Ingo Rauth

Offtopic — 2 comments
24
Aug 11

Societal Innovation

I was wondering how I should describe innovations that deal with challenges of conflicting parties on an governmental, national or even international level a couple of weeks ago. Thinking of a common nominator I ended up thinking about societies. Although it might be kind ob obvious I’m still kind of unsure if this really nails it or if it would be another fuzz/buzzword. The question is, should an area of innovation be named after the intended solution such as social - making it more open to be to applied to various fields – or after the are of the intended application/target group that it will server, such as human (centered) innovation.

From my understanding, human centered innovation clearly focuses on all things which are related to human beings and can therefore be seen as a superior group if we think of hierarchies. So the question would be if this classification would make sense. Societal Innovation in the way I thought about it, would be focused on groups of people and how there relate to each other. Therefor Societal innovation focuses on the improvement of the persistent relationships of groups of people (Wikipedia) such as tribes, political parties, states …

In contrast to human or centered innovation, this will impact the tools that might be relevant in terms of analyzing, developing and evaluating as well as implementing new innovations. Things like a group dynamics, networks and systems have to bee taken into account in order take the interactivity into account. Areas like rules and regulations, culture and history have to be considered to really understand problems and solutions.

In regards to social innovation, which is targeted towards social needs/impact, Societal Innovation is open to target areas which don’t necessarily have a social impact, such as: policies, political actions, business regulations etc. since they all impact the way groups of people relate to each other.

These are just a couple of quick thoughts on the topic since I’m curious to see how others/you will reflect on it :)

Design Thinking — No comments
5
Jul 11

Teaching Design Thinking – Innovation as a learning Process

If there is one paper I would recommend to every teacher, coach and student on who wonders about team leadership or the learning process in design thinking it would be the paper ”Innovation as a learning Process: Embedding Design Thinking” by Sarah Backman and Michael Barry. The paper not only introduces the design thinking, but connects it to learning theory (Kolb, Owen) and thereby combines good, practical advise with background knowledge.

Based on their understanding and observations they propose that every phase of the “process” needs different skills and therefor a different leader. Meaning that the leadership should alter within the team based on skills.

Beside this, the paper offers a list of guidelines for leading teams which I can only recommend:

How does a team know when it needs to shift phases? A good team leader is often critical to helping teams see when they need to move. What does that team leader look for?

There is no reframing going on. The team is stuck with one frame, or one perspective of the problem it is trying to solve, and has been unwilling to try other points of view.

There are no interesting stories being told about the current situation.

There are no “ah-has” from team members who are seeing the situation differently or in new ways.

The conversation and stories that are being told about customers and users are boring, and not inspiring to team members.

There are no challenges to existing norms.

The team is not being generative enough; it is coming up with interesting ideas that may well meet user needs, but none are real opportunities for the business.

The team is confused; the models or frameworks that it has come up with are too complicated or difficult to internalize.

The team leader must also understand the learning styles of each of the individuals on the team so that he or she hears each team member well, and in particular is tuned into the need to shift the process based upon the inputs of the team members and their particular perspectives. (Source: Sara L. Beckman, Michael Barry (2007) Innovation as a learning Process: Embedding Design Thinking)

From my own experience I think this as well as the rest of the paper is not only helpful to teams but also to coaches in design thinking since it provides a solid background as well as some hands on advice. It is full of example from the research’s experience teaching the subject. Although this might be considered as a very subjective view, this paper is definitely worth a read.

download the paper

download the presentation

Drucker and User-Centeredness

While I was reading Tims Brown’s “definition” of design thinking for the x-time now, I actually never checked his reference to Peter Drucker. Drucker is, according to wikipedia the “best-known and most widely influential thinkers and writers on the subject of management theory and practice”. True or not, I was quite curious about what he wrote on the subject so I searched his book, “The Essential Drucker” for converting need into demand and found the following in the chapter entitled “The Purpose of Business”:

“It demands that business start out with the needs, the realities, the values of the consumer. It demands that business base its reward on its contribution to the customer…. It will force business to become market-focused in their actions as well as in their pronouncements.” (p. 16)

Seems like a quite strong statement, taking Drucker’s reputation into account. But be aware that, also its sounds like a great statement for user-centered design, the argument was done to clarify the role of marketing and innovation (the “only two” basic functions of a business, according to Drucker).

Design / User Centered — No comments
19
Apr 11

Q&A with Charls Eams

I stumbled upon the reference to this video just yesterday and immediately had to check if there is a version online. Although it seems as it has been cut, concerning the date (1972) it could be considered quite visionary. This makes one wonder if we have learned anything new in the last (almost 40) years. It seems like design is still trying to catch up to this ideal state, described in the video.

