Ok, this isn’t exactly design or innovation related, but I just have to say something about this

PresentationZen has a great post on one of last week’s Daily Shows where Jon Stewart interviews former DOD PR flack Torie Clarke (check out the clip, its painfully amusing).

In the Usual Suspects, Verbal Kint said “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

Well the greatest trick a spin doctor could ever pull would be to convince the world that spin doesn’t exist.

Stewart exposes Clarke’s spin and obsequious hypocrisy by getting her to admit that spin is pervasive in this no-spin era. Black is white and up is down folks. Welcome to the wonderful world of PR.

My appologies for the the lame title–I just couldn’t come up with anything less bad.  Regardless…

Blogrium has an interesting post on the sociology of innovation and the psychological perception factors that are conducive to fostering innovation within groups. 

I was immediately struck by the fact that this is a model of product design as a professional and multi-disciplinary practice.  Indeed many designers claim that design is a problem solving endeavour (top-right).  I contend that solving is only part of the equation; modeling and understanding the problem (bottom-left) is the other half.

Furthermore most design practice seems to be trapped in derivative stylization (bottom-right).  Need proof?  Pick up any design magazine.  Chances are regardless of which one or which time or year, it will feature the winners of some kind of mind-numbingly sterile design competition.  In it you will find that what passes for award winning design is really little more than a predictable and conservative fashion show of usual suspects.

And finally design at its best, mixes with other disciplines like engineering marketing to give birth to real innovation (top-left).  This means that design is not itself innovaton (and one shouldn’t conflate the two) but strongly related to innovation. 

So these four quadrants seem to cover the reality of product design and development quite nicely.  However, I was still unsatisfied.  Something was missing.  And toward the end of the post there it was: constraints.  The 2-D model does not include one’s ability to navigate constraints. 

By constraint navigation I’m refering to execution intelligence: the ability to successfully act on what has been percieved.  Sure you can see differences and similarities, but can you take that vision to market (financial market, product market, idea market, what ever)?  No market, no innovation.

So I included a third dimension and tweaked some of the terms (in my cumudgeonly way) to come up the following cube: Innovation^3.

 

 

I’ve put this on a permanent page at http://www.scoobr.com/niblettes_old/terms-i-like/

New terms I like….

• Ninged: falling into the chasm of usability, where despite the potential value only geeks can figure out how to use your product
• Flocked: falling into the chasms of usefullness or desirability, where despite offering an easy to use product, only geeks want to use it

(cheers to Umair over at BubbleGeneration)

• YA2.0N Yet Another 2.0 Name, pronounced “YAWN”

(thanks to readwriteweb.com)

The old ones…

• meme-peddler: someone who is constantly trying to coin new nonsensical terms and is alway up on the lastest buzz
• brandmeme: a corporate brand message masquerading as meme; intellectual product placement so to speak
• buzzhound: buys all of the meme-peddler’s latest wares, and is always anxious to uncritically show-off his newest purchases
• hype-o-condriac: someone with a strong over-sensitively to all forms of hype due to over-exposure
• hype-o-allergenic: an antidote to brandmemes and other forms of unwarranted hype

So Scott Adams has a basic formula for a successful comic. In order for something to be funny, you need at least two of the following elements:

• Cute (as in kids and animals)
• Naughty
• Bizarre
• Clever
• Recognizable (You’ve been there)
• Cruel

Looking through the funny pages (actually, the not-so-funny pages) this weekend I noticed 3 comics that followed his formula exactly. Mean talking animals seems to be the flavour of the day (Family Guy anyone?), and that hit 3 of 6 right there. Perhaps Adams is right.

This makes me wonder if there is a similar formula for innovation–surely a formula for innovation is no more unthinkable than a forumla for humour (then again, I don’t find many comics that try to pull off the formula to be terribly funny, except for the foxes above–they crack me up, probably cause they hit 4 of 6).

A couple of weeks ago I was speaking with a former professor of mine about innovation. He characterized innovation not only as something original, but also as a novel juxtaposition. Its an interesting point and it got me thinking…

Proust said “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.” (thanks to charukesi over at MindSpace for pointing this quote out (I love being able to quote Proust, Balzac or Zola, it make me feel smarter–plus their names sound funny)).

