Considering the Roeblings' work. Shot by Benson Kua and licensed under Creative Commons. One of the most important ideas I've learned about leading a creative studio was shared with me by my friend Paul Bennett. Paul said: Always end up on Fridays. I've been thinking about that for about 100 Fridays. Continue reading

We've been working with an amazing, fun, ambitious client organization to develop new products and services. As we go about designing new experiences for their customers, our client partners are also doggedly learning new innovation- and customer-friendly attitudes and behaviors. As our teams were getting to know each other, a phrase I heard from more than a few places summed up the shift the team was making. That phrase is: "It might not work." We can say that phrase in at least two ways. The first way is from a place of fear or skepticism, as in: "But, it might... Continue reading

Following up on my earlier post… Building an Experimental Design Culture... Part 2 of our big inspiring weekend involved not only streaming The Dark Crystal, but also streaming Eames: The Architect and the Painter. Some of our team at IDEO New York went and saw it in the theater and I had been waiting for a quiet moment to watch it as well. Whereas Henson's studio culture was more of a surprise, the Eames' approach to design - their studio, culture, and journey - was eerily familiar. That makes sense. The Eames were pioneers in applying design as a mindset... Continue reading

To say that I had an inspiring weekend with Steph would be an understatement. To kick off the weekend, we visited the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image. Of course, seeing the Muppets up close was fun. Miss Piggy was resplendent and Rowlf looked even more good-natured in the fleece. I wasn't expecting to be blown away by all of the advertising work that Henson and his team did early on. Especially cool were the really challenging station ID ads - all of eight seconds long - that the Henson crew worked up with super simple... Continue reading

(Blaine from the Predator by Dunechaser on Flickr. "I don't got time to bleed.") I'm re-reading Emergence by Steven B. Johnson. It's great. Challenging and still fresh. I'm thinking about how the concepts do and don't apply to organizations and the discussion about the The Future or End of Management. How do Emergent behaviors apply in the case of people and ideas? What time horizons and leadership behaviors are necessary to spot and promote emergence? A passage just forced me to put down my (paperback) book, log in to Gogo inflight wireless from 27A and reflect. In one section, Johnson... Continue reading

(Mattsse, Goldfish and Pallette, 1914-1915) On Saturday, I visited the new Matisse show Radical Invention at the MoMA. On display is Matisse's experimentation with his craft between 1913 and 1917. The show (and the curators) explained a couple of things to me. First, Matisse would give himself a constraint (the same subject matter, the same color palette) allowing him to focus on variation in technique. Why worry about composition or subject matter if you want to focus on something else altogether? Second, a piece could evolve quite significantly over the course of several years. One style would morph into another.... Continue reading

(Generic substitutes courtesy of Shazam791 on Flickr and Creative Commons. I hate beets) Increasingly, I've been grappling with the question of process, tools and methods and its relationship (or not) to cultivating a culture that, at worst, permits and, at best, encourages innovation. Call it a slow hunch, but I'm coming to the point of view that innovation process, methods and tools are no substitute for innovation leadership. Sounds trite for sure, but I'd guess that less than 5% of my time in discussions with clients about innovation competency and culture revolve around this hot potato issue. There's no focused... Continue reading

(Cocktail Party At The Imperial Hotel: March 13, 1961 (Tokyo, Japan) via Jim Kuhn) Good ideas can come from cocktail parties and coffee shops. Especially if the crowd has deep and diverse expertise and are experimental / action oriented. Unfortunately, lots of cocktail parties aren't like this. As a result, the ideas often suck. Good ideas can come from spending time with the people in your organization and network, asking them what hunches they've cultivated and what support they need to try them. But most leaders don't invest the time to do this or have such a supportive mindset. As... Continue reading

(Check out Kristian Bjornard's fun Flickr pages. He did a design a day in 2010.) Last Wednesday, it occurred to me that a preoccupation with process can really impede the pursuit of revolutionary innovation. By process, I mean a focus on what happens between when an idea "emerges" and when it first gets to market.Instead, leaders should communicate constraints and conditions and then actively support action. Focus on the bookends, not the books. Constraints and conditions 1. Utilize clear constraints Let people know they'll get real money, but not a lot of it, to take the next development and learning... Continue reading

Amazing art from the folks at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation in Meadville, Pa. I took these while there for a reunion this weekend. Continue reading

(There are always others in pictures like this. From Clickflashphotos on Flickr.) The last two days I've spent at the New York Forum. If you follow me on Twitter, you might know that and hate me for it! On Tuesday night, I led a session with some colleagues on rebuilding trust in the financial system amongst 20-30 year olds. Definitely lots of energy and fun despite the heady subject. I think they might post the notes, so if they do I'll share them. After our session, I took the luxury of attending many of the workshops. The morning session on... Continue reading

