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Rapid Prototyping Learning Launch Visualization Journey Mapping Value Chain Analysis Customer Co-Creation Assumption TestingConcept DevelopmentBrainstormingMind Mapping 8 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 16 Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 / 17 WHEN DESIGNER HUGH DUBBERLY asked Tim Brennan of Apple’s CreativeServicesgrouptodefinedesign forhisbook, How Do You Design?,Brennandrewthe followingpicture: 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 ? $ Design, this drawing asserts, is simply magic – a mysterious no-man’s land where only the brave dare tread. Such a definition mocksthe ideathata formalprocesscouldpossiblyexist fornavi- gating itsmanyhairpin 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 magicwand:you’vealreadygotthepower;you justneedtofigure outhowtouse it.Can the averagemanagerbe 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 adoubt. If Managers Thought Like Designers Whatwouldbedifferentifmanagersthoughtmorelikedesigners? Wehave threewords foryou: empathy, inventionand iteration. 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 17 Designalwaysbeginswithempathy–establishingadeepunder- standing of those for whom you are designing. Managers who thought likedesignerswould consistentlyput themselves in their 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: trueempathyentailsknowingyourcustomers asrealpeoplewithrealproblems,ratherthanastargetsforsalesor as a set of demographic statistics around age or income level. It involvesdevelopinganunderstandingofboththeiremotionaland their ‘rational’ needsandwants. In addition,managerswho thought likedesignerswould view themselvesas creators.Forallourtalkaboutthe ‘artandscience’of management, we have mostly paid attention to the science part. Taking design seriously means acknowledging the difference betweenwhat scientistsdoandwhatdesignersdo:whereas scien- tists investigate today to discover explanations for what already is, designers invent tomorrow to create something that isn’t. Powerfulfuturesarerarelydiscoveredprimarilythroughanalytics. Theyare,asWalt Disneyoncesaid,“Createdfirst inthemindand next in theactivity.” Finally, design insists that we prepare ourselves to iterate our way to a solution, somanagerswho thought like designerswould view themselves as learners. Most managers are taught a linear problem-solving methodology: define the problem, identify vari- ous solutions, analyze each, and choose the best one. Designers aren’t nearly so impatient – or optimistic; they understand ...

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Rapid Prototyping Learning Launch Visualization Journey Mapping Value Chain Analysis Customer Co-Creation Assumption TestingConcept DevelopmentBrainstormingMind Mapping 8 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 16 Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 / 17 WHEN DESIGNER HUGH DUBBERLY asked Tim Brennan of Apple’s CreativeServicesgrouptodefinedesign forhisbook, How Do You Design?,Brennandrewthe followingpicture: 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 ? $

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Design, this drawing asserts, is simply magic – a mysterious no-man’s land where only the brave dare tread. Such a definition mocksthe ideathata formalprocesscouldpossiblyexist fornavi- gating itsmanyhairpin 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 magicwand:you’vealreadygotthepower;you justneedtofigure outhowtouse it.Can the averagemanagerbe 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 adoubt. If Managers Thought Like Designers Whatwouldbedifferentifmanagersthoughtmorelikedesigners? Wehave threewords foryou: empathy, inventionand iteration. 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 17 Designalwaysbeginswithempathy–establishingadeepunder- standing of those for whom you are designing. Managers who thought likedesignerswould consistentlyput themselves in their 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: trueempathyentailsknowingyourcustomers asrealpeoplewithrealproblems,ratherthanastargetsforsalesor as a set of demographic statistics around age or income level. It involvesdevelopinganunderstandingofboththeiremotionaland their ‘rational’ needsandwants. In addition,managerswho thought likedesignerswould view themselvesas creators.Forallourtalkaboutthe ‘artandscience’of

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management, we have mostly paid attention to the science part. Taking design seriously means acknowledging the difference betweenwhat scientistsdoandwhatdesignersdo:whereas scien- tists investigate today to discover explanations for what already is, designers invent tomorrow to create something that isn’t. Powerfulfuturesarerarelydiscoveredprimarilythroughanalytics. Theyare,asWalt Disneyoncesaid,“Createdfirst inthemindand next in theactivity.” Finally, design insists that we prepare ourselves to iterate our way to a solution, somanagerswho thought like designerswould view themselves as learners. Most managers are taught a linear problem-solving methodology: define the problem, identify vari- ous solutions, analyze each, and choose the best one. Designers aren’t nearly so impatient – or optimistic; they understand that successful invention takes experimentation and that empathy is hardwon.Thetask,first and foremost, is alwaysoneof learning. 18 / Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 When groups want to generate new ideas, brainstorming is often their first course of action. When this technique is effective, participants draw on each others’ pre-existing knowledge to create new combina- tions of ideas not previously considered. But brainstorming can fail in at least as many ways as it can succeed. Over the past eight years I have worked closely with designers who take brainstorming very seri- ously and together, we have added a new technique to the brain- storming mix: improvisation.

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Like brainstorming, improvisation is a creative collaboration between people with a common goal of developing engaging ideas within a prescribed amount of time. To date, I have taught improvisa- tion techniques to approximately 60 practitioners, 170 undergradu- ate and graduate students and 80 faculty members at Stanford and Northwestern Universities. Early on, participants are exposed to the rules of effective brain- storming developed by BBDO founding partner Alex Osborn. While ‘Osborn’s Rules’ for effective brainstorming remain pertinent, my experience indicates that they can be optimized by importing tech- niques from the world of improvisation. Let’s look at each rule in turn, and how improvisation can enhance it. 1. Identify a Leader. Rarely do groups explicitly commit to a struc- ture and set of processes to enhance the session’s effectiveness. One strategy that can help is to identify a leader to oversee group dynamics. In improvisational theatre, participants select a coach who takes a step back and offers advice. For example, if one indi- vidual is not being heard by his fellow ‘players’, the coach may pub- licly advise him to speak up. Active coaching can also benefit brain- storming sessions. During one session, a leader noticed that a

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col- league was drawing interesting ideas on his notepad; she asked him to share his ideas and upon doing so, he received praise from the rest of the team. From that point on, he positively informed the out- put of the brainstorm. 2.WithholdJudgment. A variety of improvisation activities can help a group transition to the non-judgmental frame of mind required for brainstorming. One such activity, called Malapropism, involves individ- uals walking around a room, pointing to familiar objects and calling them by another name out loud. For example, a one might point to a lamp and call it a ‘garage’. The goal of the activity is to misname as many objects in the room as possible. As participants move through Using Improvisation to Enhance Brainstorming Sessions By Elizabeth Gerber A Toolkit for Designing for Growth Rememberthat initialdrawingof thedesignprocess?Ourversion looksquitedifferent: We start and end in the sameplace asBrennandid, butwe’ve untangled the hairball into a manageable process. Despite fancy vocabulary like ‘ideation’ and ‘co-creation’, the design process actuallydealswith fourverybasicquestions,whichcorrespondto the four stagesofdesign:

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1. What is? 2. What if? 3. Whatwows? 4. Whatworks? What isexplorescurrentreality;What ifenvisionsanewfuture; What wows makes somechoices; and What works takesus into the marketplace. The widening and narrowing of the bands around each question represent ‘divergent’ and ‘convergent’ thinking: in the early parts of theprocess,we areprogressively expandingour fieldofvision, lookingasbroadlyaroundusaspossible inorder to ? $What is? What if? What wows? What works? 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 18 Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 / 19 not be trapped by our usual problem framing. That’s divergent thinking.Afterwehavegeneratedanewsetofconcepts,webegin to reverse the process by converging – progressively narrowing downouroptions to themostpromisingones. There are ten essential tools that a design thinker uses to addressthesefourquestions.Beforewebegin,wewanttocallyour attention to one very special design tool: visualization (Tool#1). This ‘meta tool’ is so fundamental to thewaydesignerswork that it showsup invirtually every stageof theprocess.Visualization is an approach for identifying, organizing and communicating in ways that access ‘right brain’ thinking while decreasing our dependency on ‘left brain’media such as numbers. It

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consciously inserts visual imagery into our processes and focuses on bringing an idea to life, eventually creating stories that go to the heart of howdesignerscultivateempathy ineveryphaseof theirwork. Now let’s take a look at how the process unfolds across the fourquestions, andhoweachtoolfitswithin them. Question 1: What Is? All successful innovation begins with an accurate assessment of the current reality.When we think of something new, we usually thinkabout the future– sowhystartwith thepresent?For lotsof reasons. First, weneed topay close attention towhat is going on today to identify the real problemoropportunity thatwewant to tackle. People often throw away all kinds of opportunities for growth before they even get started by framing the problem too narrowly. For years, product developers at Procter & Gamble focused on improving the detergents that were used to clean floors. One day they realized (with the help of design thinking) that what their customers really wanted was cleaner floors, and that this could be achieved through means other than better detergents – suchas a better mop.This insightproduceda runaway best-seller, the Swiffer, a growth initiative that revolved around a product invented in the middle ages. Fruitful searches always go backto thebasics:what is the jobtobedone? A funny thing happens when we pay close attention to what customersareupto:weoftenfindthatthecluestoanewfuture lie in dissatisfaction with the present. Ultimately, growth is always aboutsolvingpeoples’problems–eveniftheydon’tyetknowwhat theyare.Ifyoupaycloseenoughattentiontotheir lifeanditsfrus- trations, you might see what they don’t, and that’s why the most promising place to start any growth initiative is to find out what

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customersdon’t likeabout today. Designoffersanumberoftoolstohelpwiththisstage, suchas journey mapping (Tool#2), to help assess an idea’s potential for value creation. This tool teaches us how to ‘follow customers home’ and develop a deep understanding of their lives and the problems they strugglewith, so thatwecanbringourcapabilities tobearontheones inoursweetspot.It isalso importanttoassess thepotential forvaluecapture,soweneedtodoadeepdiveonthe valuechaininwhichthisnewideais likelytobeimplemented:Who are the powerful players?What are their incentives?Will they be able to help us?Accurate information on your organization’s own capabilities and resources (and those of key competitors) is essen- tial.You’ll alsowant to recognize early on the capabilities you are missing and locate the right partner to provide them.All of this involvesa value chain analysis (Tool#3). When will you know that you’ve explored enough? This is alwaysa judgmentcall.Gatheringhigh-quality informationusual- ly requiresfield research,which isexpensiveandtimeconsuming. Keep inmind that theprimaryobjective in this exploration stage is not tobuild a ‘business case’ for anyparticular idea; that comes later.Thepurposehere is toprepare togenerate ideas–notevalu- ate them. Designers have come up with a number of tools for the room, they hear others misnaming objects, thereby normalizing ‘failure’ and breaking free from the mindsets that constrain us to see the world as we are accustomed to seeing it. 3. Build on the Ideas of Others. Brainstormers can practice this

