shot from the hip

larry keeley, ceo of doblin, spoke earlier today at ocad, in a wonderful talk sponsored by torch partnership and the strategic innovation lab – the new incarnation of my alma mater the beal institute for strategic creativity. big thanks to the folks that hosted “the john cleese of innovation.” there were a few key ideas that really stood out for me in his talk.

the thesis of larry’s talk focused on a new emerging discipline of innovation, one that is still in its infancy and will eventually encapsulate the methods and rigour demonstrated in fully or semi-institutionalized disciplines such as medicine, law or business. at a time of great uncertainty, as the systems we have come to rely on for the exchange of economic, physical and political capital begin to erode globally, larry offers that innovation, far from dead, is thriving.

as is often the case in times of turmoil, people innovate when they need to think differently, act differently and make different things. they explore the boundaries of what is possible. however, larry asks “what if everything we thought we knew about innovation was wrong?” especially when we consider that most innovation posts a success rate of less than 4%, worldwide. he then gives the following example of how innovation commonly goes down in a company (which i’m sure will be a bit mucked up in my retelling, but the point will get across ;)

the executives of a major corporation realize that their earnings are tanking, and so product lines are trimmed, teams are reduced and gap analysis is conducted. and the gap analytics indicate that in order to close the gap between the economic projections and the actual company performance, one needs to innovate. so the sr execs comb through the company and pick the best and brightest, and get them all together in the board room. then comes the stirring speech, in which the selected team is inspired and charged to innovate with no margin for error, a super short timeline, no guidance, no resources, threat of termination upon failure and little in the way of exactly *what* they’re supposed to innovate towards. ambiguous expectations and concrete deliverables. however, there will be whiteboards and flipcharts to aid in generating ideas. this is akin to picking a bunch of random people and asking them to perform neurosurgery with a few exacto knives and some rubbing alcohol.

the sharing and training of concrete methodologies and praxis in innovation has been lacking, and this has proved detrimental in expecting people to just go and innovate. but this is changing, and primarily because of the realization that change itself is very real, and very pervasive. doblin has spent the last few decades developing metrics for analysis and specialization tools to activate innovation as required. how? in part, by:

• use discipline above creativity
• do financial analytics after prototypes
• it’s isn’t playful – it’s brutal
• abandon the brainstorming (a carcinogenic activity)
• ditch your segmentation (can you measure the ipod’s success against intended demographic?)
• think inside the box (create a powerful catalogue of your enterprise’s skill sets)
• share your patents (yay for open innovation!)
• build concept prototypes
• crash the stage gates
• study non-users

and his 4 solutions:

• apply multiple diagnostics
• pursue platforms, not products
• use several innovation types
• use explicit step-by-step protocols

bringing it around to design, what are the bedrock skills of the designer?

• conceive and make stuff
• make things and places more distinctive
• empathize with people in situations
• sense and value what is new
• simplify and clarify information
• dramatically affect preference and value

good design is now economically essential.
good design is critically important in most sectors of the economy.

he then spoke a bit about the success paradox of design – in which design is more pervasive and less profitable than in the past. in part due the hyper-specialization of design sub-disciplines and the platform and support economies that have grown around them (ie – adobe creative suite, autocad, etc), the post-industrialization/ digitization of process which eliminates the need for humans and the growth of international talent markets that can provide cheap services for products/services that were once high value.

doblin (as an innovation/strategy agency) has identified 58 sub-disciplines of design, and grouped them in 6 areas: discovery, program management, legal, synthesis, analysis and synthesis. it’s critical to know where you fit.

as well, larry discussed a hierarchy of sources of value within a company.

• conceive/prototype new futures
• prototype new integrated strategies
• imagine/prototype new brand directions
• improve/reinvent experiences
• reduce costs/reinvent processes
• improve functions and features

with more methodologies and sophistication as we move up the list, as well as increased rarity of occurrence.

finally, larry parted with the following 3 pieces of advice:

1. build platforms that manage complexity
2. Build authoritativeness beyond application expertise
3. Pursue post-client design

after the talk, i asked larry how to approach failure, and how to reconcile failure in this emerging discipline. he responded (paraphrased) ” failure is one of my favourite things. it is the way in which we understand the nature of our activities.”

bring the humility, not the certainty. what do you think?