Doblin

Deloitte has acquired substantially all of the business of Monitor, including Doblin

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 20:11:00 -0500

Deloitte has acquired substantially all of the business of Monitor, one of the world’s leading strategy consulting firms. The combination of Monitor’s talent and business with the consulting strategy service lines of Deloitte will result in a new global presence that will redefine the industry.

The new combined practices will operate under the Monitor Deloitte brand, creating a broad-reaching strategy and execution presence with world leading strengths in multiple domains, including innovation and marketing strategy.

Monitor Deloitte, through an integration of core strengths, capabilities, and assets of both networks, is designed to offer a distinctive set of services that fuse intelligent strategic insight and innovation with disciplined execution, enabling organizations on their journey to be leaders and shape the future. The strategy capabilities of Monitor Deloitte will reflect:

Fresh insights
Actionable analysis
Leading-edge methods
Deep hands-on implementation guidance

These capabilities are all joined with deep industry knowledge, and focus on business impact.

*All content on this website is currently being reviewed for migration to Deloitte.com.

The 12 Days of Innovation in the Huffington Post

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 09:48:29 -0500

Innovation consultant Robert F Brands gave the Ten Types of Innovation a starring role in a holiday-inspired piece he wrote for the Huffington Post. Riffing off our long-standing theory (which this year also features in a major book coming from Wiley), Brands had some advice for those looking to build a sustainable innovation competency. Now that’s a philosophy we can get behind. He writes:

On the first day of holiday innovations, my true love brought to me — A Profit Model Innovation: An innovation in the way in which you make money. Spotify uses the “freemium” model, where the software is provided free of charge, but a premium is charged for advanced features.

To see the rest of Brands’ holiday innovations, see the full story over at HuffPo.

Helen Walters featured in "Connecting" video on interaction design

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:45:00 -0500

Our own Helen Walters turns up in this video documentary looking at the current state of interaction design. Connecting was shot and produced by Bassett & Partners and features a whole host of design world luminaries, including Blaise Aguera y Arcas of Microsoft and Andrei Herasimchuk, director of design at Twitter.

Melissa Dalrymple speaks at SDN + DESIS

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 15:53:50 -0500

Service design is a big deal these days, and our own Melissa Dalrymple is taking part in a panel discussion hosted by the New York chapter of the Service Design Network and DESIS (the Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability program at Parsons). Taking place on Wednesday November 28th and hosted by SDN’s Marshall Sitten, Melissa is set to discuss the theories and challenges of designing services in New York City, particularly important in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

For more details, see the Service Design Network’s website.

On November 15, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow celebrated Global...

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 13:05:00 -0500

On November 15, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow celebrated Global Entrepreneurship Week. Doblin’s Steffen Gackstatter addressed an audience of more than 100 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, executives, and government officials and presented the results of the Global Entrepreneurship Week Policy Survey, which interviewed executives from 35 countries to measure differences in attitudes towards national policies. At the event, hosted by U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, Steffen focused on the Russian answers to the survey, which generally held a positive view of the country’s policy towards entrepreneurship, especially in terms of providing a favorable environment for start-ups and support of entrepreneurship as a career choice. But, Steffen revealed, many of those canvased for the report also found room for improvement in areas such as financial strategy, skills development, and tax credits.

Check out the full presentation on SlideShare.

Alex Kinnebrew and David Jensen chair the Customer Experience Strategies Summit

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 14:18:00 -0400

Alex Kinnebrew and David Jensen will chair the second annual Customer Experience Strategies Summit in Toronto, to be held November 13-14. Bringing together senior marketing and customer experience professionals from across Canada and the U.S., the conference will tackle a range of topics in the field of customer experience. The keynote speech will be given by Peter Aceto, President and CEO of ING Direct Canada; other speakers include senior leaders from Dell, Intuit, WestJet, and Microsoft. Alex and David are working hard to weave together major conference themes as well as to share Monitor’s own point of view around “Total Experience.” That’s the firmly held belief that managing experience strategically across all aspects of the business will lead to competitive differentiation and higher returns. For more information on Total Experience or the conference, please email: David_Jensen [at] monitor.com.

