by Helen Walters
published in Design Observer
“The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind — computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind — creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers.”
So wrote Daniel Pink in A Whole New Mind back in 2005. Now, some might quibble that in an era where engineers are trading themselves like over-hyped stocks, it’s clearly not the case that one group will necessarily replace the other. But the concept of the rising importance of the creative class has certainly become more widely accepted in the six years since that book (subtitle: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future) was published.
What hasn’t become so clear is how exactly the new meaning makers will ever arrive on the scene. Worse, it’s not clear that the obvious crucibles from which our creators and empathizers might emerge, the world’s universities, are at all capable of producing those with the different kind of mind necessary to lead in the complex new reality.
Read More
by Helen Walters
published in Fast Company Design
Tim Murray has a daunting job. As creative director of the Creative Vision Group at Target, he oversees the work of 10 agencies, 4 digital partners, and 3 branding studios. And those are the external contributors. Internally, Target, a Fortune 30 company with a market cap of $34.6 billion , has more than 1,200 people working in the marketing department alone. The potential depths of brand and design-related chaos across its 1,755 stores are mind-boggling.
Yet, think of the Target brand, and it’s likely that one image will spring to mind: the Target bull’s-eye, that red ring around a red dot that has come to signify the design savvy and affordable prices of the Minneapolis-headquartered department store.
Read More
by Helen Walters
published in Design Observer
In recent years, calls for a more creative or innovative approach to, well, pretty much everything but our financial instruments, have become more pointed. As the western economy in particular has evolved away from its industrial roots and as the Internet has wrought digital havoc on the old, understood ways of doing things, so have many accepted that the education of those who will effectively lead progress toward a healthy, sustainable future must also shift — and fast.
As such, multiple experiments have sprung up at both business and design schools, each one aiming to produce hybrid thinkers who can span both worlds in order to create a better, brighter future for us all.
One such initiative took place recently at Rotman School of Management, part of the University of Toronto. Students and members of the school’s Business Design Club organized the second annual Rotman Design Challenge, held in a vast space in the heart of campus over the weekend of March 25th.
Read More
by Helen Walters
published in Fast Company Design
Recently, Kevin McCullagh of British product strategy consultancy, Plan organized a two-day event for executives to wrap their heads around the concept of design thinking—and, in particular, to think about how they might go about implementing it within their own organization. Kevin invited me along to give an overview of some of the things I’ve been thinking recently. “Don’t hold back,” he advised. So I came up with a talk entitled, “Design Thinking Won’t Save You” which aimed to outline what design thinking is *not* in order to help attendees figure out a practical way forward. Here’s an edited version of what I said:
Ladies and gentlemen, let me break this to you gently. Design Thinking, the topic we’re here to analyze and discuss and get to grips with so you can go back and instantly transform your businesses, is not the answer.
Read More
by Helen Walters
published in Fast Company Design
A couple of weeks ago, I was discussing coming to this event [the RGD Design Thinkers conference] with a designer friend of mine. “What are you going to talk about?” he asked. “Oh, you know. How in the 21st century economy, design provides the differentiating factor that can really determine whether a modern day company thrives or fails,” I said merrily. His reaction was not quite what I’d hoped for. In fact, he laughed in my face. “That old shtick? Ugh. Are people *still* saying that?” he asked with a hint of derision in his voice. “Er. Yes?” I stammered in reply.
Now bear in mind that this was a designer talking! This was not a jaded executive with no connection to the creative department. This was someone who has devoted years of study and thousands of dollars to getting a well-rounded design education. He’s worked hard and done well, working as a designer in various major American corporations hailed for their attention to innovation and design. He is you. And he should have been excited and delighted and should according to my calculations have assured me that I was doing precisely the right thing and that this was an excellently interesting topic that would make for a perfectly acceptable—albeit possibly fairly bland—speech at the Design Thinkers conference in Toronto.
That he didn’t was more than just an affront to my ego. It was a problem.
Read More
by Bansi Nagji and Brian Quinn
published in The Conference Board Review
Whether or not we have truly emerged from the painful downturn of the past two years, a long-hoped-for shift has come to pass in the tone of management teams’ recent conversations. Executives are no longer spending the majority of their working (and often waking) hours obsessing about cost-cutting, optimization, and reorganizations. Their attention has returned to growth and finding fresh opportunities.
In other words, innovation is no longer on layaway—it is an imperative for right now.
