Sometimes, when people take really bold risks they look stupid on paper

That's a quote from BIF Research Advisor Larry Keeley who was interviewed earlier this month by CEO for Cities Carol Coletta. Coletta is on a mission to help city leaders such as mayors, corporate CEOs, university presidents and foundation officials, to improve urban competitiveness. As one of a handful of 'innovation gurus', Keeley presented research showing that governments are notoriously low producing innovators. Surprising? Probably not. But Keeley goes on to offer a pragmatic and often times, irreverent, ideas to kickstart the innovation process in our nation's cities.

To set the stage, a likely culprit for any city's lack of innovation is the opposing juxtaposition of short-run election gains wih long-term vision. Yet according to Keeley, it's also about attaining a level of gutsiness along with a thorough knowledge of the innovation process He goes on to say--

[But] since most people don’t know innovation fundamentals at all, they don’t know which level of boldness to pursue and how to be gutsy and how to de-risk the gutsy moves. So another issue that we have to face up to is that in many governments, you get people who are paid a lot less than people in industry or in consulting and so you end up with people who are very uncomfortable with taking risks that go well beyond their budget authority or their pay grade.

The way I explain this to clients is I say, “Think about it as what one of my colleagues calls ‘escalator delivery’ – you know how long the escalator is going to take, and you decide how frequently you’re going to stick something at the bottom of the escalator, and you know when it’s going to come off the top. So, just pick the level of activity that you think is strategically right.”

Colletta goes on to ask what urban leaders must do to be ready to innovate. Keeley responds--

Well, the most important thing is that they have to get their senior executives to gather together and to determine what their innovation intent is. That means looking at diagnostics, trying to get a sense of how much innovation and how quickly, getting a sense of the mission for innovation, so that it’s not random brainstorming. Asking, “If there’s only one big thing we could achieve with innovation what should it be?” If you want to be strategic with innovation, if you want to get it to succeed and not be wasteful, the thing you do is concentrate your firepower around some kind of mission.

Concentrated firepower around a mission. How about a sustainable platform for bringing public and private sector partners together to focus on big win projects — projects that transform how value is delivered across all sectors of our economy? [Sorry, couldn't help myself.]

In any event, Keeley is a great guy to study up on. Dubbed 'Mr. Metrics' by BusinessWeek last year, he's done pioneering work in building diagnostic measures of innovation, as well as analyzing the root causes of innovation failure. But he's also creative. Which puts him in a rare class of innovation strategists worth listening to.

Related Links
Read Carol Colletta's full interview with Larry Keeley here.
Don't miss Larry Keeley at our upcoming BIF-2 Summit in October.
Carol Coletta spoke at last year's BIF-1 Summit. See her story here.

Posted May 31, 2006 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Can It Be This Easy? Predicting the Next Wal-Mart

Where do you go to learn about the future? BIF Research Advisor Clay Christensen has given an interview to The Motley Fool's David Gardner where he outlines his distruptive innovation principles and offers his predictions for "the next Wal-Mart." If you're new to disruptive innovation, check out our profile of Clay here. Otherwise, head on over to the Motley Fool for Clay's interesting forecast. [Get the article]

Posted May 25, 2006 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

How to Read Road Signs

I recently had the opportunity to chat with BIF Research Advisor Mickey Ackerman, of the Rhode Island School of Design, who graciously shared his view on design-thinking as a tool for innovation.

Mickey is in a unique position. As head of the Industrial Design Department at RISD, he teaches students a range of techniques to visualize, evaluate and refine opportunities for the design and development of "everything in the manmade environment except architecture."

Except today, the people most interested in his expertise have no interest in industrial design. Instead, they're looking to apply his approach to the world of business innovation.

GE calls it Cencor (calibrate, explore, create, organize and realize). The Mayo Clinic calls it SPARC (see, plan, act, refine, communicate). Bruce Nussbaum at BusinessWeek calls it "teaching elephants to dance." Is there anything hotter right now than design thinking?

Read my interview with Mickey Ackerman here.

Posted May 24, 2006 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

LINKAGE: Roger Martin and the Reliability vs. Validity debate

Last week, I blogged about Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management. His reliability vs. validity argument for why design management matters is gaining a lot of traction among leading innovators.

