Category Archives: Strategy

AI and Human Creativity Solving Complex Problems Together

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

A recent McKinsey Leading Off – Essentials for leaders and those they lead email newsletter, referred to an article “The organization of the future: Enabled by gen AI, driven by people” which stated that digitization, automation, and AI will reshape whole industries and every enterprise. The article elaborated further by saying that, in terms of magnitude, the challenge is akin to coping with the large-scale shift from agricultural work to manufacturing that occurred in the early 20th century in North America and Europe, and more recently in China. This shift was powered by the defining trait of our species, our human creativity, which is at the heart of all creative problem-solving endeavors, where innovation is the engine of growth, no matter, what the context.

Moving into Unchartered Job and Skills Territory

We don’t yet know what exact technological, or soft skills, new occupations, or jobs will be required in this fast-moving transformation, or how we might further advance generative AI, digitization, and automation.

We also don’t know how AI will impact the need for humans to tap even more into the defining trait of our species, our human creativity. To enable us to become more imaginative, curious, and creative in the way we solve some of the world’s greatest challenges and most complex and pressing problems, and transform them into innovative solutions.

We can be proactive by asking these two generative questions:

What if the true potential of AI lies in embracing its ability to augment human creativity and aid innovation, especially in enhancing creative problem solving, at all levels of civil society, instead of avoiding it? (Ideascale)
How might we develop AI as a creative thinking partner to effect profound change, and create innovative solutions that help us build a more equitable and sustainable planet for all humanity? (Hal Gregersen)

Because our human creativity is at the heart of creative problem-solving, and innovation is the engine of growth, competitiveness, and profound and positive change.

Developing a Co-Creative Thinking Partnership

In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review “AI Can Help You Ask Better Questions – and Solve Bigger Problems” by Hal Gregersen and Nicola Morini Bianzino, they state:

“Artificial intelligence may be superhuman in some ways, but it also has considerable weaknesses. For starters, the technology is fundamentally backward-looking, trained on yesterday’s data – and the future might not look anything like the past. What’s more, inaccurate or otherwise flawed training data (for instance, data skewed by inherent biases) produces poor outcomes.”

The authors say that dealing with this issue requires people to manage this limitation if they are going to treat AI as a creative-thinking partner in solving complex problems, that enable people to live healthy and happy lives and to co-create an equitable and sustainable planet.

We can achieve this by focusing on specific areas where the human brain and machines might possibly complement one another to co-create the systemic changes the world badly needs through creative problem-solving.

A double-edged sword

This perspective is further complimented by a recent Boston Consulting Group article “How people can create-and destroy value- with generative AI” where they found that the adoption of generative AI is, in fact, a double-edged sword.

In an experiment, participants using GPT-4 for creative product innovation outperformed the control group (those who completed the task without using GPT-4) by 40%. But for business problem solving, using GPT-4 resulted in performance that was 23% lower than that of the control group.

“Perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, current GenAI models tend to do better on the first type of task; it is easier for LLMs to come up with creative, novel, or useful ideas based on the vast amounts of data on which they have been trained. Where there’s more room for error is when LLMs are asked to weigh nuanced qualitative and quantitative data to answer a complex question. Given this shortcoming, we as researchers knew that GPT-4 was likely to mislead participants if they relied completely on the tool, and not also on their own judgment, to arrive at the solution to the business problem-solving task (this task had a “right” answer)”.

Taking the path of least resistance

In McKinsey’s Top Ten Reports This Quarter blog, seven out of the ten articles relate specifically to generative AI: technology trends, state of AI, future of work, future of AI, the new AI playbook, questions to ask about AI and healthcare and AI.

As it is the most dominant topic across the board globally, if we are not both vigilant and intentional, a myopic focus on this one significant technology will take us all down the path of least resistance – where our energy will move to where it is easiest to go. Rather than being like a river, which takes the path of least resistance to its surrounding terrain, and not by taking a strategic and systemic perspective, we will always go, and end up, where we have always gone.

Living our lives forwards

According to the Boston Consulting Group article:

“The primary locus of human-driven value creation lies not in enhancing generative AI where it is already great, but in focusing on tasks beyond the frontier of the technology’s core competencies.”

This means that a whole lot of other variables need to be at play, and a newly emerging set of human skills, especially in creative problem solving, need to be developed to maximize the most value from generative AI, to generate the most imaginative, novel and value adding landing strips of the future.

Creative Problem Solving

In my previous blog posts “Imagination versus Knowledge” and “Why Successful Innovators Are Curious Like Cats” we shared that we are in the midst of a “Sputnik Moment” where we have the opportunity to advance our human creativity.

This human creativity is inside all of us, it involves the process of bringing something new into being, that is original, surprising useful, or desirable, in ways that add value to the quality of people’s lives, in ways they appreciate and cherish.

Taking a both/and approach

Our human creativity will be paralysed, if we focus our attention and intention only on the technology, and on the financial gains or potential profits we will get from it, and if we exclude the possibilities of a co-creative thinking partnership with the technology.

To deeply engage people in true creative problem solving – and involving them in impacting positively on our crucial relationships and connectedness, with one another and with the natural world, and the planet.

