Focus Groups Kill Innovation? Half Empty Half Full.

We've all heard the phrase, the glass is half empty or half full depending on how you look at it. True. But what if the customer isn't thirsty? 

In the case of Focus Groups and the Innovation Engine in the recent article in Fast Company, naturally, once again the definition of innovation is forgotten and Joseph Schumpeter is spinning because the underlying assumption is that customers naturally know what they want, can articulate it, and or want to. The later part is the key to this article and many others related to demand, elastic price demand determination of innovations, and of course ignoring design, design art and if customers know what they want before it is even presented. 

Regardless, the key is, and always has been, what if the customer is not thirsty for it, for a new product innovation, a new glass a new car, a new anything. Will any focus group help this? 

Yes. No. Who knows. But surely ideas and innovations come from people. Individuals. Groups. And without focus of some sort, no new innovations come into existence. 

Richard Branson Gets Design does your firm?

Recently at an meeting with senior level managers at a large USA based multinational firm, the question was asked, which of these names do you recognize: Picasso, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Phillippe Starck, Charles Eames, Frank Gehry, Giorgio Armani, and about 10 others. The overwhelming score, less than 30%. Then the women in the room were asked. The score jumped to over 80%. When the names of contemporary international designers were added again, the scores where miniscule, yet again, the women scored significantly higher. Why? Does design not matter in the America's? No, but it is certainly  not as important as in Europe and unless you are a branded international design super star, you name is not likely to ring very loudly in the America's. 

In a recent interview Richard Branson details some of the reasons why design matter and who he's working with. Can the CEO and C-Level executives at your firm say the same? How embedded is the design process in how your firm conceptualizes, and launches new products? And clearly, are they any where near as integrated and sexy as Virgin? Just take a look at the typical interiors of their planes, trains and of course advertising. 

Additive Manufacturing, Means Design Breakthroughs

Paper or Plastic? Three objects changed your entire working life and you don't even know it: the IBM 3800 Laser printer in 1976? The Hewlett Packard DeskJet in 1988? 1984's 3D System Corp's "One" 3D printer, and now it's changing again with Additive Manufacturing and it's a 3 Billion dollar industry. Artisan sculpting and design with paper, plastic, molds, etc, as a function to product development and expect that rapid prototyping as the last step? And it can be, but integrated design, engineering and output effects every firm that operates in the step to expect the but how does this effect any new product development. 

Great Innovations Fail due to Ecosystems? No. Chasms

Ever wonder why some new products gain market acceptance much slower than others? Or why products that are clearly breakthrough never seem to take off to the level they can clearly attain? The reason? It's not vision, it's not quality, it is as simple as design acceptance. Acceptance based on specific financial involvement. Because good products are everywhere, but great products take a lot more investment plain and simple and it isn't ecosystem involvement.

Recently an article called Why Great Innovations Fail: It's All in the Ecosystem attempted to describe, based on the book The Wide Lens by Ron Adner, the some of the reasons why "Innovations" many of which are clearly NPD launches, failed, or at the least were difficult adoptions. Examples included, Michelin's tires with internal sensors that cost the typical garage 70K in equipment just to repair. Yes, 10's of thousands of dollars investment needed to fix a subset of high end users tires. More we have Digital Cinema requiring your local theater to invest 70K per screen and of course Amazon and their "conditions in the ecosystem that made joining the long-awaited e-book revolution a more attractive proposition for publishers" better known as revenue sharing or at the worst predatory pricing to entice adoption. Is this all? No. Naturally we are then lead to the mother of all "innovations" - Apple's iPod where DRM and the deals with all the major record labels because of the DRM is ignored - THE key to why the iPod took off. Somehow the security of the encryption and DRM software, code, that links purchases to devices, THE reason why the entire iPod "ecosystem" exists, how it was designed, how the laws were changed to allow for this, etc., are left off the table. The Key architectural design component that makes the entire "ecosystem" exist.

Oddly, you might guess, is this enough? To have an ecosystem? The advice: “It is no longer enough to manage your innovation. Now you must manage your innovation ecosystem,” which is what designers have known from the beginning. You don't just design the object, you manufacture the object, you own the distribution, you serve the customer and you never rely on the bankers to determine success or failure.

This is what is communicated in Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore, and what we at iGNITIATE have focused on well before the iPod, Digital Cinema or Auto Fix tires hit the market and the reason is simple, innovation means breakthroughs, full market changing efforts, eg. the entire music distribution and delivery system of iTunes as launched right along with the earliest versions of iTunes. When the whole ecosystem is prepared from day 1, great "innovations" are much more likely to turn into profitable NPD endeavors.

