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Tools for Innovation: A chapbook

GEMBA Innovation, March 2009 for the DESINOVA project


TOOLS FOR INNOVATION: A CHAPBOOK FIRST DRAFT
This chapbook defnes, describes, and critques concepts, tools, and methods used in the related felds of innovaton and design. Dictonary.com defnes a
chapbook as a small book or pamphlet of popular tales and ballads. What could be more appropriate to the needs of innovators and designers? Much
of each practce innovaton and design is based on knowledge shared via professional grapevines which, if put it to music, would produce entertaining
sagas. What follows, then is a collecton of our two professions current sagas sung in prose (the writen word).
There are two major divisions to the topics described in this chapbook. One group of topics, Innovaton Tools, is widely used among innovators in business,
public agencies, and third-sector organizatons. The other group of topics, Design Tools, is widely used among designers. Because the User-Driven
Innovaton initatve brings together service organizaton innovators and designers (who may also be innovators), these terms are increasingly common to
each profession. We encourage the use of shared meanings. They facilitate the innovaton process.
There are 42 topics, one on each page, included in this version of the chapbook. One page, Innovaton, follows immediately. It is a model for the rest. It
states the topic in the ttle at the top. In the lef column it defnes the topic and briefy describes its use. In the right column are pros and cons discussed
in the literature. Below the columns is a one- or two-line descripton of the topic as it might be used in a DESINOVA project. At the botom are links to highly
informatve references online, chosen to produce a balanced discussion of the topics signifcance and value.
We intend to contnue to produce new pages. Please, feel free to contact us if you have relevant suggestons for new topics to be included you can visit us at
www.gemba.dk or www.desinova.dk.
The chapbook is produced in English because its author speaks English. However, many of the topics described in this chapbook have found their way into
Danish, because (a) they are so new that for many, there may be no Danish antecedents; and (b) Danes are contnually reinventng Dansk by introducing
new terms from other languages. Its a happy coincidence. If however, there are words in Danish that more accurately describe the topics contained in this
chapbook, please tell us when this is the case. Beter yet, please supply us with entries in Danish and we will be glad to include them. However, ten of the
most relevant methods for Danish service companies will be available in Danish.
Robert Jacobson, PhD,
GEMBA INNOVATION
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Content
INNOVATION
AUTHENTICITY
BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY
BUSINESS INCUBATOR
CO-CREATION
CONTExTUAL INqUIRY
CORPORATE NARRATIVE (BUSINESS STORYTELLING)
CULTURAL PROBES
CUSTOMER JOURNEY
DESIGN COLLABORATORIUM
DESIGNING fOR ExPERIENCE
DIVERGENCE AND CONVERGENCE
ETHNOGRAPHY
HEURISTICS (DECISIONMAkING)
IDEATION
INNOVATION MANAGEMENT
INTERACTION DESIGN
LATERAL THINkING (SIx THINkING HATS)
LEAD-USERS AND LEAD-USER PANELS
MIND-MAPPING
MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
OBSERVATION/USABILITY LABORATORY (TESTING IN A CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT)
OPEN INNOVATION
PARTICIPATORY OBSERVATION
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27
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CONTENT
PATH DEPENDENCE
PERSONAS
PREDICTION MARkETS
PROTOTYPING
RADICAL INNOVATION
ROLE-PLAYING GAMES
SCENARIO PLANNING
SERVICE DESIGN
SkUNk WORkS *
STAGE-GATE
STRATEGIC PLANNING
TRANSfORMATION DESIGN
TREND ANALYSIS
TRIZ
USER INNOVATION
VIRTUAL WORLDS AND MENTAL MODELS
WEB 2.0 AND BEYOND
WISDOM Of THE MASSES
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INNOVATION
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Like the World Bank, a large fnancial insttuton may want to initate a PM that indicates how fnancial
markets and investment opportunites will develop, to educate its users with the caveat that its outcome may not bte the truth!
