Tag Archives: Design Thinking

How to Cultivate a Design Thinking Mindset

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In today’s fast-paced world, innovation and adaptability are key to success. Design Thinking offers a structured yet flexible approach for organizations to tackle complex problems and design creative solutions. By cultivating a design thinking mindset, teams can efficiently address challenges in a human-centered way. Here’s how you can develop this crucial mindset in your organization.

Understanding Design Thinking

Design Thinking is an iterative process at its core, focused on understanding the user, challenging assumptions, and redefining problems. It involves five phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. This approach not only fosters innovation but also empowers teams to create products or solutions that genuinely resonate with users.

Core Principles of a Design Thinking Mindset

Before diving into practical steps, let’s explore some key principles of a Design Thinking mindset:

Empathy: Understanding the needs and experiences of users.
Collaboration: Bringing together diverse perspectives.
Experimentation: Encouraging a culture of prototyping and testing.
User-Centered Focus: Placing the user at the center of design efforts.
Iterative Learning: Constantly iterating based on feedback and research.

Steps to Cultivate a Design Thinking Mindset

1. Foster Empathy

Empathy is the foundation of Design Thinking. To cultivate it, encourage team members to engage directly with customers. Observational research, interviews, and feedback sessions can help them view the world through the users’ eyes. This understanding leads to deeper insights and more user-focused solutions.

2. Embrace a Collaborative Environment

Diverse teams bring various perspectives that spark creativity and innovation. Encourage collaboration by breaking down silos within the organization. Create spaces where interdisciplinary teams can work together seamlessly, fostering a culture of open communication and shared objectives.

3. Encourage Experimentation

Creating a safe space for experimentation is vital. Allow your team to take risks and learn from failures without fear. Prototyping and testing ideas early in the process enables teams to learn from each iteration quickly, improving overall solution quality.

4. Keep the User at the Core

A user-centered focus is essential. Regularly involving users in the design process ensures that the final product aligns with their needs and preferences. Methods such as user personas and journey mapping can keep your team focused on delivering value to the user.

5. Iterate Based on Feedback

Design Thinking is an ongoing process. Encourage continuous learning by iterating based on real user feedback. This not only refines solutions but also ensures they remain relevant and effective over time.

Case Studies

Case Study 1: Airbnb

Airbnb is a prime example of how design thinking can transform a business. With the company struggling in its early days, the founders decided to deeply understand their users. By renting out their space on Airbnb, they walked in their users’ shoes. This firsthand experience and empathy led them to create features that improved the user experience significantly, such as professional photography services for listings. This approach played a significant role in Airbnb’s growth and success.

Case Study 2: IBM

IBM adopted Design Thinking to reinvigorate its innovation efforts across multiple departments. By training their staff in Design Thinking methods and principles, IBM emphasized empathy, collaboration, and iteration. This cultural shift encouraged teams to focus on user outcomes and iterate on solutions rapidly. As a result, IBM increased its speed to market and improved customer satisfaction substantially, exemplifying the transformative power of a design thinking mindset.

Conclusion

Embracing a Design Thinking mindset offers a competitive advantage in today’s challenging business landscape. By focusing on empathy, collaboration, experimentation, a user-centered approach, and continual iteration, organizations can drive meaningful innovation and gain deeper insights into their users’ needs. Start by nurturing these principles within your teams, and watch as new, creative solutions come to life.

Implementing Design Thinking isn’t a one-off project; it’s a continuous journey that requires commitment and openness. However, the rewards in creativity, innovation, and user satisfaction make it a powerful strategy for any forward-thinking organization.

Extra Extra: Because innovation is all about change, Braden Kelley’s human-centered change methodology and tools are the best way to plan and execute the changes necessary to support your innovation and transformation efforts — all while literally getting everyone all on the same page for change. Find out more about the methodology and tools, including the book Charting Change by following the link. Be sure and download the TEN FREE TOOLS while you’re here.

Image credit: Pexels

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Design Thinking versus Human-Centered Design

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Clearing the Confusion

Design Thinking versus Human-Centered Design

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In the realm of innovation and creative problem-solving, two approaches often emerge as frontrunners: Design Thinking and Human-Centered Design. While these methodologies share similarities, they are not identical. Understanding their nuances is essential for organizations striving to remain competitive and truly meet the needs of their users.

Understanding Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a solution-focused methodology that revolves around a structured innovation cycle. It comprises five stages:

Empathize
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Test

This approach is both iterative and non-linear, allowing teams to move back and forth between phases as needed. It emphasizes understanding the end-user, challenging assumptions, and redefining problems to identify alternative strategies and solutions.

Exploring Human-Centered Design

Human-Centered Design (HCD), on the other hand, is an approach that prioritizes the users, their needs, and their challenges at every phase of the design process. HCD is deeply rooted in empathy for the user, with a strong focus on co-creation and active involvement of stakeholders throughout the design and development process.

HCD follows a similar journey to Design Thinking with slightly different emphases: Inspiration, Ideation, and Implementation. Its essence lies in creating solutions that are not only innovative but also truly resonate with and enhance users’ experiences.