(From Dean Terry's Flckr photostream shared herewith under the auspices of Creative Commons which says "yes.") When in doubt, don't. Almost every organization in the world struggles to design and bring new, valuable and cool stuff into the world. With their success, organizations evolve towards consistency and away from variance. As individuals, leaders follow suit. We develop all kinds of strengths and behaviors that help us to perform well at "consistency tasks". To avoid being too smart, leaders looking to encourage innovation have to learn to catch themselves and overcome the urge to say "no." Great innovation leaders learn to... Continue reading

Saw this walking in this surprisingly crisp Summer morning in New York. Then I saw this... Which made me recall hearing Howard Schultz's announcement at the Wired Disruption by Design conference this week that they'll be making Wi-Fi free at their retail locations. Continue reading

(Some beautiful fungal cultures from Petrichor's Flickr stream.) I'm in a lot of discussions with clients concerning the idea of creating, developing, instigating and encouraging a more innovative culture. In these discussions, I've been putting a finer point on the idea of what an "innovation culture" truly is and comparing and contrasting that with other types of cultures. In some instances, a company might not really want or need to create an innovation culture at all. In particular, I've found myself distinguishing amongst the following cultures (and at an individual level, mindsets): Innovative Entrepreneurial Design Human-centered Inventive Operational or Efficient... Continue reading

(Next stop, Eskimo Jo's Flickr page.) Hey Colin, This is late. Several months ago you asked me "What's the future of strategy?" I've been tossing this around in my head since then. No shit. You have a William Gibson quote at your desk: "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." So you know the answer. The future of strategy is: design, launch and learn. The past of strategy was: deliberate and decide. And as the William Gibson quote so aptly illuminates, the future is already here. It's Eric Ries, lean startup stuff. It's Clover Food Labs.... Continue reading

So, so good... http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/ Thanks to @dave_blanchard for pointing me to it. I hope it's not an April Fool's joke. Continue reading

Working on my Brite Conference talk earlier this week, I wrote this sentence. Then I saw this on the walk to work this morning. I wonder if I saw it before and the phrase stuck. I'm excited about the talk. It's one of my first times talking somewhat comprehensively (though likely not coherently) about Venture Design. Continue reading

When you've been doing this for long enough, your bar for what is simple, good, surprising and disruptive. I've seen a lot of ideas by this point in my career. Then I read David Pogue's personal technology article yesterday (after being pointed to it by my colleague Sarah L) and simply said "Whoa." I hadn't finished reading it before I started sharing it. Here's an excerpt: So you have a second line on your iPhone. But that’s not the best part. Line2 also turns the iPhone into a dual-mode phone. That is, it can make and receive calls either using... Continue reading

I've been working with a lot of clients lately that use the "Three Horizons" growth framework explained first (?) in The Alchemy of Growth, a book by a set of McKinsey consultants from the late 1990s. Here is McKinsey's enduring ideas explanation of the framework. For the most part, I'm seeing people misuse this framework. Rather than managing the horizons concurrently, people are using the horizons as a taxonomy for organizing ideas (sounds like a "horizon three idea") rather than to assess relative activity ("do we have a steady stream of S-curves stacked up on the horizon?"). In a sense,... Continue reading

This is a great article getting at the behavior change and systemic challenges that even a "granola eating, fleece wearing" kind of place has with going green. Check out the interactive graphics for great economic empathy data. Here's a quick video to whet your appetite: Continue reading

The replace-emotional-fuzzy-reason-for-buying-luxury-item-with-technical-functional-benefit thing is as timeless as the ego and the id. With that in mind, I thought BMW's decidedly more emotionally slanted campaign was an honest and timely departure. If you want more joy, check out my colleague Ingrid Fetell's great blog on emotional, joyful design here: http://aestheticsofjoy.com/ Continue reading

(Banksy gets it. Courtesy of danbrady, flickr and creative commons.) This morning I engaged in one of the most satisfying and productive parts of the design process. I cleaned up after a frenzied day of creation with my team yesterday. When I see a team that's looking for some direction, one of the things I'll suggest is to go ahead and clean the workspace. I think cleaning, at the right time, can be as important as getting messy. When we do it in the middle of the process, what we throw away and what we keep tells us something. In... Continue reading

My buddy Scott pointed me to this Diesel campaign embracing Stupid and eschewing Smart. Some really nice overlaps with doing innovative stuff. The right approach might feel kind of stupid at first! You might not love the approach or the brand, but you have to admit that they're on to something. Here's the Diesel site: http://www.diesel.com/be-stupid/ Continue reading