for these efforts will be. Leaders need to tap this, the people that support them feed off of it. This is about as close to politics as leadership in business might come, but we’re talking charisma and energy here. Change that is mandated by a detached, disconnected, and aloof leader is doomed to failure. Change that is lead by an effective leader who is passionate, invested, and connected is a rallying point. We love leaders who work as hard, or harder, than we do.

5. With the right team, anything is possible, and effective change leadership demands the right team

There are few businesses where one or two people can achieve a successful transformation. We need the support of people who are better at some things than we are. Not necessarily a lot of people, depending on the organization, but certainly people who deepen the capabilities and potential of a change effort. In most business books about this topic some significant amount of content will be dedicated to effective teaming around and in support of a strategy. This is because they’re right. Teams need to be built for speed, steeped in commitment, with members chosen for both what they bring to the effort and a devotion to work with others to achieve success. Not everyone is cut out for this, and one person that is not operating from this place can sink the efforts of an entire team. Replace them. Test for acumen and energy. Profile for passion and thought leadership. Surround yourself with people who are not afraid to challenge convention and work to do things better than they have done before. This should be leadership team best practice. For truly successful companies, it most certainly is.

I would say that these five principles are very much a work in progress, but it seemed appropriate and compelling to begin to commit my thoughts to review by a broader audience. What I know is that there is no one magic process for effectively leading and managing change within an organization. Change is based on customization of approach, and that is borne out of a deep and thorough understanding of what challenges a company faces, and an intense investigation into how it might successfully overcome those challenges. The most important piece, though, is a cohesive commitment to action.

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.

That’s a line from a really excellent slide presentation by David Armano and via FutureLab that succinctly summarizes some of the best opportunities for companies today as they contemplate their interactive marketing strategy, and how best to connect with their audience(s).

Three of his points here that are especially meaningful to me:

• Leverage the WordPress Content Management System - Huge value here, especially when combined with a thoughtful content strategy, analytics, and the focus to continuously improve and help audiences get the information that they seek. You’re only as good as your content is fresh. I am an enormous proponent of Wordpress as not only is schneiderism built with it, but two sites I am currently involved with are also taking advantage of what Wordpress offers. It has become a powerful technology for efficiently building effective websites and is very customizable from an interface design standpoint.

• Combine technologies for a stronger strategy - Like using Twitter to promote new content or priority links to people that choose to follow you. Effectively combining micro-marketing technologies can create an incredibly macro effect by making it incredibly easy for people to find you, your company, or your perspective and to help you communicate to a much broader audience very quickly, efficiently and cost effectively.

• Orchestrate infinite touchpoints - This is perhaps the most powerful slide in Armano’s presentation, and it relates very directly to the effective combination of technologies. Your messages can and should manifest themselves in a number of ways, and in a number of places. Starting with an effective website, also think about a mobile strategy, how you should use online social networks, and sites like Slideshare, YouTube, and Twitter. Effectively combining these into a range of audience touchpoints is powerful, and ultimately worth spreading your investment. In terms of platforms, it would seem shortsighted to invest in only one (like a website) when a little additional effort can position you with a range of effective communications technologies, and the technologies that your audiences are using to get information. This would be the embodiment of the whole “meet them on their turf” strategy.

Another great line from the presentation is “make the participant the star.” Armano presents a total of ten points related to investigating your interactive marketing strategy, and they are all pretty tight so I suggest taking a moment to view the entire presentation.

Despite whatever you believe to be our immediate economic reality, it is a good time to be young, smart, and focused. Companies struggle to navigate what is really a seller’s market for “human capital,” and attract the next wave of talent into their fold. The problem? There are several other companies fighting to recruit the same individual. A very successful public company in the consumer lawn care space that I know well admits actively raiding the talent pools of the medical technology companies in the area. Med tech to lawn care? Why not! The thing is, these talent pools are also targeted by financial services firms, retail giants, and others. They’re all competing openly for the same talent. This is a really good case study in supply and demand. You don’t have to look far to realize this is playing out everywhere. Often times, takeover bids between companies are as much about expanding talent as they are about increasing market share. Talent is perhaps the most important weapon in the battle for market success.