In The Discipline of Innovation Peter Drucker tells a story about how “a shift in viewpoint, not technology, totally changed the economics of ocean shipping and turned it into one of the major growth industries of the last 20 to 30 years.”

Then there’s modern print media. Sure Linotype was the technologically original innovation the helped make it possible. But it was really modern advertising as innovated by Pulitzer and Hearst that gave us the print media we are familiar with today. They re-imagined how printed information could be monetized. This reshuffled old constraints and opportunities into new and highly successful juxtapositions.

Picasso’s cubism would be an original; Duchamp’s readymade would be juxtaposition. While Descartes gave us original thought, Aquinas gave us exegesis. Portishead’s album Dummy is original; DJ Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album is juxtaposition.

And this last example really struck a cord with me. The Beatles made the White Album. Jay-Z made the Black Album. But Danger Mouse mashed them together and created something nether the Beatles nor Jay-Z nor anyone else had thought of.

DJs take other people’s music and mix it, scratch it, mash it, invert it, juxtapose it, to create new experiences for their audiences. In the same way a lot of new product innovation (especially online products) these days seems to come from mashing up other online products and ideas. I’m sure everyone is aware of the craigslist-and-google-maps find-a-rental mashup.

This kind of innovation strikes me as much easier to catalyze than entirely original innovations, because they are less about raw genius (happy birthday Mozart) and more about an accretion of alternate perspectives–something the net commoditizing incredibly efficiently. And these innovations-though-juxtaposition can often provide just as much value as their purely original cousins.

The drawback of innovations-through-juxtaposition is that they really only thrive in open and tolerant environments (perhaps this is part of what’s behind Richard Florida’s theories that tolerance can be causally connected to positive economic production). Meanwhile entirely original, raw genius innovations are like mushrooms and grow best left alone in dark basements.

Garr over at Presentation Zen has mentioned “the big duck” a few times. I love the metaphor, and it strikes me as rekated to Tufte’s cautions about decorating data.

It seems that we designers need to check ourselves evey so oftern to make sure we’re not just making glorious big ducks, but actually doing what’s best to solve the problems real people really experience.

So I’ve been slowly going over a number of design project proposals from both small and big design firms. I thought I’d take the opportunity to list some of the faults I’ve experienced so far (and the big guys are just as guilty as the little).

1. Avoid telling me what something is not, because I’m skimming your proposal at first, and will likely miss the negation. This means that I might think you are saying the exact opposite of what you mean.
2. Avoid weasle words and phrases, not just because they obviously make you sound like a fool, but also because again I’m skimming and when I hit a weasle word or phrase I seem to just jump to the next paragraph. So, if you have put something really good after the weasle, I won’t see it.
3. Avoid naked, mindless self-promotion, like “we believe that collaborating with us would be the best thing to do.” Obviously you think that–you want to make the sale and you wouldn’t be in business if you didn’t think that. So why waste my time making me read the empty marketeering? Don’t. It makes you look either obtuse and ignorant. You’re getting precious little of my attention, so please make every word count.
4. Avoid naked, mindless, mindlessness, like saying that you will work with stakeholders. Working with stakeholders goes without saying–who else would you work with, people with no stake in the project? Mindless blather wastes my time, makes you sound like an idiot and it tells me you think I’m an idiot too. That’s insulting, and insults are no way to land a deal.

Just a few thoughts on proposal writing–not that I’m an expert at writing them, but I’m getting pretty good at reading them.

I’ve had it. I’ve had it with unsubstantiated hyperbole. I’ve had it with hackneyed metaphors. I’ve had it with shallow sound bites. I crave meaty insights, not the intellectual twinkies served up in lieu of.

This means no more Bruce Nussbaum. No more Tom Peters. No more anything related to IDEO. And certainly no more Apple examples.

For instance, here’s a fresh bite from Bruce: “Innovation, creativity, design — whatever you want to call it — is the new Six Sigma.”