A marriage between creatives, technologists, and humanities

In a recent Fast Company video presentation, “Innovating Imagination: How Airbnb Is Using AI to Foster Creativity” Brian Chesky CEO of Airbnb, states that we need to consider and focus our attention and intention on discovering what is good for people.

To develop a “marriage between creatives, technologists, and the humanities” that brings the human out and doesn’t let technology overtake our human element.

Developing Creative Problem-Solving Skills

At ImagineNation, we teach, mentor, and coach clients in creative problem-solving, through developing their Generative Discovery skills.

This involves developing an open and active mind and heart, by becoming flexible, adaptive, and playful in the ways we engage and focus our human creativity in the four stages of creative problem-solving.

Including sensing, perceiving, and enabling people to deeply listen, inquire, question, and debate from the edges of temporarily hidden or emerging fields of the future.

To know how to emerge, diverge, and converge creative insights, collective breakthroughs, an ideation process, and cognitive and emotional agility shifts to:

Deepen our attending, observing, and discerning capabilities to consciously connect with, explore, and discover possibilities that create tension and cognitive dissonance to disrupt and challenge the status quo, and other conventional thinking and feeling processes.
Create cracks, openings, and creative thresholds by asking generative questions to push the boundaries, and challenge assumptions and mental and emotional models to pull people towards evoking, provoking, and generating boldly creative ideas.
Unleash possibilities, and opportunities for creative problem solving to contribute towards generating innovative solutions to complex problems, and pressing challenges, that may not have been previously imagined.

Experimenting with the generative discovery skill set enables us to juggle multiple theories, models, and strategies to create and plan in an emergent, and non-linear way through creative problem-solving.

As stated by Hal Gregersen:

“Partnering with the technology in this way can help people ask smarter questions, making them better problem solvers and breakthrough innovators.”

Succeeding in the Age of AI

We know that Generative AI will change much of what we do and how we do it, in ways that we cannot yet anticipate.

Success in the age of AI will largely depend on our ability to learn and change faster than we ever have before, in ways that preserve our well-being, connectedness, imagination, curiosity, human creativity, and our collective humanity through partnering with generative AI in the creative problem-solving process.

Find Out More About Our Work at ImagineNation™

Find out about our collective, learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack, is a collaborative, intimate, and deeply personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, which can be customised as a bespoke corporate learning program.

It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem focus, human-centric approach, and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation, and upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness, within your unique innovation context. Find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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LEGO Knows Why Companies Don’t Innovate

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LEGO Knows Why Companies Don't Innovate

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“Lego’s Latest Effort to Avoid Oil-Based Plastic Hits Brick Wall” – WSJ

“Lego axes plans to make bricks from recycled bottles” – BBC

“Lego ditches oil-free brick in sustainability setback” – The Financial Times

Recently, LEGO found itself doing the Walk of Atonement (see video below) after announcing to The Financial Times that it was scrapping plans to make bricks from recycled bottles, and media outlets from The Wall Street Journal to Fast Company to WIRED were more than happy to play the Shame Nun.

And it wasn’t just media outlets ringing the Shame Bell:

“In the future, they should not make these kinds of announcements (prototype made from recyclable plastic) until they actually do it,” Judith Enck, President of Beyond Plastics
“They are not going to survive as an organization if they don’t find a solution,” Paolo Taticchi, corporate sustainability expert at University College London.
“Lego undoubtedly had good intentions, but if you’re going to to (sic) announce a major environmental initiative like this—one that affects the core of your company—good intentions aren’t enough. And in this instance, it can even undermine progress.” Jesus Diaz, creative director, screenwriter, and producer at The Magic Sauce, writing forFast Company

As a LEGO lover, I am not unbiased, but WOW, the amount of hypocritical, self-righteous judgment is astounding! All these publications and pundits espouse the need for innovation, yet when a company falls even the tiniest bit short of aspirations, it’s just SHAME (clang) SHAME (clang) SHAME.

A LEGO Atlantis 8073 Manta Warrior (i.e., tiny) bit of context

In 1946, LEGO founder Ole Kirk Christiansen purchased Denmark’s first plastic injection molding machine. Today, 95% of the company’s 4,400 different bricks are made using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), a plastic that requires 4.4 pounds of oil to produce 2.2 pounds of brick. Admittedly, it’s not a great ratio, and it gets worse. The material isn’t biodegradable or easily recyclable, so when the 3% of bricks not handed down to the next generation end up in a landfill, they’ll break down into highly polluting microplastics.

With this context, it’s easy to understand why LEGO’s 2018 announcement that it will move to all non-plastic or recycled materials by 2030 and reduce its carbon emissions by 37% (from 2019’s 1.2 million tons) by 2032 was such big news.

Three years later, in 2021, LEGO announced that its prototype bricks made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles offered a promising alternative to its oil-based plastic bricks.

But last Monday, after two years of testing, the company shared that what was promising as a prototype isn’t possible at scale because the process required to produce PET-based bricks actually increases carbon emissions.

SHAME!