Key Differences

While both methodologies prioritize the user and involve iterative processes, the key differences lie in their application and focus:

Application Scope: Design Thinking is often applied more broadly beyond design contexts, in corporate strategy, service design, and product management. Human-Centered Design, however, remains closely tied to the design field itself.
Emphasis: HCD places a stronger emphasis on empathy and user engagement throughout the process, while Design Thinking maintains a balance between user needs and business viability.

Case Study 1: IBM’s Adoption of Design Thinking

IBM’s Transformation Through Design Thinking

IBM is an exemplary case study of how embracing Design Thinking cultivates innovation. Traditionally known for its technical and engineering prowess, IBM found itself needing to pivot towards a more user-oriented approach to keep pace with evolving market demands.

By training over 100,000 employees in Design Thinking, IBM fundamentally shifted its corporate culture. This initiative encouraged cross-functional collaboration and a deeper connection to user insights. As a result, IBM was able to accelerate product development cycles and significantly improve the customer experience across their service offerings.

An example of this transformation is the redesign of IBM’s enterprise cloud offerings. Through Design Thinking workshops, they discovered that the complexity of their product was hindering user adoption. By empathizing with the user and iterating on design prototypes, IBM streamlined its cloud interface, leading to a significant uptick in user satisfaction and engagement.

Case Study 2: IDEO and Human-Centered Design in Action

IDEO’s Human-Centered Design Approach to Healthcare

IDEO, a global design company, is a beacon of Human-Centered Design, particularly renowned for its work in healthcare. One compelling case is IDEO’s collaboration with the healthcare sector to redesign patient experience.

By employing HCD techniques, IDEO involved patients, doctors, and nurses in the entire design process. Through in-depth interviews, shadowing medical staff, and empathy-building exercises, IDEO identified that the anxiety and fear surrounding hospital visits stemmed largely from uncertainty and lack of clear communication.

Taking these insights, IDEO created new hospital layouts that integrated clearer signage and communication touchpoints. They developed prototype communication tools that ensured patients were continually informed of treatment processes. These changes dramatically reduced patient anxiety and improved overall satisfaction scores in the hospitals they partnered with.

Conclusion: Bridging the Gap

To clear the confusion between Design Thinking and Human-Centered Design, organizations need to realize that while both are valuable, their adoption depends on specific needs and contexts. Design Thinking may be better suited for broader strategic or organizational innovation, whereas Human-Centered Design offers unparalleled depth in user-focused product and experience development.

Ultimately, integrating the strengths of both methodologies can create a powerful design and innovation strategy that not only meets user needs but also drives meaningful business results. By cultivating a culture of empathy and user engagement, organizations can transcend traditional problem-solving paradigms and achieve sustainable innovation.

Image credit: Pexels

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What You Must Know Before Leading a Design Thinking Workshop

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What You Need to Know Before Leading a Design Thinking Workshop

GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

Leading a design thinking workshop can completely transform your company for the better. According to the 71% of brands that champion design thinking, making a shift to a design-centered mindset will dramatically improve productivity and work ethic amongst your staff.

Are you ready to take your team to the next level?

If you’re ready to take your team to the next level by leading a design thinking workshop, it’s essential to know the basics of design thinking first. Having a deeper understanding of this human-centered approach will make it easier to get your team on board with this process.

In this article we’ll cover the basics of design thinking and the best way to approach leading a workshop for your team with the following topics:

What is Design Thinking?
A History of Design Methodology
The Six Phases of Design Thinking
Leading a Design Thinking Workshop

Understanding Design Thinking

Design thinking is a creative problem-solving method that centers on the needs of the end-user, by considering them first when creating products or services. When you authentically understand the wants and needs of the consumer, you can develop successful products and services they value and use to improve their lives.

Ultimately, a design thinking approach helps you understand the experience of the end-user by adopting the end user’s mindset and creating your product or service from this perspective.

A History of Design Thinking

The human-centered design process is an extension of the design thinking methodology. Though scientists, creatives, scholars, analysts, and engineers have studied this methodology for the past several years, the idea to apply a design mindset to problem-solving as a business strategy didn’t exist until the cognitive scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Herbert A. Simon coined the term in 1969. Simon explained the modern idea of design as an applicable way of thinking about business in his book, The Sciences of the Artificial.

Whiteboarding

Since Simon began the conversation about the design thinking methodology, many academic elites and experts have adopted this concept and expanded upon it. Yet one thing remains the same: the user should be at the core of any design process. The human-centered process is an exploration of how to accurately and innovatively create a product or service that satisfies consumers’ wants and needs.

“We must design for the way people behave, not for how we would wish them to behave.” –Donald A. Norman, Living with Complexity

Women with Laptop Pexels

The Six Phases of Design Thinking

Let’s take a look at the six phases of the human-centered design process to learn how to create with purpose as you prepare for leading a design thinking workshop.

1. Observe & Understand Users’ Behavior

The first phase of the design thinking process is to observe and understand the end user’s behavior to learn as much as possible about their needs. This allows you to better understand the people you are designing for as you approach problem-solving from their perspective. Doing so will allow you to deeply empathize with them and identify opportunities to better cater to and address these issues.