htp://www.business.aau.dk/ike/ Aalborg University IkE Group (Innovaton, knowledge, and Economic Dynamics) website
htp://www.innovatontools.com/ Innovaton Tools website (new website for business managers and executves)
htp://www.businessweek.com/innovate/ Innovate, Business Week magazines regular secton on innovaton and design
htp://www.foranet.dk/upload/hovedrapport_engelsk.pdf User-Driven Innovaton, EBST (Dk), October 2005
htp://hbswk.hbs.edu/ Harvard Business School Working knowledge website (with a strong emphasis on business innovaton)
Links:
Defniton: The central process of the User-Driven Innovaton project,
innovaton is a mercurial subject. Its defnitons are many and diverse. They have
a chicken-and-egg quality: for example, was the frst innovaton onscious thought
or language that enabled it? Dictonary.com defnes innovaton alternatvely as
something new or diferent introduced and the act of introducing something
new or diferent. for our purposes, innovaton as used by organizatons is well
defned by the ThinkSmart blog: People using new knowledge and understanding
to experiment with new possibilites in order to implement new concepts that
create new value. It may be a tautology, but innovatons are always created by
innovators, individuals with the capability of thinking beyond the limitatons of
given wisdom. Methods of innovatng may be learned, but the ability to innovate
may be innate.
Current Use: Innovaton is encouraged in almost every social setng
except where social mores prohibit it (for example, religious dogma).
Currently, innovaton is seen as one of the most important ingredients in
the success of organizatons, the producer of solutons to problems that
are not entrely understood or widely perceived; and the generator of
opportunites that may not have existed before or that were not exploited.
In industrialized and industrializing societes, innovaton is valued as a social
asset that contributes to global compettveness and prosperity.

Pros: Innovaton enables organizatons of every size and type to positvely
and favorably change the external environment or the organizatons ability to
respond to the environment, including how other organizatons and individuals
respond. It is essental to progress. It is popularly held that the more innovatve
an organizaton or individual, the beter suited the organizaton or the person are
to actng in the world and achieving success, however it is measured. In modern
societes, where change is a constant, innovaton has no iconic downside: it is
universally favored as a capability, act, or outlook that inevitably moves things
forward. Innovators and designers working together can positvely change the
world.
Cons: Innovaton has downsides. An innovaton that is improperly conceived,
only partally understood, or poorly tmed can have deleterious efects. for
example, the internal combuston engine made a lot of sense when it was frst
introduced, providing a way of taking chemical energy on the road to wherever
it needed to be applied. Now we know that it also contributes substantally to
climate change, the efects of which are stll unknown but generally considered
dangerous. Also, in some situatons, innovatons that replace existng solutons
for example, growing corn instead of natve grains can produce retrograde
movement, substtutng novelty for traditon that may work beter.
AUTHENTICITY
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A retail company wants to sell gif packages that are authentc. It conducts historical and social research to
determine what Danes think about food that makes some products authentc and others not, and designs new packages to ft.
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authentcity_%28reenactment%29 Authentcity (reenactment), Wikipedia (historical reenactments)
htp://authentcitybook.com/ Website about the book Authentcity, by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore (contains useful concept discussions)
htp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh3R90HAyOq Authentcity, students short video monologue for kansas State University class
htp://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/may2008/id20080528_503953.htm How to Standt Out? Try Authentcity, Business Week, May 28, 2008
htp://www.hermenaut.com/ fake Authentcity, The Hermenaut Online, Issue 15 (click through to appropriate contents)
Links:
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Defniton: Traditonally, the public considered something authentc if
experts certfed it as genuine or if was commonly thought to be real. (The
Danish word for authentc is gte.) Today, when many things can be digitally
or physically replicated or simulated, authentcity Is a quality claimed for many
products, services, communicatons, and experiences. Marketng consultants
advise their clients to speak authentcally to their audiences. Products are
designed to appear authentc. Destnaton resorts and museums feature
exhibitons and environments that are alleged to be authentc. Recently, Joe Pine
and Jim Gilmore published Authentcity, a theoretcal and critcal review of the
concept of authentcity in which they argue that authentcity is negotable: what
is real and what is not, what is authentc and what is not, are all a result of formal
and informal negotatons between makers and buyers.