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skill by playing a popular improvisation activity called Yes, Let’s. This involves picking an imaginary activity in which the group will partici- pate, such as planning a party or going on a trip. Participants gener- ate ideas and offer them to each other, beginning each offer with the 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 gestures in a way that supports her suggestion. Withholding any crit- icism that might spontaneously arise in a group member’s mind, the group responds, “Yes, let’s!” A second player adds a suggestion: “…And let’s climb the Eiffel Tower,” and gestures accordingly. The group responds, “Yes, let’s.” A third person adds, “…And let’s return home and teach our friends how to speak French,” and so on, until the energy of the group begins to falter. In my class, designers often modified this activity to be product- focused. One group decided to design a product and a company to support their product. The first designer began by saying “Let’s design enterprise software that is easy to use.” Withholding criticism, the

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group members smiled and said, “Yes, let’s.” A second designer made a second suggestion building on the first, offering, “And let’s make software that people look forward to using every day at work.” The group responded in agreement saying, “Yes, let’s.” The exercise contin- ued until a company and product had been defined. These designers reported generating an idea that – while it seemed crazy at first – actually led to a discussion of a viable idea. 4. Generate a Large Quantity of Ideas. Brainstormers can prac- tice being prolific idea generators using a modified improvisation activity called New Choice. For this activity, two people stand side by side, and a third player stands to the side. The two players begin to have a conversation about building a new product. When the player to the side doesn’t like what has been said, she asks the play- er who last spoke to offer a new choice. If she is still not pleased with that response, she asks the player to offer another new choice. The goal is not to critique, but to have the players generate ideas as quickly as possible. For example, one player might say >> 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 19

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20 / Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 looking for patterns in and making sense of the wealth of data amassed in this exploratory stage. One approach is mind map- ping (Tool #4), which helps organize the information you’ve collectedandenables you todraw insights fromit about thequal- ities of the innovationneeded.Youwill thenuse these criteria to generate ideas in thenext stage. Question 2: What If? Having synthesized the data and identified emerging patterns, ideasbegintopopintoourheadsandwestarttoconsidernewpos- sibilities, trends and uncertainties. Even without trying, we are beginning to develop hypotheses about what a desirable future might look like. It’s timetomovefromthedata-basedexploratory question what is? tothemorecreativity-focusedquestion, what if? Designers call this stage ideation. To generate truly creative ideas, it is crucial tostartwithpossibilities.Often, inourattempts to be practical, we start with constraints, which can be deadly to breakthrough thinking. Ifwe start by accepting all the things that don’t allowustodosomethingbetter,ourdesignsfortomorrowwill inevitably look a lot like today’s.The only hope is to ignore some keyconstraints inorder to identify anewsetofpossibilities.Then the real creativity kicks in – figuring out how to get those con- straintsoutofourway. It takes a lotofmomentumtodo this, and thatcanbecreatedinagoodpossibilitiesdiscussionthatenergizes the hard work of overcoming constraints. In many of the innova- tions we’ve been involved with, the creativity that really matters livesinhowthenewfuturewasaccomplished,notwhat it looked like. During this stage, we look at how customers currently frame

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their problems and the mental models and constraints that we imposeonthem.Wewillusethisinformationtoformulatehypothe- ses about new possibilities using a familiar tool, brainstorming (Tool#5) – althoughwewill apply itwithmore structure than the free-form approach that is often used.Adisciplined approach to brainstorming is crucial to overcome its inherent pitfalls. A key “Let’s create a product for the elderly.” The other might say, “Yes, let’s build a safer walking cane.” The third player coaches the second player to come up with a new choice by saying “New choice.” The second player responds, “Yes, let’s build a wheelchair for snowy weather.” The third player coaches the second player for a new choice again by saying “New choice.” The second player says, “Yes, let’s build a new limb for the elderly.” The coach requests new choic- es until s/he is satisfied with the new direction. 5.Free-wheel. This simply means generating ideas free of constraints, 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 familiar object back and forth. When the object is received in hand, the player names the object and then describes an alternative use for it. The goal is to pass the object back and forth as quickly as possible while generating as many alternative uses as possible, until the original

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use of the object becomes just one of many ‘possible uses’.For exam- ple, one pair of players passed a small trash can back and forth, devel- oping multiple uses for it including “a stool” and “a door stop.” The stu- dents realized that to generate more alternate uses, they had to relin- quish their preconceptions of what a trash can could be. As they con- tinued the activity, the trash can became more imaginative things, including a cup for giants and a boat for a mouse. In the end, brainstorming will always be an unreliable process, but it remains one that shows great promise for idea generation. As indi- cated, theatrical improvisation offers a new set of tools to support the group dynamic that enhances brainstorming effectiveness. Using Improvisation to Enhance Brainstorming (cont’d) 1.Visualization:Usingimagerytoenvisionpossiblefuturecondition s. 2. Journey Mapping: Assessing the existing experience through the customer’s eyes. 3.Value Chain Analysis: Assessing the current value chain that supports the customer’s journey. 4. Mind Mapping: Generating insights from exploration activities

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and using those to create design criteria. 5. Brainstorming: Generating new alternatives to the existing business model. 6. Concept Development: Assembling innovative elements into a coherent alternative solution that can be explored and evaluated. 7. AssumptionTesting: Isolating and testing the key assumptions that will drive success or failure of a concept. 8. Rapid Prototyping: Expressing a new concept in a tangible form for exploration, testing and refinement. 9. Customer Co-Creation: Engaging customers to participate in creating the solution that best meets their needs. 10. Learning Launch: Creating an affordable experiment that lets customers experience the new solution over an extended period of time, so you can test key assumptions with market data. The Ten Tools FigureOne Elizabeth Gerber is a professor at the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University. With student designer Molly Lafferty, Elizabeth’s lab created Betterbrainstorms.com, a collection of improv inspired games for brainstormers. She previously spent five years developing programs and teaching at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (‘the d.School’). She is also the fac-

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ulty founder of Design for America, an award-winning educational initiative build- ing creative confidence in students through design for local and social impact. 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 20 reasonthatbrainstormingisoftenunfulfillingisthelackofaformal process to convert theoutput into something valuable.Thedesign thinking toolwe introducehere, concept development (Tool#6), will take the output of the brainstorming process, organize it into coherentclusters, andarchitect themostcompellingclusters intoa robust concept.Wemoved fromdata to insights in thefirstphase; inthisphase,we’llmovefrominsightsto ideastoconcepts. Having developed some hypotheses (in the form of con- cepts)aboutnewpossibilities,we’llbegintothinksystematically aboutprioritizing theconceptswehavecomeupwithandfigur- ingoutwhat ‘wows’. Question 3: What Wows? If all has gonewell in thepreceding stages, youprobably have far toomanyconcepts tomove forwardwithall atonce.Onefirmwe worked with recently generated more than 300, which they nar- rowed down to 23. Of these, only five eventually made it to marketplace testing.Clearly, youwill need tomake somechoices. Whatyouare looking for is ideas thathit the ‘sweet spot’ –where thechanceof a significantupside incustomervaluemeets attrac- tiveprofitpotential.This iswhatwecall the ‘wowzone’. Thisnecessitates startingwith somekindofevaluationof the only data you’ve got – data about today.Again, keep inmind that you are not ‘proving’ the value of an idea; you’re just ready to

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do some thought experiments to begin to assess what the business casemight looklike.Becauseit isoftendifficulttoassessthelong- termpotentialofanewconcept,youwillwanttotreadcarefullyso that you don’t unintentionally favour the incremental concepts anddismiss themore radicalones. The good news is that you have an approach at your disposal that has been little used in business, but is far more useful in assessing early-stage innovations than much-maligned but still commonlyusedmetricslikereturnoninvestment(ROI):thegood old scientific method. The scientific method uses both creative and analytic thinking – that’s what makes it such a useful tool whenwewant tobe imaginative in thesearch forpossibilitiesand rigorous infiguringoutwhichones topursue.Unlikebrainstorm- ing, it doesn’t ask us to leave our analytical minds at the door. It invites both the left and the rightbrain into theprocess, and it is custom-made todealwith situations involvinga lotofunknowns. It accomplishes all of the aboveby treating our newconcept as a hypothesisandthentestingit: itstartswiththehypothesesgener- atedby the what if? question; then it takes thesenewpossibilities (which are really educated guesses about something we think is likely to be a good idea) and tests them by asking, “What would needtobetrue for this concept tobeagoodone?” Inotherwords, yousurfaceandtest theassumptionsunderly- ing your hypothesis. The hypotheses that ‘pass’ this first set of tests are good candidates for turning into real experiments to be conducted in the marketplace. As a result, assumption testing (Tool#7) isoneofthemostpotenttools inthedesigner’s–andthe manager’s – toolbox. Remember, the goal here is not uncovering ‘truth’. All design is essentially hypothesis driven, which, in the designworld, is shorthand for saying that the solutionsgenerated are theoutcomeofan iterative rather thana linear process.