A LEGO Art World Map (i.e. massive) amount of praise for LEGO

LEGO is doing everything that innovation theorists, consultants, and practitioners recommend:

Setting a clear vision and measurable goals so that people know what the priorities are (reduce carbon emissions), why they’re important (“playing our part in building a sustainable future and creating a better world for our children to inherit”), and the magnitude of change required
Defining what is on and off the table in terms of innovation, specifically that they are not willing to compromise the quality, durability, or “clutch power” of bricks to improve sustainability
Developing a portfolio of bets that includes new materials for products and packaging, new services to keep bricks out of landfills and in kids’ hands, new building and production processes, and active partnerships with suppliers to reduce their climate footprint
Prototyping and learning before committing to scale because what is possible at a prototype level is different than what’s possible at pilot, which is different from what’s possible at scale.
Focusing on the big picture and the long-term by not going for the near-term myopic win of declaring “we’re making bricks from more sustainable materials” and instead deciding “not to progress” with something that, when taken as a whole process, moves the company further away from its 2032 goal.

Just one minifig’s opinion

If we want companies to innovate (and we do), shaming them for falling short of perfection is the absolute wrong way to do it.

Is it disappointing that something that seemed promising didn’t work out? Of course. But it’s just one of many avenues and experiments being pursued. This project ended, but the pursuit of the goal hasn’t.

Is 2 years a long time to figure out that you can’t scale a prototype and still meet your goals? Maybe. But, then again, it took P&G 10 years to figure out how to develop and scale a perforation that improved one-handed toilet paper tearing.

Should LEGO have kept all its efforts and success a secret until everything was perfect and ready to launch? Absolutely not. Sharing its goals and priorities, experiments and results, learnings and decisions shows employees, partners, and other companies what it means to innovate and lead.

Is LEGO perfect? No.

Is it trying to be better? Yes.

Isn’t that what we want?

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Sometimes You Should Collaborate Instead of Compete

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Sometimes You Should Collaborate Instead of Compete

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Boeing and Airbus are arch-rivals, competing vigorously over decades for supremacy in the global aviation market, much like DowDupont and BASF do in chemicals. Yet all of these companies, along with many others, collaborate at places like the Composites Institute (IACMI). They do this not out of any altruism, of course, but self-interest.

It is at places like the Composites Institute that profit-driven companies can explore the future with top notch scientists from places like Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Michigan State University and Purdue as well as dozens of smaller companies active in the space. To not participate would be to risk being cut out of important developments.

This type of activity is not entirely new. In the 80s, semiconductor firms, along with the Department of Defense, created SEMATECH to regain competitiveness against foreign competition, while still fighting it out in the marketplace. The truth is that sometimes you need to collaborate and sometimes you have to compete. Here’s how to know the difference.

The Value Chain and Competitive Advantage

In Michael Porter’s landmark book, Competitive Advantage, the Harvard professor argued that the key to long-term success was to dominate the value chain by maximizing bargaining power among suppliers, customers, new market entrants and substitute goods. The goal was to create a sustainable competitive advantage your rivals couldn’t hope to match.

Porter’s ideas dominated thinking in corporate strategy for decades, yet they had a fatal flaw that wasn’t always obvious. Thinking in terms of value chains is viable when technology is relatively static, but when the marketplace is rapidly evolving it can get you locked out of important ecosystems and greatly diminish your ability to compete.

To understand why, consider open-source software. When Linux first rose to prominence, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called it a cancer. Yet more recently, its current CEO announced that the company loves Linux. That didn’t happen out of any sort of newfound benevolence, but because it recognized that it couldn’t continue to shut itself out and compete.

To thrive in an ecosystem driven world, you must constantly widen and deepen connections. Instead of always looking to maximize bargaining power, you need to look for opportunities to co-create with customers and suppliers, to integrate your products and services with potential substitutes and to form partnerships with new market entrants.

A New Era Of Innovation

The philosopher Martin Heidegger argued that technological advancement is a process of revealing and building. Scientists reveal new phenomena through exploration and experiment and then later engineers figure out how to channel these phenomena to some specific use. For example, the advancements in theoretical physics revealed in the 1920s and 30s were channeled into transistors and microchips later on.

Eventually, the new technology and its implications are understood well enough to support broad adoption and a transformational period ensues. The need for revealing lessens greatly and value shifts towards building rapidly for use. We have seen much of this in the last 30 years as the digital revolution has shifted its emphasis toward skills like rapid prototyping and iteration.

Yet every technology eventually hits theoretical limits and that’s where we are now with respect to digital technology. The fact is that atoms are only so small and the speed of light is only so fast. So that limits how many transistors can fit on a silicon wafer and how fast we can compute by zipping electrons through them. Make no mistake, the future will not be digital.

So we need to embark on a new cycle of revealing and building in areas like quantum computing, synthetic biology and materials science. These things cannot be rapidly prototyped because we simply don’t understand them well enough yet. We need to explore them to reveal and, eventually, to begin building in earnest once again.

Emerging Platforms For Collaboration

Now we can understand why Boeing and Airbus are happy to join organizations like the Composite Institute. Both need to explore and neither can go it alone. They need partners, like research universities, government labs and other firms to help them uncover new things. As open source enthusiasts are fond of saying, “with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”

Yet the Composites Institute is just one node in the network of Manufacturing Institutes set up under the Obama Administration to support this type of collaboration. In areas ranging from advanced fabrics and biofabrication to additive manufacturing and wide-gap semiconductors, firms large and small are working with scientists to uncover new principles.