By identifying the end user’s behavioral patterns you’ll have a clearer understanding of what your customers enjoy and what they are dissatisfied with. This phase allows for greater innovation as you build trust and connect to your consumers.

Women Collaboration Pexels

2. Ideation

The ideation phase focuses on brainstorming new solutions based on what you learned by observing the end-user. Remember to stay focused on a human-centered design process while generating ideas. The use of divergent thinking is critical in this stage to foster creativity and generate as many ideas as possible.

In the ideation phase, everything is fair game. For example, instead of worrying about the details of how your potential ideas will work, focus on “why not?”

There are no right or wrong answers, only potential creative solutions to the problems you’ve identified. When you prioritize the needs and desires of the people you are creating for, you’ll arrive at the most successful solutions that you’ll continue to refine through the rest of the design thinking process.

3. Prototype

Now that you have potential solutions, it’s time to bring your best ideas to life with rapid prototypes. In this phase, you’ll test your ideas in real-time with real people to get their feedback. Rapid prototypes are quick and easy versions of the ideas you want to create. Their role is to ensure that your vision is on target and it allows you space to make amendments based on feedback before you make the final product.

This experimental phase isn’t about perfection. The goal is to create a quick, tangible prototype so that you can test it.

Group of People Whiteboarding Pexels

4. Feedback

In the feedback phase of the design process, you’ll test your prototype. This is perhaps the most vital part of the human-centered design process as it will determine whether or not your idea works for the people you are designing for.

Get your prototype in the hands of your target consumer and ask them: how and why does this product/service achieve or fail to reach your needs and desires? During this stage, you’ll want to collect as many details as possible from testers as you’ll use this feedback to finalize your solution.

5. Integration

The integration phase of the design thinking process helps you to identify the usefulness of the proposed solution. Consider the feedback you receive and how you can implement it into your design to make it better. This is a fluid process: integrate, test, and repeat until you reach the best version of your idea. Once your solution is fully-fledged and replicable, it’s time to share it.

6. Application

It’s time to send your idea out into the world! During this last stage of the design thinking process, make the final prototype and share it. It’s important to keep an eye on changes in your target audience and their needs and desires as time progresses so that you can make adaptations to your design as necessary.

With each new update, return to phase one and repeat the process for best results. Remember that the user’s needs change over time, so it is important to anticipate future alterations to best serve consumers’ changing needs.

Leading a Design Thinking Workshop

When we approach innovation with a human-centered design process, we are able to empathize with and therefore better understand the end-user and what they truly desire. Everything we create is an extension from t

When we approach innovation with a human-centered design process, we can empathize with and therefore better understand the end-user and what they truly desire. By leading a design thinking workshop, you’ll encourage your team to innovate in this human-centered way. As you create everything from this level of self-awareness, you’ll ultimately develop better products and services as you improve your company and team as well.

Once you have a clear understanding of the design thinking process, you’ll be able to lead your design thinking workshop with your team. Whether your design sprint is a few days or a few hours, a well-executed design thinking workshop will help you keep your customers’ needs top of mind.

Hiring a professional facilitator is one of the best ways to lead a design thinking workshop at your company. At Voltage Control, our team of facilitators is happy to assist you in your design thinking needs. With a clear understanding of this methodology and an effort to lead your team with the same mentality, you’re sure to see the benefits of adopting a design thinking approach.

This article originally appeared on VoltageControl.com, you can find it HERE.

Do you want to learn more about human-centered design?

Voltage Control facilitates design thinking workshops, innovation sessions, and Design Sprints. Please reach out at hello@voltagecontrol.com for a consultation.

Image credits: Pexels, Unsplash

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Problem Seeking 101

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Problem Seeking 101 Charles Kettering

GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers

When federal agencies in charge of protecting Americans’ health recommended that there should be a pause in the administration of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID-19 vaccine, state health leaders listened and suspended its use. People may experience a mild headache after vaccination. The headaches associated with the blood clot occur one to three weeks after the shot and are more severe.

One expert recommended asking patients, “Is this like headaches you’ve had before? Or is the quality of the headache something that you’ve never experienced before?”

The 12 steps to biomedical innovation starts with being a problem seeker, not a problem solver. Eventually, to be successful, customer problems and solutions need to meld around a VAST business model i.e. one that is not just profitable, but that demonstrates:

1. Validity Regardless or which elements of your model you choose, they have to be valid. In other words, the dogs have to eat the food. When the dog won’t eat the food, you’ll have to change your approach and try again.

2. Automaticity At the very start of planning your venture, you should think about how you are going to work on your business, not in it. Reducing hands on time to manage operations will give you more time to lead the company and create strategies for growth and give you more personal time to enjoy the fruits of your success. Outsourcing, automating or using technologies to ramp up operations, sourcing and distribution is a key part of scaling, and something that investors want to see…which brings us to the next piece.

3. Scalability Your business model is primarily a way to create a business machine that can produce an infinite number of products. Think of it as a device that takes in customers and creates profits out the other end and can do so at quicker and quicker speeds.

4. Time and Traction Finally, your model need to create as much profit as quickly as possible with a growing customer base that is loyal to your brand.

