Matter/Anti-Matter

The new issue of our design mind magazine is out. The theme is "Motion," and it features a great interview with famed ballet choreographer Alonzo King, who discusses the risks and rewards of collaboration with San Francisco Chronicle dance columnist Rachel Howard:

"Collaboration is always risky. You don't have total control. Also, with choreography you have such a short amount of time to do it. If you're writing a book you've got years; a film, you can shop it around; Broadway, take it out six weeks for previews. With most choreographers, you've got to create the thing now. So I like to pretend I have absolutely no deadline. So we can play [with] every possibility of stupid mistakes, which are fertile, before you close the box and say, 'This is how it has to be.' There has to be a floating balance. And that's the reality of life.

In design, you'll hear people say, 'Yes, I'm going to do a series of chairs and they're going to be Shaker-inspired.' You'll hear people talking about appearances. But Shaker came out of what? A belief system. When Shakers are talking about efficiency, they're talking about a lean life with no fat, you know? When they're talking about economy of craft, they're talking about humility. This is a belief system. And true stuff has to come from inside out. That's where real design comes from. It has to be based on truth. Has to have a sense of wonder. You must bring something to it that no one else has because of who you are. What's interesting about you is you. Now, do people get rewarded for being someone else? Yes. Do people pay for a good knockoff or copy? Yes. But each one of us is an enigma. And we've got to figure out that enigma of our own lives before we close our eyes to the world."

Read the full interview

Despite an over-abundance of media coverage about the importance of innovation in recent years, it seems the business media may not have gotten its point across. Instead of hailing innovation as The Next Big Thing, journalists and book authors now wonder if there's an Innovation Gap in U.S. business. The September 22nd issue of BusinessWeek, "Keeping America Competitive," is coupled with online articles like "Firing Up America's Idea Economy" and "Can America Invent Its Way Back?." Judy Estrin also examines flagging innovation culture in her new book, "Closing the Innovation Gap."

As a follow-up to my recent post on the WEF's Global Competitiveness Report, I wanted to share what my colleagues at frog design, a global innovation firm, think. When we heard about a so-called innovation gap, we asked all four of our US studios what they thought. In one hour more than 50 "frogs" responded. Here's our crowdsourced blitz survey response to the current innovation gap debate.

Read why chairs are the biggest barrier to innovation in the Fortune 500 and more.

"We're doing all the things we tell our clients not to do," admits a strategy director at a renowned design and innovation firm, "it is ironic." He's not alone with his assessment. Other employees of creative firms (let's just use this label as a catch-all for all design, innovation, marketing, brand, and advertising firms) secretly confess that while they go out preaching to their clients about the importance of open innovation, brand consistency, or a distinct, provocative marketing messages, it is the very absence of all of which that often severely hampers their own organizations.

All too often, creative firms struggle with applying their proven principles, methodologies, and tools at home. While they strive to inject "out-of-the-box" thinking into their clients' organizations, they choose to stay within their own box, which is often in a poor condition. While they teach clients ways to foster a high-commitment, high-performance culture, they fail to create it for their own teams. While they promote flat hierarchies to spur innovation, risk-taking, and creativity, they often have bloated structures themselves that resemble the org chart of the Roman Empire. While they evangelize original and irreverent thinking, their own marketing campaigns are safe, mediocre, boring, and devoid of any potentially polarizing, sticky ideas. While they propagate the value of an engaging, user-friendly experience across all brand touch points, the interactions with their own brand are often stale and impersonal.

Of all firms, creative firms should get it right -- but they often don't. Why is that?

First of all, creative firms tend to suffer from a Not-Invented-Here syndrome. Instead of welcoming outside innovation, they succumb to the same short-sighted inward fixation that handicaps many of their clients -- relying on internal, often billable resources that are strapped for time and laden with political baggage and thus often fail to generate truly fresh ideas. Groupthink and other well-researched social dynamics prohibit true, disruptive change. Decisions are made by committees, and the result is, in many cases, the lowest common denominator. Everyone's satisfied -- but no one is really happy, let alone excited.