To understand how different this is from earlier eras, consider the case of IBM. When it developed the PC, it did so largely in secret with a skunk works the company set up in Florida. With quantum computing, however, it has built up an expansive network of collaborators, including labs, customers and startups.

They don’t do this out of any newfound altruism, but because it significantly speeds up the exploration process. As George Crabtree, Director of JCESR, a consortium of national labs, research universities and private firms developing advanced battery technology, put it to me. “Usually discovery propagates at the speed of publication, but here, we can operate within the time frame of the next coffee break.”

Innovation Is Never A Single Event

All too often, we view innovation as the work of a single genius who, in a moment of sudden epiphany, conjures up an idea that changes the world. In reality, things never work like that. Innovation is never a single event, but a process of discovery, engineering and transformation, which usually takes about 30 years to create a significant impact.

It’s important to note, however, that in no way means it takes 30 years to develop an innovative product. Far from it, in fact. What it means is that the next big thing is usually already about 29 years old! The truth is that the next big thing always starts out looking like nothing at all. That’s why it is crucial to invest in exploration to reveal it.

As we have seen, exploration is best done in numbers. Businesses today, such as in the semiconductor industry, that rely on the principles of quantum mechanics revealed in the 1920s and 30s were in no way harmed by the fact that those discoveries were published openly and taught in universities. In fact, they greatly benefitted from it.

Yet the products built on those principles are highly proprietary and the secrets behind the design of those products are closely guarded. That’s the key to navigating collaboration and competition. You collaborate to reveal, but compete to develop and build. To build a great enterprise, you need to learn to do both zealously.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog and previously appeared on Inc.com
— Image credit: Unsplash

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What Company Do You See in the Mirror?

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What Company Do You See in the Mirror?

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

There are many types of companies, and it can be difficult to categorize them. And even within the company itself, there is disagreement about the company’s character. And one of the main sources of disagreement is born from our desire to classify our company as the type we want it to be rather than as the type that it is.

Here’s a process that may bring consensus to your company.

For all the people on the payroll, assign a job type and tally them up for the various types. If most of your people work in finance, you work for a finance company. If most work in manufacturing, you work for a manufacturing company. The same goes for sales, engineering, customer service, consulting. Write your answer here __________.

For all the company’s profits, assign a type and roll up the totals. If most of the profit is generated through the sale of services, you work for a service company. If most of the profit is generated by the sale of software, you work for a software company. If hardware generates profits, you work for a hardware company. If licensing of technology generates profits, you work at a technology company. Which one fits your company best? Write your answer here _________.

For all the people on the payroll, decide if they work to extend and defend the core offerings (the things that you sell today) or create new offerings in new markets that are sold to new customers. If most of the people work on the core offerings, you work for a low-growth company. If most of the people work to create new offerings (non-core), you work for a high-growth company. Which fits you best – extend and defined the core / low-growth or new offerings / high growth? Write your answer here __________ / ___________.

Now, circle your answers below.

We are a (finance, manufacturing, sales, engineering, customer service, consulting) company that generates most of its profits through the sale of (services, hardware, software, technology). And because most of our people work to (extend and defend the core, create new offerings), we are a (low, high) growth company.

To learn what type of company you work for, read the sentences out loud.

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An Innovation Lesson From The Rolling Stones

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GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

If you’re like most people, you’ve faced disappointment. Maybe the love of your life didn’t return your affection, you didn’t get into your dream college, or you were passed over for promotion. It hurts. And sometimes, that hurt lingers for a long time.

Until one day, something happens, and you realize your disappointment was a gift. You meet the true love of your life while attending college at your fallback school, and years later, when you get passed over for promotion, the two of you quit your jobs, pursue your dreams, and live happily ever after. Or something like that.

We all experience disappointment. We also all get to choose whether we stay there, lamenting the loss of what coulda shoulda woulda been, or we can persevere, putting one foot in front of the other and playing The Rolling Stones on repeat:

“You can’t always get what you want

But if you try sometimes, well, you might just find

You get what you need”

That’s life.

That’s also innovation.

As innovators, especially leaders of innovators, we rarely get what we want. But we always get what we need (whether we like it or not)

We want to know.

We need to be comfortable not knowing.

Most of us want to know the answer because if we know the answer, there is no risk. There is no chance of being wrong, embarrassed, judged, or punished. But if there is no risk, there is no growth, expansion, or discovery.

Innovation is something new that creates value. If you know everything, you can’t innovate.

As innovators, we need to be comfortable not knowing. When we admit to ourselves that we don’t know something, we open our minds to new information, new perspectives, and new opportunities. When we say we don’t know, we give others permission to be curious, learn, and create.

We want the creative genius and billion-dollar idea.

We need the team and the steady stream of big ideas.

We want to believe that one person blessed with sufficient time, money, and genius can change the world. Some people like to believe they are that person, and most of us think we can hire that person, and when we do find that person and give them the resources they need, they will give us the billion-dollar idea that transforms our company, disrupts the industry, and change the world.

