CEOs Must Be Designers, Not Just Hire Them. Think Steve Jobs And iPhone.

I gave a speech at Innovation Night at the Royal College of Art in London on Tuesday and here it is. It's my latest thinking on innovation and design. There are a number of bottom lines in it but perhaps the most important is that I now believe that CEOs and managers must know Design Thinking to do their jobs. CEOs must be designers and use their methodologies to actually run companies. Let me be even more precise. Design Thinking is the new Management Methodology. There are a growing number of insightful folks with great blogs who are saying the same thing and I'll be linking to them and having a deep conversation with them in the future.

But for now, here's my RCA speech. Let me know what you think.

"Thank you Jeremy (Myerson). It’s great being here. London is like New York on steroids. It’s so exciting! London is clearly the global city of the moment. It is the center of things.

Tonight, I bring you news from America on the state of design. In preparation, I talked to the most thoughtful and important American designers and design educators I could contact. On Friday, I chatted up Tim Brown who runs IDEO, the biggest design and innovation consultancy in the US. Oops. Tim is a Brit—and a graduate of the RCA. I tried Jonnie Ive at Apple. He was busy polishing up the iPhone. But, as you well know, he too is a Brit. I called the founder of ZIBA design in Portland, Oregon. Sohrab Vossoughi. Sohrab was born in Iran. I just had dinner with Paul Thompson, the director of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. Yep, he’s British. I emailed Patrick Whiney at the Illinois Institute of Design and—darn—he’s Canadian. I spoke with Yves Behar at Fuse Projects in San Francisco. And he’s, well, Swiss-Turkish.

You get my point. I’m not sure there is a specific “American” design point of view today but there sure is a global perspective coming out of America thanks to its global designers and design thinkers. That’s a good thing. Design has many enemies and parochialism is perhaps the worst. In an era when all of us, journalists, business people, and designers are making the transition from being leaders of thought to curators of conversations, I believe the field of design is best served by viewing it in the broadest of terms. Industrial design was born by cross-pollinating graphics, fashion and even window display with the demands of product marketing. Post-industrial design is evolving out of the interplay of new and exciting global and technological forces as well. More of that later.

Let’s get up to 30,000 feet for a bit to see what big forces at play around the world are shaping design. Let me begin by saying that we don’t know !#@*! I’m sorry but it is true. There are moments in history when the pace of change is so fast and the shape of the future so fuzzy that we live in a constant state of beta.

Continue reading "CEOs Must Be Designers, Not Just Hire Them. Think Steve Jobs And iPhone."

Want Great Talent For Innovation? Try The RCA in London.

I just got back from three days at the Royal College of Art in London--three amazing days. If you are looking for innovation and design talent for your companies or your consultancies, you have got to check out the incredible students coming out of the RCA. I met and talked with them--many award winners from the various contests they hold every year--and they are world class. The solutions these students came up with for difficult problems were game-changing. They see things with fresh eyes and fresh insight.

I was there to speak on Innovation Night, an annual event which celebrates students' best work. This year was special. It was the 150th anniversary of The Great Exhibition, which made a hefty profit that was then invested in the RCA, the Imperial College, the Albert and Victoria Museum and other great institutions.

Jeremy Myerson runs InnovationRCA, a series of programs that effectively promote innovation among the students. One helps them commerialize their creations. Another plugs them into corporations willing to sponsor student projects. Yet another gives special awards to the most brilliant of creations. And I did see brilliant creations. Jeremy is leading the RCA to integrate design and business and engineering and indeed, will soon be giving a Design MBA.

No, Jonathan Ive (iPod, iPhone) did not do graduate work at the RCA. But James Dyson did as well as IDEO's Tim Brown.

Clayton Christensen on the iPhone.

The Harvard Business School professor who wrote the brilliant book, The Innovator's Dilemma, 10 years ago, Clayton Christensen, doesn't think the iPhone will be that disruptive an innovation.