And this is nothing new. Look back ten years and business magazines were full of articles about the looming, and now pressing, “War for Talent.” McKinsey released a study back in 1998 that surveyed 6,000 executives in 77 companies which consistently identified that the single most important corporate resource over the next 20 years as talent, define in the study as “smart, sophisticated businesspeople who are technologically literate, globally astute, and operationally agile.” Sounds familiar. Not much has changed in ten years. What’s more, the study goes on to tell us that even as the demand for talent goes up, the supply of it will be going down. Supply and demand in action.

What’s a company to do? Get aggressive, really aggressive. Focus resources on talent acquisition that are commensurate with those focused on market expansion. The reality is that the former will ultimately beget the latter. As a best practice, companies need to be obsessed with ensuring that they are staffed by the best possible people, from the top on down. This is entirely a quality proposition, and it means always having your finger on the pulse of available talent, regardless of the real need for people. It means having an organized HR team that has an effective talent profile, and relentlessly tests for this profile. It means ensuring that your organization is a recruiting machine, that your people, your environment, and your package are not only competitive… they’re compelling. And relevant. And tailored to the people you seek to attract. Stop and think about your company for a moment, and think about your company in two years if a focused plan to attract talent was deployed. I suspect we are talking about two very different companies.

The McKinsey study also revealed ten years ago that only 60% of the corporate officers interviewed said that they were able to pursue most of their growth opportunities. These corporate leaders said that they had good ideas, and that they had the budgets to pursue these ideas, but they lacked the right people to execute. They reported that they did not have enough talented people to pursue their good ideas, regardless of budgetary abundance. They were “talent-constrained.” Ten years ago the implications of this were huge, and was a part of the feeding frenzy that became the .com debacle. Today these implications are staggering and I have yet to find a similar analysis regarding the relationship between growth and talent, but I would surmise that we are facing similar if not more critical deficiencies in growth as it relates to the talent needed to create that growth, and the lack thereof.

The Cold War feels like ancient history, which is odd because it raged for 2/3’s of my life. During the Cold War, American and CIA aligned undercover spies and espionage agents stationed in the East were constantly under threat of discovery and exposure by their counterparts from the KGB, Stasi, and the other espionage and security agencies of the Soviet nations. Discovery would mean a nasty stay and interrogation at someplace like the KGB’s Lubyanka prison, and possibly death. Survival for them depended on maintaining a low profile, being hyper-aware, and adherence to The Moscow Rules (10 of which are excerpted below). I was digging through my desk and came across a postcard someone had given me with these rules on the front. I thought I should share:

1. Assume nothing.
2. Never go against your gut.
3. Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
4. Don’t look back; you are never completely alone.
5. Go with the flow, blend in.
6. Vary your pattern and stay within cover.
7. Lull them into a sense of complacency.
8. Don’t harass the opposition.
9. Pick the time and place for action.
10. Keep your options open.

I have not really looked yet, but somebody has had to have turned The Moscow Rules into a business book akin to The Art of War For Executives.

This is a question that is incredibly important to me for a number of reasons, and that I address directly whenever possible. Priority among the reasons this is important would be two, the first being that I have found great success by taking the creative generalist path, the second that I have found great success by the combination of creative generalists with specialists. One does not obviate the other, they are instead profoundly complimentary. I just read a very well written post at CreativeGeneralist that is a comprehensive survey of both the value of being a creative generalist, and the value of having them as members of your team. The author of the article broadly defines five areas in which creative generalists excel and create value, which I include below with excerpts that I found to be especially worthy of highlighting:

Wander + Wonder - Finding possibility

“Ideas follow inspiration, which comes freely at a friendly intersection of diverse multidisciplinary, multi-industry, multicultural thinking – exactly the kind of thinking that our focused lives tend not to have enough of.”

Synthesize + Summarize - Connect the dots and present complex information succinctly

“Diversity generates economic expansion. We have an environment teeming with differentiations and obscure inspirations by way of hyperinnovation, culture blur, and enhanced communications. Organizations have more points of inspiration, not only as a result of their own activities but also of others’ from every industry all over the world.”

Link + Leap - Generating ideas, take a simple insight and find a transcending application.

“Effective leaders today understand that we’re no longer operating in a linear cause-and-effect world but rather in more of a web-like ecosystem where inter-relationships shape direction, decisions, and delegation.”

Mix + Match - Make worlds collide and harness collaborative energies.

“There are many instances where organizations are not, in their processes, motivated to function horizontally or outside of their traditional bounds, and there are many talented individuals locked in the tunnel vision of their pursuits, blindly unaware that collaboration could be the best move they make.”

