Vol 3. Changing Times Requires New Approaches: How Design Thinking Helps
Article by Helene Cahen and Alicia Arnold
Design thinking is becoming more mainstream, yet many in the business and creative communities are unclear about what design thinking really means or how powerful it can be. In this article, we will provide a basic understanding of design thinking, discuss three key mindsets of design thinkers, and present an example of how design thinking is helping to save millions of lives.
What is Design Thinking?
Design thinking is best defined as applying the principles and mindsets used by designers to solve problems where no clear, easy answers exist. Design thinking is a problem solving approach that integrates and reconciles opposing viewpoints – analysis versus intuition, business versus art, thinking versus feelings, working alone versus working as a team. It also helps address one of the key issues of our world. How to deal with increasingly complex, stubborn challenges where the pieces of the solution are interconnected, affect the outcome, cannot be predicted prior to trying the solution, and where there is no one, right answer?
Enter design thinking. Because design thinking is a mindset, non-designers can learn to use and apply design thinking to challenges that require innovation. Three key mindsets of design thinkers include: being human-centered, thinking visually, and adopting a prototyping attitude.
Mindset #1: Being Human-Centered
While consumer needs have always been important, the human-centered principle takes this idea much further and requires design thinkers to consider all those who may be affected by the changes throughout the process. The mindset of being human-centered requires empathy – walking in another person’s shoes.
For instance, if investigating a consumer product, the project team might observe and interview customers, retailers, influencers, non-users, etc. in a real life environment. If the project is related to manufacturing, the team might visit a plant, observe how the products are made, or talk to the employees. And, if the project involves a non-profit, the team might talk to donors and the community at large, or spend time observing the place where the services are delivered. This type of observation and discovery happens at the start of the project, as well as throughout the project to get feedback as the challenge is defined and ideas, solutions and prototypes are developed.
Mindset #2: Thinking Visually
It has been said, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” And, when it comes to design thinking, nothing could be more appropriate. With complex problems, it is sometimes difficult to succinctly express the essence of the situation in words. However, these complex stories can be expressed with a single image.
For problems that involve large amounts of information, visuals help others to absorb the meaning more quickly. Arnheim, a Harvard professor in Psychology of Art explains that drawings serve as an “aid in the process of working solutions to a problem” (Visual Thinking p.129).
Regardless of one’s ability to draw, an image, whether it is personally illustrated, a photograph, a video, a model representation or another form of visual representation, helps to convey meaning in an empathetic way such others truly grasp the significance.
Mindset #3: Adopting a Prototyping Attitude
A prototyping attitude is not about creating a perfect, finished representation of the solution but rather to provide a means to allow others to interact with and improve the solution. A prototyping attitude compels one to ask, “How might we create a small version of the solution to evaluate it quickly and cheaply?” Tom Kelley once said, “Prototyping is problem solving…. What counts is moving the ball forward, achieving part of the goal” (Art of innovation, p. 103). This means trying solutions in the real world on a very small scale to get feedback, while saving time and money. It also involves believing in feedback as a gift and embracing “failure.”
How Design Thinking is Helping to Save Millions of Premature Babies
This concept, which started as a project in a class on design for extreme affordability at the Stanford d.school, became a not-for- profit start-up in 2009. Jane Chen, co-founder and CEO of Embrace, and her team created a low-cost infant warmer to help premature babies born in developing countries.
The challenge – four million premature babies die every year because they are unable to regulate their body temperature; thereby unable to sustain the ability to grow and thrive. The conventional means of solving this problem involved the use of an incubator during the crucial early stages of a premature baby’s life to keep the baby warm. However, incubators are expensive (about $20,000 USD each) and require electricity – two factors working against developing countries.
To solve the problem, the Embrace team worked to understand the different users, uncovered the root of the problem and strived to create the simplest solution. By talking to doctors, mothers and communities, the Embrace team was introduced to the many makeshift ways these groups dealt with lack of access to an incubator. In prototyping solutions, the team created a low cost, sterile solution that could be used for more than one baby. The Embrace Baby Warmer resembles a baby-sized sleeping bag (pictured below) and uses a phase change thermal wax that “melts” when against the baby’s body.