In a terrific Q&A; with Jena McGregor, the management editor at Business Week, Christensen says that the iPhone is really a sustaining technology, not a disruptive technology. "They've launched an innovation that the existing players in the industry are heavily motivated to beat." "it's not [truly]disruptive," he says. "History speaks pretty loudly on that, that the probibility of success is going to be limited."

Wow. Christensen argues that the telcos are pushing their own music download services onto their mobile phones. It's not as good as downloading from iTunes for many people but it's getting better and it may be good enough for most folks.

Hmmm. I think Christensen is wrong here. For one thing, ATT/Cingular is signing with Apple. That leaves, what, Verizon and a couple of smaller players. There's isn't that much competition left. Apple may have a lock.

What do you think?

Chris Bernard on Why Six Sigma is Just Table Stakes Now--And so is Design.

This is a great comment from Chris Bernard at designthinking digest on how Six Sigma--and design--are being commoditized so they are now just table-stakes. More is needed--innovation.

"When I read this post it often reminds of how misinterpreted that Nicolas Carr was when he wrote IT doesn't matter. What people missed is not that Nick thought you didn't need to pay attention to IT, simply that is was expected that you would master it to whatever degree was required in your enterprise. Great IT wasn't going to get you a pat on the back, it was merely a requirement to get in the door. Six Sigma can certainly bury a company and it by no means ensures that a company will make things that people may want or be useful (although they could still perhaps be well made.)

What similar about Six Sigma concerning IT Doesn't Matter is that quality and reliability are now also a 'table stake.' You simply need to have them to play anymore and you're certainly not going to get rewarded for doing them well.

But I think the next table stake is going to be design. In that people will simply expect things to be well designed and companies won't be rewarded for it as much as it will simply be a requirement for playing.

I personally think on the design front we already see design as a table stake. So what is the enterprise to do? I think this is where innovation comes in. I think Apple and Target are successful because of how they use design (along with IT and quality) to create platforms of innovation. The success of the iPod is largely not just of the device but that platforms and services that surround it.

Target does this to high effect as well with things like the Clear RX bottle which is beautiful, useful but also has an impact of increasing foot traffic in a store if Target can get a customer to start using their pharmacy more frequently.

So perhaps this is a long winded way of acknowledging Tom Peter's work and understanding today that the new table stakes might really be the trinity that is evangelized by Doblin (roughly paraphrased as..."What does the market need, what can technology do, what do customes desire.)

The trick for the future vitality of companies is figuring out the processes that are culturally viable in your enterprise that enables you to build platforms on which you can innovate on. Getting mired too much in any one area (even design) is not going to enable the continued vitality of most enterprises."

Thanks Chris. Food for thought.

Facebook Fascination.

Check out Esther Dyson on the important changes at Facebook. I especially like her quote of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg: "The other guys think the purpose of communication is to get information. We think the purpose of information is to foster communication."

If you're a manager out there blindly moving into social media to market your brand, co-create, or just experiment, think about that. And if you're in the media business, think deeply about it.

The new, redesigned Huffington Post site has some really good bloggers now for business, media, and other "deep verticles." That's on top of Arianna Huffington's focus on politics, of course.

Tom Peters On Six Sigma Vs. Innovation.

I just caught up to this great post on Tom Peters' blog that gives historic context to the debate over efficiency vs. creativity that we started in the last issue of Inside Innovation.

It was a story by Brian Hindo on how an ex-GEer put a Six Sigma overlay over 3M, straightened out its processes but hurt its wonderful innovation culture.

Peters points out that in his 1997 book Circle of Innovation, he warmed about Six Sigma. Here's a piece of what he has to say:

"I was riffing on the problems associated with ISO 9000 certification, and unearthed the perfect quote to match my sentiments, courtesy Richard Buetow, then director of corporate quality for business systems at Motorola:

"With ISO 9000 you can still have terrible processes and products. You can certify a manufacturer that makes life jackets from concrete, as long as those jackets are made according to the documented procedures and the company provides next of kin with instructions on how to complain about defects. That's absurd."