Innovation isn’t magic. Innovation is team work.

We need other people to help us see what we can’t and do what we struggle to do. The idea-person needs the optimizer to bring her idea to life, and the optimizer needs the idea-person so he has a starting point. We need lots of ideas because most won’t work, but we don’t know which ones those are, so we prototype, experiment, assess, and refine our way to the ones that will succeed.

We want to be special.

We need to be equal.

We want to work on the latest and most cutting-edge technology and discuss it using terms that no one outside of Innovation understands. We want our work to be on stage, oohed and aahed over on analyst calls, and talked about with envy and reverence in every meeting. We want to be the cool kids, strutting around our super hip offices in our hoodies and flip-flops or calling into the meeting from Burning Man.

Innovation isn’t about you. It’s about serving others.

As innovators, we create value by solving problems. But we can’t do it alone. We need experienced operators who can quickly spot design flaws and propose modifications. We need accountants and attorneys who instantly see risks and help you navigate around them. We need people to help us bring our ideas to life, but that won’t happen if we act like we’re different or better. Just as we work in service to our customers, we must also work in service to our colleagues by working with them, listening, compromising, and offering help.

What about you?

What do you want?

What are you learning you need?

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3 Ways to View Your Innovation Basket

(including one that makes Radical Innovation easy)

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You are a rolling stone, and that means you gather no moss! You read the September issue of HBR (and maybe last week’s article), tossed out your innovation portfolio, and wove yourself an innovation basket to “differentiate the concept from finance and avoid the mistake of treating projects like financial securities, where the goal is usually to maximize returns through diversification [and instead] remember that innovation projects are creative acts.”

Then you explained this to your CFO and received side-eye so devastating it would make Sophie Loren proud.

The reality is that the innovation projects you’re working on are investments, and because they’re risky, diversification is the best way to maximize the returns your company needs.

But it’s not the only way we should communicate, evaluate, and treat them.

Different innovation basket views for different customers

When compiling an innovation basket, the highest priority is having a single source of truth. If people in the organization disagree on what is in and out of the basket, how you measure and manage the portfolio doesn’t matter.

But a single source of truth doesn’t mean you can’t look at that truth from multiple angles.

Having multiple views showing the whole basket while being customized to address each of your internal customer’s Jobs to be Done will turbocharge your ability to get support and resources.

The CFO: What returns will we get and when?

The classic core/adjacent/transformationa l portfolio is your answer. By examining each project based on where to play (markets and customers) and how to win (offerings, profit models, key resources and activities), you can quickly assess each project’s relative riskiness, potential return, time to ROI, and resource requirements.

The CEO: How does this support and accelerate our strategic priorities?

This is where the new innovation basket is most helpful. By starting with the company’s strategic goals and asking, “What needs to change to achieve our strategy?” leadership teams immediately align innovation goals with corporate strategic priorities. When projects and investments are placed at the intersection of the goal they support, and the mechanism of value creation (e.g., product, process, brand), the CEO can quickly see how investments align with strategic priorities and actively engage in reallocation decisions.

You: Will any of these ever see the light of day?

As much as you hope the answer is “Yes!”, you know the answer is “Some. Maybe. Hopefully.” You also know that the “some” that survive might not be the biggest or the best of the basket. They’ll be the most palatable.

Ignoring that fact won’t make it untrue. Instead, acknowledge it and use it to expand stakeholders’ palates.

Start by articulating your organization’s identity, the answers to “who we are” and “what we do.”

Then place each innovation in one of three buckets based on its fit with the organization’s identity:

Identity-enhancing innovations that enhance or strengthen the identity
Identity-stretching innovations that “do not fit with the core of an organization’s identity, but are related enough that if the scope of organizational identity were expanded, the innovation would fit.”
Identity-challenging innovations that are “in direct conflict with the existing organizational identity.”

It probably won’t surprise you that identity-enhancing innovations are far more likely to receive internal support than identity-challenging innovations. But what may surprise you is that core, adjacent, and transformational innovations can all be identity-enhancing.

For example, Luxxotica and Bausch & Lomb are both in the vision correction industry (eyeglasses and contact lenses, respectively) but have very different identities. Luxxotica views itself as “an eyewear company,” while Bausch & Lomb sees itself as an “eye health company” (apologies for the puns).

When laser-vision correction surgery became widely available, Bausch & Lomb was an early investor because, while the technology would be considered a breakthrough innovation, it was also identity-enhancing. A decade later, Bausch & Lomb’s surgical solutions and ophthalmic pharmaceuticals businesses account for 38% of the company’s revenue and one-third of the growth.

One basket. Multiple Views. All the Answers.

Words are powerful, and using a new one, especially in writing, can change your behavior and brain. But calling a portfolio a basket won’t change the results of your innovation efforts. To do that, you need to understand why you have a basket and look at it in all the ways required to maximize creativity, measure results, and avoid stakeholder side-eye.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Why You Should Care About Service Design

What is Service Design?

RB: Hi, Leala, thanks for taking the time to talk with me today.

LA: My pleasure! I’m excited about this topic. I’ve managed teams with service designers, and I’ve always been impressed by the magical way they brought together experience strategy, UX, and operations.

