Friday 13 August 2010

Using design thinking to challenge recipes for success

A constant theme throughout my research on design thinking was the ability of leading consultants to re-frame problems enabling clients a new perspective about what's really driving performance.

Whilst being interview for this research IDEO’s Ilya Prokopoff commented, “instead of thinking about how do you reduce the costs and make you more efficient … what are we’re doing day in and day out. You need to be asking yourself the question, what are your own expectations about what you can do in the future because ultimately that’s what you’re going to be optimising and making more efficient down the line.”


Applying a ‘human-centred’ framework during helped IDEO focus their questions. Their conceptual framework comprises of three interdependent areas. Prokopoff summarised it as:

“(1) The technical capability of an organisation … not just what capabilities they have, but how able are they to deliver on them. (2) The business situation that they’re in, and (3) the human need or the human ability to do what that organisation is creating out there in the world. All these things are critical. I mean if you come up with something that people want in an unsustainable business, shame on you. If you start with technology and you’ve got a great business designed around it, but people don’t like it, shame on you. Our feeling in our organisation is that you have to start by understanding what people are really wanting and what people are really needing … It’s not saying that this negates business issues or technological ability, it’s simply saying if ultimately what you’re trying to do serves the needs people have, focus on understanding what that need is first, then fill in how capable you are of delivering on that need … So, always start with the person in the system.”


Running with this theme John Seely Brown effected change by asking directed questions about the consumption barriers to his clients’ products and services, “you start with something as simple as why haven’t their messages been getting across.”

These pointed lines of enquiry challenge existing recipes for success in solving problems and sets the agenda for new learning.

Thursday 12 August 2010

Spreading the word

I'm currently researching the dynamics of social media and the fashion industry. One of the most interesting insights was how social media is re-shaping the consumer behavior and shaping trends.

One of the most interesting observations is how fashion bloggers and PR agencies are using social media to publish photos and commentary of new fashion brands ‘look books’ and samples 6-18 months prior to launch. Whilst there is nothing particularly new here, en-masse this structured and organised behaviour is shaping contemporary fashion trends and the financial performance of brands. A typical example of this pattern came from Steve Monaghan from Sane Communications. He described how he would visit a number of major trade shows and industry events every year, then subsequently send his favorite look books, photos of their samples and supporting commentary to his network of 400 bloggers globally who then edit their favorites and share with their communities.

What's more, it's now an established career direction for a generation of fashion writers who previously would have entered into conventional journalism. Now aspiring media types are building their own social media platform to communicate and connect with their audience, leveraging their influence for commercial gains.

Reflecting on my previous post about Social Media Analysis which described how you can start to measure and quantify this information. Herein lies the opportunity! The brands that build capabilities to evaluate and respond to the wealth of 'social data' will be best positioned to create the most desirable products. This intelligence and insights becomes a critical input into any design process which is validated and lead by fact-based insights not intuition.

There’s no point in talking to somebody about something they’re not capable of doing

The best consultants are people who have got a much better awareness of their own limits and the limits of others and don’t adopt the expert stance. This was the most insightful thing I took away from speaking to David Austin, principal of Bailey Austin Strategic Innovation Partners.

After a hugely successful career, David’s current focus is to dramatically improve innovation strategies and processes. A unique characteristic of David Austin’s approach was that he had no point of view; or more precisely what was best for the client was right. He says “my role is to help them to discover a way forwards and in any organisation. There is probably half a dozen perfectly feasible ways forward and in helping them to build a coalition of enthusiasm to move forward.”

He later commented, “it’s a matter of starting from their world. It’s not a matter of is it the right thing to do. I can’t possibly say what’s the right thing to do” … “the people we are dealing with are typically bright, analytical, and certainly given the right pieces of the jigsaw very capable of doing those sort of things. It may be that they’ve never had those particular pieces of reality laid in front of them before.”


Austin’s consultancy approach reflected his beliefs about the complexity of organisations and the fallibility of the expert stance. “Every organisation has its own culture, history and way of doing things. It’s the capacity of doing something and effect real change has to be different. You’ve got to start where they can do something, rather than come up with some sort of theoretical approach which they can’t actually do anything with” … “you start off at the client’s world, where are they at, and what are they capable of doing. There’s no point in talking to somebody about something they’re not capable of doing.”


In a related point Doblin Group consultant Jeff Tull commented, “we never claimed to have industry expertise. We urge people not to come to us if they’re looking for an industry expert. What we’re really good at is having these collective capabilities and supply towards innovation collectiveness. We also just culturally, or because we are specifically not aligned with any industry, watch lots of industries and we work with lots of industries. On the client side, if you work in financial services, you live day in day out in financial services, you know all the usual suspects, all the head-to-head competitors, you read all the journals, you go to all the same conferences and it’s all financial services. We’re able to help people broaden their viewpoint.”