The hard part is figuring out how. Executives looking to re-energize their innovation programs face two stark realities. First, after the cost-cutting and restructuring activities of the last twenty-four months, they have fewer resources and capabilities available to pursue new initiatives—as with everything else, they must achieve more with less. Second, when it comes to past innovation efforts, most remember— even if they’d rather not—that their suc- cess rates were dismally low. So as they try to carry on with tightened belts, they recognize that today’s innovation efforts must be more effective than ever before.
Compounding the challenge, most executives aren’t starting from prime positions. They’re returning to innovation portfolios that are broad and diffuse, padded with pet projects, half-measures, and stale initiatives. Their employees, while well-intentioned, lack the focus, discipline, and energy to develop winning innovations. Having survived the economic storm, their organizations are feeling a little aimless in making plans to rebuild competitive advantage in a dramatically different world.
Read the PDF of the full article
by Henry King
published in BusinessWeek
From the Asian carp to the zebra mussel, invasive species are a major force of change in nature. They radically alter the ecosystems they invade, seize control of important resources from established native species, and create new opportunities for themselves and those that can adapt quickly enough to help exploit the way they affect things. They are the very model of disruptive innovation, sharing certain characteristics that can be used by executives to think afresh about their approach to innovation across all areas of business.
1. Start small. Most non-native species arrive on foreign shores in small numbers. Few survive. Those that go on to become invasive tend to exploit their smallness, which allows them to survive longer, with fewer resources, in uncertain circumstances—and to keep out of sight of competitors, predators, and parasites until they’ve learned how to thrive.
Acting small provides the same benefits to business innovators. In addition, thinking small can illuminate market opportunities that large companies typically overlook. Curves, the world’s largest health and fitness franchise, can operate in spaces as small as 1,000 square feet. In some markets the company reportedly needs as few as 250 members to be profitable. That means that Curves can serve small, previously overlooked communities.
Read More
by Bansi Nagji and Matt Locsin
published in Pharmaceutical Executive
Pharmaceutical executives understand that they must confront multi-layered demands. They have to explore new business models while attending to their existing, highly profitable commercial model. The important question is: How can they actively pursue both paths to create their own future?
Designers, who are trained in creative problem solving, excel at solving these kinds of complex, multi-dimensional challenges. While designers are respected for their vision and creativity, their disciplined approach to problem solving often yields solutions not discoverable through traditional business methods.
Though design has historically been applied to the development of new products, in recent years leading companies such as Intel, Toyota, GE, and P&G have implemented design in conjunction with traditional business thinking to create new offerings, customer experiences, and business models.
Read More
by Larry Keeley
published in Step Inside Design
Two summers ago I was biking in the Alps and got a call from a client CEO who expected me to drop everything and meet him in New York City the very next day. I said it was impossible, that it would take me two days to get there. He said he would wait, though in a tone of voice that clearly suggested he shouldn’t have to. Thinking it unwise to appear in biking duds, I bought some business-meeting clothes and flew to New York, got to his conference room, and he promptly walked in to tell me a tale.
Three days earlier this CEO, head of a $70 billion financial services firm with offices in 40 countries, had met with stock analysts. He was reporting on his achievements—which were numerous and impressive. Over the prior year or so he had cut $100 million of annual costs out of the firm; consolidated a bunch of bad data centers into two great ones; dumped several businesses that were not core to operations; improved customer response time; and a dozen other advances. He sort of expected the analysts would at least give him a standing ovation, or perhaps carry him out of the room on their shoulders.
They didn’t.
Read More
by Jay Doblin
published in STA Design Journal
Editor’s Note: One of the last pieces he wrote before he died, Jay summed up his philosophy towards design and innovation. This article gives a wonderful impression of his wit and attitude and his forward-thinking approach to a discipline that has been widely adopted in the years since.
For years, most design problems could be solved by using a combination of design training, experience, and applied intuition. But as the world and its design problems have become more complex, traditional approaches have become less effective.
The notion of design theory may seem woolly-headed and irrelevant, but it has a place: theory can provide a structure for understanding problems and help generate methods for solving them. After may years of being confined to a few oddball schools, design methods are starting to find widespread practical application. Indeed, there are today many classes of design projects (big positioning studies, complex identity programs, massive electronic publishing systems, and systems of products produced in robotic factories among them) that would be irresponsible to attempt without using analytical methods.
Read the PDF of the full article.