Current Use: Although its use seems to be abatng, authentcity was heavily
applied to the descripton and promoton of types of foods, entertainments, and
styles of clothing. As Pine and Gilmore point out, what has been important to
consumers is that if a thing is claimed to be authentc, it must be. If, however, a
thing isnt claimed to be authentc, but only appears to be authentc, consumers
may accept it if the mimicry is accurate. further, if a thing is completely false
and advertsed as false, but done well, it may achieve a new type of authentcity.
Disneyland is considered the paragon of real/false inventons.
Pros: Who can argue with authentcity? That which is old and tme-tested is
clearly superior to its counterparts or so our cognitve machinery tells us. Thus,
manufacturers, marketers, and retailers have invested a great deal of resources
in the development, manufacture, marketng, and sale of products, services,
communicatons, and experiences that embody in one way or another someones
concept of what is authentc. When their point of view coincides closely with
consumer attudes and preferences regarding things that are authentc, then
the thing being invented and sold does well in the market. Most products do not
atain this degree of excellence, whether as things that are genuinely authentc or
as inauthentc things that nevertheless come across as good tries.
Cons: Partal authentcity is an oxymoron (that is, a contradicton). Once a
thing has perceptvely deviated from reality, it is no longer authentc. It is then
only an approximaton of authentcity. Claiming or implying that it is authentc
can backfre if the intenton is to present it as authentc as real. The larger
problem with the authentcity paradigm is that authentcity may have nothing to
do with a things appeal or appropriateness as a soluton to a customer need. In
fact, the paradigm may not be a paradigm at all, but simply a marketng fad that
recurs with regularity, recycled with each generaton as it harkens back to its
roots.
BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Currently, no DESINOVA companies have implemented the Blue Ocean Strategy, but BOS
could prove useful especially when new products/innovatons are being conceived and then readied for implementaton.
htp://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/ Ofcial website of the Blue Ocean Strategy inventors, book, and organizaton
htp://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_kim_blue_ocean_strategy.html Blue Ocean Strategy in a nutshell
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Blue Ocean Strategy, Wikipedia
htp://www.slideshare.net/jayrobinson/blue-ocean-strategy-summary/ SlideShare visual presentaton of the Blue Ocean Strategy
Links:
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Defniton: In a Harvard Business Review artcle published in 2004, INSEAD
professors W. Chan kim and Rene Mauborgne introduced the term Blue Ocean
Strategy (BOS) to summarize a decade of research on business success. In 2005,
they published a book of the same name that achieved business bestseller status.
The Blue Ocean Strategy is a branded, atractvely packaged collecton of kim
and Mauborgnes recommendatons for business success. Briefy, it defnes two
regions in which businesses can choose to operate: Red Oceans crowded with
compettors, bloodied by energy-sapping confict; and calm Blue Oceans without
compettors. A blue ocean is created when a company achieves value innovaton
that creates value simultaneously for both the buyer and the company. The
innovaton (in product, service, or delivery) must raise and create value for the
market, while simultaneously reducing or eliminatng features or services that are
less valued by the current or future market.
Current Use: Popular to speak about, BOS adopton by business appears
sporadic (in part because many companies implement some BOS features and
not others). Also, because BOS incorporates elements of other popular business
practces, a company may be implementng the BOS but not know it. However,
some large corporatons, like koreas diversifed manufacturer LG, have praised
BOS positve efects on their plans and external and internal operatons.
Pros: BOS can be seen as a new management approach to change the business
core and model for a company. In additon, the value of non-customers is
appreciated as a mean to expand the market base. BOS contains a roadmap for
assessing a company and its present business and the logic it is based on. Its
partcular interestng for mature companies with the need for restructuring its
compettve base. BOS includes a number of specifc methods and techniques for
evaluatng current product and value propositons, such as the strategy canvas,
four actons framework etc., which might be adopted by business executves,
consultants and agencies.