What's particularly interesting about that, in addition to the amusing-but-deadly-serious content, is that the speaker is a Motorolan. Long before Welch at GE, Motorola was the poster child for wholesale adoption of Six Sigma quality processes. And, though the process worked wonders on quality in the short term, it apparently starved innovation, an under-tended priority for historically innovative Motorola—until the RAZR signified a return to corporate roots."

Peters goes on to point out that 20 years ago, Florida Power & Light was the first US company to get Japan's famous Deming Award (named after that great quality-control guru W. Edward Deming). What people forget is that the company took off most of those controls several years later because it was choking it to death.

Tom was there in this debate way before we were.

Facebook Is On Fire, MySpace May Be Fading.

Facebook is hot. You hear it all over the US and Britain. Corporations may love Second Life, but smart people are pouring into Facebook and it apparently is exploding.

Marc Andreesen, Netscape and Ning co-founder, has a great analysis of why Facebook is the new net platform in his blog. Basically, what's happened is that on May 24, Facebook launced a set of application programming interfaces (API's)and services that permit developers to introduce new features and content. Since they people have been pouring in to introduce and register new applications and users of Facebook are adding those applications to their pages.

Andreesen argues what Facebook is doing is far more sophisticated that what MySpace is doing. Once you start using new application on Facebook, it notifies your friends and they can start using it as well. A new application can spread to millions of users very quickly. Perhaps most important, new applications can run ads and sell products and services--and you get to keep all the revenue.

One of the most important pages of the latest Inside Innovation is the INdata page which shows how social media is a fast-moving construct that different demographic groups move through quickly. Just as corporations are discovering Second Life and MySpace, a big chunk of their customers are shifting to Facebook. And the folks at Facebook are rewriting the rules of social media, even as we speak, with their brilliant introduction of a suite of widgets that make it perhaps the most inviting platform out there.

Bottom line, the future of the web may be services, entertainment and information coming to you via your own page rather than you chasing around for each and every thing. The relaunch of the Facebook social networking site may be a quiet revolution in the making.

Cutting Edge Designers.

If you want to see what's really hot in design, check out this new series on the Innovation & Design channel on Cutting Edge Designers. It's by the amazing Jessie Scanlon who says the the freshest, best design usually takes place on the borders of two or more disciplines.

Let me quote a bit of her story:

"In the new book, Sketching User Experience (see BusinessWeek.com, 5/18/07, "Why Products Fail"), Microsoft (MSFT) researcher Bill Buxton also hits the theme of cross-pollination, arguing that the field of industrial design was actually established by people who "transferred skills from established disciplines, and adapted them to the demands of product design." He cites Walter Dorwin Teague, founder of the eponymous Seattle-based firm, who was trained as a graphic designer, and Raymond Loewy, whose famous Coca-Cola (KO) bottle followed an early career in fashion illustration and window displays. Both men were key figures in the birth of the field.

Then, as now, the most exciting work in design happened at the intersection of two or more disciplines, where knowledge from one finds relevance in another. Many designers might say, quite rightly, that they always work at the nexus of disciplines—synthesizing the demands of engineering, business, and human factors, not to mention style. Yet some designers still push beyond the expectations of their profession, breaking down more boundaries. "

Who are the 10 cutting edge designers? Check out the slide show. They include Martin Wattenberg, Group Manager, IBM Visual Communication, Cameron Sinclair, of Open Architecture Network, John Thackara, director of Doors of Perception and others.

Can The iPhone Replace The Blackberry And Treo?

Across the corporate landscape, folks are asking if they can turn in their Blackberries and Treos for iPhones and they're not getting a definitive "yes." Apple kind of says "yes," but even after Steve Jobs' keynote at the annual Apple developers conference, there are lots of questions. Most of these have to do with connecting to Microsoft Exchange with the server behind a firewall. I can't pretend to understand all the software issues involved, including Apple allowing third party developers to write software for the iPhone.

Microsoft and Starbucks Back Games For Change.