Another frequent phenomenon is the creative paralysis that begets the creative firm not in spite but because of its amassed creative powers. One key leader empowered to make decisions is of the essence in such environments, and the lack thereof stifles commitment. When there are too many cooks in the kitchen, too many strong creative opinions, too much foil and mutual out-smarting, competitiveness does not fuel, but rather stalls progress. Projects derail, and egos are inconsolably hurt along the way.

The third problem is the time horizon. Many creative firms' perspective is rather short-term as they are strongly exposed to the volatility of the economy and focus on new and opportunistic business rather than long-term strategic planning. The need to meet the numbers and maximize the utilization of resources all the way down to the bottom line doesn't leave much room for brand-building, a critical examination of one's own market positioning, or an overhaul of the marketing platform.

Fourth, marketers who are tasked with marketing a creative firm are under constant scrutiny for a possible lack of proper credentials. Creative teams are often skeptical about the efforts of an "outsider" who has not lived through the inner-workings and experienced the pain of working for demanding clients. Their motto seems to be: "We could do it better if only we could (but we lack the time)." Of course, the billable, creative types will never be pleased, no matter what. If the corporate marketer delivers below-par work, they will tear it apart. If s/he excels, they will feel threatened.

Creative firms can be narcissistic, navel-gazing, and soul-searching monsters, carried away with their own grandeur and prowess (or the assumption thereof) and in stubborn defiance of what their audiences have to say. And often, some nebulous self-cult makes them openly refuse being marketed at all ("The first rule of the Fight Club: You don't talk about the Fight Club.").

Marketing a creative firm is a tough job. You gotta be creative.

Here are three principles that I try to apply in my job:

1. Whenever you can, simplify. Because that's your job and the one turf where no one else can (and wants to) compete with you! Translate the complexity of your business into digestible chunks for your audience. Earn a reputation as "simplifier" and you will earn respect.

2. Stay out of the arena. Leave the intellectual strong-arming to the creative stars. Don't try to out-smart, out-wit, or out-innovate them. Drop your ego at the door.

3. Play with your own toys, find your own buddies, and build something that you and your team can truly own.

(to be continued)

In this series of interviews with innovation thought leaders we reach out to innovators in marketing, design, strategy, and operations -- from start-ups, small-medium sized business, Fortune 500 companies, academia, to non-profits -- and asked them to answer the same set of questions.

In this installment, Willem Boijens, Senior User Experience Manager at Vodafone in Dusseldorf, Germany, takes on the questions. Willem has had a wide variety of roles at Vodafone and has seen the large wireless services company from many angles. In his current role he aims to make experiential design a catalyst for innovation, ensuring that customer needs are kept at the forefront but also balanced with the many other factors of business, technology, partners and marketing which must be considered.

Q. How do you define "innovation"?

A: Innovation is directly related to the 'creative act'. Creating something new implies innovation. Materialized through incremental improvements or breakthrough experiences. The essence of innovation is still appropriate. However, in times when corporations make innovation a policy for reinventing themselves rather than a 'raison d'etre' it often becomes wishful thinking. True innovation can be encouraged and staged but hardly regulated.

Q. What was your most important innovation, and how did you find it?

A: The symbiotic relationship between communication and content.

Q. What is the best idea you've ever had and haven't yet executed?

A: A true immersive information architecture

Q. Which design "failure" did you learn the most from, and why?

A: Live a design agenda driven by downstream briefs rather creating upstream demand.

Q. What lessons can you pass on to others from how your organization has changed to make itself more innovation driven?

A: Manage a value-based portfolio by balancing validating/incremental activities with envisioning/breakthrough. Be a catalyst for debate.

Q. In your opinion, what are the biggest barriers and challenges that stand in the way of organizations becoming more innovative?

A: Politics, not invented here, (lack of) talent(s)

Q. Beyond your organization, who do you admire for risk-taking innovation, and what do you think makes them successful?

A: No specific individual but all that impacts the way people think about and live their lives which eventually forms society. Current risk-taking trend is sustainability.

Q. What innovation are you still waiting for?

A: Humanized technology

It's been a lackluster soccer season so far, especially in my favorite league, the Spanish Primera Division. The performances of the two top teams, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona (Barca), have been inconsistent, and while both have displayed some exceptional skills in their best matches, the passion, the surprise, and the big drama, all of which crucial elements of soccer's unique appeal, have been largely missing.