Cons: According to Wikipedia, It is argued that rather than a theory, Blue
Ocean Strategy is a successful atempt to brand a set of already existng concepts
and frameworks with a highly stcky idea. The Blue Ocean/Red Ocean analogy is
a powerful and memorable metaphor [that] can be powerful enough to stmulate
people to acton. However, the concepts behind the Blue Ocean Strategy (such
as the competng factors, the consumer cycle, non-customers, etc.) are not new.
The most obvious weakness of BOS is it does not say where or how to fnd Blue
Oceans. Every company is limited by its won accumulated learning and knowledge
and cannot escape its own destny. One needs other methods perhaps open-
source innovaton to look for and fnd Blue Oceans.
BUSINESS INCUBATOR
Sample use by DESINOVA company: DESINOVA companies by defniton are not startups or early-stage companies; hence, they are not clients of
business incubators. However, its possible that a DESINOVA company might want to spin out one of its units that could then become a business incubator customer.
htp://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/bi/index.htm Business Incubators Database, European Commission, Dec 11, 2003
htp://en.f.dk/publicatons/publicatons-2007/exploring-best-practses-in-incubaton-in-europe-and-israel/?searchterm=incubators, Exploring Best Practces in Incubaton in
Europe and Israel, Danish Agency for Science, Technology & Innovaton (fIST), April 16, 2007
htp://www.nbia.org/resource_center/what_is/index.phphtp://www.nbia.org/resource_center/what_is/index.php What is Business Incubaton? U.S. Natonal Business
Incubaton Associaton, 2009
htp://www.edn.com/index.asp?layout=artcle&artcleid=CA6479855 Report from Europe: Incubators hatch small successes, Drew Wilson, Electronic Business, Sep 27, 2007
htp://www.btds.biz/ New Venture Creaton and Sustainable Development, Business & Technology Development Strategies LLC, New York
Links:
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Defniton: A business incubator is an insttuton ofen a laboratory or
research center set up to nurture startups and early-stage companies, thus
improving their chances of surviving and growing. This focus on startups and
early-stage companies distnguish incubators from general research parks.
Incubators are ofen publicly fnanced. They include public R&D centers;
self-standing nonproft companies; university R&D units; corporate divisions
responsible for commercializing technology and spinning of new companies. A
company usually is resident in an incubator from six months to one or two years.
In additon to providing inexpensive accommodatons and shared ofce services,
incubators ofer entrepreneurs business training, expert advice, techniques of
innovaton, and preparaton for fundraising; they seldom provide investment
capital but have close relatons with VCs and other sources of capital. In Denmark,
Vkstonden, a public agency, acts as an incubator VC. It funds startup and early-
stage companies that survive a rigorous competton.
Current Use: Today, most industrial natons provide incubators for local
startup and early-stage companies, though never enough. Demand greatly
outstrips supply. In Denmark, there are many business incubators; most are
afliated with universites and research parks. Among the best known are NOVI,
Symbion judged the worlds best incubator in 2005 CAT, and the new Medicon.
The resund Region is rich in incubators including those in Malm and Lund.
MINC is a well-known incubator in Malm that serves startups and early-stage
companies working on both sides of the resund. The economic downturn hurts
incubators: scarce capital keeps their companies from leaving.
Pros: Its claimed by business incubator directors and incubator advocates
that startups raised in incubators have a much greater survival rate (almost
100% beter) than startups that to go it alone. Its certainly true that incubator-
nourished company executves are more sophistcated when dealing with VCs,
corporate venture managers, and potental business partners. Incubators provide
a valuable service to the founders and executve ofcers of startups and early-
stage companies: peer support. founders and CEOs regularly report that social
companionship with their peers is as valuable to them personally as the technical
and instructonal benefts of incubator residency are valuable to their companies.
Presumably this results in beter performance and in turn, business success for
these executves and their companies.