“Generalists play the often overlooked yet essential role of identifying specialists’ strengths and directing project activities and timing in such a way that makes the most effective use of them.”

Experience + Empathize - Understand humanity and life’s many interrelationships.

“Ideation feeds on lateral thinking and free association. And the farther one can look the more there is to learn and connect. In this sense, crossing cultural borders – replete with unique languages, customs, traditions, politics, religions, senses (sights, sounds, smells, tastes), technologies, and philosophies – is the most expansive lateral thinking that can be done. Developing a deeper understanding of how other cultures solve problems is a huge leadership asset…”

“Embracing a human-centered observational and empathic approach tunes into multiple perspectives, various worldviews. And this is both inspiring and empowering, not simply because of the exposure and the reality check but because, again, it taps into the intersectional riches of diversity.”

That is the title of an excellent post I came across at FutureLab. We have discussed design thinking, and its value to business, here before. This post by Idris Mootee, succinctly breaks down the foundational principles of design thinking and how they might be appropriately applied. Idris Mootee is not only all over the concept of design thinking, he has built a successful consultancy around it. Perhaps the most important point made in the post is in the opening sentences. Typically, when “design thinking” comes up in a meeting or discussion of strategy it is relegated to something to do with aesthetics, and there is a disconnection with how design thinking might be relevant to strategy, which unfortunately still struggles to mean something beyond an analysis of spreadsheets and increasingly complex formulas. In reality:

“I explained to them that “design thinking” is crucial to any innovation effort if a company wants to break out of its current competitive structure.”

Idris Mootee

In many ways, business is still stuck in an approach to innovation and strategy that is based on optimization, which at a high level means maximizing inherent resources and market influence to create a competitive advantage. This can work, and historically has been a beneficial approach to a diversity of companies. The problem is that this approach does not scale and it is dominated by a cycle of business performance. You cannot optimize every quarter. Optimization follows a much longer cycle of action and response. Applying design thinking to the strategic breakdown of advantage in business brings an empathic approach to supporting innovation, and involves a more holistic analysis of business, one that asymetricaly surveys not only the competitive landscape, but has at its core a people centered approach to business. This involves needs assessment, strategic risk review, and the creative collaboration around how to take advantage of the results of these key assessments. Here is Mootee’s presentation of the 10 Design Thinking Principles for Strategic Business Innovation:

The dreaded curse of knowledge, that as we become more expert in something we also begin to limit and eventually lose the ability to innovate. Is this possible?

Janet Rae-Dupree thinks so, and in an article in the New York Times titled Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike, she looked at how innovation is actually better supported by toning down the level of expertise. The premise she explores is that once we become expert we lose the ability to think freely, and operate instead from the place of our expertise. She points out that as we become more knowledgeable and expert in our fields our language and thought patterns change to such a degree that outsiders and non-experts often will not understand. This knowledge/action patterning then begins to wear behavioral paths for us that inhibit our ability to operate without the support of what we know to be true, and instills avoidance tendencies for things that are outside of that expertise.

How do you avoid this tendency? Dupree points us to Cynthia Barton Rabe, who in her 2006 book, “Innovation Killer: How What We Know Limits What We Can Imagine — and What Smart Companies Are Doing About It,” proposes bringing in “zero-gravity thinkers” from the outside to keep creativity and innovation on track. Rabe tells us to look for renaissance-thinkers and creative generalists who have expertise in related areas, but not in your specific area of expertise. It is important to empower these individuals to question and challenge, and bring a different perspective to the work at hand.

This would seem to align with my post earlier regarding building innovative cultures, and the idea that you need to attract talent to your team that bring both a unique perspective AND a willingness to challenge convention, argue on behalf of ideas, and embrace risk.

We have spent a fair amount of time on this site investigating issues and ideas around innovation (especially back in October of last year). This is because few things can so substantially affect the fortunes of a company to the extent that supporting innovation can. Nothing new here, open any business magazine or visit any number of blogs and innovation is being discussed. This pervasiveness is born out of the priority and value we place on being able build the cultures that allow us to innovate consistently, and well. It is also because creating these cultures is incredibly challenging, and we benefit from learning how others have navigated these challenges.