There is hope that this will change on Sunday when the two archrivals battle each other for the first time this season, in the derby of derbies, "El Clásico," which is historically loaded with enourmous psychological, cultural, and political significance. This edition is a special of specials: Madrid is leading the table with four points ahead of second-placed Barca, and the upcoming clash, the last game of the first half of the season, can potentially give Real a comfortable seven point cushion over Barca during the winter break.

Innovation is rare

Looking back to the past Clásicos and looking forward to the encounter on Sunday, I have been wondering what can make the difference when two equally star-studded teams compete. I think I have found the answer: innovation. The more innovative team won the past games, and the more innovative team will win this time. This hypothesis is as simple as it is challenging. Soccer is often used as a metaphor to describe innovation in a business context ("meaningful innovation is like scoring a goal in soccer -- it doesn't happen often, but is always a hallmark that differentiates the winning team"). But what does innovation actually mean in soccer?

First of all, if you examine the history of soccer for groundbreaking, "game-changing" innovations, you realize they have been scarce; by and large the game hasn't changed much. Some innovations resulted from a changing of the rules (on the macro-innovation level, if you will). Most of them, however, were truly driven by either organizational or individual excellence: for example, the position of the "Libero," the "sweeper" before the goal-keeper, who, freed from marking a direct opponent, was mandated with opening a team's game from deep in its own territory (German legend Franz Beckenbauer perfected this role in the 70s); the allure of the "playmaker" (personified by the French Michel Platini in the 80s); the introduction of a three-man defense row in the 90s; the "Sweeper-Keeper" performing the defensive actions of a libero; the increased importance of the "6," the central defensive midfielder; and the Dutch "Total Football" concept with its fluid, attacking 4-5-1 and 3-2-5 formations.

Total Football

As in business and academia, innovation takes place in soccer on both the collective and individual levels. And it is deeply rooted in culture. Starting in their youth education, great teams establish a distinct style which sets them apart from mediocre ones. Almost always, these styles have been shaped by a city's, a region's, or a nation's history. Ajax Amsterdam and the Dutch school of "Total Football," considered by many to be the most sophisticated and most influential soccer philosophy in recent times, can be traced back to historical, geographical, and socio-cultural factors, as can the Dutch refusal to win the "big one" (the Netherlands' national team never won a final at any of the international championships). Total Football was the first multi-disciplinary approach to playing soccer and implied that all players can play in all positions and have comparable levels of fitness, technical ability, and awareness. It is focused on the creation of space on offense and the destruction of space on defense. The result is maximum flexibility, a strong element of surprise, and the ability to exert pressure on any of the opponent's moves, at any time during the game. Besides Ajax, a number of British clubs including Arsenal London and Manchester United have embraced and refined Total Football, and so has FC Barcelona, with its strong tradition of Dutch coaches and players.

In stark contrast, the so-called "catenaccio" (literally translated, "door-bolt"), a rather static, defensive-minded tactic, is the hallmark of most Italian clubs. Some contend this goes all the way back to the Roman Empire and its poise to defend its borders, but I'm not sure if I buy into this explanation: even the Roman Empire, in order to become an empire, had to conquer territory first, no? In any case, the point is that soccer tactics and styles, and herein lies one parallel to business innovation, are inexorably linked to culture (to learn more about the cultural -- and religious -- underpinnings of soccer, read "How Soccer Explains the World" by Franklin Foer).

Wanted: Entrepreneurs

And yet, only a few soccer pundits would dispute that the most critical innovation in soccer occurs on the individual level. While some herald the "star is the team" philosophy and praise the power of the collective, it is more plausible to uphold the "whole is more than the sum of its parts" argument precisely because some of the parts, that is, certain individuals, are better than others. Although there are attempts underway to "crowd-source" soccer, the difference between win and loss is still marked by the quality of individuals -- players, coaches, and, not to forget, referees.