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Having tested your assumptions as carefully as you can, it is time to move to the real thing: experimentation in the market- place. In order to do this, you take the concepts that have successfully passed through the screening process and translate themintosomethingactionable:aprototype.Rapid prototyping (Tool#8)seemslikeachallengingtask,butallwearetalkingabout here is taking the concepts generated in the what if? stage and turning them into something concrete enough to spur conversa- tions with important stakeholders.The intent is to create visual (and sometimes experiential)manifestationsof concepts inorder to facilitatemeaningful conversationandfeedback. Question 4: What Works? Finally, youare readyto launchand learn.First,wesuggest thatyou try out a low-fidelity prototypeon somecustomers and seehow it goes. If it succeeds, build a higher-reliability 3D prototype of the ideaandseeifanycustomersarewillingtopartwiththeirmoneyfor it. A particularly powerful approach to determining what works involves inviting the customer into the conversation in an active, hands-on way.The tool you can use here is customer co-creation (Tool#9).There isnomoreeffectivewaytoreducetherisksofany growthinitiativethantoengagecustomers indesigning it. Prototype in hand, you are ready to move into piloting. To accomplish this, we offer a tool called a learning launch (Tool #10),whichmovesyourdevelopingconcept into thefield.Asyou design thepilot, youwill want tobe explicit about the search for disconfirmingdata– informationthatdisprovesyourhypotheses. This is themost valuable information you canuncover – and it is also the easiest to miss.To enhance your ability to detect it, you must layout inadvancewhatdisconfirmingdatamight look like. As you proceed, keep in mind some of the principles of this

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learning-in-actionstage:workinfastfeedbackcycles;minimizethe cost of conducting your experiments; fail early to succeed sooner; and test forkey trade-offs andassumptionsearly.Most important, playwith theprototypes in thefield insteadof defending them in endlessmeetings. In closing Anunavoidablebuthealthy tensionwill always exist between cre- ating the newandpreserving the best of the present,betweeninnovating newmodels andmaintaininghealthyexistingones.As amanager, youneed to learnhowtomanage this tension,not adopt awholly new set of techniques and abandon all of the old.Theprocesswe havedescribedcangetyoustartedonthepath. Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 / 21 Jeanne Liedtka is theUnitedTechnologies CorporationProfessorofBusinessAdministration at theUniversityofVirginia’sDardenSchoolof Businessandtheformerchief learningofficerat UnitedTechnologiesCorporation. Tim Ogilvie is CEOofPeerInsight, an innovationstrategyconsultancyandavisiting lecturerat theDardenSchool.Theyaretheco-authorsof Designing for Growth: A Toolkit for Managers (ColumbiaUniversityPress, 2011), fromwhichthis isexcerpted. 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 21 POL/115 v3

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Week 3 Assignment Worksheet POL/115 v3 Page 2 of 2POL/115 Week 3 AssignmentU.S. Federal Bureaucracy and Public Policy Step 1: Complete the federal bureaucracy matrix to demonstrate how it influences the U.S. political system. Include APA citations for all unoriginal ideas, facts, or definitions. Elements of federal bureaucracy In 100-250 words, explain each element, and discuss how it affects or influences the U.S. political system. Civil servants Government corporation Cabinet departments Independent regulatory agencies Independent executive agencies Merit system Public administration Spoils system Privatization Negotiated rulemaking Step 2: Complete the public policy matrix to explain and the compare the main policy types. Types of public policy

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Explanation or definition How is it the same or different from the other types of policy? Example of the type of policy Distributive policy Regulatory policy Redistributive policy Copyright© 2018 by University of Phoenix. All rights reserved. Copyright© 2018 by University of Phoenix. All rights reserved. 10 | Research-Technology Management • May—June 2012 Roger Martin has been studying what it takes to create breakthrough innovation for many years. In that time, he has become frustrated by the increasingly heavy reliance on analytics in most businesses, which crowds out intuitive thinking. For Martin, both analytics and intuitive insight are necessary to create successful breakthroughs; he calls this productive synthesis “design thinking.” In his books The Opposable Mind: Winning through Integrative Thinking and The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage , he explores design thinking and its importance in making the truly important decisions. I talked with him about design thinking and how it can be nurtured into today’s analytical businesses.

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JIM EUCHNER [JE]: You have written extensively about the importance of design thinking in business. How do you de- fi ne “design thinking”? ROGER MARTIN [RM]: I consider design thinking to be the productive mix of analytical thinking and intuitive think- ing. I call it a productive mix because you need both kinds of thinking if you’re going to analyze the past, project what you can from it, and create futures that go beyond an extrapolation of the past. If you use analytical thinking alone, you will just extrapolate from the past, which will work for you if you are willing to accept a future that is no different from the past. If you use intuitive thinking alone, you won’t take advantage in a rigorous way of the data that’s available. Both of them are needed. Analytical think- ing tends to miss new different things that change the envi- ronment. And intuitive thinking tends to be just plain wrong too many times. What you want and need is a com- bination of the two. JE: Analytical thinking has dominated and still dominates business, and it’s been fairly successful. Why is there a need now for more design thinking? RM: I’m not sure it has been successful. It’s credited with lots of success. Science and the scientifi c method have made a notable difference in the world. But what’s happened in the business world is that we’ve gotten too analytical, to the point where analysis is relied on too much. And what that does is calcify companies. You have to ask yourself, “Why is it that big companies keep getting beaten up by little com- panies?” Old companies get beaten up by little, new compa- nies. How can that be?

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I’d say the answer is that big, old companies get totally analytical, and they focus on honing and refi ning what it is that they’re currently doing. The little companies come along and challenge that which now exists, and they blow the big, old companies completely out of the water. I think that phe- nomenon is a direct function of the predominance of analyti- cal thinking in these big companies. The problem is less about the world having changed; it is more about the intensity of analytical thinking. JE: That’s very interesting. You don’t attribute disruption to faster movement of technology and shorter cycle times for products, but rather to the reifi cation of analytical thinking in business. RM: More so. I can’t believe that there is a lot of truth to the pace of technology explanation. Henry Mintzberg gave a talk Roger Martin has served as dean of the Rotman School of Management since September 1998. Previously, he spent 13 years as a director of Moni- tor Company, a global strategy consulting fi rm based in Cambridge, Mas- sachusetts. His research work is in integrative thinking, business design, corporate social responsibility, and national competitiveness. He is the author of four books: Fixing the Game (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011), The Design of Business (Harvard Business School Press, 2009), The Opposable Mind (Harvard Business School Press, 2007) and The Responsi- bility Virus (Basic Books, 2002). He also co-wrote (with

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Mihnea Moldoveanu) The Future of the MBA (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Diaminds (Uni- versity of Toronto Press, 2009). Roger earned an AB with a concentration in economics from Harvard College and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. [email protected] Jim Euchner is editor-in-chief of Research-Technology Management and vice president of global innovation at Goodyear. He previously held senior management positions in the leadership of innovation at Pitney Bowes and Bell Atlantic. He holds BS and MS degrees in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Cornell and Princeton Universities, respectively, and an MBA from Southern Methodist University. [email protected] DOI: 10.5437/08956308X5503003 CONVERSATIONS Design Thinking An Interview with Roger Martin Roger Martin talks with Jim Euchner about the need to include intuitive thinking in the innovation process. Conversations May—June 2012 | 11 at a conference 20 or 25 years ago where he put up a slide with a quote about how things are moving so fast, techno- logical advances are happening as never before, etc. It’s the greatest we’ve ever seen in history. And he froze the slide

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and he asked, “Where’s that from?” And everybody thought it was from last month’s Wired or something. But it was from Scientifi c American . In 1868. And so it’s stuck in my mind that we have to be careful saying how much the world has changed, when much of it hasn’t changed at all. There is an insight of this wacky but brilliant twentieth- century American analytical philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce. He was a contemporary of William James and John Dewey, but his thinking was ahead of many people. He came to the conclusion that you cannot prove any new idea through analytical thinking. He argued that no new idea in the history of the world has been proven in advance through inductive or deductive logic. But there are new ideas in the world. Where do they come from? They come from another thought process, which Peirce called abductive logic. And I think he’s just plain right. People relying on all these analytical method- ologies do not realize that you cannot use them to demon- strate any new idea in advance. So if you’re using them, you’re using them to reinforce existing ideas. They have an embedded assumption that the future is going to look a lot like the past. JE: I hear your point. It’s interesting, because at the same time that design thinking is becoming a much bigger topic of discussion, people are also focused on competing on analytics and big data. Do you think the two are complementary, or do you think that there are people who just have opposing points of view of how you create the future? RM: I think the intensity of interest in analytics by some is representative of the absolute last gasp of attention that happens before you get a big change. At least most of the

25

stuff I see says, “Wow, we’ve got all this data and we need to redevelop analytics to deal with it.” I think that it’s more of a symptom of the challenge than a prescription to answer it. JE: A kind of interesting synthesis is in the movie Moneyball , which describes a situation where analytics are deeply im- portant, but so is throwing reliance on past heuristics out the door. RM: I could describe that as design thinking, which is the pro- ductive combination of both of those. Take advantage of ev- ery bit of past data that you have, but then add some artistry to that in order to imagine a future that is productively differ- ent from the past. JE: In your book, you say that business leaders don’t need just to understand designers and how they think and how they talk and what they do, but they need to become design- ers. Can you talk a little bit more about that? RM: I do not think that you’re going to be a great business leader if you are just an analyst. I do not believe you can ana- lyze your way to business leadership greatness. Some of the people who quote me imagine that I’m saying that leaders have to become artists. I don’t believe that’s the case. The dif- ference between a fi ne artist and a designer is that a fi ne art- ist cares about personal expression and not necessarily what anybody else cares about, or whether it produces fi nancial success, whereas a designer has to care about whether what they’re designing will work and provide the economic bene- fi t that it was designed to deliver. What great business leaders have to do is become design-

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ers in the sense of integrating their intuition in an explicit way into their decisions, rather than suppressing it, hiding it, and not making it explicit. That’s what I mean when I say leaders must become designers. They need to develop their skills and sensitivity. They need to understand qualitative dis- tinctions between things. And in that way, they have to become designers. JE: Let me push on that a little bit more. In most corpora- tions, there’s a CEO and a senior management team. And they’re probably heavily biased toward an analytical ap- proach to the world. But in addition, they’re likely to have a variety of intuitions on a given issue that they may or may not be able to express effectively to others. How do you Roger Martin , author of The Opposable Mind: Winning through Integrative Thinking and The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage , believes that a productive synthesis of analytic and intuitive insight is required to create successful breakthroughs. What great business leaders have to do is become designers in the sense of integrating their intuition in an explicit way into their decisions. 12 | Research-Technology Management Conversations