For more, visit our other examples, and successes at www.iGNITIATE.com

Design Dichotomies: Sexy Simple East Design & Overly West Design

Often with hyper aware clients, the idea of globalization, but in particular regional design differences comes up. The biggest question: why should we care? When really the discussion should be revolving around the question: why should we not take this into account. 

A perfect example of this are the designs of Braun and the treatment of these designs in on the Japanese version of Braun’s website as the cleanliness and simplicity speaks for itself. More, one critic has urged that the peaceful transition of images to functions of the site is THE basis for the tone that clearly sets these design objects apart from others in the market especially when the firm in question is a German design and manufacturing firm.

Investigating the Braun History also communicated grace and history ( obviously, in Japanese) versus the fully English version of the US Braun website which literally speaks for itself - no need to discuss the obvious. 

Design for Better, Simpler, Cheaper Packaging = 500K British Pounds Savings Yearly

How far does design extend into the enterprise? All the way to the format of packaging a sandwich. How does this effect ROI? Well when your selling more than a million sandwiches a day, every inch of packaging counts and more specifically where the data on that package is placed, means seconds for checkout staff. A design function. Definitely. TESCO in the uk saved more than 500k British pounds after simplifying design and the placement of that  product label. As described by Sir Terry Leahy, past CEO of TESCO describes in his book and described here. 

Simple examples of the design work being completed by Dove and L’Oreal are great examples and even the advanced R&D design work of Sunstar Butler amongst others show the necessity to push forward on materials and manufacturing capabilities.

And this isn't a new topic, especially in the world of packaging as described and detailed by Smashing Magazine's Packaging Simplicity Article where even the placement of logo can effect the way, end users, in the case of checkout workers, can effect the time it takes to scan customers items. Thus simplicity isn't just for management, or even packaging design, but must begin with the 1st steps of the design, review and release process.

Building your firm into a design powerhouse

What has been a consistent message is that design and utilizing design as a competitive advantave for your firm is not to be ignored within todays environment. The question is of course how can this be acomplished. And without pain, infighting and jockying at the board level. More and more board level positions are going to design professionals cross trained in at least one other dicipline: engineering, strategy, operations, or manufacturing.

Some key factors include:
1. Have A vision and strategy that is well-articulated and understood by its organization - why design is important, how the firm will utilize it and the process for making that happen
2. Developing leadership that is capable and committed to driving its vision - promoting design executives within the organization providing they are focused and capabale of executing on ROI oriented design efforts
3. Creating an organization that is structured and resourced for success - developing and executing on specific phase gates, external engagement, etc
4. Cultivating a talent pool that is diverse in design disciplines and deployed at key points of functional integration -  hiring, training and retraining people with at least a dual design & operations background with at least 2 areas of expertiese, Design and engineering, operations, finance, etc. 
5. Fostering a culture that embraces the myriad dimensions of design - even if it is divisional bakeoffs for who has the best cookies, this is a simplistic yet important factor in continually building and creative and competitive environment

Our friends at Fast Company come through once again by detailing some of the basic steps of how to make this a reality inside your organization. The full article can be seen here: 6 Keys For Turning Your Company Into A Design Powerhouse although strangely firms such as Apple, Braun, Samsung, Unilieve, Frog, etc., are all missing as they are non-US centric and as we have seen by many US magazines, if it isn't US oriented it is just not important which should be one of THE major tennants in any design centric strategy - "Don't forget the US is NOT the center of the universe!"

Design Disruption isn't just for designers - the business model canvas (BMC)

Design disruption isn't just for objects and information but also the representation of that information. This has been called info-graphics, data visualization, information architecture. What is important is design disruption or more accurately the visualization of design disruptions are what is at stake. Quantifiable accurate? Measurable visually? Absolutely. And there are tools and techniques to see these disruptions in practice.

How is this achieved? With tools such as BCM and the resulting end product - a clean representation of how  utilizing design disruption methods effect ROI for firms employing these models as described here in this example of BCM as applied to Dow Corning.

More on this in the future where we will see visually how ROI for firms employing disruptive design out perform organizations who do not.

Corporate Design Challenges - 90yrs of Braun

Normally product companies work within their own fences, focusing on the applicability of the internal design team and within the framework set down by the CDO - Chief Design Officer or CPO - Chief Product Officer, relatively new positions within firms. Why? Marketing and Tecnology, CMO & CTO are often at odds with who "owns" the consumer. Why? Because firms often believe that customers know what they want - as Steve Jobs pattently knew: customers don't know what they want until they see it.