I read yesterday an excellent article in Architectural Record by Andrew Pressman titled “Creating a Firm Culture That Supports Innovation” that offered a perspective that warrants sharing. This perspective begins with the increasing recognition that a firm’s cultural environment is a critical factor not only in producing the best possible design work but also in attracting and retaining both new staff and clients. In any creative enterprise you are only as good as your people, teams, and degree to which they are supported. A significant component of the talent war is demonstrating to prospects that you offer the culture that will support them in their creative work. Additionally, just as the business press is permeated with investigations into innovation, so are clients. The expectation for design excellence, and for teams and methodologies that put innovation front and center, should be considered a best practice by clients looking for creative services. For creative teams, fostering this culture and being able to identify successful outcomes is a significant competitive differentiator.

The article highlights an approach promoted by Robert Sutton in work featured in the Harvard Business Review back in 2000/2001, but still right on the money. It is an extreme approach to fostering innovation and acknowledges that new perspectives and ideas often emanate from “mavericks” with wildly diverse backgrounds, who harbor no preconceptions, and who are undaunted in challenging the status quo and championing their ideas. These mavericks are invaluable to successful innovation subcultures, and their ultimate impact on the organizational culture at large. Sounds good. The main points of this approach:

• - Hire naive misfits who argue with you
• - Encourage failure
• - Avoid letting client input limit your vision
• - Fully commit to risky ventures

I’ll let you read the article to get the full story, but there is some particularly valuable insight offered by Ted Hoff, an innovator and inventor of microprocessors, with respect to how client input can limit your vision. He says:

“Don’t do what your customers want; Do something better.”

Ted Hoff

I think all of the points above are important, and while they may sound somewhat intuitive they are very difficult to maintain in practice. Many organizations exist specifically to limit the existence of these behaviors, they are counterintuitive to an “established” enterprise and threaten the order that some managers can spend their entire careers trying to create. They defy predictability, and therefore deny managers the ability to financially model and plan. Therein lies the challenge, to encourage these behaviors in support of an innovative culture and in contrast to the ubiquitous corporate model. To realize and champion that business as usual in creative enterprise is a definitive path to extinction.

The British Design Council has emerged from a period of serious introspection and reinvention. The results? New leadership and direction in the form of Chairman Sir Michael Bichard (pictured above with sleeves rolled up and ready to dig in and get to work), and sharper focus replete with a new tagline:

“Helping businesses become more successful, public services more efficient and designers more effective.”

Not so much catchy as vitally important in describing its direction, I suppose. The Design Council has long been a resource for the design industry, but has suffered mounting criticism in the last few years due to a predominance of product, industrial and graphic design focus in its efforts and events. This despite the reality that the Design Council has done much to show businesses all over the world the real value of design when applied to a diversity of industries.

Sir Michael Bichard’s recent appointment as chairman is in support of the refined Council mission of being the strategic body for design in the UK. The operative word now being “strategic.” Bichard has a long record as a successful public servant, leader in arts and education, and vocal supporter of the value of design. He received attention recently for his Five Rules of Design:

1. Great design can change the world and move people

2. If you think good design is expensive you should look at the real cost of bad design

3. Design, creativity and innovation are essential if we are to meet the global challenges of sustainable development

4. Design is not just about products and communications, it’s also increasingly in the services we receive or buy

5. To consume design is a creative act - and everyone can be creative!

I chuckle each time I read rule number two, as it is so, so true. These rules are important as the Council still finds itself embroiled in debate about exactly how design fits into the British, or global, economy. Despite their best efforts, the design community in the UK still finds itself somewhat adrift from the core of British industry and business. This is partly due to overconfidence, and partly due to the increasing irrelevancy of design education in the face of the realities of real world practice. These challenges are no different than those faced here in the United States, and amount to a massing of missed opportunities for design. Changing this begins, perhaps, with the importance of combining a deep understanding of business and business processes, of business thinking, with the methodologies and practices of design thinking, a concept getting much airplay in a diversity of business magazines as of late. It would seem that the British Design Council is going down this road, and most probably in a smart way, and as they are known for their quality publications and case studies I look forward to learning more about their new focus in the coming months.

via beyond the beyond

We’re going through some very important exercises at work. The goal is a real and unflinching assessment of the state of our industry, architecture and design, and the role we play in that industry. The goal is to seriously challenge notions of status quo, and to question accepted practices. Hard questions are being asked. Tough answers are being put up on the white board. None of us disagree. But, what are we to do with this information, with these confirmations?

We are to change.

