Visualization Journey Mapping Value Chain Analysis

Mind Mapping Brainstorming Concept Development Assumption Testing

Rapid Prototyping Customer Co-Creation Learning Launch

While many business people appreciate the power of design,
a formal process for its practice has been elusive; until now.

by Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie

Designing for Growth:

A Tool Kit For Managers

WHEN DESIGNER HUGH DUBBERLY asked Tim Brennan of Apple’s Design, this drawing asserts, is simply magic – a mysterious
Creative Services group to define design for his book, How Do You no-man’s land where only the brave dare tread. Such a definition
Design?, Brennan drew the following picture: mocks the idea that a formal process could possibly exist for navi-
gating its many hairpin turns.
Our advice: don’t be put off by Brennan’s view of design.
Design has many different meanings, and the approach we will
describe here is more akin to Dorothy’s ruby slippers than to a
magic wand: you’ve already got the power; you just need to figure
out how to use it. Can the average manager be transformed into
$ the next Jonathan Ive? No more than your local golf pro can
? turn you into Tiger Woods. But can you improve your game?
Without a doubt.

If Managers Thought Like Designers

What would be different if managers thought more like designers?
We have three words for you: empathy, invention and iteration.

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 Design always begins with empathy – establishing a deep under- A Toolkit for Designing for Growth
standing of those for whom you are designing. Managers who Remember that initial drawing of the design process? Our version
thought like designers would consistently put themselves in their looks quite different:
customers’ shoes. We all know we’re supposed to be ‘customer-
centered’, but what we’re talking about is deeper and more
personal than that: true empathy entails knowing your customers
as real people with real problems, rather than as targets for sales or
as a set of demographic statistics around age or income level. It
involves developing an understanding of both their emotional and
their ‘rational’ needs and wants.
In addition, managers who thought like designers would view
themselves as creators. For all our talk about the ‘art and science’ of ? What is? What if? What wows? What works? $
management, we have mostly paid attention to the science part.
Taking design seriously means acknowledging the difference
between what scientists do and what designers do: whereas scien-
tists investigate today to discover explanations for what already We start and end in the same place as Brennan did, but we’ve
is, designers invent tomorrow to create something that isn’t. untangled the hairball into a manageable process. Despite fancy
Powerful futures are rarely discovered primarily through analytics. vocabulary like ‘ideation’ and ‘co-creation’, the design process
They are, as Walt Disney once said, “Created first in the mind and actually deals with four very basic questions, which correspond to
next in the activity.” the four stages of design:
Finally, design insists that we prepare ourselves to iterate our
way to a solution, so managers who thought like designers would 1. What is?
view themselves as learners. Most managers are taught a linear 2. What if?
problem-solving methodology: define the problem, identify vari- 3. What wows?
ous solutions, analyze each, and choose the best one. Designers 4. What works?
aren’t nearly so impatient – or optimistic; they understand that
successful invention takes experimentation and that empathy is What is explores current reality; What if envisions a new future;
hard won. The task, first and foremost, is always one of learning. What wows makes some choices; and What works takes us into the
marketplace. The widening and narrowing of the bands around
each question represent ‘divergent’ and ‘convergent’ thinking: in
the early parts of the process, we are progressively expanding our
field of vision, looking as broadly around us as possible in order to