Many doctors, scientists and engineers start with solutions looking for a problem. Some find it or, eventually, as their inventions or technology evolves, markets appear to those who have the talent to see them. The more typical model, and one that is more common among the startup community, is to find a problem and devise a solution.

But, how do you pick the IDEAL opportunity given the almost infinite possibilities? Here are some tips:

I Identify the problem: Seeing a problem is an important skill and core competency of savvy entrepreneurs. It typically is the result of personal experience, primary research talking or watching others or secondary research. Whichever problem you pick, look for ones that:

Will make a very big difference in people’s lives if you solve it
Has the potential to be very profitable or create lots of user defined value, typically at least 10x the value compared to existing offerings or the status quo.
Is something that taps into your passion or satisfies your psychic need
Anticipates future customer/stakeholder wants and needs
Has an extremely high level of market pain and frustration, where customers know they have a problem and have unsuccessfully and repeatedly tried to solve it
Has limited barriers to entry
Has the right potential risk-return profile that matches yours
Is not one dominated by incumbents
Is easy to explain and understand
Someone is willing to pay enough for your solution so that you can make it profitably

Where massive success comes – where a good idea becomes great – is when it meets five simple criteria:

It is the first solution to a problem or gap (it is “innovative”)
It is the first WORKING solution to a problem or gap (it is “innovative and effective”)
It is the most affordable, comparable, option for its market (it is “innovative, effective and affordable”)
It consistently examines its effectiveness and seeks to improve (it is “innovative, effective, affordableand adaptive”)
It is powerful enough to create a loyal following that naturally wants to – and does – share the idea with others (it is “innovative, effective, affordable, adaptive and influential”)

How do you find problems worth solving?

1. Solve a problem that you already face
2. Observe a problem and solve it
3. Anticipate a problem and solve it
4. Create a problem and solve it
5. You have a personal stake in solving it
6. The 3 W’s: Will customers WANT it, is it WORTH it, can you WIN at it?

Identifying a problem starts with identifying a customer archetype that has it. Beyond guessing, identifying that person and describing their problem can only be done by talking to, working with or observing potential customers.

Doctors call it taking a pain history and documenting the chief pain complaint, the history of the present illness and their past medical history. In other words, talk to people and have them describe:

Where is your pain?
How bad is it?
How long have you had it?
On a scale of 1-10, how would you describe it?
What have you done in the past to make it better?
What makes it better or worse?
What other problems do you have that makes the pain better or worse?
How have you treated it in the past?
Is the pain constant or intermittent?
What would you pay to relieve the pain?

Startup geeks call this process customer discovery by “getting out of the building”. Doctors call it making house calls. Here is the ultimate list of customer discovery/development questions.

Here is a customer interview script.

Remote patient programs , for example, don’t just automatically work out. They have to be carefully planned and developed in order to gain traction and produce results. Most importantly, they have to target the right patients.

D Define and represent the problem

Primary or secondary research should give you some idea about :

Market size
Market growth
The competitive landscape
Where you intend to play
What you see that others don’t.

Once you have done these things, then you can:

E Explore and experiment with possible strategies or solutions and risks involved with each by identifying customer segments and creating a value proposition canvas and a business model canvas

Here’s an into to value proposition design

When you create new value propositions and growth you need to focus on high-value customer jobs. These are not necessarily the most important jobs from your customers’ perspective. They are the most promising jobs from your perspective as a solutions provider. High-value customer jobs are characterized by the following, they are:

Important: When customer’s success or failure to get the job done leads to essential gains or extreme pains, respectively. Examples are managing the security risk of an ecommerce website, or designing and implementing the strategy at a company.
Tangible: When the pains or gains related to a job can be felt or experienced immediately or often. Examples are traffic during your daily commute, or managing a constantly overflowing email inbox.
Unsatisfied: When current value propositions don’t help to relieve pains or create desired gains in a satisfying way. Maybe the desired value proposition doesn’t even exist. Examples are the inexistent cure for hangovers, or calorie-free chocolate.
Lucrative: When many people have the job with related pains and gains or when a small number of customers are willing to pay a premium. An example of the former is listening to music on the go. An example of the latter are rare diseases for which customers or insurers are willing to pay a premium.

Here is a list of stakeholders that represent customer segments. But, job title is only one part of creating a customer persona. Here’s what Linkedin Sales Navigator won’t tell you and how to fill the gaps.

If you listen to or watch customers enough, you’ll be surprised at what you’ll discover. Here are some examples.

Don’t send out a questionnaire. Here’s why you need to interview stakeholders to identify their value factors that are most important until you get saturation.

A Act on a selected strategy or solution

L Look back and evaluate

Most businesses fail because 1) they don’t offer the right value proposition-market fit or 2) they don’t have a viable business model. Your business model canvas is anchored on your value proposition. Your value proposition (doing the job the customer wants you to do, removing the pain they have to endure to do it now and offering a product that meets or exceeds customer expectations) starts with understanding your customers. Focusing on your customers or market segments starts with those who touch the problem every day.

Design thinking describes this process i.e. understanding a problem from the customer perspective, putting yourself in their shoes by either interviewing them, watching them or experiencing what they experience. and create a range of solutions that you then design, prototype and test.