This solution costs a mere $25.00 USD and is able to keep the baby’s body temperature constant for up to 4 hours without the use of electricity. Chen estimates her solution has the potential to save one million premature babies at .1% of the cost of a traditional incubator.
Conclusion
So what about results? On the academic side, major institutions such as the Stanford d.school, Rotman School of Business and the Chicago Institute of Design, as well as many others, are acknowledging the need of business and designers alike to learn about this integrative way of thinking as the way to help solve today’s complex issues. And, on the business side, companies like Procter and Gamble, Samsung, Whirlpool and Steelcase have changed their structure and business principles to better integrate design thinking.
While these principles may seem simple, it takes practice and commitment to follow them. Design thinking requires embracing the mindset of a designer – being human-centered, thinking visually and adopting a prototyping attitude. Design thinking, when fully embraced, changes the fundamentals of the organization. To succeed, the organization has to be willing and ready. How do you know if design thinking is right for you and your organization? CPSI offers you a unique chance to give design thinking a try! Learn more and experiment with design thinking in a risk-free environment. Join us for Design Thinking: Inspire. Inform. Transform. (a day and a half post-conference, experiential workshop).
Helene Cahen, Innovation Consultant at Strategic Insights and Alicia Arnold, SVP, Digital at Hill Holliday. You can find Helene and Alicia leading a program called Design Thinking: Inspire. Inform. Transform at CPSI: The HOW TO Create, Innovate and Lead Change Conference June 21- 25, 2010 www.cpsiconference.com
For more articles from The HOW TO Create, Innovate and Lead Change Conference Series produced by the CPSI Conference, click here.
Vol. 2: What Really Drives Innovation
This article was written collectively by the partners at New & Improved, LLC. One of the partners, Bob Eckert, will be leading at CPSI: The How To Create, Innovate and Lead Change Conference.
Maple Syrup sea
son at our Adirondack office inspires us to boil things down to their essence. What follows is our distillation of what really works to create a sustainable innovation culture.
Collectively, our team has led creativity and innovation programs for thousands of projects and clients. So in our roles as attendees, presenters, leaders and emcees at various innovation and creativity conferences over the past 20 years, we’ve seen a lot of presentations that offer up suggestions for "how to drive innovation” through systems, processes, procedures, tools, business models alliances, arrangements and so forth. We've enjoyed and learned from all of them, and reveled in the debates that ensued. (Two favorites: "Stage-gate doesn't work," (George Land) vs. "Stage-gate is the only way!" (Deloitte & Touche) and "Brainstorming doesn't work" (Larry Keeley, Doblin) vs. "We use structured brainstorming all the time for our outstanding results" (Tom Kelley, IDEO).
We believe the presenters assertions that their suggestions really do work. Especially in their organizations, with their challenges, in their context. But, as members of “People for The Ethical Treatment of Ideas” or PETI, we at N&I believe the moment someone takes one of 
these polarized positions, and claims it as Their Belief, they fall into the boiling vat of narrow-mindedness. Missing the point of what drives innovation. All of these approaches are designed to work around defects yet fail to emphasize the fact that the main obstacle to innovation is the human being. Yes, it all boils down to people. The resistance and obstacles people have to see things in new ways and to do things differently. All of the innovation methods are, at their essence, ways to get people to work productively and collaboratively.
The most common driver of innovation is people, which bring us to our list. One based on research, curious listening, and the collective experience in driving innovation and the education of the N&I partners. Our list emphasizes people. The list...
10 Things That Really Drive Innovation:
1 The individual: You can ask "an organization" all day long to do something, but the basic building block of getting things done is an individual. Organizations, departments, divisions, groups, teams, etc. are all things that anthropologists describe. And they're all units built from individual people. Focus on strengthening the primary building block to start moving the needle on innovation.