Using Improvisation to Enhance Brainstorming Sessions By Elizabeth Gerber

When groups want to generate new ideas, brainstorming is often their 1. Identify a Leader. Rarely do groups explicitly commit to a struc-
first course of action. When this technique is effective, participants ture and set of processes to enhance the session’s effectiveness.
draw on each others’ pre-existing knowledge to create new combina- One strategy that can help is to identify a leader to oversee group
tions of ideas not previously considered. But brainstorming can fail in dynamics. In improvisational theatre, participants select a coach
at least as many ways as it can succeed. Over the past eight years I who takes a step back and offers advice. For example, if one indi-
have worked closely with designers who take brainstorming very seri- vidual is not being heard by his fellow ‘players’, the coach may pub-
ously and together, we have added a new technique to the brain- licly advise him to speak up. Active coaching can also benefit brain-
storming mix: improvisation. storming sessions. During one session, a leader noticed that a col-
Like brainstorming, improvisation is a creative collaboration league was drawing interesting ideas on his notepad; she asked him
between people with a common goal of developing engaging ideas to share his ideas and upon doing so, he received praise from the
within a prescribed amount of time. To date, I have taught improvisa- rest of the team. From that point on, he positively informed the out-
tion techniques to approximately 60 practitioners, 170 undergradu- put of the brainstorm.
ate and graduate students and 80 faculty members at Stanford and
Northwestern Universities. 2. Withhold Judgment. A variety of improvisation activities can help a
Early on, participants are exposed to the rules of effective brain- group transition to the non-judgmental frame of mind required for
storming developed by BBDO founding partner Alex Osborn. While brainstorming. One such activity, called Malapropism, involves individ-
‘Osborn’s Rules’ for effective brainstorming remain pertinent, my uals walking around a room, pointing to familiar objects and calling
experience indicates that they can be optimized by importing tech- them by another name out loud. For example, a one might point to a
niques from the world of improvisation. Let’s look at each rule in turn, lamp and call it a ‘garage’. The goal of the activity is to misname as
and how improvisation can enhance it. many objects in the room as possible. As participants move through

18 / Rotman Magazine Fall 2011

not be trapped by our usual problem framing. That’s divergent best-seller, the Swiffer, a growth initiative that revolved around a
thinking. After we have generated a new set of concepts, we begin product invented in the middle ages. Fruitful searches always go
to reverse the process by converging – progressively narrowing back to the basics: what is the job to be done?
down our options to the most promising ones. A funny thing happens when we pay close attention to what
There are ten essential tools that a design thinker uses to customers are up to: we often find that the clues to a new future lie
address these four questions. Before we begin, we want to call your in dissatisfaction with the present. Ultimately, growth is always
attention to one very special design tool: visualization (Tool#1). about solving peoples’ problems – even if they don’t yet know what
This ‘meta tool’ is so fundamental to the way designers work that they are. If you pay close enough attention to their life and its frus-
it shows up in virtually every stage of the process. Visualization is trations, you might see what they don’t, and that’s why the most
an approach for identifying, organizing and communicating in promising place to start any growth initiative is to find out what
ways that access ‘right brain’ thinking while decreasing our customers don’t like about today.
dependency on ‘left brain’ media such as numbers. It consciously Design offers a number of tools to help with this stage, such as
inserts visual imagery into our processes and focuses on bringing journey mapping (Tool #2), to help assess an idea’s potential for
an idea to life, eventually creating stories that go to the heart of value creation. This tool teaches us how to ‘follow customers
how designers cultivate empathy in every phase of their work. home’ and develop a deep understanding of their lives and the
Now let’s take a look at how the process unfolds across the problems they struggle with, so that we can bring our capabilities
four questions, and how each tool fits within them. to bear on the ones in our sweet spot. It is also important to assess
the potential for value capture, so we need to do a deep dive on the
Question 1: What Is? value chain in which this new idea is likely to be implemented: Who
All successful innovation begins with an accurate assessment of are the powerful players? What are their incentives? Will they be
the current reality. When we think of something new, we usually able to help us? Accurate information on your organization’s own
think about the future – so why start with the present? For lots of capabilities and resources (and those of key competitors) is essen-
reasons. First, we need to pay close attention to what is going on tial. You’ll also want to recognize early on the capabilities you are
today to identify the real problem or opportunity that we want to missing and locate the right partner to provide them. All of this
tackle. People often throw away all kinds of opportunities for involves a value chain analysis (Tool #3).
growth before they even get started by framing the problem too When will you know that you’ve explored enough? This is
narrowly. For years, product developers at Procter & Gamble always a judgment call. Gathering high-quality information usual-
focused on improving the detergents that were used to clean ly requires field research, which is expensive and time consuming.
floors. One day they realized (with the help of design thinking) Keep in mind that the primary objective in this exploration stage
that what their customers really wanted was cleaner floors, and is not to build a ‘business case’ for any particular idea; that comes
that this could be achieved through means other than better later. The purpose here is to prepare to generate ideas – not evalu-
detergents – such as a better mop. This insight produced a runaway ate them. Designers have come up with a number of tools for