Design Thinking Diagram

Customer centered design means you have to learn how to talk to humans.

Before you do all this, though, decide whether the industry or market you decide to tackle is, the words of my friend, Tom Higley, the CEO at www.101010.net, the right founder-opportunity fit. That usually means finding independence, mastery and purpose and scratching all those psychological itches, be they pathological or not.

Perhaps the most powerful problem is one that you make personal but don’t take personally.

Here’s the problem with saying, “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.”

The education pioneer, John Dewey, said, “a problem well-put is half solved”

That happens when you arm yourself initially with the information you get from being a problem seeker, not a problem solver. Even academic scientists are getting the message.

Image credits: MisterInnovation.com, Interaction Design Foundation

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600 Free Innovation, Transformation and Design Quote Slides

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600 Innovation, Transformation and Design Quote Slides on Innovation, Change and Design

Free Downloads for Keynote Speeches, Presentations and Workshops

Looking for a compelling quote for a keynote speech, workshop or presentation on any of these topics?

Innovation
Digital Transformation
Design
Change
Creativity
Leadership
Design Thinking

I’m flattered that people have been quoting my keynote speeches and my first two books Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire and Charting Change.

So, I’m making some of my favorite quotes available from myself and other thought leaders in a fun, visual, easily shareable format.

I’ve been publishing them on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

But now you can download twelve (12) volumes of fifty (50) quote posters, for a total of 600, for FREE from my store:

Volume 1 (#1-50)
Volume 2 (#51-100)
Volume 3 (#101-150)
Volume 4 (#151-200)
Volume 5 (#201-250)
Volume 6 (#251-300)
Volume 7 (#301-350)
Volume 8 (#351-400)
Volume 9 (#401-450)
Volume 10 (#451-500)
Volume 11 (#501-550)
Volume 12 (#551-600)

You can add them all to your shopping cart at once and download them for FREE.

Print them, share them on social media, or use them in your presentations, keynote speeches or workshops.

They are all Adobe PDF’s and the best way to add them to your presentation is to:

Put the PDF into FULL SCREEN MODE
Take a screenshot
Paste it into your presentation
Crop it and adjust the size to your liking
Change the background color of the slide to a suitable color (if necessary)

Contact me with your favorite innovation, design thinking, change, transformation, or design quotes and I’ll consider adding them to my library of future downloads.

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Achieving Sustainability Through Design Thinking

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GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In a world increasingly mindful of sustainability, Design Thinking emerges as a crucial methodology for fostering sustainable innovation. This human-centered approach not only prioritizes user needs but also embraces systemic thinking to solve complex ecological challenges. Through empathy, creativity, and iteration, Design Thinking paves the path to more sustainable products, services, and systems.

The Essence of Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a process that encompasses understanding users, redefining problems, and creating innovative solutions to prototype and test. Its stages—empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test—ensure a holistic view that extends beyond immediate user needs to consider environmental and societal impacts.

Case Study 1: IKEA’s Sustainable Design Journey

Creating a Better Everyday Life

IKEA, the global leader in affordable home furnishings, showcases a powerful application of Design Thinking in sustainability. Striving to be “people and planet positive,” IKEA integrates sustainable practices from the drawing board to the delivery process.

By empathizing with environmentally conscious consumers, IKEA revamped its product design to incorporate renewable and recyclable materials. For example, the company replaced traditional foam in its sofas with sustainable materials, reducing both carbon footprint and production costs.

Through iterative prototyping, IKEA explored various configurations to enhance the durability and recyclability of its products. The result is a line of furnishings that cater to eco-savvy consumers while contributing to a sustainable future.

Case Study 2: Patagonia’s Regenerative Organic Certification

A Commitment to Environmental Stewardship

Patagonia, a pioneer in outdoor apparel, exemplifies the fusion of sustainability and design thinking. Known for its commitment to environmental causes, Patagonia took a bold step by introducing Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC) for its products.

Using Design Thinking, Patagonia embarked on a deep-dive empathizing phase with farmers, understanding the intricacies of sustainable agriculture. The company redefined its supply chain challenges, ideating a new framework that prioritizes soil health, animal welfare, and fair trade practices.

The prototyping and testing phase involved collaborative experimentation with farmers to refine agricultural practices that rebuild soil and sequester carbon. The result is a line of clothing that not only meets sustainability criteria but actively contributes to environmental restoration.

Toward a Sustainable Future

Design Thinking provides organizations with the tools to create sustainable innovations that resonate with environmentally conscious consumers. By embracing empathy, iteration, and holistic problem-solving, companies can transform challenges into opportunities for a sustainable future.

As industries continue to grapple with ecological imperatives, the journey to sustainability is not just a strategic choice but a moral compass guiding us toward collective prosperity.

Bottom line: Futurology is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Voting Closed – Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021

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For more than a decade I’ve devoted myself to making innovation insights accessible for the greater good, because I truly believe that the better our organizations get at delivering value to their stakeholders the less waste of natural resources and human resources there will be.

As a result we are eternally grateful to all of you out there who take the time to create and share great innovation articles, presentations, white papers, and videos with Braden Kelley and the Human-Centered Change and Innovation team. As a small thank you to those of you who follow along, we like to make a list of the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers available each year!

Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2015
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2016
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2017
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2018
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2019
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020

Do you just have someone that you like to read that writes about innovation, or some of the important adjacencies – trends, consumer psychology, change, leadership, strategy, behavioral economics, collaboration, or design thinking?

Human-Centered Change and Innovation is now looking to recognize the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021.

It is time to vote and help us narrow things down.

The deadline for submitting votes is December 31, 2021 at midnight GMT.

The ranking will be done by me with influence from votes and nominations. The quality and quantity of contributions to this web site by an author will be a BIG contributing factor (through the end of the voting period).

You can vote in any of these three ways (and each earns points for them, so please feel free to vote all three ways):

Sending us the name of the blogger by @reply on twitter to @innovate
Adding the name of the blogger as a comment to this article’s posting on Facebook
Adding the name of the blogger as a comment to this article’s posting on our Linkedin Page (Be sure and follow us)

The official Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021 will then be announced here in early January 2022.

Here are the people who received nominations this year along with some carryover recommendations (in alphabetical order):

Adi Gaskell – @adigaskell
Alex Goryachev
Andy Heikkila – @AndyO_TheHammer
Arlen Meyers – @sopeofficial
Braden Kelley – @innovate
Chad McAllister – @ChadMcAllister
Chris Beswick
Dan Blacharski – @Dan_Blacharski
Daniel Burrus – @DanielBurrus
Daniel Lock
Dr. Detlef Reis
David Burkus
Douglas Ferguson
Drew Boyd – @DrewBoyd
Frank Mattes – @FrankMattes
Gregg Fraley – @greggfraley
Greg Satell – @Digitaltonto
Janet Sernack – @JanetSernack
Jeffrey Baumgartner – @creativejeffrey
Jeff Freedman – @SmallArmyAgency
Jeffrey Phillips – @ovoinnovation
Jesse Nieminen – @nieminenjesse
Jorge Barba – @JorgeBarba
Julian Birkinshaw – @JBirkinshaw
Julie Anixter – @julieanixter
Kate Hammer – @Kate_Hammer
Kevin McFarthing – @InnovationFixer
Lou Killeffer – @LKilleffer

Mari Anixter- @MariAnixter
Maria Paula Oliveira – @mpaulaoliveira
Matthew E May – @MatthewEMay
Michael Graber – @SouthernGrowth
Mike Brown – @Brainzooming
Mike Shipulski – @MikeShipulski
Mukesh Gupta
Nick Partridge – @KnewNewNeu
Nicolas Bry – @NicoBry
Pamela Soin
Paul Hobcraft – @Paul4innovating
Paul Sloane – @paulsloane
Pete Foley – @foley_pete
Ralph Christian Ohr – @ralph_ohr
Richard Haasnoot – @Innovate2Grow
Robert B Tucker – @RobertBTucker
Saul Kaplan – @skap5
Scott Anthony – @ScottDAnthony
Scott Bowden – @scottbowden51
Shelly Greenway – @ChiefDistiller
Soren Kaplan – @SorenKaplan
Stefan Lindegaard – @Lindegaard
Stephen Shapiro – @stephenshapiro
Steven Forth – @StevenForth
Tamara Kleinberg – @LaunchStreet
Tim Stroh
Tom Koulopoulos – @TKspeaks
Yoram Solomon – @yoram

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Everyone hates to fail, why do you?

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Everyone hates to fail, why do you?

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

If you have ever had a significant setback, made a serious mistake, or failed at completing an important task, you will have experienced some kind of deep emotional and visceral, largely unconscious, negative, reactive response to it.

By becoming passively or aggressively externally defensive and blaming and punishing others for the outcome, or by withdrawing internally, and attributing self-blame and self-punishment for what may have happened.

Everyone hates to fail because either type of reactive response stings and causes discomfort, dissonance, sorrow, suffering, and pain since you are feeling ashamed, judged, and shamed by yourself and by others. We need to re-think how we approach and digest failure, to scale and leverage it as one of our 21st-century superpowers.

Sabotaging your chances of success

According to a recent article in Psychology Today, this reactive response triggers your avoidance motivation, which then often exceeds your motivation to succeed!

Describing that the fear of failure causes us to then unconsciously sabotage our chances of success, as well as our ability to cultivate and manifest the superpowers necessary to thrive in the 21^st century.

Self-doubt settles us into a denying the need to experiment, and a reluctance, full of excuses, to experiment further with adopting, iterating, and testing new and novel ideas. Or in taking smart risks, that help you connect, explore and discover and design opportunities for making important and necessary, personal and professional changes.

Pivot and adapt to disruptive events

Yet, our ability to experiment, test, validate and iterate creative ideas is critical to surviving and thriving through the current decade of both disruption and transformation – which more of us are viewing as a series of relentless, continuous, and exponential changes, requiring unlearning and radically new learning processes.

In a 2021 Deloitte survey of 2,260 private – and public-sector CXOs in 21 countries, 60% of the respondents said that they believe disruptions like those seen in 2020 will continue. The resulting challenge is underscored by another of the survey’s findings:

Seventy percent of the CXOs do not have complete confidence in their organisation’s ability to pivot and adapt to disruptive events.