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manage the team dynamic? In the end, are you going to end up relying heavily on the intuition of just the CEO in making things happen? RM: There’s where I think excellent management is going to play out. You put your fi nger very much on it. I think a great leader is going to be a leader who makes it both legitimate and safe to put your intuitive thoughts on the table rather than dismissing them as being of lesser value than the ana- lytical thoughts. That’s one thing. And second, a leader helps people develop a language for discussing these things. A great modern leader will do this and not let a discussion at the board table be entirely analyti- cally driven. Otherwise, the intuition of the team is going to be hidden and the intuitions of the CEO will dominate. JE: Do you think that design thinking can be taught or learned? RM: Absolutely, positively. There isn’t a question in my mind. JE: Under what conditions will that happen? It really is a dis- tinct way of thinking. RM: This is one of the most interesting things in my work. People seem to think that something that is untaught is un- teachable. And other than in a few places, business design thinking is untaught. The assumption that it’s unteachable is staggering to me. We’re teaching it here at Rotman, and it’s totally teachable. Most people in the world of business—cer- tainly in the world of technology—stopped doing anything abductive very early in their education. They took an English literature course maybe in grade 11 or 12, and they haven’t

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taken a single thing that would exercise one iota of their ab- ductive logical capability since. Then they go work at an en- gineering fi rm, and 15 years later they would appear totally incapable of having any kind of design capability. But it’s be- cause they haven’t exercised it for a long, long time. JE: So what can you do with a senior management team to get them to the point where they can actually express their intuitions and work with them and have a discussion about them? Suppose three out of the seven people on the man- agement team go to a week-long course in design thinking. They’re going to have awareness, but that’s about it. How do you help an organization move from one where you might have an inspired leader to one where you have an organiza- tional capability? RM: Procter & Gamble is a good case in point. I worked inti- mately with them in an effort to make them a design-thinking company. It took time, but we created a customized process for taking category teams through the design thinking process. We would take one category at a time. The fi rst one we took through the process was global hair care, and then we did global laundry, skin care, and a whole bunch of others. We took the senior management teams through a process that taught them about design thinking, and they actually applied those principles to the decisions and challenges in their company and in their category at that time. And we did eight or nine of them ourselves, and then trained the Procter people to be able to do it. Now they have a couple of hundred facilitators who can facilitate the approach. That’s a user-friendly way for management teams to prac- tice design thinking and impart their ability to create a future to the next level. The result is a change in the dialogue at se-

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nior management team meetings. They all know the lan- guage that they’re using and how they came up with ideas. They’ve been told that if you ever say “prove it” to anybody, it guarantees that you won’t get anything new happening. JE: What are you teaching in these sessions? Ways of being aware of and listening to your intuition? Qualitative data col- lection? Customer insight? Prototyping? What kinds of things are you helping people get better at? RM: All of those things. Design thinking includes helping people get a deeper understanding of customers using more qualitative approaches. So we teach how to do that and how to legitimize qualitative research. We also teach some kind of tools for how to create ideas that may make sense, how you prototype them, and then how you convert them into strat- egy. That last step is one of the things that is unique about the approach that I developed for Procter and that we now teach at Rotman. What I think is missing in the design fi eld is how to con- vert design thinking into a winning strategy—one that puts the pieces together. The key tools are customer understand- ing, visualization, prototyping, and strategic business design. It’s fun to watch the combination at work. JE: Let’s dig deeper into what leaders need to do to create environments where these intuitive leaps can happen— environments that are hospitable to the leaps happening. Even if you’re not ever going to be a genius design thinker, you might be able to create an environment in which design can survive and have a signifi cant voice. When I worked with designers, their biggest complaint was they just felt like their concerns didn’t get heard until they were re- phrased by someone with a different background or way of talking. I’m trying to understand what people need to do

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to make design effective in their organizations, even if it doesn’t become predominant. That’s a user-friendly way for management teams to practice design thinking and impart their ability to create a future to the next level. Conversations May—June 2012 | 13 RM: My view is that there are subtle things that can be easily done that make a big difference. One of the things that A. G. Lafl ey and I engineered at Procter & Gamble was a relatively modest change in the way strategy planning meetings were run. It wasn’t an expansive change; it was kind of a small change, but it created an environment that allowed for the possibility of design thinking. Traditionally at Procter & Gamble, every September all the categories would come forward to the senior management— the CEO, the COO, the CFO—to have their strategies re- viewed. The category teams would come in with big, long strategy presentations in a PowerPoint deck. They would come in with many little loops of three to fi ve slides each to respond to every question they could anticipate. “It’s funny that you should ask that. Here are the three answers to that question specifi cally.” The whole goal of these meetings from the respective categories was—and they used this term for it—to “get in and get out.” It was a successful meeting if you could get in and get out unscathed. Nothing changed; there was no more work to be done.

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So that was the goal, with senior management kind of taking the critic’s role. “We’re going to ask tough questions and you’d better have the answers.” If that’s your goal, what are you going to generate? You’re going to have a totally analytical meeting where you try to prove things so that you can “get in and get out.” We said, “From here on in, you will send us whatever material you want to include two weeks in advance. We’ll read it and we’ll issue you three to fi ve questions that we would like to have dialogue on in your strategy review meeting. You’re not al- lowed to bring more than three 8 ½ x 11 inch additional pages into the meeting, because we don’t want you to create another presentation that provides “perfect answers” to all of our questions. We actually want to have a generative discus- sion of these issues. There’ll be no presentation. We will think together and come up with better solutions that way. That’s how we’re going to run the meeting.” That changed the meetings to meetings that were actually discussions about what might be—What could we do here? What might be a good idea?—rather than a discussion about proving or disproving what the leaders said about their strat- egies. That changed things tremendously; it created an enor- mous change in what goes on in those meetings and how productive those meetings are. They’re now meetings about imagining what could be, what could be different, what could be better, instead of meetings about the past. JE: That’s great. I’m sure A. G. Lafl ey’s leadership made that happen. RM: Absolutely. And it was profoundly disturbing to the ex- ecutives, profoundly disturbing. They were conditioned to

32

getting hammered for not having everything perfect. A. G. had to prove over time that he actually wanted a dialogue; he actually wanted a discussion about what might be and what could be. We fi rst did that in 2001. Now, I don’t think they could go back. If they went back to the old approach, it would be so depressing for people, so disconcerting, that it would be really hard. JE: They still have to make decisions, for example that they’re going to invest $200 million in this area and not in that area. How do they get to the point where they’re willing to make those bets about a world that may not be? RM: There’s just more recognition that that’s how all impor- tant decisions are made. There is no proof. It’s a matter of getting out of this fool-proof mode. That’s what I hate about the “competing on analytics” idea. You’ve got to prove everything to be right before you can do it. But the things that you can prove to be right or wrong tend to be the most inconsequential things in the en- tire decision. The things you cannot prove at all are the most consequential elements of any decision. That’s what you get paid the big bucks for. JE: I guess another way to look at it is that a lot of business teams are focused on not making the decision to invest in a bad initiative and less focused on failing to invest in a good initiative. There are two types of errors, right? RM: Yes. And certainly one is more correlated with the use of analytical techniques. Analysis makes you overconfi dent with the impulse to keep on doing what you’re doing. So that’s what we get in many businesses today. We get lots of

33

people confi dently doing more of the same. You have Gen- eral Motors confi dently having their production plan for 2008 be more pickup trucks and more full-sized sport-utility vehicles. Was that stupid? No. If you analyzed the past and extrapolated it into 2008, 2009, you could extrapolate the SUV and pickup truck demand, and you could say we should gear up to make many more of these vehicles. There’s an overconfi dence created by the analysis of the past. JE: How do companies that you’ve worked with achieve the right balance? It may be diffi cult for one person to be both a great intuitive thinker and a good placer of bets on something that isn’t so certain. How do companies create a successful synthesis, or what you call the productive synthesis? But the things that you can prove to be right or wrong tend to be the most inconsequential things in the entire decision. The things you cannot prove at all are the most consequential elements of any decision. 14 | Research-Technology Management Conversations RM: I think a whole lot of it has to do with respect for the other side. The best intuitive thinkers understand the limita- tions of their intuition and give credence to analytical types and partner with them.

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JE: I have just one more question. A lot of the people who will read this interview are leaders of innovation functions or R&D labs. What kind of advice would you give them about design thinking and what they can do to incorporate it into their worlds? RM: One of the big problems internal R&D labs have is that they get very analytical and very reliability focused. That’s the biggest thing to watch out for. I would say, on average, I am struck by how conservative and analytical corporate R&D departments are. JE: How do you suggest they get beyond it? They’re by na- ture embedded in a very analytical tradition. RM: I would stop hiring all analysts. That’s one of the biggest problems in big companies: their selection criteria are either implicitly or explicitly driven to focus on analytical talent. And so they get many analysts, and guess what the analysts do? They analyze. Think about actually having your selection criteria in- clude something about somebody’s intuitive capacity. Think about it. What do R&D departments look for when they hire? JE: They’re looking for the technical disciplines and execu- tion ability. People in R&D are looking for people who have made creative contributions, but perhaps— RM: Not much. I don’t fi nd that. I fi nd there is a focus on super-high grade-point averages, and how do you get a super-high GPA? JE: You’re very good at what the schools are teaching, which

35

are the analytical subjects. RM: And on the fi nal exam, with the big project that’s worth everything, are people likely to take a leap to do something wacky and way out there? No, because that one B could be the difference between a 3.9 and a 3.85, and you’re going to lose out to some other 3.9. It’s incredibly narrowing conser- vatism. And we in business select for that. It’s scary. JE: Just to build further—you can’t hire one or two designers to create this capability. You’ve got to start getting a critical mass. So what do you think a critical mass of people with that sort of background is, or am I barking up the wrong tree? RM: It would be the fi rst tree I’d bark up. But you don’t need a design background. Take Claudia Kotchka, Procter & Gam- ble’s head of design under Lafl ey. Before going to Procter & Gamble, she was an Arthur Anderson auditor. She’s a friend of mine. She’s brilliant. But it’s not about her having a design education but about having a mind that was open to design. And she’s learned a lot. She hangs out with designers; she reads everything about design. So she’s very knowledgeable. But it doesn’t necessarily take design- ers. That’s why I make a distinction between designers and design thinking. Design thinking is a way of thinking. What you need to be successful is somebody who encourages a different way of thinking in the organization. You will end up hiring design- ers and working with designers because you’ll say, “Wow, there’s real value in that kind of training and expertise.” But the training is not the key. There are lots of designers with great training who are not design thinkers. JE: I very much appreciate your insights. It’s been a fascinat-