Last week, he spoke at the Institute of Design's Strategy 06 conference. ITT has published his presentation Designing in Hostile Territory here.

There's also a good blog entry written by one of our own BIF-1 storytellers, Carol Coletta.

Finally, you can hear from the man himself and check out an interview Martin gave to ITT here. Really good stuff!

Posted May 23, 2006 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Validity vs. Reliability: The Innovation Trade-off

Several years ago, before B-schools were even aware of the term 'design-thinking,' Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School, began teaching his students the value of the designer's approach to problem solving. His viewpoint: "Businesspeople will have to become more 'masters of heuristics' than 'managers of algorithms."

From the last issue of Rotman Magazine, Martin has written a really good article, Designing in Hostile Territory, where he argues that economic value creation will only be found if organizations shift from "an obsession with reliability" to a "welcoming environment for validity."

What a great concept to help business people understand the true value of design management.

Design-thinking has a natural bias towards validity, because good designers "seek deep understanding of the user and the context, which entails the consideration of many variables." Unfortunately, all too often, most organizations put a high priority on the production of consistent, predictable outcomes.

"Design-unfriendly people use words such as 'proof', 'regression analysis', 'certainty', 'best practices', and 'deployment'. Design-oriented people speak the language of validity, putting a high priority on producing outcomes that delight users, whether they are consistent and predictable or not."

With a laser-like business focus, Martin states that it's not enough to call yourself a design-oriented organization. Leaders, he says, "must take responsibility for safe-guarding validity." The article goes on to describe the five things you need to do if you want to be effective in a design-unfriendly organization.

Martin is a breath of fresh air for us non-designers who believe in the power of design management. He provides the tools and rhetoric to help those pesky corporate reliability-oriented managers embrace the uncertainty of validity-based innovation.

Get the article here

Posted May 19, 2006 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Report from the Field: Thoughts on Designing your Business

There are some common themes from the buzz generated at yesterday's BIF workshop Designing your Business: Creating a Compelling Consumer Experience . Hosted by BIF Research Advisor Harry West and his firm, Design Continuum, our diverse group of attendees from the public and private sector included students, consultants, service providers, manufacturers, and healthcare providers. At the end of the day, we all left pondering both the importance of 'design thinking' in creating compelling experiences and how we can individually apply it to our daily lives.

First, a big hats off to Harry West and the folks from Design Continuum. While most of us had an inkling of what design thinking is all about (doesn't hurt that it's on the lips of every would-be innovator), there was little expectation for how West and his team would be teaching the process, nor that it would be through such hands-on experiential learning.

What did participants take away from the workshop? Here's a report from the field:

Bill Fay of CVS writes

I went in with no idea as to what we would be doing. Being from central Massachusetts, I"m not that familiar with Providence, so everything was fresh and of interest to me - the narrow sidewalks, the funky storefronts, the profanity-spewing construction dudes - well, they were fresh. On a more serious note, I liked the challenge of working with people I've never met in order to perform specific tasks in a very short period of time. The way we jelled as a team after our first store visit and the passionate discussions that followed are elements I will always remember. I learned to look at the everyday, seemingly-mundane functions - like paying for goods and services - as opportunity for improvement. My biggest challenge now is how I can inject the thought processes we used yesterday into my everyday life - at work and at home.

Larry Quick of New Commons says

The event was very timely and an excellent reminder of the importance of quality design thinking in business, and the greater impact on RI and the region’s success. The session also reinforced the potential for design thinking to be applied to a range of problems and opportunities outside of business – I imagined design thinking applied to other critical issues like the ecology, housing, poverty, economic development, education and government. Just imagine if we could bring the design minds in the room to these types of issues – WOW!!

Katharine Flynn of RIEDC says

Before I started the day I hadn't really considered that something as mundane as the payment or check out experience at a store could be such a big reflection on the overall brand of the store. The more we dug in the more I realized that consumers' positive and negative experiences aren't merely around product but really are around the whole experience from start to finish. Businesses need to focus less on innovative new products and more on innovative new consumer experiences and service. This will be the big differentiator between brands going forward.