Players and coaches are chased with tons of cash not merely because they are stars who are able to turn the game into a spectacle and thus add invaluable charisma and entertainment to a club's brand, but also because their individual decisions, be they strategic (coach) or opportunistic (player), decide over fortune and misfortune. Both coach and player are risk-taking entrepreneurs, and the more creativity they exhibit, the more freedom they're typically given. Ironically, buying risk-takers is a measure for clubs to minimize risk and manage the inherent volatility of their success. The impact of coach and player is significant but their tools of influence are somewhat different. In the long-term, the coach can create a competitive culture that propels creativity and innovation, build confidence and team spirit; on the immediate match level, he can alter the formation and line-up, and make adjustments and substitutions during the game. But can his genius or lucky hand re-invent a team or truly innovate the game?

Ultimately, the most visible and arguably most impactful innovation lies in the feet of the players. Notwithstanding the team's culture, strategic formation, and tactical fitness, innovation on a micro-level is still the biggest competitive advantage, and it is engrained in soccer's DNA: Paul B. Paulus and Bernard Arjan Nijstad argue in their book "Group Creativity: Innovation Through Collaboration" that soccer offers more opportunities for creativity and innovation than baseball and other U.S. sports because the team's task is more "hierarchical, less sequential, and less cyclical." Furthermore, soccer players can innovate their game in every game. Here's what Barcelona's Ronaldinho, FIFA World Player of the Year in 2004 and 2005 and the most marketable player in the world, generating $57.8m annually, says: "The important thing is to keep on innovating and finding a way to surprise. You always look to surprise, with dribbling, a new move, a new pass. (...) As long as I believe I have the creativity for that, that's what I'll try and do. I'm never going to lose my characteristics because that's what I know how to do. I want to mix everything that is innovative with the same things as always. Perhaps the fans expect me to do all the tricks, the opponents as well. If you don't innovate, they all take the ball away from you. I believe it's important to innovate in order to avoid repetition."

Playtime

When El Clásico kicks off, keep all that in mind. Admire the poetic and sometimes melancholic Total Football of Barca, and respect the prosaic, rather efficient style of Real Madrid. And watch how a few players will decide the game. Soccer can be researched, carefully planned, and strategically devised -- however, the most beautiful thing about this "beautiful game" is the fact that there is no lag between idea and implementation. Creativity can be immediately applied and has to be found on the pitch again and again. Every match is a blank slate. There is no history, only anticipation. Nothing is ever the same. This is what business leaders can learn from soccer: Innovation is, literally, a "play," and the best players will win.

Thousands of representatives from international corporations, design firms, government entities, and institutions of higher education, spanning more than 35 countries around the world, attended the CONNECTING'07 World Design Congress last week in San Francisco, the largest and arguably most influential gathering of industrial designers to date.

Did it live up to its promise? The short answer is: yes and no. There were early warning signs for the "no": The opening ceremony was a long-winded and largely self-congratulatory celebration of the two organizing bodies, ICSID and IDSA. In his opening keynote, ICSID president Peter Zech set the tone for what the conference turned out to be: a celebration of industrial design's accomplishments as well as an ambitious overview of the richness of what's out there right now -- but not so much a departure towards (or at least a vision of) a new and exciting future of industrial design. No wonder then that after showing a promotional video that featured the dolce vita in next year's World Design Capital Torino, everyone rushed to the buffet (piles of sushi! I wonder how consternated the Japanese attendees who had just gotten off the airplane must have been).

The opening night's impression remained throughout the conference. It soon became clear that the main problem of the Congress was that it had a motto ("Connecting"), albeit very broad, but it lacked an agenda or a distinct purpose. No new paradigm was born, no overarching theme emerged, and no new star rose. No battles were fought, no heated debates were held. The conference was primarily designed as a forum for designers to reassure each other of the value of design. As for the debatable value proposition of industrial design in the 21st century, a consensus appeared to have been reached even before the first panel began: Yes, designers are committed to beauty. Yes, they are committed to connecting commerce, technology, and culture, and they provide a holistic, systemic perspective. Yes, they are humanists and environmentalists, acknowledging and acting upon their ecological and ethical responsibilities. Yes, they are, as Peter Zech described it in his keynote, "The most influential creative discipline because we shape the things of the everyday world." But the vehemence with which all of this was proclaimed inadvertently revealed how insecure designers still feel about their tangible and yet so inexplicable profession.