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ing discussion. Design thinking is a way of thinking. Share your expertise . . . Contribute to RTM as an author or peer reviewer. Visit us at http://www.iriweb.org/rtm for announcements of upcoming special issues, author guidelines, and information about volunteering as a peer reviewer. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

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  • 1. Rapid Prototyping Learning Launch Visualization Journey Mapping Value Chain Analysis Customer Co-Creation Assumption TestingConcept DevelopmentBrainstormingMind Mapping 8 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 16 Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 / 17 WHEN DESIGNER HUGH DUBBERLY asked Tim Brennan of Apple’s CreativeServicesgrouptodefinedesign forhisbook, How Do You Design?,Brennandrewthe followingpicture: 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 ? $
  • 2. Design, this drawing asserts, is simply magic – a mysterious no-man’s land where only the brave dare tread. Such a definition mocksthe ideathata formalprocesscouldpossiblyexist fornavi- gating itsmanyhairpin 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 magicwand:you’vealreadygotthepower;you justneedtofigure outhowtouse it.Can the averagemanagerbe 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 adoubt. If Managers Thought Like Designers Whatwouldbedifferentifmanagersthoughtmorelikedesigners? Wehave threewords foryou: empathy, inventionand iteration. 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 17 Designalwaysbeginswithempathy–establishingadeepunder- standing of those for whom you are designing. Managers who thought likedesignerswould consistentlyput themselves in their 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: trueempathyentailsknowingyourcustomers asrealpeoplewithrealproblems,ratherthanastargetsforsalesor as a set of demographic statistics around age or income level. It involvesdevelopinganunderstandingofboththeiremotionaland their ‘rational’ needsandwants. In addition,managerswho thought likedesignerswould view themselvesas creators.Forallourtalkaboutthe ‘artandscience’of
  • 3. management, we have mostly paid attention to the science part. Taking design seriously means acknowledging the difference betweenwhat scientistsdoandwhatdesignersdo:whereas scien- tists investigate today to discover explanations for what already is, designers invent tomorrow to create something that isn’t. Powerfulfuturesarerarelydiscoveredprimarilythroughanalytics. Theyare,asWalt Disneyoncesaid,“Createdfirst inthemindand next in theactivity.” Finally, design insists that we prepare ourselves to iterate our way to a solution, somanagerswho thought like designerswould view themselves as learners. Most managers are taught a linear problem-solving methodology: define the problem, identify vari- ous solutions, analyze each, and choose the best one. Designers aren’t nearly so impatient – or optimistic; they understand that successful invention takes experimentation and that empathy is hardwon.Thetask,first and foremost, is alwaysoneof learning. 18 / Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 When groups want to generate new ideas, brainstorming is often their first course of action. When this technique is effective, participants draw on each others’ pre-existing knowledge to create new combina- tions of ideas not previously considered. But brainstorming can fail in at least as many ways as it can succeed. Over the past eight years I have worked closely with designers who take brainstorming very seri- ously and together, we have added a new technique to the brain- storming mix: improvisation.
  • 4. Like brainstorming, improvisation is a creative collaboration between people with a common goal of developing engaging ideas within a prescribed amount of time. To date, I have taught improvisa- tion techniques to approximately 60 practitioners, 170 undergradu- ate and graduate students and 80 faculty members at Stanford and Northwestern Universities. Early on, participants are exposed to the rules of effective brain- storming developed by BBDO founding partner Alex Osborn. While ‘Osborn’s Rules’ for effective brainstorming remain pertinent, my experience indicates that they can be optimized by importing tech- niques from the world of improvisation. Let’s look at each rule in turn, and how improvisation can enhance it. 1. Identify a Leader. Rarely do groups explicitly commit to a struc- ture and set of processes to enhance the session’s effectiveness. One strategy that can help is to identify a leader to oversee group dynamics. In improvisational theatre, participants select a coach who takes a step back and offers advice. For example, if one indi- vidual is not being heard by his fellow ‘players’, the coach may pub- licly advise him to speak up. Active coaching can also benefit brain- storming sessions. During one session, a leader noticed that a
  • 5. col- league was drawing interesting ideas on his notepad; she asked him to share his ideas and upon doing so, he received praise from the rest of the team. From that point on, he positively informed the out- put of the brainstorm. 2.WithholdJudgment. A variety of improvisation activities can help a group transition to the non-judgmental frame of mind required for brainstorming. One such activity, called Malapropism, involves individ- uals walking around a room, pointing to familiar objects and calling them by another name out loud. For example, a one might point to a lamp and call it a ‘garage’. The goal of the activity is to misname as many objects in the room as possible. As participants move through Using Improvisation to Enhance Brainstorming Sessions By Elizabeth Gerber A Toolkit for Designing for Growth Rememberthat initialdrawingof thedesignprocess?Ourversion looksquitedifferent: We start and end in the sameplace asBrennandid, butwe’ve untangled the hairball into a manageable process. Despite fancy vocabulary like ‘ideation’ and ‘co-creation’, the design process actuallydealswith fourverybasicquestions,whichcorrespondto the four stagesofdesign:
  • 6. 1. What is? 2. What if? 3. Whatwows? 4. Whatworks? What isexplorescurrentreality;What ifenvisionsanewfuture; What wows makes somechoices; and What works takesus into the marketplace. The widening and narrowing of the bands around each question represent ‘divergent’ and ‘convergent’ thinking: in the early parts of theprocess,we areprogressively expandingour fieldofvision, lookingasbroadlyaroundusaspossible inorder to ? $What is? What if? What wows? What works? 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 18 Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 / 19 not be trapped by our usual problem framing. That’s divergent thinking.Afterwehavegeneratedanewsetofconcepts,webegin to reverse the process by converging – progressively narrowing downouroptions to themostpromisingones. There are ten essential tools that a design thinker uses to addressthesefourquestions.Beforewebegin,wewanttocallyour attention to one very special design tool: visualization (Tool#1). This ‘meta tool’ is so fundamental to thewaydesignerswork that it showsup invirtually every stageof theprocess.Visualization is an approach for identifying, organizing and communicating in ways that access ‘right brain’ thinking while decreasing our dependency on ‘left brain’media such as numbers. It
  • 7. consciously inserts visual imagery into our processes and focuses on bringing an idea to life, eventually creating stories that go to the heart of howdesignerscultivateempathy ineveryphaseof theirwork. Now let’s take a look at how the process unfolds across the fourquestions, andhoweachtoolfitswithin them. Question 1: What Is? All successful innovation begins with an accurate assessment of the current reality.When we think of something new, we usually thinkabout the future– sowhystartwith thepresent?For lotsof reasons. First, weneed topay close attention towhat is going on today to identify the real problemoropportunity thatwewant to tackle. People often throw away all kinds of opportunities for growth before they even get started by framing the problem too narrowly. For years, product developers at Procter & Gamble focused on improving the detergents that were used to clean floors. One day they realized (with the help of design thinking) that what their customers really wanted was cleaner floors, and that this could be achieved through means other than better detergents – suchas a better mop.This insightproduceda runaway best-seller, the Swiffer, a growth initiative that revolved around a product invented in the middle ages. Fruitful searches always go backto thebasics:what is the jobtobedone? A funny thing happens when we pay close attention to what customersareupto:weoftenfindthatthecluestoanewfuture lie in dissatisfaction with the present. Ultimately, growth is always aboutsolvingpeoples’problems–eveniftheydon’tyetknowwhat theyare.Ifyoupaycloseenoughattentiontotheir lifeanditsfrus- trations, you might see what they don’t, and that’s why the most promising place to start any growth initiative is to find out what
  • 8. customersdon’t likeabout today. Designoffersanumberoftoolstohelpwiththisstage, suchas journey mapping (Tool#2), to help assess an idea’s potential for value creation. This tool teaches us how to ‘follow customers home’ and develop a deep understanding of their lives and the problems they strugglewith, so thatwecanbringourcapabilities tobearontheones inoursweetspot.It isalso importanttoassess thepotential forvaluecapture,soweneedtodoadeepdiveonthe valuechaininwhichthisnewideais likelytobeimplemented:Who are the powerful players?What are their incentives?Will they be able to help us?Accurate information on your organization’s own capabilities and resources (and those of key competitors) is essen- tial.You’ll alsowant to recognize early on the capabilities you are missing and locate the right partner to provide them.All of this involvesa value chain analysis (Tool#3). When will you know that you’ve explored enough? This is alwaysa judgmentcall.Gatheringhigh-quality informationusual- ly requiresfield research,which isexpensiveandtimeconsuming. Keep inmind that theprimaryobjective in this exploration stage is not tobuild a ‘business case’ for anyparticular idea; that comes later.Thepurposehere is toprepare togenerate ideas–notevalu- ate them. Designers have come up with a number of tools for the room, they hear others misnaming objects, thereby normalizing ‘failure’ and breaking free from the mindsets that constrain us to see the world as we are accustomed to seeing it. 3. Build on the Ideas of Others. Brainstormers can practice this
  • 9. skill by playing a popular improvisation activity called Yes, Let’s. This involves picking an imaginary activity in which the group will partici- pate, such as planning a party or going on a trip. Participants gener- ate ideas and offer them to each other, beginning each offer with the 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 gestures in a way that supports her suggestion. Withholding any crit- icism that might spontaneously arise in a group member’s mind, the group responds, “Yes, let’s!” A second player adds a suggestion: “…And let’s climb the Eiffel Tower,” and gestures accordingly. The group responds, “Yes, let’s.” A third person adds, “…And let’s return home and teach our friends how to speak French,” and so on, until the energy of the group begins to falter. In my class, designers often modified this activity to be product- focused. One group decided to design a product and a company to support their product. The first designer began by saying “Let’s design enterprise software that is easy to use.” Withholding criticism, the
  • 10. group members smiled and said, “Yes, let’s.” A second designer made a second suggestion building on the first, offering, “And let’s make software that people look forward to using every day at work.” The group responded in agreement saying, “Yes, let’s.” The exercise contin- ued until a company and product had been defined. These designers reported generating an idea that – while it seemed crazy at first – actually led to a discussion of a viable idea. 4. Generate a Large Quantity of Ideas. Brainstormers can prac- tice being prolific idea generators using a modified improvisation activity called New Choice. For this activity, two people stand side by side, and a third player stands to the side. The two players begin to have a conversation about building a new product. When the player to the side doesn’t like what has been said, she asks the play- er who last spoke to offer a new choice. If she is still not pleased with that response, she asks the player to offer another new choice. The goal is not to critique, but to have the players generate ideas as quickly as possible. For example, one player might say >> 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 19