the room, they hear others misnaming objects, thereby normalizing support their product. The first designer began by saying “Let’s design
‘failure’ and breaking free from the mindsets that constrain us to see enterprise software that is easy to use.” Withholding criticism, the
the world as we are accustomed to seeing it. group members smiled and said, “Yes, let’s.” A second designer made
a second suggestion building on the first, offering, “And let’s make
3. Build on the Ideas of Others. Brainstormers can practice this skill software that people look forward to using every day at work.” The
by playing a popular improvisation activity called Yes, Let’s. This group responded in agreement saying, “Yes, let’s.” The exercise contin-
involves picking an imaginary activity in which the group will partici- ued until a company and product had been defined. These designers
pate, such as planning a party or going on a trip. Participants gener- reported generating an idea that – while it seemed crazy at first –
ate ideas and offer them to each other, beginning each offer with the actually led to a discussion of a viable idea.
phrase, “Let’s…”, and the group responds with, “Yes, let’s.” The first
player makes a suggestion such as, “Let’s travel to Paris” and then 4. Generate a Large Quantity of Ideas. Brainstormers can prac-
gestures in a way that supports her suggestion. Withholding any crit- tice being prolific idea generators using a modified improvisation
icism that might spontaneously arise in a group member’s mind, the activity called New Choice. For this activity, two people stand side
group responds, “Yes, let’s!” A second player adds a suggestion: by side, and a third player stands to the side. The two players begin
“…And let’s climb the Eiffel Tower,” and gestures accordingly. The to have a conversation about building a new product. When the
group responds, “Yes, let’s.” A third person adds, “…And let’s return player to the side doesn’t like what has been said, she asks the play-
home and teach our friends how to speak French,” and so on, until the er who last spoke to offer a new choice. If she is still not pleased
energy of the group begins to falter. with that response, she asks the player to offer another new choice.
In my class, designers often modified this activity to be product- The goal is not to critique, but to have the players generate
focused. One group decided to design a product and a company to ideas as quickly as possible. For example, one player might say >>

Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 / 19

looking for patterns in and making sense of the wealth of data
amassed in this exploratory stage. One approach is mind map- The Ten Tools Figure One
ping (Tool #4), which helps organize the information you’ve
collected and enables you to draw insights from it about the qual-
1. Visualization: Using imagery to envision possible future conditions.
ities of the innovation needed. You will then use these criteria to
generate ideas in the next stage. 2. Journey Mapping: Assessing the existing experience through
the customer’s eyes.
Question 2: What If?
Having synthesized the data and identified emerging patterns, 3.Value Chain Analysis: Assessing the current value chain that
ideas begin to pop into our heads and we start to consider new pos- supports the customer’s journey.
sibilities, trends and uncertainties. Even without trying, we are
4. Mind Mapping: Generating insights from exploration activities
beginning to develop hypotheses about what a desirable future
and using those to create design criteria.
might look like. It’s time to move from the data-based exploratory
question what is? to the more creativity-focused question, what if? 5. Brainstorming: Generating new alternatives to the existing
Designers call this stage ideation. To generate truly creative business model.
ideas, it is crucial to start with possibilities. Often, in our attempts
to be practical, we start with constraints, which can be deadly to 6. Concept Development: Assembling innovative elements into a
coherent alternative solution that can be explored and evaluated.
breakthrough thinking. If we start by accepting all the things that
don’t allow us to do something better, our designs for tomorrow will
7. Assumption Testing: Isolating and testing the key assumptions
inevitably look a lot like today’s. The only hope is to ignore some that will drive success or failure of a concept.
key constraints in order to identify a new set of possibilities. Then
the real creativity kicks in – figuring out how to get those con- 8. Rapid Prototyping: Expressing a new concept in a tangible
straints out of our way. It takes a lot of momentum to do this, and form for exploration, testing and refinement.
that can be created in a good possibilities discussion that energizes
9. Customer Co-Creation: Engaging customers to participate in
the hard work of overcoming constraints. In many of the innova-
creating the solution that best meets their needs.
tions we’ve been involved with, the creativity that really matters
lives in how the new future was accomplished, not what it looked like. 10. Learning Launch: Creating an affordable experiment that lets
During this stage, we look at how customers currently frame customers experience the new solution over an extended period of
their problems and the mental models and constraints that we time, so you can test key assumptions with market data.
impose on them.We will use this information to formulate hypothe-
ses about new possibilities using a familiar tool, brainstorming
(Tool #5) – although we will apply it with more structure than the
free-form approach that is often used. A disciplined approach to
brainstorming is crucial to overcome its inherent pitfalls. A key