Larry Keeley at Digital October: How to Make Innovations Truly Effective

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:23:00 -0400

On October 29, our own Larry Keeley gave a talk at Digital October, an initiative in Moscow to help professionals share best practices, learn about trends, and try new products. Presenting via webcam, Larry described recent work on Doblin’s Ten Types of Innovation framework and talked about how to make innovations effective in business. Making the case that ”the best gift that we can give each other is the right to build the predictable and dependable future in which we want to live,” Larry outlined a playbook for innovation that everyone can use.

Watch the full webcast here.

What if a robust global economic recovery is not in our medium...

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 17:52:00 -0400

What if a robust global economic recovery is not in our medium term future? How can companies enhance their competitiveness and find opportunities if a low growth economy is the new status quo? Our upcoming After Five @ 111 event tackles these questions, and more.

In their new report, Growth in a Low Growth Economy, Monitor’s Eamonn Kelly and UC Berkeley’s Steve Weber paint a challenging picture of the world over the next decade. They argue that “recovery” will be a drawn-out period of low growth, will accelerate major shifts in consumption and globalization patterns, and will fail to restore a global economic system that resembles a re-balanced version of 2008.

On Thursday October 11th, from 5pm at our office in downtown Chicago, Eamonn and Steve will discuss how the current recession is profoundly different from anything we’ve endured before. And they’ll argue that corporate leaders who are awaiting greater certainty and a more robust recovery before committing to substantive investments may actually be pursuing the riskiest strategy of all. Fancy coming along and sharing your point of view? Email Amy_Wright [at] monitor.com for more information and to be put on the guest list.

Larry Keeley in the Financial Times: "Apology takes Apple into Uncharted Waters"

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 14:01:00 -0400

Larry Keeley is quoted in Tim Bradshaw’s piece for the Financial Times, which looks at how Apple is negotiating the choppy waters of innovation in the post-Steve Jobs era. As Larry points out, even though the Cupertino giant is now the most valuable company in the world, that’s no excuse for complacency, and there are real questions to be answered about the tech company’s path to the future. Here’s the piece:

If Tim Cook was seeking to demonstrate how his leadership of Apple differs from that of his predecessor Steve Jobs, he could have made no better public gesture than issuing an apology.

Mr Cook said on Friday that Apple was “extremely sorry for the frustration” caused by misplaced landmarks and incorrectly named locations in Maps, which replaced Google Maps in the latest version of the iPhone and iPad’s operating system.

Coming a week before the first anniversary of the death of Apple’s co-founder, the contrast of Mr Cook’s contrition over the Maps app and Jobs’ often arrogant response to customer complaints could not be more marked.

[Read the rest of the article at the Financial Times’ website.]

Matt Damon cites Bansi Nagji and Geoff Tuff in Bloomberg Businessweek

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 09:37:00 -0400

This is one of the more left-field validations we’ve had for the Total Innovation theory written by Bansi Nagji and Geoff Tuff and originally published in Harvard Business Review. In a Bloomberg Businessweek story, movie star Matt Damon explains the investment thinking at Water.org, a company he co-founded to provide clean water and sanitation to everyone on earth: “Harvard Business Review just put out an article about this that actually broke it down,” he said. “You want 70 percent to be your core business, 20 percent to be adjacencies to that and 10 percent to be highest risk. Funnily enough, they say it pays off exactly inverse to that.”

[Read the full article here]

Larry Keeley in NYT story, "Has Apple Peaked?"

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 09:48:00 -0400

Larry Keeley is quoted in this article in the New York Times, in which columnist Joe Nocera wonders if the Cupertino-based technology giant is heading for a fall. One of the issues, explains Larry, is that business models become a “gilded cage,” hampering continued success by getting in the way of the constant evolution needed for ongoing innovation. It’s a super interesting read.

If Steve Jobs were still alive, would the new map application on the iPhone 5 be such an unmitigated disaster? Interesting question, isn’t it?

Apple’s chief executive, Jobs was a perfectionist. He had no tolerance for corner-cutting or mediocre products. The last time Apple released a truly substandard product — MobileMe, in 2008 — Jobs gathered the team into an auditorium, berated them mercilessly and then got rid of the team leader in front of everybody, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs. The three devices that made Apple the most valuable company in America — the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad — were all genuine innovations that forced every other technology company to play catch-up.

[Read the rest of the article here.]