This from Reena Jana, who reports on gaming culture, virtual culture and culture in general for our Innovation & Design site and IN magazine:

"Last year, we reported on the annual Games for Change Festival held at Parsons School of Design here in New York – this year’s event takes place from June 11-12 -- which showcases the budding genre of activist-themed video games that’s now starting to blossom. The festival is attended by game-design students, gamers, and game developers alike. And in our analysis of last year’s festival, we concluded that more corporations could raise their public profiles as socially conscious companies by sponsoring video games intended to mobilize young people to help save the environment or fight genocide.

This year, corporate support for the growing “games for change” movement is starting to bloom. Two of the world’s most-recognized brands, Microsoft and Starbucks, are present at the event. Significant is Microsoft’s announcement of its new involvement with the organizers of the Games for Change Festival. Last year, Microsoft funded an activist game on display at the event, called Four Years in Haiti, about poverty-stricken children in the Caribbean country and their struggles to find the resources to go to school. On June 11, at the opening of this year’s Festival, Microsoft unveiled a partnership with Games for Change, the organization that produces the event. Together, they will produce the Xbox 360 Games for Change Challenge, launching in August.

The contest will award three cash prizes to the makers of the best student activist game entered in the competition. Beyond the cash, these three finalists will also be given the chance to pitch their ideas to the managers of the Xbox games team at Microsoft, American Idol-style. And keeping consistent with the reality-TV approach, the top winner will become an intern at Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business in Redmond, Wash., later in the year.

Also at the Games for Change Festival, Starbucks is showcasing an online game, Planet Green Game (http://www.planetgreengame.com), which the coffee giant produced in collaboration with Global Green USA, an environmentalist organization. Players choose a character, and then have limited time to make eco-friendly, everyday decisions, such as riding a bike around town instead of a gas-guzzling SUV or turning down a home thermostat, to score points. Although the game was launched in April, the company’s presentation of it at the Games for Change Festival helps Starbucks align its brand with the activist games movement, and will help the corporation further target socially conscious youth.

Now that high-profile corporations such as Microsoft and Starbucks are sponsoring activist games with their vast financial resources and promoting them with their marketing departments, they will no doubt play a hand in educating more young gamers about socially conscious causes such as global warming. In the process, they will also draw more gamers to their brands -- as do-good consumers of their products. But at the festival, companies could also attract potential game-savvy employees among the students in attendance, even before Microsoft’s upcoming contest kicks off later this summer. To recruit as well as publicize their brands at the event could be a smart strategy for corporations looking to gain from attending the Games for Change Festival."

For blogs, talk and conversation about these games designed to promote needed social change go here...

Where Did The Swastika Come From?

I'm getting a lot of comment on the London 2012 Logo that appears to look like a swastika to me. Some folks believe the swastika image came from ancient India, others the Vikings. I've seen the swastika image on very old Navajo blankets. Frankly, I'm betting there is something about the image that is universal and common to many cultures.

Here's the Wikipedia answer--the swastika's origins are Eurasian.

Here is what wiki says:

"The swastika has an extensive history. The motif seems to have first been used in Neolithic Eurasia. The swastika is used in religious and civil ceremonies in Hindu countries (especially Nepal and India). Most Indian temples, entrance of houses, weddings, festivals and celebrations are decorated with swastikas. The symbol was introduced to Southeast Asia by Hindu kings and remains an integral part of Balinese Hinduism to this day, and it is a common sight in Indonesia. The symbol has an ancient history in Europe, appearing on artifacts from pre-Christian European cultures. It was also adopted independently by several Native American cultures.

Greek helmet with swastika marks on the top part (details), 350-325 BC from Taranto, found at Herculanum. Cabinet des Médailles, Paris.In the Western world, the symbol experienced a resurgence following the archaeological work in the late 19th century of Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered the symbol in the site of ancient Troy and associated it with the ancient migrations of Proto-Indo-Europeans. He connected it with similar shapes found on ancient pots in Germany, and theorized that the swastika was a "significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors," linking Germanic, Greek and Indo-Iranian cultures.[1][2] By the early 20th century it was widely used worldwide and was regarded as a symbol of good luck and success.