RB: I felt the same way after you explained it to me. Before we get too geeked up about the topic, let’s go back to the beginning and define “service.”

LA: Service is something that helps someone accomplish a goal. As a result, every business needs service design because every business is in the service industry.

RB: I’ll be honest, I got a little agitated when I read that because that’s how I define “solution.” But then I saw your illustration explaining that service design moves us from seeing and problem-solving isolated moments to seeing an integrated process. And that’s when it clicked.

LA: That illustration is from Lou Downe’s talk Design in Government Impact for All . Service Design helps us identify what customers want and how to deliver those services effectively by bringing together all the pieces within the organization. It moves us away from fragmented experiences created by different departments and teams within the same company to an integrated process that enables customers to achieve their goals.

Why You Need It

RB: It seems so obvious when you say it. Yet so often, the innovation team spends all their time focused on the customer only to develop the perfect solution that, when they toss it over the wall for colleagues to make, they’re told it’s not possible, and everything stops. Why aren’t we always considering both sides?

LA: One reason, I think, is people don’t want to add one more person to the team. Over the past two decades, the number of individuals required to build something has grown exponentially. It used to be that one person could build your whole website, but now you need user experience designers, researchers, product managers, and more. I think it’s just overwhelming for people to add another individual to the mix. We believe we have all the tools to fix the problem, so we don’t want to add another voice, even if that voice explains the huge disconnect between everything built and their operational failures.

RB: Speaking of operational failures, one of the most surprising things about Service Design is that it almost always results in cost savings. That’s not something most people think about when they hear “design.”

LA: The significant impact on the bottom line is one of the most persuasive aspects of service design. It shifts the focus from pretty pictures to the actual cost implications. Bringing in the operational side of the business is crucial. Building a great customer journey and experience is important, but it’s also important to tie it back to lost revenue and increased cost to serve

Proof It Works

LA: One of the most compelling cases I recently read was about Autodesk’s transition to SaaS, they brought in a service design company called Future Proof. Autodesk wanted to transition from a software licensing model to a software-as-a-service model. It’s a significant transition not just in terms of the business model and pricing but also in how it affects customers.

If you’re a customer of Autodesk, you used to pay a one-time fee for your software, but now you are paying based on users and services. Budgeting becomes messy. The costs are no longer simple and predictable. Plus, it raises lots of questions about the transition, cost predictability, control over access, managing subscriptions, and flexibility. Notice that these issues are about people managing their money and increasing costs. These are the areas where service design can truly help.

Future Proof conducted customer interviews, analyzed each stage of the customer journey, looked at pricing models and renewal protocols, and performed usability studies. When they audited support ticket data for the top five common customer issues, they realized that if Autodesk didn’t change their model, the cost of running software for every customer would increase by 40%, and profit margins would decrease by 15% to 20%.

Autodesk made the change, revenue increased significantly, and their stock price doubled. Service design allows for this kind of analysis and consideration of operational costs.

How to Learn More

RB: Wow, not many things can deliver better service, happier customers, and doubling a stock price. Solid proof that companies, and innovation teams in particular, need to get smart on service design. We’ve talked a lot about the What and Why of Service Design. How can people learn more about the How?

LA: Lou Downe’s book is a great place to start Good Services: How to Design Services That Work. So is Woo, Wow, and Win: Service Design, Strategy, and the Art of Customer Delight by Thomas A Stewart and Patricia O’Connell. I also recommend people check out The Service Design Network for tools and case studies and TheyDo, which helps companies visualize and manage their service design.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Three Maps to Innovation Success

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3 Maps to Innovation Success

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Several years ago, my now-husband and I were in London. It was his first time in the city but my 4^th or 5^th so, naturally, I talked a big game about how well I knew the city and how I would be, with the help of our handy tourist map, our tour guide.

Things were going fine until I took the wrong road leading away from Buckingham Palace. I thought we were heading straight to Parliament. We were not.

After a walk that lasted far longer than it should have, he nervously asked,” We’re lost, aren’t we?”

With wounded pride and astounding stubbornness, I declared, “We’re not lost. I know exactly where we are. It’s just not where we want to be.”

Maps are incredibly useful. Until they’re not.

Innovation literature has more maps than a Rick Steves’ guidebook, and most are quite useful. If they’re used at the right time for the right purposes in the right way by the right people (which is a lot of rights that have to be right).

Here are three of my favorites – 2 classics and a new one that blew my mind

Stakeholder Map:

Stakeholder Map

Avoid getting blind-sided, buttering up the wrong people, or ignoring potential champions

What it is: A visual representation of the people, roles, and groups who (1) are involved in and affected by a challenge or system and (2) have the power to affect or are likely to be affected by the proposed solution. Stakeholders can be internal and/or external to the organization
Why you need one: To prioritize where and how you spend your time understanding, influencing, communicating, collaborating, persuading, and selling
When to create it: At the very beginning of a project and then updating as you learn more
How to use it: Interaction Design Foundation explains it simply and concretely:
- Brainstorm who your internal AND external stakeholders are
- Prioritize them using an Influence x Interest two-by-two matrix
- Engage and communicate based on their place in the chart