Actually, we have already been changing. We know that architecture has become a largely commoditized business, that the value provided by many architecture design firms has been slowly and consistently eroded in the United States over the last 20 to 30 years. Architects have allowed this to happen, and it has happened as issues of liability and responsibility have come to dominate project realities. But instead of embracing this and accepting the challenges, architecture has retreated behind drawings and plans and allowed others to step in and manage the process of building, of making. A long list of other trades were only too happy to step in and take on the historically traditional role of the architect, that of a master builder. Allowing this has effectively removed architecture from the value stream of building. Many, many firms now exist to produce drawings. They are production houses.

What we are finding is priority is the importance of reinserting ourselves into the making and effectively taking back the control of the value stream. We know that we must do what it takes to become the most relevant and influential force in building culture, this much is clear. What is unclear is exactly how we will get there, and I suspect we will continue to challenge and explode traditional notions of design and building. Embodied in this is the reinvention of our firm around core goals of design excellence, as we define it, and the reconnection of our design to implementation, to execution. Architecture is a strategic move, and that move will not be successful if architecture does not protect the value and integrity of the idea, the idea power, from inception through implementation.

While I have framed this discussion around my immediate industry, the reality is that it is powerfully meaningful for a diversity of creative professions who face very similar challenges.

Just read a terrific article on Businessweek online that is absolutely right on and intersects perfectly with The Upside by Adrian Slywotsky, which we discussed here a few weeks back. If you’ve not read this book, do. And soon. Then, let’s chat. Both expand on the whole “Innovate or Die!” theme. The article starts with the assertion that we must learn to embrace the edges of our businesses, edges being the outer limits, the danger area, the unknown. Edges are the peripheries of the global business environment, the places where innovation potential is the highest. The article asserts that comfort with operating at the edge of your business and industry is the most expedient way to identify opportunity and advantage. More:

“Edges define and describe the borders of companies, markets, industries, geographies, intellectual disciplines, and generations. They are the places where unmet customer needs find unexpected solutions, where disruptive innovations and blue oceans get birthed, and where edge capabilities transform the core competencies of the corporation.”

This is important from the perspective of Slywotsky’s concept of strategic risk assessment. First, the edges are the frontiers, the limits, of what is known and accepted, of what has worked up to this point. It is beyond these frontiers where tremendous opportunity resides. Change is self-sustaining as the business environment continues to speed up with improved technologies, communications and time-to-market. And heats up with changing customer loyalties, expectations, and need. In this intense environment we see ideas constantly delivered by companies from the frontier (and quickly), and we also see this opportunity and innovation fundamentally change companies and markets with stupefying speed. We have been inundated by game changing innovation and change, so much so that we are sometimes jaded to it. But think about how business has changed in the last ten years. This change has not only been exponential, it has been paradigmatic. This has been driven by a diversity of catalysts, the most obvious being technology, communications, the internet, and globalization. Companies that harnessed these drivers found themselves in a very different place. Those that did not, most often, disappeared. Adrian Slywotsky’s ideas in The Upside really begins with the notion of surveying the frontiers for strategic risk. Slywotsky asserts that nothing can beat robust strategic risk assessment for both identifying and mitigating potential threats to a company’s health and well-being, but also for identifying what game changing opportunities for innovation might be highlighted as a result of that assessment. Both the article’s authors and Slywotsky agree that for companies to innovate they must understand what is happening at the edges of their business, and to innovate they must bring back from the edge ideas that challenge the status quo in products, markets and practices.

You hear the words “design thinking” a lot, and with greater frequency in the last year of so. It is not a new concept, by any stretch, but as the value of design has sparked the interest of a growing diversity of businesses in a wide range of industries, you are hearing it with more frequency and in places you might not have a few years ago. This hype around design thinking is also causing some conflict, as beyond the reality that few actually agree on what it means, even fewer people seem to understand what impact it might have on their business, or how to properly apply the concept. Here are four design thinking references pulled from the first page of a Google search:

• Wikipedia: Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues. The stages of this process are suggested as: Define | Research | Ideate | Prototype | Choose | Implement | Learn
• noisebetweenstations: Design thinking is collaborative, abductive, experimental, personal, integrative and interpretive
• Dan Saffer of Adaptive Path: Design thinking is defined by a focus on customers, finding alternatives, ideation and prototyping, wicked problems, diverse influences, and emotion
• iDesign: As an approach to understanding, design thinking is the establishment of needs, wants and goals, the defining of what is involved, the exploration of possibilities, suggesting possible solutions, innovating on your ideas, evaluating and measuring y