This confidence can be developed by re-thinking how we approach and digest failure, to scale and leverage it as a 21st-century superpower.

Developing 21st-century superpowers

Here are the four key superpowers, to be supported by digital technologies:

Nimbleness: The ability to quickly pivot and move. (“We used to do this, and now we do that.”)
Scalability: The ability to rapidly shift capacity and service levels. (“We used to serve x customers; we now serve 100x customers.”)
Stability: The ability to maintain operational excellence under pressure. (“We will persist despite the challenges.”)
Optionality: The ability to acquire new capabilities through external collaboration. (“Our ecosystem of partners allows us to do things we couldn’t do previously do.”)

Rethinking our fears of failure

None of these 21st-century superpowers can be developed without experimentation and collaboration.

Where you are able to self-regulate your fears of making mistakes and failure, by becoming a smart risk-taker who willingly, stretches the envelope and steps outside of your safety and comfort zones.

This helps maximise your potential and ability to learn and develop in the growth zone, where we stop self-sabotaging our chances of adapting and learning, succeeding, and growing in an uncertain and unstable world.

Everyone hates to fail because it’s hard to self-regulate the basic emotions of disappointment, anger and frustration, and deep shame. Resulting from and the distorted thinking patterns that accompany failure, often immobilising you which results in an unwillingness and inability to disrupt yourself and take intelligent actions.

Slow down to rethink, respond, regroup, play and thrive

It all starts with leading, teaching, mentoring, and coaching people to slow down, to learn, and appreciate the value of taking “time-out” for retreat and reflection.

At ImagineNation, in last week’s blog, we described how this involves developing regular reflective practices, where people can pay deep attention, and learn how to master these basic emotions and unresourceful thought patterns. How this allows them to be playful and experimental in developing new mindsets, rethinking habits, and resourceful emotional states, which are foundational for developing 21st-century superpowers.

Failure can become valued as a process and resource for effecting significant human-centric change, deepening learning, and improving your future fitness.

Consequences of avoiding failure

According to the same article in Psychology today – “shame is a psychologically toxic emotion because instead of feeling bad about our actions (guilt) or our efforts (regret) shame makes us feel who we are”.

By getting to the core of your egos, your identities, your self-esteem, and your feelings of emotional well-being and resourceful thinking habits.

Because everyone hates to fail, we all unconsciously seek ways of mitigating the implications of a potential failure – “for example, by buying unnecessary new clothes for a job interview instead of reading up on the company – which allows us to use the excuse, “I just didn’t have time to fully prepare.”

Benefits of embracing failure

Rather than succumbing to the notion that everyone hates to fail, it is much more useful to develop healthier ways of embracing and flowing with it which might:

Motivate you to reflect deeply to consider and deliberate as to what might be the most intelligent and brave actions to take under the range of circumstances you find yourself in.
Inspire you to risk-taking those intelligent actions through developing sound risk anticipation, management, and mitigation strategies that help boost your confidence.
Commit to doing just a bit more, in inventive ways that add value to the quality of people’s lives as well to your customer’s experience of your product or service.
Encourage you to access your multiple and collective intelligence, be more courageous, compassionate, and creative in co-sensing, co-discovering, co-designing, and co-creating innovative solutions to complex problems.
Enable you to learn from others, and harness people’s collective intelligence to adapt and grow, through teaming, in ways that serve the common good.

Tips for rethinking and self-regulating fears of failure

A few tips to support you to rethink, respond, regroup and thrive that we will explore more deeply, through real-life stories and examples, in our next two ImagineNation™ blog posts (November and December):

Be willing to redefine and reframe failure as what it means in your unique context, review past failures and see if you can find benefits that resulted from them.
Set approach goals and not avoidance goals to view failure as a challenge that can be mastered.
Control the controllable by intentionally managing your mindsets, shifting any negative perspective, and unpacking distortion and generalisations about failures and their negative consequences.
Imagine yourself doing well, achieving your goals by composing and painting a picture or image of a desirable and compelling future success.
Develop healthy self-compassion for when you do mess up, make mistakes and fail, by being kind and understanding, and empathic to your won humanness.
Focus on every experience, no matter what it brings is an opportunity for deep learning and creative and inventive change.

Rather than living in a world where everyone hates to fail, why not adopt the rethink, respond, regroup, thrive pattern, be future-fit and develop your set of 21st-century superpowers in the face of the acute disruption of COVID-19?

Where it is expected that the business environment, over the next three to five years, will be the most exciting and innovative period that many of us may learn from and experience in our lifetimes?

Want to know why you might have a fear of failure?

Participate in our online research study “Ten Signs you may have a fear of failure” which we adapted from the article “10 Signs That You Might Have Fear of Failure… and 2 ways to overcome it and succeed” by Guy Winch Ph.D. in Psychology Today. Click here to access the survey.

We will happily share the results and findings with you if you leave your name and email address on the form provided. By sharing these details, you will also qualify for a complimentary 30 minute one on one online innovation coaching session, with one of our global professionally certified coaches to help you overcome your own anxieties and fears about failure and develop your 21st-century superpowers.