2 The team: Individuals make things happen, but in most cases, they can't do it all by themselves. Innovation requires multiple skill sets, whether it's invention, development, funding, marketing, patenting, operations, etc., those skill sets almost never exist in one person, so it requires multiple people to move it forward. Focus on improving effective and collaborative team dynamics to keep the innovation engine running smoothly. Most often, skill sets require training in a process that everyone in the team can work with. Involving the team in the creative and innovation process increases the probability that the innovation will see the light of day.
3 The enterprise: A sad truth is that individuals, in teams, when successful, get resistant to change. The successful innovation team of yesterday becomes the "this is the way we've always done it" team of tomorrow. Thought needs to be given to creating and sustaining enterprise wide procedures, policies, metrics, reward & recognition and executive level accountability in order to keep the whole innovation vehicle running on the rough competitive road of the business cycle.
The three levels above are important to think about across the following additional drivers:
4 Processes: Think about improving the processes that drive innovation, but do so across all three levels described above. Individuals (e.g. processes to enhancing self awareness, emotional intelligence and cognitive ability), the group level (e.g. using a structured "brainstorming" or "ideation" or “creative process” to support teams in creating innovative solutions), and the enterprise level (e.g. the organizational system for idea management).
5 Offerings: There are many ways to look at what is "an innovation," or the artifact of the innovation process. To only see innovation as "a product" is to overlook services, business models, alliances, processes, channels, and more. Expanding your scope to see that the BIG innovations were more than just a simple "product," can change the way you see the world. The iPod would be nothing but a cool-looking gizmo if we couldn't easily purchase and load music into it. Listerine Pocket Packs would never have made it to market if the team working on it had not innovated their way through organizational resistance to its market introduction.
6 Psychological climate: What are the stories that the individual is telling him/herself about what's working? What's not working? What's acceptable? What's our industry? What's its scope? Does this make a difference to innovation? Absolutely, because how one defines the world will shape the newness that they create and enable. The right amount of personal freedom in the system, and the mental energy to explore are the primary impactors on the psychological climate. Steady attention to the support of an effective psychological climate is a requirement for sustained innovative output.
7 Physical environment: Are people able to easily get together to communicate and work together? Are they able to escape and think in peace and quiet? Can they find a space to spread out and dig into prototypes/results/data? Think about improving the physical space in which people work such that it enables innovation (Hint: everyone has a different concept of the ideal environment).
8 Organizational culture: What are the stories that people tell in the organization about success? What are the ways that people discover and share about how things really get done? Any process and procedure that is set up usually has a workaround. What organizational leaders say is often drowned out by what people know is really going on. It's not enough to just say "Innovation is important!" The organizational policies, management behaviors, things that are measured and executive messaging must all align to create the stories of work that create the culture. If you want innovation over the long haul, look at culture.
9 Economic climate/market conditions: the spot where innovation culture is easiest to maintain is when market conditions are such that there is not too much fear, or too much confidence. These are rare moments in the business cycle. Want to see innovation dry up and fade away? Announce a layoff/cutback/restructuring. Want to see people start to play it safe and stop putting things at risk? Let people know that sales are down, or that the economy is in the tank. Similarly, announce market dominance, the best year ever, or give a big bonus. People can get complacent. The smart innovation leader sets money aside to support experimentation when the market is down, and requires (creating real accountability as well) ever increasing innovative output when things are running really well.
10 Geopolitical culture: Where you were born, where you live, where you work, how you were educated and the culture of those elements all make a difference. We all know that different cultures communicate differently, see the world differently, perceived different threats, and find value in different things. Every culture, every education system, has strength and weakness. Be arrogant about your culture at your own innovation peril. Curiously ask: "What cultural strengths can I leverage, and what cultural impediments must I work to overcome?" and you’re clearly on the path to innovation mastery.