Claiming something is the new something else is about as insightful as claiming something is dead. What exactly does this really mean? Does this mean that innovation is all about consistent manufacturing quality? Does this mean that creativity is the new management fad? Does it mean that design is now table-stakes? Does this mean that innovation, creativity, design are no long enough to maintain a competitive advantage?

Why not just say what you mean? Perhaps because you don’t mean anything. Perhaps because you don’t know what you mean. Or perhaps because what you mean is neither interesting nor insightful nor even true. As a result you hide behind the obfuscation of a clumsy yet common metaphor–sort of like hiding the taste of rotting meat with even hotter curry.

Check out some of the folks on my blogroll, folks like Niti Bahn, Presentation Zen, Black Sheep and Bubblegeneration, folks who shun the twinkies.

Part 1: Definitions (10/23)
Part 2: iNPD model (11/06)
Part 3: Innovation Matrix – Categories of Innovation (11/24)
Part 4: Innovation Matrix – Areas of Innovation
Part 5: Innovation Matrix – Overall
Part 6: Process

I see 9 distinct areas companies can innovate in. These 9 areas organize into 2 broad groups I call Customer Experience and Organization Capacity (please forgive the current crudeness of my descriptions).

Customer Experience

Area	Description
Product	The product, service and/or experience that the company sells and that the customer and/or user values. This can also include peripheral, complementary or accessory products.
Marcomm	All the messages and materials used to raise awareness, consolidate demand, and bring customers and products together.
Sales	The transaction experience; everything that facilitates the exchange between customers and company over the product.
Fulfillment	The mechanisms to fulfill the sales transaction, including distribution delivery.
Support	The post-transaction activities that the company provides related to the customer’s ownership of the product—in some cases the support is the product, or a significant portion of the product.

Operational Capacity

Area	Description
Finance	How the company pays for its continuance and delivery of customer experiences.
Process	The ways in which the company does things and makes decisions.
Strategy	The goals and directions a company sets for itself, the market position it takes, and the trade-offs it is willing to make. Of course Strategy occurs at many different levels, from company-wide down to product development.
Organization	The coherent and integrated collection or resources as well as the methods of integration and marshalling of these resource, that keep the company running and delivering customer experiences.

It should be clear that the Customer Experience areas are all external facing and impact direct interaction with customers and users; while the Operational Capacity areas are all internal facing and impact the company’s capacity for delivering customer experiences.

It is important to note that each of these areas can have any number of incremental, sustaining, breakthrough or disruptive innovations.

These distinctions are important because each represents unique subject matters requiring unique mixtures of appropriate expertise, as well as providing guidelines for appropriate expectations and contributions. For example, design likely does not have the financial subject matter expertise to drive financial innovations, and would therefore likely not be expected to do so. Likewise engineering often lacks the mass communications expertise to drive marcomm innovations, and would therefore likely not be expected to do so.

This relates to some of the current discussion of design and innovation, and how many people conflate the two. A quick look at these areas of innovation should reveal the limits of where design and innovation currently intersect where they should intersect more, and perhaps where they should not intersect.

Design has an established history of product and marcomm innovation, and many designers are trying to establish design as a component of strategic innovation area (though mostly from a product strategy approach). However what can design contribute to distribution or support innovations? And is it even appropriate for design to be involved in finance innovations? Visually mapping these areas of innovation makes such questions easy to ask.

I recently noticed Geoffrey Moore’s new book has just been released. It delves into the topic of distinguishing between kinds of innovation and how these distinctions should guide companies’ decisions.

Further Questions

• Do the areas I have identified adequately reflect reality, without getting mired in too fine a detail?
• Are the processes for innovation different across these areas? or is it only the subject matter that differs
• Is the importance of subject matter expertise consistent across these areas?
• Can there even be an overall innovation discipline, or would such a discipline necessarily have to exist within each area?

Like quotes, I normally don’t like to just link to other blog posting–but this is a particularly interesting posting from a particularly interesting blog (admitedly a lot of it often goes over my head, but I like that).

Something strikes me about a lot of what Umair writes. It strikes me with a ring of truth the way much of what Negroponte and Kelley wrote in Wired last century struck with with a ring of hype. I don’t know if Umair is right in his theories, but something about them feels right. We shall see.