Join our next free “Making Innovation a Habit” masterclass to re-engage 2022!

Our 90-minute masterclass and creative conversation will help you develop your post-Covid-19 re-engagement strategy. It’s on Thursday, 10th February at 6.30 pm Sydney and Melbourne, 8.30 pm Auckland, 3.30 pm Singapore, 11.30 am Abu Dhabi and 8.30 am Berlin. Find out more.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Design Thinking Workshops – A Step-by-Step Guide

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Design Thinking Workshops - A Step-by-Step Guide

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In today’s fast-paced world, the need for innovative solutions has never been more apparent. Design Thinking has emerged as a powerful philosophy to guide teams toward creative solutions. This step-by-step guide unveils how to conduct effective Design Thinking workshops that harness collaborative creativity.

Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting a Design Thinking Workshop

Step 1: Empathize

Begin by understanding the users you’re designing for. Use observation, interaction, and immerse yourself in their experiences to glean insights.

Step 2: Define

Clearly articulate the problem you’re aiming to solve. This stage helps in narrowing the focus and addressing the right challenge.

Step 3: Ideate

Brainstorm a plethora of ideas without judgment. Encourage wild thinking and shelve feasibility questions. Capture as many ideas as possible.

Step 4: Prototype

Create inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product or features to investigate what works and what doesn’t.

Step 5: Test

Test the prototypes with users. Gather feedback, refine and redefine to ensure the solution meets user needs effectively.

Case Studies

Case Study 1: Revamping Customer Experience in Banking

Challenge: A leading bank wanted to improve its customer onboarding process to enhance satisfaction and reduce drop-offs.

Approach: Through a series of Design Thinking workshops, the bank invited frontline employees to empathize with customers. They mapped the entire customer journey, pinpointing stressful pain points.

Outcome: The bank devised a simplified onboarding mobile app with real-time assistance features, slashing drop-offs by 30% within six months.

Case Study 2: Educational Tools for Remote Learning

Challenge: With the rise of remote learning, an educational publisher needed a way to keep students engaged outside traditional classrooms.

Approach: Utilizing Design Thinking workshops, the team included educators, students, and tech experts. Empathy maps were crafted to understand both teachers’ and students’ struggles.

Outcome: The team created a gamified learning platform that used interactive storytelling, resulting in a 40% increase in student engagement rates.

Conclusion

Design Thinking workshops are not just sessions, but transformational journeys that reshape perspectives and cultivate innovative solutions. When executed well, they empower organizations to not just meet, but anticipate and exceed user expectations.

Image credit: Pexels

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Design Thinking as a Tool for Breakthrough Innovation in Service Industries

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Design Thinking as a Tool for Breakthrough Innovation in Service Industries

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, service industries are constantly seeking ways to differentiate themselves and stay ahead of the competition. One approach that has gained traction in recent years is the use of design thinking as a tool for driving breakthrough innovation. By putting the end-user at the center of the design process, companies can create truly customer-centric solutions that meet the needs and desires of their target market.

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that involves empathizing with the end-user, defining the problem, ideating potential solutions, prototyping, and testing those ideas with real users. By following this iterative process, companies can uncover deep insights about their customers’ pain points and preferences, leading to breakthrough innovations that drive business growth.

Two case studies exemplify the power of design thinking in driving breakthrough innovation in service industries:

Case Study 1: Airbnb

Founded in 2008, Airbnb disrupted the hospitality industry by providing a platform that connects travelers with unique and personalized accommodations. By using design thinking principles, Airbnb was able to deeply understand the needs and desires of both hosts and guests.

Through interviews and observations, Airbnb’s design team discovered that many travelers were seeking authentic, local experiences rather than cookie-cutter hotel rooms. This insight led to the creation of a platform that allows hosts to offer their homes as accommodations, giving travelers a more personal and unique experience.

By putting the end-user at the center of their design process, Airbnb was able to create a breakthrough innovation that has reshaped the way people travel and experience new places.

Case Study 2: Disney Parks

Disney Parks is known for providing an immersive and magical experience for its guests. To maintain this high level of customer satisfaction, Disney has embraced design thinking as a tool for continuous innovation.

One way Disney has used design thinking is through its FastPass+ system, which allows guests to reserve ride times in advance, reducing wait times and enhancing the overall park experience. By focusing on the needs and preferences of park guests, Disney was able to create a system that improves the customer experience and drives guest satisfaction.

By incorporating design thinking into their innovation process, Disney Parks continues to deliver breakthrough innovations that delight and captivate their guests.

Conclusion

Design thinking is a powerful tool for driving breakthrough innovation in service industries. By empathizing with customers, defining their needs, and prototyping solutions, companies can create truly customer-centric products and services that set them apart from the competition. The case studies of Airbnb and Disney Parks demonstrate the transformative impact of design thinking in driving innovation and delivering exceptional customer experiences. By embracing design thinking, service industries can unlock new opportunities for growth and success in today’s competitive market.

SPECIAL BONUS: The very best change planners use a visual, collaborative approach to create their deliverables. A methodology and tools like those in Change Planning Toolkit™ can empower anyone to become great change planners themselves.

Image credit: Pexels

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