How do firms take advantage of this? By involving external designers, external experts and not relying solely on internal design navel gazing - something firms like Braun have been experts at for more than 90 years now. See how they do this.

These external and internal efforts, led by some of the best designers in Braun's history and certainly the world, such as Peter Behrens, and Dietrich Lubs and Ram's philosophy shaped an entire company, and more generation of designers. How many firms can say that? And how many firms are committed to keeping their R&D windows open? Not many. But those that do follow Braun's lead. 

5 Innovation Fail's - not to be ignored

Recently we were asked how exactly do you know where a New Product Development efforts fail point and more how can they apply to innovation processes? Naturally this means taking a hard look at "that which might destroy you can make you stronger" via the 5. 

Let's review: 

1) Innovation is episodic - and certainly not something you kill at the 1st sign of missing revenue. R&D does not come over night and New Venture teams do not produce cash flying out of their backside in one quarter

2) Resources are held hostage by incumbent businesses - let those who are in power determine where $$$ is spent on new development and they will always choose their own best interests: an instant innovation killer. 

3) Slamming innovation into the structure that you have - when an organization is not interested in growth by the architecture of the firm itself, trying to "make" innovation happen simply won't. 

4) Too little diversity of thought - when confronted with complex systems, a team with a broader range of potentially relevant experiences tends to do better as no one eye can see all possibilities. 

5) Treating assumptions like knowledge - relying on "managers of innovation" is just as stupid as asking Leonardo da Vinci to group think the Mona Lisa as managers are rewarded for being "right" when the easiest way to be right is to take very few risks and innovation has nothing to do with "few risks" occurs when direct refutable evidence is tested in the real world with real customers/partners/manufacturers/etc. 

The article in HBS online tells even more. 

When design matters - Google buys a design co.: Mike and Maaike

Naturally when the big players move, the market takes notice and taking center stage at Google in the physical design world are the advancements of Project Glass and the recent accquisition of design company Mike and Maaike into the Google fold.

When Leads to

Does this signify any radical shift of design importance in the hi-tech world? No. In the North American Market? Yes. Design-centric studios are at the center of technological direction, consumer value, brand perception, and of course functional development and product acceptance which we all understand as Apple soars to higher and higher levels of consumer demand because of it's aesthetic awareness putting a high value on it's internal design team and how it effects the bottom line. Should Google partner with Gucci? Prada? Hermes? Yes. Is it valuable? How can we measure this? As simple as the number of news, blog, and twitter postings of Google's aquistion of Mike and Maaike as reported in business specific publicatons such as Business insider, Tech News, CNN, C-Net, Fast Company Design, ID Magazine, etc. and naturally as in the design world as well.

design and innovation gone wrong

It's not often that design especially in the European market goes wrong as the connection between design, art and innovation have such a tight link. It is even less often that we comment on this, but in the case of M&S London, it has not been more apparent.

In their recent Shwopping installation profiled here: capability for design is missed, the capability for art is ignored and a media and marketing opportunity is lost. Why? Design is ignored. Construction is minimal and execution is quick and dirty. Only in the photo above where clothes are laid out in a green color combination is there even the slightest indication of possibilities. What could have been? Anything depending on the designer / design team called in.

ROI oriented? Certainly not.

PR possibilities ignored? Certainly so.

A canvas for any number of designers to show M&S's commitment to design: Clearly.

great ideas come in pairs, innovations come in processes? no.

The question is always the same, are "innovations" and better than ideas? only if they make it to market. Is there a formula? Well, in 2004 Leslie Martinich in Commercializing and Managing Innovations suggests there is a correlation and specifically based on capabilities of the internal team. Very natural. But what of the validity of the external design itself? David Lavenda in Why Great Ideas Come In Pairs suggests where there is one there is another. And in this Non-European, non artisan model the question is therefore ignored: Have Western companies still not quantified the mentality of design value?


Oddly CNN got it correct recently when an interviewee was quoted as saying, "It seems that only It is odd for me to represent design thinking and process in the debate when my education and training is as a scientist and MBA. The reason I hang around so many smart designers is that I don't think the old tricks alone will enable the business model innovation and system change we need. We need to borrow from both approaches to pave a new way. It is messy but necessary. Lets bring together the mad scientists and mad designers and see what happens."

The "innovation nation" is finally catching up with the rest of the world.