Cons: It has never been established that business incubators provide
satsfactory fnancial or social ROI. Its difcult to know whether companies
actually do beter or not for having spent tme in incubators. There are many
ways of measuring success and equally, many diverse paths that companies can
take on graduatng from a business incubator. Correlatng the two to determine
the value of incubators is nearly impossible, especially when other variables are
factored in. VCs and other investors are divided regarding the value of business
incubators. Many VCs appreciate the ease of access that incubators ofer to
potental funding vehicles. Others believe that residency in an incubator weakens
a startup or early-stage company by keeping it dependent on the incubator. Also,
they claim, companies remain in incubators too long for the same reason that
some students remain in school too long: to avoid competng in the real world.
Co-Creation
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Over a period of years, a company has spent years cultvatng co-creatonists as an actve part of its organizaton. In
turn, the co-creatonists funnel into the company a stream of innovatve thoughts and insights.
htp://www.12manage.com/methods_prahalad_co-creaton.html Co-creaton, from Pk Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy, 12 Manage / Executve fast-Track website
htp://masscustomizaton.blogs.com/mass_customizaton_open_i/cocreaton/index.html New Blog on Mass Customizaton and Rapid Ranufacturing,Mass Customizaton and
Open Innovaton blog, March 31, 2008
htp://www.wikinomics.com/blog/index.php/tags/customer-co-creaton/page/2/ Is PlayStaton opening up their home? Don Tapscot, Wikinomics blog, March 2, 2007
htp://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Courses/StratTech07/Tech/Preso/E-cocreaton.doc (download), Business Models of co-creaton, iSchool, University of California,
Berkeley
Links:
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Defniton: Co-creaton is the process by which two or more agents work
together to create something. In the case of innovaton and design, it is the
process of business innovators or designers working together with users or their
advocates to specify desired products and services. Co-creaton sums up many
diferent innovaton-related methodological streams that place the user in the
center of things and make the user a principal actor. This is especially true of those
streams that have democratzaton of innovaton and design as a principal goal.
Current Use: Despite the atenton given to co-creaton in business
textbooks, among innovaton theoretcians, and prescriptve research outcomes,
in fact it is a business practce honored more ofen in the breech than in the
barrel. There are two reasons for this: (1) There are few (and there may be no)
co-creaton experts in each geographical locale and (2) larger organizatons dont
really like to share customer informaton with their supply chain companies, the
small-business community, and government agencies.
Pros: Co-creaton is democratc. It recruits every available person into the
research, design, and development of innovatve product and service oferings
that will be pitched to the co-creators.
Co-creaton enables many points of view to be gathered, displayed, and analyzed
in an easily analyzed framework. Co-creaton is the ultmate expression of user-
driven infuences. It relies on prior educaton of everyone in the development
chain and theoretcally should result in alignment of all partcipants on common
goals. In this sense, it is deeply transformatve.
Cons: Its impossible to hear or use the term co-creaton without recalling
the Biblical story of the Creaton problems associated with co-creaton:
Grandiose expectatons. Co-creaton ideally would lead to a quantum leap
soluton: absolutely new, a true creaton. But more ofen, it results in refnements
to existng solutons. Partcipatng in co-creaton is costly in terms of tme
and emotons, and can result in shared biases. If the results are trivial and
expectatons for a dramatc change are not met, its unlikely that co-creaton
for that purpose will happen again. Co-creatons promises are stll largely
hypothetcal.
CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Antcipatng the design of a new cellphone interface, researchers sit down with representatve prospectve end
users and go through the various processes of using the interface under specifed conditons.