Journey Map

Customer Journey Map

Spot opportunities to create radical value through incremental innovations

What it is: A visual representation of what your customer/consumer/user does, thinks, and feels as they move from awareness of a need/want/JTBD to loyalty to a solution. Journey maps should dig deep into moments where customers currently interact with your organization and highlight opportunities where interaction can and should occur
Why you need one: To identify opportunities for innovation by surfacing customer current pain points between your customer and your business (or competitors if your business isn’t there and can/should be)
When to create it:
- Create the basic structure (start and end point) or a hypothesized journey before primary research.
- During research, work with individual stakeholders to develop their maps using (and adapting) your initial structure.
- At the end of research and before ideation, synthesize insights into the smallest possible number of maps to use as inspiration for solution brainstorming
How to use it: IDEO offers simple instructions and tips based on practical use:
- Brainstorm who your internal AND external stakeholders are
- Prioritize them using an Influence x Interest two-by-two matrix
- Engage and communicate based on their place in the chart

Service Map:

Service Design Blueprint

Make journey maps actionable (and see how your innovation affects your operations)

What it is: A visual representation of the people, touchpoints, processes, and technology required/desired both frontstage (what customers see) and backstage (what happens behind the scenes). Similar to process documentation with a special focus on the customer
Why you need one: Doing something new (i.e., innovating) often requires changes to internal operations, organizations, and processes, but these changes are often ignored or unexplored until late in the process, potentially slowing or stopping the development and launch of a new solution.
When to create it: Draft a baseline current state once you have 50% confidence in the general area or type of solution to be created (e.g., we want to improve the use of digital tools in classrooms, so let’s create a service map for our current digital offerings and operations). Then continually revise and update it as the solution/service develops.
How to use it: Interaction Design Foundation offers practical instructions and advice.
- Identify the service to be blueprinted
- Identify the customers to be service
- Examine the customers’ experience of the process (customer journey map)
- Identify the role and impact of employees, processes, technology, and other operational and organizational factors on the service
- Link activities together to show a natural flow between frontstage and backstage

What’s your favorite map (innovation or otherwise)?

Image credits: Pixabay, Interaction Design Foundation

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Turn Cynics into Believers in Three Simple Steps

Why You Need to Say Yes to Dr. No

Let’s be honest, no one wants to do this. At best, Dr. No’s negativity and smug predictions of inevitable failure are downers, dampening and discouraging the culture of questioning, experimentation, and learning you’re trying to create. At worst, it can feel like working with a saboteur hell-bent on doing the “I told You So” dance atop the ruins of your innovation team.

But just like eating your vegetables, you need to do it because it will make you and your innovation efforts healthier, stronger, and more likely to live longer.

How to Say Yes to Dr. No

Step 1: Be Human. Together.

As with many things in life, the first step is changing how you think and behave. Naturally, you have feelings, perceptions, and even predictions about Dr. No and their likely behavior. Set them aside. Not because they’re incorrect but because you can’t move forward if you’re standing in a hole.

So, start with what you have in common – Dr. No is a human being, just like you.

Like other human beings, Dr. No needs to feel connected and accepted. When they don’t feel connected and accepted, they will feel defensive and under attack and respond by taking steps to protect themselves and their jobs. But when they connect and feel accepted, you have the foundation for psychological safety.

To establish a connection and foster a feeling of acceptance, try:

Acknowledging the importance of the job they’re doing and its impact on the business
Asking questions to understand better how they think and what they prioritize
Building a rapport by sharing some of your aspirations and concerns and asking about theirs

Step 2: Invite Them on the Journey

People love what they create. It’s the only way to explain why people have outsized attachments to IKEA furniture, distorted art projects, and failed products.

Invite Dr. No to be part of the creation process. Don’t tell them they’re part of it, that’s the business version of kidnapping, and no one likes being kidnapped.

Instead, express your desire for them to be involved because you value their perspective. Ask them how and when they want to be involved. Share how you want them to be involved. Then work together to find a solution that works for both of you. Stay open to experimenting and changing how and when involvement happens. Make this a learning process for both of you as you work to do what’s best for the business.

Step 3: Stay curious

One of the most valuable lessons from Ted Lasso (and not Walt Whitman) is the importance of being curious, not judgmental.

As you do the work of innovation, there will be times when Dr. No lives up (or down) to their name. No matter how much time you invested in your relationship, how much psychological safety you built, or how involved they were in the process, they will still say No.

If you are judgmental, that No is the end of the conversation. If you’re curious, it’s the start.

So, get curious and ask,

What causes you to say that? (probe on what they see, think, and feel)
Have you seen something like this before? What was the context? What happened?
What do you need to see to say Yes?

Engage them in solving the problem with you rather than defending themselves against you.

Can Dr. No become Dr. Yes?

Maybe.

I’ve seen it happen, even to the point that Dr. No became the team’s loudest champion.

I’ve also seen it not happen. But even then, the No is less harsh, devastating, and final.

You won’t know until you try. Certainly, you won’t say no to that.

Image credit: Pexels

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3 Ways to Make Smarter Decisions – Confidently

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3 Ways to Make Smarter Decisions - Confidently

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

When my niece was 4 years old, she looked at her mom (my sister) and said, “I can’t wait until I’m an adult so I can be in charge and make all the decisions.” My sister laughed and laughed.