Alex Kinnebrew on Ten Types of Innovation: Using Multiple Types of Innovation to Drive Growth & Strategic Differentiation

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:52:00 -0400

Alex Kinnebrew will be leading a discussion around Doblin’s Ten Types of Innovation framework at a meeting organized by the Northern California chapter of MENG. The event takes place on Wednesday, September 19th at the Parc 55 Wyndham Hotel in San Francisco. Here’s the blurb about what’s on the docket: register for the event here.

Today, innovation is core to most corporate strategies and plays a major role in how companies drive growth and manage risk. However, the definition of what innovation is and how it is undertaken is not always clear. For many years, executives equated innovation with the development of new products. But creating new products is only one way to innovate, and on its own, provides the lowest return on investment and the least competitive advantage, say our speakers. First developed in 1998 by Doblin, the Ten Types of Innovation talk describes ten distinct innovation types; each alone can help companies create new value, but in combination can yield results more difficult to copy, generating higher returns.

In the past 15 years, the Ten Types framework has evolved to reflect how businesses navigate macro forces like globalization, commoditization, complexity, and social business by developing sophisticated innovations that go far beyond product. By viewing innovation activity as a coordinated effort directly linked to a firm’s strategy, organizations can develop an innovation ambition matrix that enables them to balance near- and long-term growth and develop sustained differentiation.

Helen Walters on "The Subtraction of Writing"

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:38:00 -0400

by Helen Walters
published as an essay in The Laws of Subtraction: 6 Simple Rules For Winning In The Age Of Excess Everything by Matthew E May, to be published by McGraw-Hill in October.

The first time I saw Twitter being used in the wild was a strange experience. It was 2007. I sat next to a guy I knew in the auditorium of a conference and watched, confused, as he tapped into his laptop: “Sitting with Helen Walters from BusinessWeek.” Why is that interesting? I asked him. “It’s not, really,” he answered, shrugging. So I gave him what I hoped was my most withering look and then turned my attention to the stage to focus on writing and reporting in the traditional way I had long understood.

Since then I’ve come to appreciate the 140-character medium. Twitter seems to embody the essence of subtraction. The brevity forces you to focus on what’s truly important and to harness the restrictions as a challenge. The exercise of paring down meaning and insight into its purest form, formerly the purview of headline writers and the copy desk, is an invaluable one for anyone looking to communicate in the modern world. Such focused, clear thinking feeds back into the writing and thinking of a longer article, too.

In the years since I signed up for the service (in 2008, still reluctant, still grumpy, quickly addicted) I have marveled at the way in which this simple service has aided my writing, my thinking, my network, and my life. Many people seem to have constructed complex theories about the best ways to use it. My own philosophy aims to ape the simplicity of the service itself: don’t overthink things. I tune in when I can; I write what I think; I engage with those I feel are real; I don’t sweat the number of people following me; and I don’t talk about what I had for lunch unless it was genuinely remarkable.

As the years have passed, the service has created new relationships, strengthened old ones, given me space to think aloud and to ask for feedback or critique. (And boy, do people deliver.) I have watched breaking news stories unfold; I have cried over updates from people I’ve never met; I’ve been guided to stories I would never have seen; and I’ve been introduced to incredible people I’d never have known were it not for this powerful yet brilliantly simple form of expression.

I know that many people still don’t get Twitter and there’s certainly still time for the company to take a wrong turn, to pollute its purity with some bad business decisions. But for me, as a writer, I’m hugely grateful for the focus and clarity it has afforded my life. #Thanks.

Heather Fraser’s new book is Design Works: How to Tackle...

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 17:24:00 -0400

Heather Fraser’s new book is Design Works: How to Tackle Your Toughest Innovation Challenges through Business Design. The executive director and co-founder of Designworks at the Rotman School of Management, Heather spent ten years working in research and business design at Procter & Gamble. She’s coming to Doblin on Wednesday August 22nd to talk about her work and discuss the successes and challenges she’s seen organizations face in using design to shape success.

Happy hour starts at 5pm; discussion starts at 6 o’clock. For more information or to come along, contact amy_wright [at] monitor.com

Matt Locsin: Do More With Less

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 13:12:00 -0400

Doblin’s Matt Locsin spoke at a recent event organized by IDSA/NYC. Sharing the stage with Allan Chochinov, editor-in-chief of Core77 and founding chair of the new MFA in Products of Design at SVA, Matt chose to follow Allan’s presentation with his own description of how design can be used to develop big, platform level solutions. “By design, innovation in areas other than just products can have dramatic effect,” he said, echoing a key theme of Doblin’s practice.