Despite the harmonious and leveling mood, the conference was not devoid of many outstanding moments. Some of the old icons, in particular, demonstrated that they're still on top of their game. The Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa took the audience on a riveting journey through the "core of awareness," illuminating how the shapes of things live in us. He presented product designs that respect our pre-conceived notions of how objects have to look. He argued that good design "notices the unnoticeable," providing a-ha moments rather than wow effects. Furthermore, some of the popular advocates of "design thinking" such as Tim Brown from IDEO or Roger Martin from the Rotman School of Management, who had been instrumental in transcending the traditional boundaries of design by embracing its innovative potential for social and economic change, reinforced their compelling cases. The idea behind design thinking is simple: Design is not just design. It is a way of thinking that tackles a problem at the input and not just the output level. With the words of Tim Brown, design thinking examines the desirability of a product or service (human factors), its economic viability (business), and its feasibility (technology). And based on these insights, it then develops design solutions for increasingly interdependent (eco)-systems of producers and consumers. All design thinking presentations were eye-opening for those unfamiliar with the matter; however, who really is? Brown et al can consider it a huge accomplishment that, thanks to them, design thinking is not such a radical novelty anymore; it is a widely accepted concept that designers may in fact mistrust more than business people do, as frog design founder Hartmut Esslinger knowingly said in his speech.

Speaking of business: Where was it? The perspective of corporations, except for presentations by HP and Tesla Motors, was greatly missing from all of the plenary sessions and would have added a lot of value to the discussions. The same holds true for web 2.0 phenomena (ironically, the Web 2.0 summit took place at the same time only a few miles away), particularly the convergence of software and hardware, virtual and real, online and offline: what about virtual communities like Second Life, 3D printing, or virtual displays; what about web 2.0, social media, and amateur culture and their implications for industrial design? These issues did not get the level of attention they deserved. You could have forgotten in all the talks about eco-design that Al Gore had not only fostered the green movement but also invented the Internet. Fortunately, there were speakers like Bruce Sterling, the self-acclaimed "design visionary," who ruminated on his notion of "spimes" in the upcoming "Internet of things" -- new types of products that are defined as ideas or memes that can be tracked through space and time throughout the lifetime of an object in an ever-connected world (simply put). Or forecaster Paul Saffo, who depicted the notion of "design after the information revolution." In general, the best plenary sessions were those that served as a homage to the future rather than a homage to someone's lifetime achievement. Product designer Richard Seymour, for instance, gave a fascinating update on the Virgin Galactic space tourism project. Alex Steffen from Worldchanging.com offered some practical advice for navigating the future markets of green innovation.

For the most part, though, a certain nostalgia clouded the program, and the key for designing the future seemed to lie in the past. Consequently, most of the attempts to make sense of the conference theme were actually proposing a "re-connecting" rather than a "connecting." The wonderfully witty Sir Ken Robinson urged the audience to re-connect the ecology of human resources with the ecology of nature. Janine Benyus, in her fascinating study of biomimicry, suggested we re-connect industrial design and engineering with nature, understanding and mimicking its far more sustainable shapes and processes. The main lesson to learn here is that nature does not produce any waste. While we almost always build top-down -- starting with the larger material from which we deduct the eventual object -- nature does it better: it builds bottom up and grows organically.

Nostalgia may have also been the reason for revisiting some of the big industrial design truisms. One of them is the importance of emotions. Laura Richardson's attempt to rationalize emotion by quantifying its impact ("emotion engine") was interesting and unique, but other presenters were simply stating the obvious (and long established) link between understanding people's emotional needs and the design brief. Left-brain vs. right-brain, analytical vs. emotional thinking, form follows emotion etc. -- the conference treated these topics like museum exhibits. But as far as emotions go and creativity, advertising has long been outperforming design: The Clio award commercials that were shown during session breaks were more "out of the box" than many of the products shown in the PowerPoint slides before and after.