A transscipt of the video can be found here. Would have loved to see the original (if there is an un-cut version).

Offtopic — No comments
10
Mar 11

Designs role in innovation?

Design’s Role in Innovation from Design Council on Vimeo.

It’s interesting what people say, that design is. Seems like it’s everything and therefore maybe nothing at the same time. And its also interesting that a lot of people put design = innovation. Maybe design is the process or craft of innovation, who knows.

User Centered — No comments
19
Feb 11

User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs

Just came accords this identically named article on fastcodesign. Wondering why somebody writes User-Led Innovation since I always thought it’s user centered innovation. Therefor finding unmet opportunities by understanding and observing (future) users, not by ask the users what they want. Who does that anyway? Of course a user can’t predict the future, and even if they “knows” what they want its most likely that they come up with “faster horses” (to paraphrase Henry Ford). We all know that, so, in my point of view, someone who really thinks that this is the way to go forward didn’t really get the point of user centered innovation. In addition I think someone has to be also critical not to miss the another point of the article which draws attention to the fact that there are other sources of innovation which got less attention at the moment, but which are equally important.

And, in the end, it is not – most of the time – the user that limits the radicalness of innovations,but the companies themselves which are unable or unwilling to met the challenges that radical innovations bring with them.

Design Thinking / Management — No comments
17
Feb 11

Design Thinking, a toolkit for managers?!

Cover by Columbia Business School Publishing

This is the first publication, I’m aware of, that tries to address the operative nature of design methodology in management practices. A bit supprised by the monodisciplinary approach, (previous publications of other authors have favored mostly multi.- or transdisciplinary approaches) “Designing for Growth: a design thinking tool kit for managers” by Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilivie frames a good logical structure and sheds some light on the use of design thinking in management practices .

Since the book isn’t out yet, this review draws on the first two chapters which are online and definitely worth a read.

The main share of the first chapter is devoted to develop a convergence between design and business and point out four main reasons why design is beneficial to managers:

Design is all about action, and business to often get stuck at the talking stage.
Design teaches us how to make things feel real, and most business rhetoric today remains largely irrelevant to the people who are supposed to make things happen.
Design is tailored to deal with uncertainty, and business’s obsession with analysis is best suited for a stable and predictable world.
Design understands that products and services are bought by human beings.

Although these statements read like an ad campaign for design the authors clarify their view on management practices by stating: “The problem in many established organizations today is not that our analytical approaches are bad – it’s all we’ve got…”.

The second chapter offer an alternative visualization of the process. Instead of using a verb based vocabulary the authors identified four basic questions, underlying the design process. (Fig.1.)

Fig.1: Design thinking process description from "Designing for Growth" by J. Liedtka and T.Oglivie

In addition to these, the book suggests 10 tools which should be used within the steps to manage the journey from identifying today’s challenges till the learning lunch, a tool which moves concepts into the field to find out about disconfirming data to improve previously developed hypotheses (prototypes). Although these tools might not seem that many, its great to see a logical structured approach from ideation to insights to ideas and finally concepts, underpinned with tools that allow a replicable approach.

The second chapter ends with a WARNING that, despite all good intentions, the biggest obstacles with this lies in the inner barriers of companies who “still don’t get it”. Although I don’t know if that’s just the companies fault, the outlook on a final chapter addressing “moving a design project through an organization”, sounds promising.

All in all, I’m looking forward to the final book, which will be released (according to amazon.com) in June 2011. The only main critique which I would have right now is that design thinking, as far as I understood it in the first two chapters, is mend to be used as a toolbox, which I think differs quite heavily from recent approaches and misses a lot of the benefits one can get through collaboration.

Companies & Innovation / Tools — No comments
7
Feb 11

Reducing risk in New Product Development

How to test, sell and market new products.

Signs on beach on East Falkland warning of the dangers of unexploded mines and mine fields. Falkland Islands. ©Toby Adamson/Axiom

Companies as well as Entrepreneurs nowadays take a substantial risk, not only from a financial but also from a “innovation race” game perspective when developing new products. Betting on the wrong horse can get you anywhere from losing a fair amount of money to total bankruptcy. No wonder that companies are trying to minimize risk by being less radical and by conducting upfront research to come up with the safest plan and concept possible. But, as we all know; only a view “innovations” survives the first contact with a customer and a sustainable amount of products fail in the market.

So the question which comes to mind is, is it possible to make the right predictions upfront to have a save delivery in the end? Well, the cool thing is, there is such a thing and it which just appeared and it does much more.