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_inquiry Contextual Inquiry, Wikipedia
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_design Contextual Design, Wikipedia
htp://www.deyalexander.com/resources/uxd/contextual-inquiry.html Contextual design and feld inquiry, Dey Alexander Consultng website
htp://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/remote_contextual_inquiry_a_technique_to_improve_enterprise_sofware Remote Contextual Inquiry, Lynn Rampoldi-Hnilo and Jef
English, Boxes and Arrows website, 19 April 2004
htp://wiki.fuidproject.org/display/fuid/Contextual+Inquiry+Overview Contextual Inquiry Overview, fluid Project wiki
Links:
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Defniton: Contextual inquiry is a formal term for a simple process in which
most designers engage as a mater of course. To quote Wikipedia, Contextual
inquiry is a user-centered design (UCD) method, part of the contextual design
methodology, that happens up front in the sofware development lifecycle. It calls
for one-on-one observatons of work practce in its naturally occurring context.
During or afer the observatons, discussion ensues wherein users daily routnes
or processes are discovered so that a product or website can be best designed to
either work with the processes or help to shorten or eliminate them altogether.
Current Use: Contextual inquiry, in which the researcher assumes the role
of student to the prospectve end user, is widespread. This is partcularly true
where engineering alone may not produce a usable product or service:, especially
when a new category of product or service is being designed. Examples of its use
include the design of new types of cellphone interfaces, vehicles that are novel
and unprecedented, systems for the delivery of services that were unavailable
before, and so forth. Most user-centered designers employ some sort of
contextual inquiry in the process of design.
Pros: Contextual inquiry locates the researcher as close to the use process
as is possible. It results in potentally deep insights that would not be available
through either simple observaton or reliance on synthetc users like personas.
Contextual inquiry also creates a bridge to ethnographic techniques that
collect informaton based on cultural norms and social behavior. This design
methodology is a perfect complement to ethnographic methods, making good use
of ethnography in ways proven to have positve results.
Cons: Prospectve end users dont have all the answers. As with other
forms of research that rely on user accounts and experiences, there is a basic
vulnerability to the imperfect knowledge that end users have about the way in
which new products and services ultmately will be used. Outside the laboratory,
people are endlessly creatve and always fnd new uses of products and services
unantcipated by their creators, ofen transforming them into virtually new
products and services based on the actual contexts not the projected contexts
within which the products and services are used. Contextual inquiry can lead
researchers astray because, on its face, it may appear impervious to challenge.
CORPORATE NARRATIVE
(Business storytelling)
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A manufacturing company encounters a problem with interdepartmental coordinaton. Using corporate narratve
techniques, the departments discover many diferent stories in efect. They then sttch together a collectve story that explains why coordinaton is poor and how to
improve it.
htp://www.anecdote.com.au/index.php Anecdotes vast archive of knowledge and yes, stories about corporate narratve
htp://www.makingstories.net/narratve_leadership_by_David_fleming.pdfNarratve Leadership, Dave fleming, 2001
htp://www.fastcompany.com/blog/seth-kahan/leading-change/organizatonal-storytellers-take-economy-focus-innovaton-hyper-produ/fast Company, Organizatonal
Storytellers Take on the Economy - focus is Innovaton, Hyper-producton, feb 23, 2009
htp://www.astoriedcareer.com/svend-erik_engh_qa.html A Storied Career, Svend-Erik Engh: q&A
htp://www.amazon.com/Ugly-Duckling-Goes-Work- Workplace/dp/0814408710/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTf8&s=books&qid=1236216889&sr=1-8 The Ugly Duckling Goes to Work:
Wisdom for the Workplace from the Classic Tales of Hans Christan Andersen, Mete Norgaard and Steven Covey (AMACOM, 2005)
Links:
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Defniton: Corporate narratve or storytelling is one way to discover
what may be a hidden truth but of greater value, what people in an organizaton
believe and what drives them. Human communites preserve their most precious
knowledge as stories and myths or sagas. Myths or sagas are fundamental and
long-lastng. They prescribe proper social relatonships, social mores, and values
to which everyone in the community must adhere. Stories tend to be more
immediate, short-term, and partcular to the topic or event to which they relate.
In a guided session, individuals and group stories are collected, analyzed, and
interpreted to give a state-of-the-company overview. When guided methods are
unavailable, an investgator can conduct interviews and examine records, press
accounts, and publicatons to reconstruct prevailing stories that can then be used
to inform innovaton and change processes.