Melissa Quinn on "The Ever-Expanding Design Profession"

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 10:50:00 -0400

Doblin’s own Melissa Quinn will be taking part in a session at the IDSA’s international conference, taking place in Boston on August 15th. Here’s the blurb for the session, which takes place in the “Business of Design” track and which promises to be lively and thought-provoking. If you’re there, be sure to say hello!

The definition and practice of design has never been more dynamic. Now wholeheartedly embraced by the business, nonprofit and government communities as a critical success factor, more scope and integration is being demanded of design and its managers than ever before. How is this trend playing out in the far corners of the profession? A set of panelists who sit at some of the furthest edges of where design is being applied will discuss the important trends they are seeing as well as the biggest challenges they face in moving forward in the environments they serve. Melissa Quinn will talk about Doblin/Monitor’s unique approach to design/business integration; Steve Kaneko will talk about the broad range of talent and skills that are required to produce compelling hardware and software products; Jeneanne Rae will talk about what is uniquely required in service design; and Heather Boesch will talk about using design thinking in NGO and government settings.

Brian Quinn on Threadless and the Business of T-shirts

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 10:09:00 -0400

Doblin associate partner Brian Quinn is quoted in this Chicago Business article on design world darling, Threadless. Explaining the real-world pressures of community-driven businesses, Brian provides an objective voice of reason looking at a company reportedly shifting 10,000 orders ever day.

Years before “Chicago” and “startup scene” became frequently strung-together words, local apparel retailer Threadless embraced an entrepreneurial, creative ethos—and turned its scrappy vision into piles of cash.

Now, the 12-year-old company, which has seen sales of its independently designed T-shirts grow from $6.2 million in 2005 to somewhere north of $30 million this year, is moving beyond tees and expanding into large-scale design with corporate partners, including Gap Inc. and Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.

[Read the rest of the article, including Brian’s take on Threadless and the challenges that lie ahead as the company continues to expand.]

Here’s the video of our own Erik Kiaer presenting at the Design...

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 18:06:12 -0400

Here’s the video of our own Erik Kiaer presenting at the Design Management Institute-organized conference,Balancing Extremes, held last month in Portland. Erik tells the history of navigation while making the case for bringing discipline to innovation efforts by reframing each and every challenge.

Erik Kiaer presented recently at the Design Management...

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 12:01:11 -0400

Erik Kiaer presented recently at the Design Management Institute-organized conference, “Balancing Extremes,” held in Portland. In his presentation, entitled “Powers of Ten: Building Transformational Capital,” he ran through the history of navigation, all in the name of his broader point: that innovation requires the reframing of a problem, as well as thoughtful, systemic disciplined efforts. Video to follow shortly.

Geoff Tuff at After Five @ 111: Learning About Total Innovation

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 11:54:00 -0400

“We hear all the time from folks that their company has tried to pursue transformational innovation but either they got stuck thinking about great and lofty things that they can never bring to market or they gave up when they realized how risky the bets might be. It doesn’t have to be that way,” said Geoff Tuff at the After Five @ 111 event held in our Chicago office on June 27th. ‘We teach companies to develop transformational innovation regularly. But they also shouldn’t forget there is that vast “middle space” of adjacent innovations, where a lot of untapped opportunities exist which will feel a lot closer to home.”

Geoff, a partner at Monitor + Doblin and co-author of the recent Harvard Business Review feature on total innovation, Managing Your Innovation Portfolio, spoke to a gathering of about 30 professionals and leaders in business and design. Drawing on examples and experiences from real companies, the discussion centered on the challenges of innovating across different ambition levels—core, adjacent and transformational—and how best to apply this theory in practice.

Later, over cocktails, participants continued the discussion on total innovation by engaging with the content on wall-sized installations. One group of participants came up with real-world innovation examples to create a map of innovations that exemplified core, adjacent and transformational innovations. Another group contemplated their own organizations’ current and desired balance of innovation across the different ambition levels, to gauge how that compared to other companies from other industries.

Melissa Quinn, who helped to facilitate the discussions observed, “While the debates are really fun, the real value in applying the framework is not in being highly precise about where an innovation falls on the ambition matrix but rather to think holistically about managing a portfolio of innovations to drive strategic growth goals.”

For a copy of Geoff’s presentation or to learn more about total innovation, contact Amy_Wright [at] monitor.com