  • 11. 20 / Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 looking for patterns in and making sense of the wealth of data amassed in this exploratory stage. One approach is mind map- ping (Tool #4), which helps organize the information you’ve collectedandenables you todraw insights fromit about thequal- ities of the innovationneeded.Youwill thenuse these criteria to generate ideas in thenext stage. Question 2: What If? Having synthesized the data and identified emerging patterns, ideasbegintopopintoourheadsandwestarttoconsidernewpos- sibilities, trends and uncertainties. Even without trying, we are beginning to develop hypotheses about what a desirable future might look like. It’s timetomovefromthedata-basedexploratory question what is? tothemorecreativity-focusedquestion, what if? Designers call this stage ideation. To generate truly creative ideas, it is crucial tostartwithpossibilities.Often, inourattempts to be practical, we start with constraints, which can be deadly to breakthrough thinking. Ifwe start by accepting all the things that don’t allowustodosomethingbetter,ourdesignsfortomorrowwill inevitably look a lot like today’s.The only hope is to ignore some keyconstraints inorder to identify anewsetofpossibilities.Then the real creativity kicks in – figuring out how to get those con- straintsoutofourway. It takes a lotofmomentumtodo this, and thatcanbecreatedinagoodpossibilitiesdiscussionthatenergizes the hard work of overcoming constraints. In many of the innova- tions we’ve been involved with, the creativity that really matters livesinhowthenewfuturewasaccomplished,notwhat it looked like. During this stage, we look at how customers currently frame
  • 12. their problems and the mental models and constraints that we imposeonthem.Wewillusethisinformationtoformulatehypothe- ses about new possibilities using a familiar tool, brainstorming (Tool#5) – althoughwewill apply itwithmore structure than the free-form approach that is often used.Adisciplined approach to brainstorming is crucial to overcome its inherent pitfalls. A key “Let’s create a product for the elderly.” The other might say, “Yes, let’s build a safer walking cane.” The third player coaches the second player to come up with a new choice by saying “New choice.” The second player responds, “Yes, let’s build a wheelchair for snowy weather.” The third player coaches the second player for a new choice again by saying “New choice.” The second player says, “Yes, let’s build a new limb for the elderly.” The coach requests new choic- es until s/he is satisfied with the new direction. 5.Free-wheel. This simply means generating ideas free of constraints, 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 familiar object back and forth. When the object is received in hand, the player names the object and then describes an alternative use for it. The goal is to pass the object back and forth as quickly as possible while generating as many alternative uses as possible, until the original
  • 13. use of the object becomes just one of many ‘possible uses’.For exam- ple, one pair of players passed a small trash can back and forth, devel- oping multiple uses for it including “a stool” and “a door stop.” The stu- dents realized that to generate more alternate uses, they had to relin- quish their preconceptions of what a trash can could be. As they con- tinued the activity, the trash can became more imaginative things, including a cup for giants and a boat for a mouse. In the end, brainstorming will always be an unreliable process, but it remains one that shows great promise for idea generation. As indi- cated, theatrical improvisation offers a new set of tools to support the group dynamic that enhances brainstorming effectiveness. Using Improvisation to Enhance Brainstorming (cont’d) 1.Visualization:Usingimagerytoenvisionpossiblefuturecondition s. 2. Journey Mapping: Assessing the existing experience through the customer’s eyes. 3.Value Chain Analysis: Assessing the current value chain that supports the customer’s journey. 4. Mind Mapping: Generating insights from exploration activities
  • 14. and using those to create design criteria. 5. Brainstorming: Generating new alternatives to the existing business model. 6. Concept Development: Assembling innovative elements into a coherent alternative solution that can be explored and evaluated. 7. AssumptionTesting: Isolating and testing the key assumptions that will drive success or failure of a concept. 8. Rapid Prototyping: Expressing a new concept in a tangible form for exploration, testing and refinement. 9. Customer Co-Creation: Engaging customers to participate in creating the solution that best meets their needs. 10. Learning Launch: Creating an affordable experiment that lets customers experience the new solution over an extended period of time, so you can test key assumptions with market data. The Ten Tools FigureOne Elizabeth Gerber is a professor at the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University. With student designer Molly Lafferty, Elizabeth’s lab created Betterbrainstorms.com, a collection of improv inspired games for brainstormers. She previously spent five years developing programs and teaching at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (‘the d.School’). She is also the fac-
  • 15. ulty founder of Design for America, an award-winning educational initiative build- ing creative confidence in students through design for local and social impact. 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 20 reasonthatbrainstormingisoftenunfulfillingisthelackofaformal process to convert theoutput into something valuable.Thedesign thinking toolwe introducehere, concept development (Tool#6), will take the output of the brainstorming process, organize it into coherentclusters, andarchitect themostcompellingclusters intoa robust concept.Wemoved fromdata to insights in thefirstphase; inthisphase,we’llmovefrominsightsto ideastoconcepts. Having developed some hypotheses (in the form of con- cepts)aboutnewpossibilities,we’llbegintothinksystematically aboutprioritizing theconceptswehavecomeupwithandfigur- ingoutwhat ‘wows’. Question 3: What Wows? If all has gonewell in thepreceding stages, youprobably have far toomanyconcepts tomove forwardwithall atonce.Onefirmwe worked with recently generated more than 300, which they nar- rowed down to 23. Of these, only five eventually made it to marketplace testing.Clearly, youwill need tomake somechoices. Whatyouare looking for is ideas thathit the ‘sweet spot’ –where thechanceof a significantupside incustomervaluemeets attrac- tiveprofitpotential.This iswhatwecall the ‘wowzone’. Thisnecessitates startingwith somekindofevaluationof the only data you’ve got – data about today.Again, keep inmind that you are not ‘proving’ the value of an idea; you’re just ready to
  • 16. do some thought experiments to begin to assess what the business casemight looklike.Becauseit isoftendifficulttoassessthelong- termpotentialofanewconcept,youwillwanttotreadcarefullyso that you don’t unintentionally favour the incremental concepts anddismiss themore radicalones. The good news is that you have an approach at your disposal that has been little used in business, but is far more useful in assessing early-stage innovations than much-maligned but still commonlyusedmetricslikereturnoninvestment(ROI):thegood old scientific method. The scientific method uses both creative and analytic thinking – that’s what makes it such a useful tool whenwewant tobe imaginative in thesearch forpossibilitiesand rigorous infiguringoutwhichones topursue.Unlikebrainstorm- ing, it doesn’t ask us to leave our analytical minds at the door. It invites both the left and the rightbrain into theprocess, and it is custom-made todealwith situations involvinga lotofunknowns. It accomplishes all of the aboveby treating our newconcept as a hypothesisandthentestingit: itstartswiththehypothesesgener- atedby the what if? question; then it takes thesenewpossibilities (which are really educated guesses about something we think is likely to be a good idea) and tests them by asking, “What would needtobetrue for this concept tobeagoodone?” Inotherwords, yousurfaceandtest theassumptionsunderly- ing your hypothesis. The hypotheses that ‘pass’ this first set of tests are good candidates for turning into real experiments to be conducted in the marketplace. As a result, assumption testing (Tool#7) isoneofthemostpotenttools inthedesigner’s–andthe manager’s – toolbox. Remember, the goal here is not uncovering ‘truth’. All design is essentially hypothesis driven, which, in the designworld, is shorthand for saying that the solutionsgenerated are theoutcomeofan iterative rather thana linear process.
  • 17. Having tested your assumptions as carefully as you can, it is time to move to the real thing: experimentation in the market- place. In order to do this, you take the concepts that have successfully passed through the screening process and translate themintosomethingactionable:aprototype.Rapid prototyping (Tool#8)seemslikeachallengingtask,butallwearetalkingabout here is taking the concepts generated in the what if? stage and turning them into something concrete enough to spur conversa- tions with important stakeholders.The intent is to create visual (and sometimes experiential)manifestationsof concepts inorder to facilitatemeaningful conversationandfeedback. Question 4: What Works? Finally, youare readyto launchand learn.First,wesuggest thatyou try out a low-fidelity prototypeon somecustomers and seehow it goes. If it succeeds, build a higher-reliability 3D prototype of the ideaandseeifanycustomersarewillingtopartwiththeirmoneyfor it. A particularly powerful approach to determining what works involves inviting the customer into the conversation in an active, hands-on way.The tool you can use here is customer co-creation (Tool#9).There isnomoreeffectivewaytoreducetherisksofany growthinitiativethantoengagecustomers indesigning it. Prototype in hand, you are ready to move into piloting. To accomplish this, we offer a tool called a learning launch (Tool #10),whichmovesyourdevelopingconcept into thefield.Asyou design thepilot, youwill want tobe explicit about the search for disconfirmingdata– informationthatdisprovesyourhypotheses. This is themost valuable information you canuncover – and it is also the easiest to miss.To enhance your ability to detect it, you must layout inadvancewhatdisconfirmingdatamight look like. As you proceed, keep in mind some of the principles of this
  • 18. learning-in-actionstage:workinfastfeedbackcycles;minimizethe cost of conducting your experiments; fail early to succeed sooner; and test forkey trade-offs andassumptionsearly.Most important, playwith theprototypes in thefield insteadof defending them in endlessmeetings. In closing Anunavoidablebuthealthy tensionwill always exist between cre- ating the newandpreserving the best of the present,betweeninnovating newmodels andmaintaininghealthyexistingones.As amanager, youneed to learnhowtomanage this tension,not adopt awholly new set of techniques and abandon all of the old.Theprocesswe havedescribedcangetyoustartedonthepath. Rotman Magazine Fall 2011 / 21 Jeanne Liedtka is theUnitedTechnologies CorporationProfessorofBusinessAdministration at theUniversityofVirginia’sDardenSchoolof Businessandtheformerchief learningofficerat UnitedTechnologiesCorporation. Tim Ogilvie is CEOofPeerInsight, an innovationstrategyconsultancyandavisiting lecturerat theDardenSchool.Theyaretheco-authorsof Designing for Growth: A Toolkit for Managers (ColumbiaUniversityPress, 2011), fromwhichthis isexcerpted. 4640 16_21.qxp:Layout 1 7/26/11 1:00 PM Page 21 POL/115 v3