Boil all 10 of these drivers down, and it all amounts to people or the output of people. And the essence of that truth is that in the service of creating more innovation for our organizations, we are developing more mature, collaborative human beings that solve problems better. Not just at work, but in their homes and communities as well.
CPSI will once again be auctioning some of the Maple Syrup produced at the New & Improved Adirondack office as part of the annual CEF fundraising auction. Labeled as “Innovation Elixir” and “Brain Brush-n’ Fluid” it is known to be the secret 11th ingredient to their innovation recipe.
Bob Eckert is CEO at New & Improved LLC. You can find Bob leading programs called Building Innovative Organizations, The Way of the Innovation Leaders and Mastering Mental Clutter at CPSI: The HOW TO Create, Innovate and Lead Change Conference, June 21- 25, 2010 www.cpsiconference.com
For more articles from The HOW TO Create, Innovate and Lead Change Conference Series produced by the CPSI Conference, click here.
Vol. 1: How To Be An Innovative, Not Just Business, Leader
Three ways to transform right now.
By: David Magellan Horth
Center for Creative Leadership
CPSI 2010: Innovation Leadership Immersion Workshop
Managers are full of ideas, theories and information. They have extraordinary knowledge and expertise. They are skilled at traditional business thinking. Business thinking is based on deep research, formulas and logical facts looking for the one right answer among the wrong answers. Business thinking is about removing ambiguity and driving results. But ambiguity can't be managed away. As problems and circumstances become more complex, they don't fit previous patterns.
The traditional push for results can go nowhere when the situation is unstable, the challenge is complex or the direction is unclear. No matter how great the urgency, you need to be reflective and approach the situation in new ways. That's where innovative leadership and building capacity for innovative thinking comes in.
Innovation leadership is about both managing the tension between traditional business thinking and design thinking and using it as a source of innovation possibilities.
Innovative thinking goes beyond past experience and known facts. It imagines a desired future state and figures out how to get there. It is intuitive and open to possibility. Rather than identify right answers or wrong answers, the goal is to find a better way and to explore multiple possibilities. Ambiguity is therefore an advantage, not a problem. It allows us to ask, what if? Business thinking comes into its own after we discover new opportunities through innovative thinking, when we then seek to implement and commercialize those opportunities.
Everyone can develop and use innovative thinking skills. Getting started, however, can be intimidating. Whether your focus is operational or involves your own practice of leadership, you can experiment with innovation in three key ways.
1. Reframe the challenge.
Innovative thinking can be used to redefine, or reframe, a problem. This is not a cosmetic or semantic change; it is a process of re-examining the situation. Often the problem we are focused on isn't the important problem. Or the challenge we've selected is too big, or too small. By looking at the problem in a different way, you gain clarity and insight. By reframing problems, you uncover new places to innovate, or new angles to take.
To reframe your challenge, ask powerful questions, challenge assumptions and bring in multiple perspectives. For example, one executive I worked with was trying to relaunch a product in a market where it had been struggling. In addition to the business challenges, he found himself in an adversarial relationship with colleagues who had previously been involved in the work. He reframed the challenge away from fixing a past problem and toward differentiating the product and the company for the future. That was a vision that could focus and motivate the whole team.
2.Focus on the customer experience.
Innovation begins with really deep, empathetic understanding of the customer. Even the most sophisticated market research operation can't replace first-hand understanding of what goes on in the customer's life and how it is affected by your product, process or service. Get out and watch your customers (or suppliers or employees) work, live and play.
When Dan Buchner of Continuum was working on product development with Procter & Gamble, he had members of his team spend time in people's homes to understand how they cleaned, what worked and what didn't. If his people had relied on surveys, they might have missed the opportunity for what became the Swiffer line of sweepers, mops and dusters.
3.Practice rapid prototyping.
A hands-on try-it-out approach is invaluable to innovation. Rapid prototyping--building and testing new things fast--jumps past endless analysis to quickly provide the kind of feedback and knowledge that typically takes months or years.