The work of Schliemann soon became intertwined with the völkisch movements, for which the swastika was a symbol of "Aryan" identity, a concept that came to be equated by theorists like Alfred Rosenberg with a Nordic master race originating in northern Europe. Since its adoption by the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler, the swastika has been associated with fascism, racism (white supremacy), World War II, and the Holocaust in much of the West. The swastika remains a core symbol of Neo-Nazi groups, and is also regularly used by activist groups to signify the supposed Nazi-like behavior of organizations and individuals they oppose."

Ivy Ross On Why Innovation Means Connection, Not Process.

A thanks to Diego Rodriguez at Metacool for pointing out this great interview in Ambidextrous Magazine with Ivy Ross.

Here are my favorite quotes:

"Let's face it. Everyone has everything. We're not about price anymore. It's about the connection you find with the object."

"I also believe that creativity and innovation are built around trust and freedom. Companies don't get that. They think it is a process."

"It hit me that the words about relationships, trust and finding the good in all of us was about bringing fearlessly female qualities to the corporation."

"I think the future of design is not just designing the object. We are going to design entireties, entire entities."

Ambidextrous is Stanford U's Journal of Design.

Ivy Ross is right on. The feminization of business culture. The design of civic society. Trust trumping process. Connection over form. All very important concepts to me. You?

Open Source Is Opening The Closed World Of Science And R&D.;

I spent a hundred years in grad school and basically live half my life in academic culture, so I know how closed scientific inquiry traditionally is. But new open source models are changing the model, opening it globally and perhaps making it more efficient as well. Peter Turner over at his Open Source blog highlights a new study--The Value of Openness in Scientific Inquiry--that makes the case for this. It's by Karim R. Lakhani, Lars Bo Jeppesen, Peter A. Lohse & Jill A. Panetta from the Harvard Business School, Copenhagen Business School, and InnoCentive.com.

Let me quote from it:

"We present evidence of the efficacy of problem solving when disclosing problem information. The method’s application to 166 discrete scientific problems from the research laboratories of 26 firms is illustrated. Problems were disclosed to over 80,000 independent scientists from over 150 countries.

We show that disclosure of problem information to a large group of outside solvers is an effective means of solving scientific problems. The approach solved one-third of a sample of problems that large and well-known R & D-intensive firms had been unsuccessful in solving internally. Problem-solving success was found to be associated with the ability to attract specialized solvers with range of diverse scientific interests. Furthermore, successful solvers solved problems at the boundary or outside of their fields of expertise, indicating a transfer of knowledge from one field to others."

The InnoCentive model, of course, matches scientists around the world with problems offered up by global corporations.

We now have two models for creativity: social networking and individual genius. Which suits your culture?

Britain's Olympics Logo Stinks--And It Paid Way Too Much.

For the equivalent of $800,000 Britain has bought itself the worst kind of logo--one that stirs up horrible images of the past rather than wonderful images of the future.

It's edgy, all right but in a weird, Nazi swastika kind of way. Sorry, but the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, is right when he says the logo makers, Wolff Olins, branding agency, didn't do a "health check" before rolling it out. It didn't check to see how it played in public.

New logos need to be empty vessels that represent nothing but an idea, an opportunity for a product/service experience that consumers learn to love. I'm drinking from a Starbucks coffee cup with a mermaid on it. Mermaids have nothing to do with coffee but we've come to associate it with a great experience. It now is a meaningful logo.

The Olympic torch is the only image we have from one Olmpic to another that touches us and reminds us of what the contests are supposed to be about--community, what binds us together around the world. Beyond that, each national logo every four years, is essentially meaningless. At best, it can be filled up by great athletic events, images, experiences and memories (or bad ones--we've had some awful Olympics).

As for me, I'm basically a NoLogoMan. I especially hate them on clothes. The Plains Indians are now shifting their tradition of beading moccasins to beading on Converse sneakers. Each pair is a work of art. That has meaning to me.

iPhone Ads Are So Hot.

So who is doing this incredible work for Apple? The iPhones ads are just terrific.