Some time ago the Glif, an iPhone 4 Tipod Mount & Stand developed by Thomas Gerhardt and Dan Provost, two designers from NY was featured on the web (e.g. Economist) for the first time. The most intriguing thing about it, was not the product itself, but the process they used to to come up with their testing and the upfront investment for production.

Instead of looking for an investor, the two designers used kickstarter.com to pitch to the public. This, not only gave them more than the initial investment they needed ($10.000) but much more. By looking at the proposal of the Glif, visitors of the website evaluated the product and where showing their commitment by literally buying into the idea. By buying the product prior to production, not only financing but a secure customer base which expressed their belief and their trust into the product was secured. In addition one might only speculate about the viral marketing that took by committed customers who bought into the idea and send the links to family and friends. After achieving $80.000 the economist featured the product online which led to the final sum of $137,417.

Although the creators of the Glif might not have been aware about it, but their success already inspired another, Apple related, product Tik-Tok, a wrist bad for the ipod nano touch, which already gathered more than 182.000 US$.

So is this just hype or a real business model that we can see emerging. One might argue that there where others trying to make their luck using the same approach before. But if you look at how they did it, it never has been used so professionally in terms of preparation, creating and addressing a market need. By building on a “current hype” combined with a meaningful proposal and a good story to communicate it, these designers where able to successfully finance a product development even beyond their expectations.

So these two concepts might only be the first in a series to come, using this new business model in a professional way – which was rarely considered before. Showing how crowds could be used as a core principle to test, market, crowd-finance and deliver new and innovative products.

But this is not only great example when it comes to entrepreneurial endeavors but also when looking at it from a product evaluation and market testing perspective (Evidence Based Management …). Established companies who invest millions in new developments to see them fail on market release could also gain a substantial benefit using this approach. Using this approach for pre-market tests or radical ideas could substantially minimize the risk and therefore help mature business to test more radical ideas without endangering their existing businesses.

So by looking at these examples one might come up with a rough sketch of steps which emerges from the early examples at hand:

Identify a market need related to a web save user base that is in high demand for innovative products and is web save (in means of trusting online services such as kickstarter.com).
Develop and test a product idea to address this need and build a working prototype that is as close to the final product – and therefore as real – in terms of function, materials and look as possible.
Calculate the price based on the minimum requirements to produce and ship a small quantity of approx. 100-1000 pieces. (reverse’ income statement – as described in the article „Discovery Driven Planning” by McGrath and MacMillian 1995)
Publish the product story/pitch on kickstarter.com
1. Publishing a pitch on an online platform like kickstarter.com which communicates the idea by an insightful story. The story needs to clearly show the advantages and the needs which are being addressed as lively and simple as possible.
2. Rather than spending money on the project itself, offer the user to order the product by his investment upfront. With this, the user will not only pay for the product, but contribute to turn the idea into reality.
3. Be authentic! Provide a compelling background story on your credibility is in terms of product development and why you developed the product in the first place.
4. Provide info on how the product will be turned into reality.
Market your product proposal using social networks and related user forums.
Check on people’s interest (visits) vs. investment into your idea in order to recalculate and re-plan your production while the demand grows.

The great thing about this approach is, it shortcuts your way to the market and reduces the risk of spending a lot of money in tooling and infrastructure beforehand. In addition product, production method and profit can develop while getting feedback. However the downside might be a loss of a first mover advantage in terms of time to market. In addition this business model might be most suitable for products with low complexity that could be produced and shipped shortly after the crowd-financing pitch runs out.

Nevertheless, this might be as revolutionary to product design as t-shirt printing to graphic design. Once production facilities have adapted to this kind of business model and new web services have been set up, we will surely see much more niche product by entrepreneurs,designers, communities and private practitioners than ever before.

Thanks to Henrik Berglund and Sören Sjölander from CBI/Chalmers who inspired the links on Evidence Based Management and Discovery Driven Planning.

Offtopic — No comments
10
Nov 10

Glif – small scale production biz.

Although the product itself is quite nice, the story of how they developed their business so far is much more interesting. An great example of how small products can be developed and a great showcase of how accessible production methods are at the moment.

Even financing seems simple when people believe in your ideas. Although I doubt that it was at simple and flawless as it is described, by this article about the making of the “Glif”.

It seems so “simple” that it makes you want to do it yourself. I wonder how many people will follow this rout in the near future, especially in times with to much designers and a shortage of jobs.

PS: The time I read the article, money gathered on kickstarter was $131.000+

Design Thinking — No comments
10
Nov 10

What is Design Thinking?

Being asked to define it a couple of times, I just came across this very interesting video on the “Dialog on Design” blog.