Using Improvisation to Enhance Brainstorming (cont’d)

“Let’s create a product for the elderly.” The other might say, “Yes, ple, one pair of players passed a small trash can back and forth, devel-
let’s build a safer walking cane.” The third player coaches the second oping multiple uses for it including “a stool” and “a door stop.” The stu-
player to come up with a new choice by saying “New choice.” The dents realized that to generate more alternate uses, they had to relin-
second player responds, “Yes, let’s build a wheelchair for snowy quish their preconceptions of what a trash can could be. As they con-
weather.” The third player coaches the second player for a new tinued the activity, the trash can became more imaginative things,
choice again by saying “New choice.” The second player says, “Yes, including a cup for giants and a boat for a mouse.
let’s build a new limb for the elderly.” The coach requests new choic- In the end, brainstorming will always be an unreliable process, but
es until s/he is satisfied with the new direction. it remains one that shows great promise for idea generation. As indi-
cated, theatrical improvisation offers a new set of tools to support
5. Free-wheel. This simply means generating ideas free of constraints, the group dynamic that enhances brainstorming effectiveness.
and can be practiced by playing a modified version of an improv activi-
ty called Presents. During this activity, participants pair up and pass a Elizabeth Gerber is a professor at the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern
familiar object back and forth. When the object is received in hand, the University. With student designer Molly Lafferty, Elizabeth’s lab created
player names the object and then describes an alternative use for it. Betterbrainstorms.com, a collection of improv inspired games for brainstormers.
She previously spent five years developing programs and teaching at Stanford
The goal is to pass the object back and forth as quickly as possible
University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (‘the d.School’). She is also the fac-
while generating as many alternative uses as possible, until the original ulty founder of Design for America, an award-winning educational initiative build-
use of the object becomes just one of many ‘possible uses’.For exam- ing creative confidence in students through design for local and social impact.

20 / Rotman Magazine Fall 2011

reason that brainstorming is often unfulfilling is the lack of a formal Having tested your assumptions as carefully as you can, it is
process to convert the output into something valuable. The design time to move to the real thing: experimentation in the market-
thinking tool we introduce here, concept development (Tool #6), place. In order to do this, you take the concepts that have
will take the output of the brainstorming process, organize it into successfully passed through the screening process and translate
coherent clusters, and architect the most compelling clusters into a them into something actionable: a prototype. Rapid prototyping
robust concept. We moved from data to insights in the first phase; (Tool #8) seems like a challenging task, but all we are talking about
in this phase, we’ll move from insights to ideas to concepts. here is taking the concepts generated in the what if? stage and
Having developed some hypotheses (in the form of con- turning them into something concrete enough to spur conversa-
cepts) about new possibilities, we’ll begin to think systematically tions with important stakeholders. The intent is to create visual
about prioritizing the concepts we have come up with and figur- (and sometimes experiential) manifestations of concepts in order
ing out what ‘wows’. to facilitate meaningful conversation and feedback.