Of course, what's "rapid" depends on the context. Some prototypes can be put together in hours, others in months. The key is to create a small team to bring together knowledge and work quickly. In large or complex situations, you can test out one idea or try partial solutions. Rapid prototyping is common in product development and design, but it also applies to new services and even internal operations. Along the way, keep asking what works, what doesn't, and what you are learning.
Chief executives and leaders throughout organizations know they need to change how they work. Innovative leadership--meaning genuinely innovative thinking and the leadership that supports it--has no predictable, formulaic method. But it is a powerful engine for building sustainable business and fuelling new industries, markets, products and services.
1. Reframe the challenge.
Innovative thinking can be used to redefine, or reframe, a problem. This is not a cosmetic or semantic change; it is a process of re-examining the situation. Often the problem we are focused on isn't the important problem. Or the challenge we've selected is too big, or too small. By looking at the problem in a different way, you gain clarity and insight. By reframing problems, you uncover new places to innovate, or new angles to take.
To reframe your challenge, ask powerful questions, challenge assumptions and bring in multiple perspectives. For example, one executive I worked with was trying to relaunch a product in a market where it had been struggling. In addition to the business challenges, he found himself in an adversarial relationship with colleagues who had previously been involved in the work. He reframed the challenge away from fixing a past problem and toward differentiating the product and the company for the future. That was a vision that could focus and motivate the whole team.
2.Focus on the customer experience.
Innovation begins with really deep, empathetic understanding of the customer. Even the most sophisticated market research operation can't replace first-hand understanding of what goes on in the customer's life and how it is affected by your product, process or service. Get out and watch your customers (or suppliers or employees) work, live and play.
When Dan Buchner of Continuum was working on product development with Procter & Gamble, he had members of his team spend time in people's homes to understand how they cleaned, what worked and what didn't. If his people had relied on surveys, they might have missed the opportunity for what became the Swiffer line of sweepers, mops and dusters.
3.Practice rapid prototyping.
A hands-on try-it-out approach is invaluable to innovation. Rapid prototyping--building and testing new things fast--jumps past endless analysis to quickly provide the kind of feedback and knowledge that typically takes months or years.
Of course, what's "rapid" depends on the context. Some prototypes can be put together in hours, others in months. The key is to create a small team to bring together knowledge and work quickly. In large or complex situations, you can test out one idea or try partial solutions. Rapid prototyping is common in product development and design, but it also applies to new services and even internal operations. Along the way, keep asking what works, what doesn't, and what you are learning.
Chief executives and leaders throughout organizations know they need to change how they work. Innovative leadership--meaning genuinely innovative thinking and the leadership that supports it--has no predictable, formulaic method. But it is a powerful engine for building sustainable business and fuelling new industries, markets, products and services.
David Magellan Horth is a senior enterprise associate at the Center for Creative Leadership, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Creative Education Foundation and co-author of The Leader's Edge: Six Creative Competencies for Navigating Complex Challenges. You can find David leading participants at a session called Innovation Leadership at CPSI: The HOW TO Create, Innovate and Lead Change Conference June 21- 25, 2010, www.CPSIConference.com
For more articles from The HOW TO Create, Innovate and Lead Change Conference Series produced by the CPSI Conference, click here.
Disney Imagineer Tony Baxter Speaks at the Creative Problem Solving Institute
The Imagineer Discusses Designing for Disney: Patterns that Embolden Successful Innovation
BUFFALO, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Creative Education Foundation (CEF) is pleased to announce Tony Baxter, Senior Vice President of Creative Development for Walt Disney Imagineering, will deliver the keynote address kicking off the Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) annual conference Monday, June 21, 2010.
“We’re very excited and honored to have such an inspiring presenter kick off CPSI 2010”
Baxter, a 40-year Disney Imagineering veteran, is the concept designer behind attractions such as Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Splash Mountain, Indiana Jones Adventure and much of Disneyland Paris. Through his presentation, CPSI participants will gain insight into the creative process employed by Disney Imagineers. He will speak to an international audience spanning many industries whose common thread is a passion for Creative Problem Solving, Innovation and Leading Change.