Being in charge looks glamorous from the outside, but it is challenging, painful, and sometimes soul-wrenching. Never is this truer than when you must make a tough decision and don’t have all the data you want or need.

But lately, I’ve noticed more and more executives defer making decisions. They’ll say they want more data, to hear what another executive thinks, or are nervous that we’re rushing to decide.

This deferral is a HUGE problem because making decisions is literally their job! After all, as Norman Schwarzkopf wrote in his autobiography, “When placed in command, take charge.”

When you decide, you lose

A decision is “a choice that you make about something after thinking about several possibilities.” Seems innocent enough, right? Coke or Pepsi. Paper or plastic. Ariana Madix or Raquel Leviss (if you don’t know about this one, consider yourself lucky. If you choose to know about it, click here).

The problem with making decisions is that loss is unavoidable. Heck, the word “decide” comes from the Latin roots “de,” meaning off, and “caedre,” meaning cut. When you choose Coke, paper bags, or Ariana, you are cutting off the opportunity to drink Pepsi with that meal, use a plastic bag to carry your purchases or support Rachel in a pointless pop culture debate.

Decisions get more challenging as the stakes get higher because the fear of loss skyrockets. Loss aversion, a cognitive bias describing why the psychological pain of loss is twice as acute as the pleasure of gain, is common in cognitive psychology, decision theory, and behavioral economics. You see this bias in action when someone refuses to ask questions or challenge the status quo, to take a good deal because it’s below their initial baseline, or to sell an asset (like a house) for less than they paid for it.

No decision is the worst decision

Deciding not to decide is often the worst decision of all. Because it feels like you’re avoiding loss and increasing your odds of making the right decision by gathering more data and input, it’s easy to forget that you’re losing time, employee engagement and morale, and potential revenue and profit.

When you decide not to decide, progress slows or even stops. No decision gives your competition time to catch up or even pass you. Your team gets frustrated, morale drops, and people search for other opportunities to progress and have an impact. The date of the first revenue slips further into the future, slowly becoming just a theoretical number in a spreadsheet.

Decide how to decide

In a VUCA world, a perfect, risk-free decision that offers only upside does not exist. If it did, the business wouldn’t need an executive with your experience, intellect, and courage. Yet here you are.

It’s your job to make decisions.

Make that job easier by deciding how to decide

1. Tell people what you need to see to say Yes. “I’ll know it when I see it” is one of the biggest management cop-outs ever. If you don’t know what you want, don’t waste money and time requiring your team to become mind readers. But you probably know what you want. You’re just afraid of being wrong. Instead of allowing your fear to fuel inefficiency, tell the team what you need or want to see and that, as they make progress, that request might change. Then set regular check-ins so that if/when it happens, it happens quickly and is communicated clearly.

2. Break big decisions down into little decisions. I once worked with a team that had an idea for a new product. They planned to pitch to the executive committee and request 3 million dollars to develop and launch the idea. After some coaxing, we decided to avoid that disaster and brainstormed everything that needed to be true to make the idea work. We devised a plan to test the three assumptions that, if we were wrong, would instantly kill the idea. When we pitched to the executive committee, we received an immediate Yes.

3. Present options and implications. As anyone with a toddler knows, you don’t ask yes or no questions. You give them options – do you want to wear the yellow or pink shirt? If they pick something else, like their Batman costume, you explain the implications of that decision and why the options previously presented are better. Sometimes they pick the yellow shirt. Sometimes they pick the Batman costume. You could force them to make the right decision, but no one wins. (Yes, I just compared managers to toddlers. Prove me wrong).

It’s your decision

Being in charge requires making decisions. When you decide, you lose the option (maybe temporarily, maybe forever) to pursue a different path. But you can’t be afraid to do it.

After all, “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.”

Image credit: Pixabay

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Human-Centered Change and Innovation

Innovation, change and transformation thought leadership, lovingly curated by Braden Kelley

Category Archives: Strategy

AI and Human Creativity Solving Complex Problems Together

Moving into Unchartered Job and Skills Territory

Developing a Co-Creative Thinking Partnership

Creative Problem Solving

Developing Creative Problem-Solving Skills

Succeeding in the Age of AI

Find Out More About Our Work at ImagineNation™

LEGO Knows Why Companies Don’t Innovate

A LEGO Atlantis 8073 Manta Warrior (i.e., tiny) bit of context

A LEGO Art World Map (i.e. massive) amount of praise for LEGO

Just one minifig’s opinion

Sometimes You Should Collaborate Instead of Compete

The Value Chain and Competitive Advantage

A New Era Of Innovation

Emerging Platforms For Collaboration

Innovation Is Never A Single Event

What Company Do You See in the Mirror?

Three Maps to Innovation Success

Stakeholder Map:

Journey Map

Service Map:

Turn Cynics into Believers in Three Simple Steps

Why You Need to Say Yes to Dr. No

How to Say Yes to Dr. No

Can Dr. No become Dr. Yes?

3 Ways to Make Smarter Decisions – Confidently

When you decide, you lose

No decision is the worst decision

Decide how to decide

It’s your decision