  • 19. Week 3 Assignment Worksheet POL/115 v3 Page 2 of 2POL/115 Week 3 AssignmentU.S. Federal Bureaucracy and Public Policy Step 1: Complete the federal bureaucracy matrix to demonstrate how it influences the U.S. political system. Include APA citations for all unoriginal ideas, facts, or definitions. Elements of federal bureaucracy In 100-250 words, explain each element, and discuss how it affects or influences the U.S. political system. Civil servants Government corporation Cabinet departments Independent regulatory agencies Independent executive agencies Merit system Public administration Spoils system Privatization Negotiated rulemaking Step 2: Complete the public policy matrix to explain and the compare the main policy types. Types of public policy
  • 20. Explanation or definition How is it the same or different from the other types of policy? Example of the type of policy Distributive policy Regulatory policy Redistributive policy Copyright© 2018 by University of Phoenix. All rights reserved. Copyright© 2018 by University of Phoenix. All rights reserved. 10 | Research-Technology Management • May—June 2012 Roger Martin has been studying what it takes to create breakthrough innovation for many years. In that time, he has become frustrated by the increasingly heavy reliance on analytics in most businesses, which crowds out intuitive thinking. For Martin, both analytics and intuitive insight are necessary to create successful breakthroughs; he calls this productive synthesis “design thinking.” In his books The Opposable Mind: Winning through Integrative Thinking and The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage , he explores design thinking and its importance in making the truly important decisions. I talked with him about design thinking and how it can be nurtured into today’s analytical businesses.
  • 21. JIM EUCHNER [JE]: You have written extensively about the importance of design thinking in business. How do you de- fi ne “design thinking”? ROGER MARTIN [RM]: I consider design thinking to be the productive mix of analytical thinking and intuitive think- ing. I call it a productive mix because you need both kinds of thinking if you’re going to analyze the past, project what you can from it, and create futures that go beyond an extrapolation of the past. If you use analytical thinking alone, you will just extrapolate from the past, which will work for you if you are willing to accept a future that is no different from the past. If you use intuitive thinking alone, you won’t take advantage in a rigorous way of the data that’s available. Both of them are needed. Analytical think- ing tends to miss new different things that change the envi- ronment. And intuitive thinking tends to be just plain wrong too many times. What you want and need is a com- bination of the two. JE: Analytical thinking has dominated and still dominates business, and it’s been fairly successful. Why is there a need now for more design thinking? RM: I’m not sure it has been successful. It’s credited with lots of success. Science and the scientifi c method have made a notable difference in the world. But what’s happened in the business world is that we’ve gotten too analytical, to the point where analysis is relied on too much. And what that does is calcify companies. You have to ask yourself, “Why is it that big companies keep getting beaten up by little com- panies?” Old companies get beaten up by little, new compa- nies. How can that be?
  • 22. I’d say the answer is that big, old companies get totally analytical, and they focus on honing and refi ning what it is that they’re currently doing. The little companies come along and challenge that which now exists, and they blow the big, old companies completely out of the water. I think that phe- nomenon is a direct function of the predominance of analyti- cal thinking in these big companies. The problem is less about the world having changed; it is more about the intensity of analytical thinking. JE: That’s very interesting. You don’t attribute disruption to faster movement of technology and shorter cycle times for products, but rather to the reifi cation of analytical thinking in business. RM: More so. I can’t believe that there is a lot of truth to the pace of technology explanation. Henry Mintzberg gave a talk Roger Martin has served as dean of the Rotman School of Management since September 1998. Previously, he spent 13 years as a director of Moni- tor Company, a global strategy consulting fi rm based in Cambridge, Mas- sachusetts. His research work is in integrative thinking, business design, corporate social responsibility, and national competitiveness. He is the author of four books: Fixing the Game (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011), The Design of Business (Harvard Business School Press, 2009), The Opposable Mind (Harvard Business School Press, 2007) and The Responsi- bility Virus (Basic Books, 2002). He also co-wrote (with
  • 23. Mihnea Moldoveanu) The Future of the MBA (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Diaminds (Uni- versity of Toronto Press, 2009). Roger earned an AB with a concentration in economics from Harvard College and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. [email protected] Jim Euchner is editor-in-chief of Research-Technology Management and vice president of global innovation at Goodyear. He previously held senior management positions in the leadership of innovation at Pitney Bowes and Bell Atlantic. He holds BS and MS degrees in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Cornell and Princeton Universities, respectively, and an MBA from Southern Methodist University. [email protected] DOI: 10.5437/08956308X5503003 CONVERSATIONS Design Thinking An Interview with Roger Martin Roger Martin talks with Jim Euchner about the need to include intuitive thinking in the innovation process. Conversations May—June 2012 | 11 at a conference 20 or 25 years ago where he put up a slide with a quote about how things are moving so fast, techno- logical advances are happening as never before, etc. It’s the greatest we’ve ever seen in history. And he froze the slide
  • 24. and he asked, “Where’s that from?” And everybody thought it was from last month’s Wired or something. But it was from Scientifi c American . In 1868. And so it’s stuck in my mind that we have to be careful saying how much the world has changed, when much of it hasn’t changed at all. There is an insight of this wacky but brilliant twentieth- century American analytical philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce. He was a contemporary of William James and John Dewey, but his thinking was ahead of many people. He came to the conclusion that you cannot prove any new idea through analytical thinking. He argued that no new idea in the history of the world has been proven in advance through inductive or deductive logic. But there are new ideas in the world. Where do they come from? They come from another thought process, which Peirce called abductive logic. And I think he’s just plain right. People relying on all these analytical method- ologies do not realize that you cannot use them to demon- strate any new idea in advance. So if you’re using them, you’re using them to reinforce existing ideas. They have an embedded assumption that the future is going to look a lot like the past. JE: I hear your point. It’s interesting, because at the same time that design thinking is becoming a much bigger topic of discussion, people are also focused on competing on analytics and big data. Do you think the two are complementary, or do you think that there are people who just have opposing points of view of how you create the future? RM: I think the intensity of interest in analytics by some is representative of the absolute last gasp of attention that happens before you get a big change. At least most of the
  • 25. stuff I see says, “Wow, we’ve got all this data and we need to redevelop analytics to deal with it.” I think that it’s more of a symptom of the challenge than a prescription to answer it. JE: A kind of interesting synthesis is in the movie Moneyball , which describes a situation where analytics are deeply im- portant, but so is throwing reliance on past heuristics out the door. RM: I could describe that as design thinking, which is the pro- ductive combination of both of those. Take advantage of ev- ery bit of past data that you have, but then add some artistry to that in order to imagine a future that is productively differ- ent from the past. JE: In your book, you say that business leaders don’t need just to understand designers and how they think and how they talk and what they do, but they need to become design- ers. Can you talk a little bit more about that? RM: I do not think that you’re going to be a great business leader if you are just an analyst. I do not believe you can ana- lyze your way to business leadership greatness. Some of the people who quote me imagine that I’m saying that leaders have to become artists. I don’t believe that’s the case. The dif- ference between a fi ne artist and a designer is that a fi ne art- ist cares about personal expression and not necessarily what anybody else cares about, or whether it produces fi nancial success, whereas a designer has to care about whether what they’re designing will work and provide the economic bene- fi t that it was designed to deliver. What great business leaders have to do is become design-
  • 26. ers in the sense of integrating their intuition in an explicit way into their decisions, rather than suppressing it, hiding it, and not making it explicit. That’s what I mean when I say leaders must become designers. They need to develop their skills and sensitivity. They need to understand qualitative dis- tinctions between things. And in that way, they have to become designers. JE: Let me push on that a little bit more. In most corpora- tions, there’s a CEO and a senior management team. And they’re probably heavily biased toward an analytical ap- proach to the world. But in addition, they’re likely to have a variety of intuitions on a given issue that they may or may not be able to express effectively to others. How do you Roger Martin , author of The Opposable Mind: Winning through Integrative Thinking and The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage , believes that a productive synthesis of analytic and intuitive insight is required to create successful breakthroughs. What great business leaders have to do is become designers in the sense of integrating their intuition in an explicit way into their decisions. 12 | Research-Technology Management Conversations
  • 27. manage the team dynamic? In the end, are you going to end up relying heavily on the intuition of just the CEO in making things happen? RM: There’s where I think excellent management is going to play out. You put your fi nger very much on it. I think a great leader is going to be a leader who makes it both legitimate and safe to put your intuitive thoughts on the table rather than dismissing them as being of lesser value than the ana- lytical thoughts. That’s one thing. And second, a leader helps people develop a language for discussing these things. A great modern leader will do this and not let a discussion at the board table be entirely analyti- cally driven. Otherwise, the intuition of the team is going to be hidden and the intuitions of the CEO will dominate. JE: Do you think that design thinking can be taught or learned? RM: Absolutely, positively. There isn’t a question in my mind. JE: Under what conditions will that happen? It really is a dis- tinct way of thinking. RM: This is one of the most interesting things in my work. People seem to think that something that is untaught is un- teachable. And other than in a few places, business design thinking is untaught. The assumption that it’s unteachable is staggering to me. We’re teaching it here at Rotman, and it’s totally teachable. Most people in the world of business—cer- tainly in the world of technology—stopped doing anything abductive very early in their education. They took an English literature course maybe in grade 11 or 12, and they haven’t