Question 3: What Wows? Question 4: What Works?

If all has gone well in the preceding stages, you probably have far Finally, you are ready to launch and learn. First, we suggest that you
too many concepts to move forward with all at once. One firm we try out a low-fidelity prototype on some customers and see how it
worked with recently generated more than 300, which they nar- goes. If it succeeds, build a higher-reliability 3D prototype of the
rowed down to 23. Of these, only five eventually made it to idea and see if any customers are willing to part with their money for
marketplace testing. Clearly, you will need to make some choices. it. A particularly powerful approach to determining what works
What you are looking for is ideas that hit the ‘sweet spot’ – where involves inviting the customer into the conversation in an active,
the chance of a significant upside in customer value meets attrac- hands-on way. The tool you can use here is customer co-creation
tive profit potential. This is what we call the ‘wow zone’. (Tool #9). There is no more effective way to reduce the risks of any
This necessitates starting with some kind of evaluation of the growth initiative than to engage customers in designing it.
only data you’ve got – data about today. Again, keep in mind that Prototype in hand, you are ready to move into piloting. To
you are not ‘proving’ the value of an idea; you’re just ready to do accomplish this, we offer a tool called a learning launch (Tool
some thought experiments to begin to assess what the business #10), which moves your developing concept into the field. As you
case might look like. Because it is often difficult to assess the long- design the pilot, you will want to be explicit about the search for
term potential of a new concept, you will want to tread carefully so disconfirming data – information that disproves your hypotheses.
that you don’t unintentionally favour the incremental concepts This is the most valuable information you can uncover – and it is
and dismiss the more radical ones. also the easiest to miss. To enhance your ability to detect it, you
The good news is that you have an approach at your disposal must lay out in advance what disconfirming data might look like.
that has been little used in business, but is far more useful in As you proceed, keep in mind some of the principles of this
assessing early-stage innovations than much-maligned but still learning-in-action stage: work in fast feedback cycles; minimize the
commonly used metrics like return on investment (ROI): the good cost of conducting your experiments; fail early to succeed sooner;
old scientific method. The scientific method uses both creative and test for key trade-offs and assumptions early. Most important,
and analytic thinking – that’s what makes it such a useful tool play with the prototypes in the field instead of defending them in
when we want to be imaginative in the search for possibilities and endless meetings.
rigorous in figuring out which ones to pursue. Unlike brainstorm-
ing, it doesn’t ask us to leave our analytical minds at the door. It In closing
invites both the left and the right brain into the process, and it is An unavoidable but healthy tension will always exist between cre-
custom-made to deal with situations involving a lot of unknowns. ating the new and preserving the best of the present, between innovating
It accomplishes all of the above by treating our new concept as a new models and maintaining healthy existing ones. As a manager,
hypothesis and then testing it: it starts with the hypotheses gener- you need to learn how to manage this tension, not adopt a wholly
ated by the what if? question; then it takes these new possibilities new set of techniques and abandon all of the old. The process we
(which are really educated guesses about something we think is have described can get you started on the path.
likely to be a good idea) and tests them by asking, “What would
need to be true for this concept to be a good one?”
In other words, you surface and test the assumptions underly-
ing your hypothesis. The hypotheses that ‘pass’ this first set of
tests are good candidates for turning into real experiments to be
Jeanne Liedtka is the United Technologies
conducted in the marketplace. As a result, assumption testing Corporation Professor of Business Administration
(Tool #7) is one of the most potent tools in the designer’s – and the at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of
manager’s – toolbox. Remember, the goal here is not uncovering Business and the former chief learning officer at
United Technologies Corporation. Tim Ogilvie is
‘truth’. All design is essentially hypothesis driven, which, in the
CEO of Peer Insight, an innovation strategy consultancy and a visiting lecturer at
design world, is shorthand for saying that the solutions generated the Darden School. They are the co-authors of Designing for Growth: A Toolkit for
are the outcome of an iterative rather than a linear process. Managers (Columbia University Press, 2011), from which this is excerpted.

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