Posted May 12, 2006 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Forget about new and different: Let's innovate to get things right

I met some fascinating, funny and really smart people yesterday at BIF’s Designing your Business: Creating a Compelling Consumer Experience workshop. Presented by BIF Research Advisor Harry West and his firm, Design Continuum, I entered the day with no pre-conceived expectations, spent 7 hours immersed in a process called ‘design thinking’, and emerged at the end with a new idea of what it means to innovate.

First, some design thinking 101. According to Harry West, there are basically two competitive business strategies in the world. One, you can be different. Or, two, you can be cheap. Historically, companies have differentiated themselves on technology. Today, it’s differentiation based on lifestyle and design.

West called it non-technical differentiation and it’s what customers are starved for today. Why? Because it’s completely focused around those elusive ‘un-met’ customer needs. (I loved the Charles Eames quote West provided to define design—“Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.”)

Following a brief overview of what it means to be a design thinker, and an interesting case study of the design of P&G’s Swiffer, the folks at Design Continuum broke us into small group teams and gave us each a mission—to determine whether there’s an opportunity to create a better payment experience for a retail or food establishment.

As part of Team Blue, I set off with my able and eclectic group of compatriots for a 2-hour jaunt through the streets of rainy Providence, entering a variety of convenience stores and one pretty decent sandwich joint.

We observed, photographed and interviewed each other about our experiences buying an Rx item. Sounds simple, but don’t be fooled. This phase of design thinking is tedious, and repetitive. We learned, through our Design Continuum advisor Kory, how to be exhaustive in our observations and lines of questioning.

Armed with our user research, we returned to reflect and analyze our findings. Everything we learned from the day was mapped, sorted, segmented and framed to guide us on developing the ‘big idea’.

And we came up with some pretty decent big ideas. Ideas like a ‘smart card’ that would contain both our rewards info. and our payment info. in order to speed up the check-out process and take away the need for all those pesky FOB’s on our keychain. A few of us wanted to decouple the payment process from customer service all-together, enabling a new form of payment that wouldn’t require human interaction. (That would take place on the floor, where people really need help.) Others suggested new methods of line formation, or new bagging options.

All good ideas. But you know what, the bulk of our group kept returning to an observation we made earlier that was so basic, so fundamental, that someone said we were throwing back to the 1950s and perhaps missing the point of the exercise—customer service.

You see, the one consistent takeaway from each of our experiences, was a lack of customer service. No eye contact, total disregard for pleasantries, limited assistance when asked. Now before you think I’m going down some hokey path, none of us were asking for much—just a common connection of courtesy.

Right now, innovation in customer service means embracing new technology. Everything from ATM’s at the register, to coupons on demand, to self-service web portals. It seems to me that we’ve lost sight of what Charles Eames called the ‘particular purpose.’

So what did I learn from the design strategy innovation process? With all the talk about the importance of innovation and creating value, let’s stop the focus on the next new thing. Some things don’t need to be completely reinvented. Instead, let’s innovate to get things right. (I’m ready for a healthy debate on what that means for customer service in a self-service age.)

But as Harry West said very early in the day, “most ideas are crap. Just because you could doesn’t mean you should.”

Posted May 11, 2006 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Master Collaborator: BIF Research Advisor Bob Ballard & The Jason Project

Ask most people what they know about BIF Research Advisor Bob Ballard, and they'll say he's either an ocean explorer or, 'that guy who discovered the Titanic'. But that's only half his story. For the past 16 years, Ballard has been on a mission to improve science education for middle-grade students across the globe.

From the Washington Post, Caleb Schutz, president of the Jason Project, the national organization Ballard founded, writes

"In addition to his deep-sea expeditions, one of Ballard's most urgent missions is to foster the next generation of scientists and explorers and to exemplify that careers in science can be thrilling if students study hard and apply themselves.

The national organization he founded, the Jason Project, offers students and teachers a distinct opportunity to learn from -- and be motivated by -- real scientists conducting real research. Evaluations confirm that this approach positively influences students' perceptions of scientists and helps them grasp a deeper understanding of complex science concepts.Jason provides standards-based, multimedia science curriculum and professional development to 1 million students and 20,000 teachers in 41 states.

Ballard's discoveries are immensely important, but if asked, he will tell everyone that equipping students with the skills to succeed in the 21st century is far more vital than telling tales of his exploits."