By blending creativity and innovative technological advancements, Walt Disney Imagineering has produced some of the world's most distinctive experiential storytelling. Every day, Baxter and Disney Imagineers bring art and science together to turn fantasy into reality, sketches into castles and dreams into magic.
“We’re very excited and honored to have such an inspiring presenter kick off CPSI 2010,” said Victoria Cliche, President of CEF. “Tony Baxter is a visionary and an innovator second to none and will offer conference attendees exclusive insights into the creative process that inspire new ways of thinking.”
CPSI is a unique event where participants learn from a broad range of imaginative guest speakers such as Baxter. Participants learn HOW to be more creative, HOW to use creative process, tools and techniques, and HOW to lead change. They design their own experience based on their personal interests and schedule, choosing from core courses, elective workshops, speakers and activities that span one to six days.
To register and learn HOW TO Create, Innovate and Lead Change at CPSI 2010 visit us at www.cpsiconference.com or call: 508-960-0000.
The Creative Problem Solving Institute is run by the Creative Education Foundation, Inc. a 501(c)(3) headquartered in Amherst, Massachusetts. CPSI is the first and longest running creativity conference in the world dedicated to the teaching and practice of creative problem solving skills.
Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6241988&lang=en
Creativity Conference in Buffalo Attracts Innovation Leaders From Around the World
Registration opens and website goes live for HOW TO Create, Innovate and Lead Change
BUFFALO, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In late June, hundreds of leaders in creativity, innovation and change management will gather in Buffalo, NY, - the birthplace of “brainstorming” - for the Creative Problem Solving Institute Conference: HOW TO Create, Innovate, and Lead Change.
“While many may know Buffalo’s history in creative problem solving, they may not realize how extensive the practice is today. CPSI’s return highlights the region’s leadership in the field of teaching innovation and change management.”
The Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) returns to Buffalo, June 21 - 25, hometown of its founder, Alex Osborn, inventor of “brainstorming” and the Creative Problem Solving method.
Osborn’s seminal work in creativity education in the 1940s and 1950s was fully realized when Dr. Sidney Parnes and Dr. Ruth Noller established a permanent academic home for the International Center for Studies in Creativity (ICSC) at Buffalo State in 1967. The first and oldest degree-granting program in creativity in the world, the ICSC has achieved an international reputation for scholarly research and teaching that focuses on developing creativity, leadership, decision-making and problem solving skills.
“We are very happy to have CPSI back in Buffalo.” says Gerard Puccio, Chair, International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State College. “While many may know Buffalo’s history in creative problem solving, they may not realize how extensive the practice is today. CPSI’s return highlights the region’s leadership in the field of teaching innovation and change management.”
He added, “Now more than ever, people need to think creatively in order to cope with today’s challenges. Organizations, too, need people who can manage change, and who understand the process of innovation.”
What makes the Creative Problem Solving Institute different is that participants learn HOW to use creative process, tools and techniques, HOW to be more creative and How to lead change. Participants design their own experience based on interest and time - from one to six days, choosing from core courses, elective workshops, speakers and activities.
“While CPSI is chock-full of inspirational speakers and hundreds of guests with whom to network, unlike other conferences, participants also attend skill-building and mind-warping classes.” says Victoria Cliche, CEO of The Creative Education Foundation, which runs the annual event. “Participants actively engage instead of passively listen. They are surrounded by people across industries instead of from a single industry. When they leave they possess new skills and abilities and know how to initiate the changes they want to see in their world."
To register and to review program details, please visit www.cpsiconference.com or call: 508-960-0000.
The Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) is run by the Creative Education Foundation, Inc. (CEF), a 501(c)(3) headquartered in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Contacts
for The Creative Problem Solving Institute
Kristen Peterson, 508-960-0000
kpeterson@creativeeducationfoundation.org