  • 28. taken a single thing that would exercise one iota of their ab- ductive logical capability since. Then they go work at an en- gineering fi rm, and 15 years later they would appear totally incapable of having any kind of design capability. But it’s be- cause they haven’t exercised it for a long, long time. JE: So what can you do with a senior management team to get them to the point where they can actually express their intuitions and work with them and have a discussion about them? Suppose three out of the seven people on the man- agement team go to a week-long course in design thinking. They’re going to have awareness, but that’s about it. How do you help an organization move from one where you might have an inspired leader to one where you have an organiza- tional capability? RM: Procter & Gamble is a good case in point. I worked inti- mately with them in an effort to make them a design-thinking company. It took time, but we created a customized process for taking category teams through the design thinking process. We would take one category at a time. The fi rst one we took through the process was global hair care, and then we did global laundry, skin care, and a whole bunch of others. We took the senior management teams through a process that taught them about design thinking, and they actually applied those principles to the decisions and challenges in their company and in their category at that time. And we did eight or nine of them ourselves, and then trained the Procter people to be able to do it. Now they have a couple of hundred facilitators who can facilitate the approach. That’s a user-friendly way for management teams to prac- tice design thinking and impart their ability to create a future to the next level. The result is a change in the dialogue at se-
  • 29. nior management team meetings. They all know the lan- guage that they’re using and how they came up with ideas. They’ve been told that if you ever say “prove it” to anybody, it guarantees that you won’t get anything new happening. JE: What are you teaching in these sessions? Ways of being aware of and listening to your intuition? Qualitative data col- lection? Customer insight? Prototyping? What kinds of things are you helping people get better at? RM: All of those things. Design thinking includes helping people get a deeper understanding of customers using more qualitative approaches. So we teach how to do that and how to legitimize qualitative research. We also teach some kind of tools for how to create ideas that may make sense, how you prototype them, and then how you convert them into strat- egy. That last step is one of the things that is unique about the approach that I developed for Procter and that we now teach at Rotman. What I think is missing in the design fi eld is how to con- vert design thinking into a winning strategy—one that puts the pieces together. The key tools are customer understand- ing, visualization, prototyping, and strategic business design. It’s fun to watch the combination at work. JE: Let’s dig deeper into what leaders need to do to create environments where these intuitive leaps can happen— environments that are hospitable to the leaps happening. Even if you’re not ever going to be a genius design thinker, you might be able to create an environment in which design can survive and have a signifi cant voice. When I worked with designers, their biggest complaint was they just felt like their concerns didn’t get heard until they were re- phrased by someone with a different background or way of talking. I’m trying to understand what people need to do
  • 30. to make design effective in their organizations, even if it doesn’t become predominant. That’s a user-friendly way for management teams to practice design thinking and impart their ability to create a future to the next level. Conversations May—June 2012 | 13 RM: My view is that there are subtle things that can be easily done that make a big difference. One of the things that A. G. Lafl ey and I engineered at Procter & Gamble was a relatively modest change in the way strategy planning meetings were run. It wasn’t an expansive change; it was kind of a small change, but it created an environment that allowed for the possibility of design thinking. Traditionally at Procter & Gamble, every September all the categories would come forward to the senior management— the CEO, the COO, the CFO—to have their strategies re- viewed. The category teams would come in with big, long strategy presentations in a PowerPoint deck. They would come in with many little loops of three to fi ve slides each to respond to every question they could anticipate. “It’s funny that you should ask that. Here are the three answers to that question specifi cally.” The whole goal of these meetings from the respective categories was—and they used this term for it—to “get in and get out.” It was a successful meeting if you could get in and get out unscathed. Nothing changed; there was no more work to be done.
  • 31. So that was the goal, with senior management kind of taking the critic’s role. “We’re going to ask tough questions and you’d better have the answers.” If that’s your goal, what are you going to generate? You’re going to have a totally analytical meeting where you try to prove things so that you can “get in and get out.” We said, “From here on in, you will send us whatever material you want to include two weeks in advance. We’ll read it and we’ll issue you three to fi ve questions that we would like to have dialogue on in your strategy review meeting. You’re not al- lowed to bring more than three 8 ½ x 11 inch additional pages into the meeting, because we don’t want you to create another presentation that provides “perfect answers” to all of our questions. We actually want to have a generative discus- sion of these issues. There’ll be no presentation. We will think together and come up with better solutions that way. That’s how we’re going to run the meeting.” That changed the meetings to meetings that were actually discussions about what might be—What could we do here? What might be a good idea?—rather than a discussion about proving or disproving what the leaders said about their strat- egies. That changed things tremendously; it created an enor- mous change in what goes on in those meetings and how productive those meetings are. They’re now meetings about imagining what could be, what could be different, what could be better, instead of meetings about the past. JE: That’s great. I’m sure A. G. Lafl ey’s leadership made that happen. RM: Absolutely. And it was profoundly disturbing to the ex- ecutives, profoundly disturbing. They were conditioned to
  • 32. getting hammered for not having everything perfect. A. G. had to prove over time that he actually wanted a dialogue; he actually wanted a discussion about what might be and what could be. We fi rst did that in 2001. Now, I don’t think they could go back. If they went back to the old approach, it would be so depressing for people, so disconcerting, that it would be really hard. JE: They still have to make decisions, for example that they’re going to invest $200 million in this area and not in that area. How do they get to the point where they’re willing to make those bets about a world that may not be? RM: There’s just more recognition that that’s how all impor- tant decisions are made. There is no proof. It’s a matter of getting out of this fool-proof mode. That’s what I hate about the “competing on analytics” idea. You’ve got to prove everything to be right before you can do it. But the things that you can prove to be right or wrong tend to be the most inconsequential things in the en- tire decision. The things you cannot prove at all are the most consequential elements of any decision. That’s what you get paid the big bucks for. JE: I guess another way to look at it is that a lot of business teams are focused on not making the decision to invest in a bad initiative and less focused on failing to invest in a good initiative. There are two types of errors, right? RM: Yes. And certainly one is more correlated with the use of analytical techniques. Analysis makes you overconfi dent with the impulse to keep on doing what you’re doing. So that’s what we get in many businesses today. We get lots of
  • 33. people confi dently doing more of the same. You have Gen- eral Motors confi dently having their production plan for 2008 be more pickup trucks and more full-sized sport-utility vehicles. Was that stupid? No. If you analyzed the past and extrapolated it into 2008, 2009, you could extrapolate the SUV and pickup truck demand, and you could say we should gear up to make many more of these vehicles. There’s an overconfi dence created by the analysis of the past. JE: How do companies that you’ve worked with achieve the right balance? It may be diffi cult for one person to be both a great intuitive thinker and a good placer of bets on something that isn’t so certain. How do companies create a successful synthesis, or what you call the productive synthesis? But the things that you can prove to be right or wrong tend to be the most inconsequential things in the entire decision. The things you cannot prove at all are the most consequential elements of any decision. 14 | Research-Technology Management Conversations RM: I think a whole lot of it has to do with respect for the other side. The best intuitive thinkers understand the limita- tions of their intuition and give credence to analytical types and partner with them.
  • 34. JE: I have just one more question. A lot of the people who will read this interview are leaders of innovation functions or R&D labs. What kind of advice would you give them about design thinking and what they can do to incorporate it into their worlds? RM: One of the big problems internal R&D labs have is that they get very analytical and very reliability focused. That’s the biggest thing to watch out for. I would say, on average, I am struck by how conservative and analytical corporate R&D departments are. JE: How do you suggest they get beyond it? They’re by na- ture embedded in a very analytical tradition. RM: I would stop hiring all analysts. That’s one of the biggest problems in big companies: their selection criteria are either implicitly or explicitly driven to focus on analytical talent. And so they get many analysts, and guess what the analysts do? They analyze. Think about actually having your selection criteria in- clude something about somebody’s intuitive capacity. Think about it. What do R&D departments look for when they hire? JE: They’re looking for the technical disciplines and execu- tion ability. People in R&D are looking for people who have made creative contributions, but perhaps— RM: Not much. I don’t fi nd that. I fi nd there is a focus on super-high grade-point averages, and how do you get a super-high GPA? JE: You’re very good at what the schools are teaching, which
  • 35. are the analytical subjects. RM: And on the fi nal exam, with the big project that’s worth everything, are people likely to take a leap to do something wacky and way out there? No, because that one B could be the difference between a 3.9 and a 3.85, and you’re going to lose out to some other 3.9. It’s incredibly narrowing conser- vatism. And we in business select for that. It’s scary. JE: Just to build further—you can’t hire one or two designers to create this capability. You’ve got to start getting a critical mass. So what do you think a critical mass of people with that sort of background is, or am I barking up the wrong tree? RM: It would be the fi rst tree I’d bark up. But you don’t need a design background. Take Claudia Kotchka, Procter & Gam- ble’s head of design under Lafl ey. Before going to Procter & Gamble, she was an Arthur Anderson auditor. She’s a friend of mine. She’s brilliant. But it’s not about her having a design education but about having a mind that was open to design. And she’s learned a lot. She hangs out with designers; she reads everything about design. So she’s very knowledgeable. But it doesn’t necessarily take design- ers. That’s why I make a distinction between designers and design thinking. Design thinking is a way of thinking. What you need to be successful is somebody who encourages a different way of thinking in the organization. You will end up hiring design- ers and working with designers because you’ll say, “Wow, there’s real value in that kind of training and expertise.” But the training is not the key. There are lots of designers with great training who are not design thinkers. JE: I very much appreciate your insights. It’s been a fascinat-
  • 36. ing discussion. Design thinking is a way of thinking. Share your expertise . . . Contribute to RTM as an author or peer reviewer. Visit us at http://www.iriweb.org/rtm for announcements of upcoming special issues, author guidelines, and information about volunteering as a peer reviewer. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.