A much discussed example of emotional design is the one hundred dollar laptop. For Yves Behar "design must create values and value." Behar demoed the device and showed how easy it is to record music or to connect with others in the same area that are online with their laptops as well. On the way out to the lobby I overheard a conversation: "That's exactly the problem. Hundreds of these laptops in the Bay Area. But no one in Africa will buy them." But maybe that's exactly not the problem. Maybe the point is that the developed world needs a product that makes it feel better about the developing world. I don't mean this in a cynical way at all. What if this laptop, rather than connecting kids in Africa, is our emotional connection to these kids? That may not be the product's original purpose but that doesn't make it less legitimate. Maybe, in times of human and natural disasters, stripping off the negative association from the word "feel good" is a brave act.

If you recognize anxious times, that is. The Congress panels did not articulate any fear of future technology or a sense of paranoia or angst (with the notable exception of Fiona Ruby's and Anthony Dunne's session on "designs for fragile personalities in anxious times"). While the catastrophic consequences of climate change were widely discussed and were mostly embraced with profound optimism, nano-technology or bio-genetics were simply left out of the equation. I found that surprising. If "the future doesn't need us" (Bill Joy), tomorrow's design will certainly not need designers. As design pretends to provide the accessories for the ongoing illusion of human mastery, it is in fact already in a constant state of emergency. Given the radical progress in advanced nano-technologies, design may be nothing but proof that "something can be done even when there is nothing that can be done" (Peter Sloterdiijk). "Design thinking" is nice but it will become meaningless if (when) artificial intelligence will start doing the thinking (and the design) for us. Already, the designer's responsibility is shifting from designing things and experiences to designing the conditions for design (and thinking), creating human links between bits, atoms, neurons, and genes. What if the designer's major task in the 21st century is to be the devil's advocate, providing a (false) sense of personal safety in times of genetic engineering, personalized machines, and a new singularity? What if it is time to start designing for a time after design?

Those and other potentially disturbing questions remained unaddressed at the World Design Congress. At the end, after three days of digesting the over-scheduled and vastly divergent CONNECTING program, it had become almost impossible to somehow connect all the disparate dots. The Congress had lost itself in a diversity of topics, perspectives, and disciplines that came at the expense of one strong message. CONNECTING'07 was a great experience and certainly connected designers from all over the world. But was that enough? I'm not sure. It celebrated the history of industrial design, but it may have squandered an historic opportunity to inspire and prepare thousands of designers for the future. In this regard, Sir Ken Robinson's words aptly summarized the conference's shortcoming without intending to: "We don't fail because we aim too high and fail. We fail because we aim too low and succeed."

The Economist has a special report on innovation in this week's issue, and it's good to see the magazine recognizing "open innovation" as the perhaps most important current trend in this space: "Rapid and disruptive change is now happening across new and old businesses. Innovation ... is becoming both more accessible and more global. This is good news because its democratization releases the untapped ingenuity of people everywhere and that could help solve some of the world's weightiest problems."

The report is an expansive tour de force through the entire innovation landscape, covering a lot of ground (open innovation, mass- or user-driven innovation, product vs. process innovation, creativity vs. operational excellence, innovation policy, innovation in Asia, innovation in developing countries, Six Sigma, innovation measurement, the "Innovators Dilemma," the importance of "Fast Failing," etc.) and quoting the usual suspects (GE, P&G, Eric Von Hippel, Toyota, Doblin, Nokia, etc.).

The Economist concludes with a seemingly trivial recommendation for putting "the debate over creativity versus execution" to rest: "For a start: firms need to do both. But that does not mean they have to do it all themselves. On the contrary, the double act is best managed with a loose and open approach during the wild and woolly idea-generation phase, and a tighter, more concentrated one to turn ideas into products or services." John Kao, author of "Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity," likens the process to playing jazz: "There is no fixed score in any given improvisation, but that does not mean there are no underlying principles either."

So, open, yes, but also rigorous and tightly managed. But is that really news? And what about Apple, arguably the most innovative company in the world and yet the most un-open you can imagine?

At the end, innovation remains a fuzzy concept, or as one of the quoted senior executives puts it in the famous words of Potter Stewart: "Like pornography, I know it when I see it." And in contrast to the Economist's claim, I don't see much evidence at this point that the innovation process will be "steadily becoming a practical science to be measured, taught, and managed."