Interestingly, the idea for the Jason Project came from Ballard's discovery of the Titanic. Spurred by the outpouring of letters (16,000 in two weeks) from children after he found the Titanic, Ballard created the Jason Project to allow middle school students to go on “virtual explorations.” Ballard believes most children are natural scientists. “Any parent can tell you kids are fired up with curiosity,” he says. “The first question they ask is why? Our job is to capture that natural curiosity and turn it into a lifelong passion for learning.

Because of the Jason Project, more than 12 million kids have explored the ocean floor, mapped wetlands, and discovered sunken ships and treasures. Truly an educational innovator, don't miss Bob Ballard, who will be sharing his story at our upcoming BIF-2 summit in October.

P.S. If you're interested in learning more about Ballard's deap-sea discoveries as well as his Jason Project,Voice of America has posted a great radio segment and profile.

Posted May 04, 2006 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Good Find: Student's Guide to Freakonomics

For anyone not familiar with Freakonomics, I came across a Studen'ts Guide to the book which is a primer to the innoative economic principles presented by authors Levitt and Dubner.

How is an economics book relevant to business innovation? There's little argument that in order to achieve transformative innovation, we must begin by challenging prior beliefs and looking at problems from a different perspective (some like to call it a different lens). Easier said than done.

Which is why you should find Freakonomics both engaging and insightful. As the author's state: "the answer to a given riddle is not always right in front of you." Figuring out how to solve the riddle requires a good head for framing what questions need to be asked. These inquiries, matched with solid data, can turn conventional wisdom on its head and provide the starting point for solving the complex social riddles we'd all like to solve.

[Get the Student's Guide to Freakonomics.]

Posted by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

P.S. Mr. Scientist...is 'blogosphere' really a word?

Meet high-school senior Shannon O'Brien who goes toe-to-toe with BIF Research Advisor John Seely Brown in last month's Fast Company. Beginning with U.K. band Timbuk 3's song 'The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades,' Brown and O'Brien tackle everything from quality of life innovations, to passion-based learning, to MySpace, to whether or not 'blogosphere' is really a word. Kudos go out to 18-year old O'Brien, whose smarts, wit, and insight shone brightly next to the always intelligent Brown. [Get the article here]

Posted May 02, 2006 by Chris Flanagan | Permalink | Comments (0)

Service Innovation: Design’s New Frontier

We know that design is becoming a vitally important part of product differentiation and revenue growth. We also know that services are accounting for an increasing proportion (now up to 80%) of the U.S. economy. Put the two together, and you get the new frontier of design: service innovation.

That’s according to Jeneanne Rae, the co-founder of Peer Insight, LLC and former principal at IDEO who’s been cited by Business Week as the “doyenne of service innovation.” Speaking at the Center for Design and Business’ ninth annual Success By Design Conference in Providence last week, Rae noted that service innovation presents tremendous opportunities for designers. But designing services is different from creating products in a few important ways:

Intangibility – services have no physical form
Heterogeneity – no two service experiences are alike
Inseparability – supplying services is inseparable from consuming services
Perishability – services cannot be inventoried

Rae suggested that, fortunately, the skills of designers are naturally suited for services innovation: empathy, abductive thinking, visualization + prototyping, iteration + testing, and integrated solutions. The raw skills though, aren’t enough. To be successful, designers need real world exposure to the unique characteristics of service innovation as early in their careers as possible, preferably while they’re still students. And organizations in services industries need to engage designers as early on in the development process as possible. But how can the two ends meet?

BIF is working on it. On May 10, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) will host BIF’s next workshop, Designing Your Business: Creating A Compelling Customer Experience with Harry West and Design Continuum. The event will bring together leaders from different sectors and industries to learn about how design thinking, strategy and analysis can transform organizations.

And, we're partnering with RISD and other BIF healthcare community stakeholders to launch a Health Care Innovation Pilot that will design and test a patient-focused healthcare delivery model that demonstrates higher quality, lower cost healthcare. The project will be part of a summer class at RISD, allowing design students to gain experience in service innovation.

Stay tuned for more!

Posted May 01, 2006 by Matthew Guilford | Permalink | Comments (0)