November 6 Readings

Your Point of View

• User + need = point of view
• You need an understanding of the user group and insight into that group’s needs
• Two tools can help you find a point of view
• Focusing tools help you narrow your field of view
• Flaring tools expand your field of view generating new concepts and frameworks that deepen your thinking
• Techniques within Flaring
• Always start with space saturation to get ideas out in the open
• Change your perspectives using the Powers of 10 to back up 10 steps to zoom in on the problem. Instead of buying shoes, focus on the shoe/skin interface, for example
• Create diagrams that map either journey (experience vs. time) or spatial (presence vs. space)
• 2x2 and pick two parameters and map them against each other, such as mood and the number of cups of coffee consumed daily. An empty quadrant marks an opportunity
• Techniques with Focusing
• Find patterns to put images and articles into ‘buckets’
• Composite character profiles that embody your current understanding to enable you to related to them
• Draw conclusions from multiple observations
• Put insights into action in order to get close to forming a point of view
• The seeds of great ideas start at the beginning of the point of view process, when one understands and observes
• Powerful ideas take root in observations about the real world
• The more abstract and bigger the scope of the idea, the farther your idea will go
• POV is getting good when your team is speaking its own language

This article again reiterated the importance of observation. While the authors’ tools were designed to help you develop a point of view, I felt they were similar to Whirlpool’s innovation tools. Whirlpool’s innovation tools are designed to stimulate ideas, rather than bring the user and their needs together. One item of particular interest is the 2x2 mapping. In Whirlpool innovation, my personal favorite innovation stimulus was mapping two seemingly unrelated consumer trends. I think innovation is best found when you take these observations about the real world and pair random observations together. Because you are already starting with two abstract ideas, I think it is easier to gain a greater scope of idea and a more abstract idea that will get you farther on the spectrum.

Building Your Company’s Vision

• Great companies understand the difference between what should never change and what should be open for change
• The ability to manage continuity and change is closely linked to the ability to develop a vision
• A well-conceived vision consists of a core ideology (defines what we stand for and in what we believe) and envisioned future (what we aspire to become, achieve, create)
• Most visionary companies only have between three and five core values
• When defining core values, push yourself to determine which core values are absolutely central and essential to your company. Ask yourself if you would keep that value if people were penalizing you for having it. If you say no, then it isn’t a core value
• Purpose should not be confused with specific goals or business strategies. A purpose is like a guiding star, unattainable but by which you guide yourself
• One powerful method at getting at the purpose is to ask the 5 whys. Ask why what you do is important five times to get to the fundamental purpose of the company
• Many purposes fall into ‘guide’ and ‘inspire,’ not ‘to maximize shareholder wealth’
• Ask what core values the company truly and passionately holds. Don’t accept values you want the company to have, but rather the values the company already has.
• Need to employ persons who hold your core values and purpose
• If it’s not core, change it!
• BHAG – big, hairy, audacious, goals
• A true BHAG is clear and compelling, serves as a unifying focal point of effort, and acts as a catalyst for team spirit
• An envisioned future requires translating words into images that people can carry for the long-term
• Passion, emotion, and conviction are essential parts of the vivid description
• It doesn’t make sense to analyze whether an envisioned future is the right one. With a creation, the task is creating the future, not a prediction. Did Beethoven create the right 9^th Symphony?
• Be careful not to suffer from the ‘We’ve Arrived Syndrome,’ keep pushing yourself
• Building a visionary company requires 1% vision and 99% alignment

The most relevant part of this article was the latter half, regarding the envisioned future. Innovators and their innovations help achieve these BHAGs and aim towards your core purpose. Somebody once said that a purpose is like a star, it is unreachable, but one should chart their core by it. I think that too often companies restrict their own visions. To borrow a learning from B2B marketing, they can’t see the actual transition vision. Visionary companies are able to work in that dreamspace and use alignment to get there. I also fully support what this article’s point regarding letting your core values and purpose come from within the company. For me, that consists of the actual employees. Google was very much this way. It hired people who not only dreamed big, but who were not afraid to actually chart their course by the big dreams. That is how development happens. Oddly enough, I don’t think that CEOs actual innovate products, but rather, they innovate ideas. When a company continues to drive towards innovative ideas, it is going to push the company further and make it more successful.

MIT Video, Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO

· Design thinking is the way that company’s create their future

· Design thinking finds new ways to connect with customers, especially in service industries

· Think of people, technology (feasible) and then business (what is viable and sustainable. When you create something, what value does it create?)

· Design thinking is supported by different processes and roles that people play

· Design falls into 3 phases: inspiration (from where do ideas come?), ideation (having good ideas), implementation (doing something good with them)

· Use the world as a source of ideas

· Insights come from extreme users. People are most predictable from the middle of the bell curve

· It is hard to be inspired unless you ‘get out there’

· Learn by prototyping, not unusual to create hundreds of different prototypes

· Prototypes don’t have to be physical, but they do have to be tangible in order to help people figure out what they learn, especially in the nature of services

· Some ideas don’t survive because they can’t make it through the politics of the company

· The easiest way to survive the politics is through the concept of storytelling because it scales and frames the problem

· Need to synthesize information about projects by putting it visually around you and you need project rooms in order to do this

· Have an idea wall for when you come up with something

· Design thinking is a humanized process of inspiration

There were two points from this video that provided me with a value added. The first regarded from where you find your insights. It is true that we look at the people in the middle of the bell curve. I found it interesting to think that innovation comes from the extremists. However, now that I think about it, it is the same concept as finding people who use your product in a way other than for that which it was intended. For example, Baking Soda reduces smells when refrigerated and bakes cookies. It may be the same as the type of talent from which innovators stem. Innovators don’t fall in the ‘mean’ of people. They fall on the extreme. So when an innovative innovator matches wits with a similar minded customer, perhaps that spurs on innovation more than just brainstorming in a room. That is more of a basis for humanized process of inspiration for me.