Current Use: Storytelling is ancient. Today, in most cultures, it is relegated
to writers, artsts, and performers, although skilled teachers also use storytelling
to educate in a lastng way. Corporate narratve professional analysis of myths
and stories to understand prevailing cultures and relatonships in companies is
more recent. Many professional innovaton and change-management frms now
use corporate narratve as an essental component of transformatonal innovaton
and planned change. Practtoners in the feld defne corporate narratve and
storytelling as group processes of discovery and afrmaton, respectvely.
Pros: Everyone likes to talk about themselves, their lives, and their challenges.
Corporate narratve is a popular and enjoyable way to get people to divulge
their personal stories, in partcular those that pertain to the company, and to
invent new stories that may be equally revealing and valuable. Under managed
conditons, corporate narratve is a safe way to express praise for a coworker,
ideal goals, dissatsfacton with a situaton, or a new way of doing things all
expressions that are difcult to make in other public situatons. Storytelling
in Denmark and the Nordic countries is well developed as an educatonal tool
and experts are available to help in business situatons. Corporate narratve is
democratc in its practce.
Cons: Observing a storytelling session, a more sober manager might inquire,
What for? He or she might note that the company informaton environment is
already saturate with word-of-mouth chater and gossip. Is it really productve
to add to the load? Also, corporate narratve takes tme of the job whether in
a group setng or during a one-on-one interview. There is a sort of euphoria
associated with storytelling and story-listening that feels transformatve but
its efects may last only days or hours before mundane events bury the sense of
accomplishment. The largest barrier to corporate narratves broad acceptance,
however, is a factor of its success: too many diferent practtoners, each with his
or her own style, making quality control difcult.
CULTURAL PROBES
Sample use by DESINOVA company: In preparaton for the development of new communicaton services, a transport company conducts Cultural
Probes to see which services its customers will adopt early, and which later on.
www.alistapart.com/artcles/culturalprobe Inside Your Users Minds: The Cultural Probe, Ruth Stalker-firth, A List Apart No. 234, March 27, 2007
www.sfu.ca/~benn/iat333/DESIGNING%20A%20CULTURAL%20PROBE.doc Designing a Cultural Probe, Derek Pante et al, Simon fraser University (Britsh Columbia), January
15, 2008
htp://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/002816.html Cultural probes for intranet user research, Column Two blog, April 8, 2008
htp://portal.acm.org/citaton.cfm?id=1228219 Moving from cultural probes to agent-oriented requirements engineering, Anne Boetcher, University of Melbourne, ACM
Series on Internatonal Conferences, 2006
Links:
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Defniton: Cultural Probes have an antecedent everyone recognizes: The
treasure hunt game. In the game, players are instructed to fnd certain hidden
items in a locaton. Usually, they have to navigate to that locaton frst, which is
key to discovering the items. A Cultural Probe is like an open-ended treasure
hunt: Users of a product or technology are given instructons, and ofen actual
packages of devices (like a voice recorder), and told to explore the environment
in which they live and work, where the innovaton being developed will be
employed. Individuals are usually required to keep a diary in order to accurately
record each discovery emotonal and intellectual, as well as physical that is
relevant to the innovaton. Afer suitable tme has elapsed, probers are called
together to report their fndings.
Current Use: Cultural Probes by other names have always been popular
ways of surveying the social landscape in which products and services
must survive and thrive. Now that they have a formal name and a growing
methodology, Cultural Probes are becoming uniform and thus scientfcally more
reliable. The so-called ITC industries IT and communicatons are heavy users
of Cultural Probes.
Pros: A Cultural Probe theoretcally can detect phenomena that ordinary
ethnography or trend analysis might miss. It is a more focused approach, but its
main value-add is that the user is the researcher and is accountable in both roles
to the development or design team. Rather than deal in gross generalizatons,
a prober can be very narrow and precise defning the cultural milieu in terms of
his or her own experience only. This may be considered a more scientfc way
of collectng cultural informaton than less fne-grained methodologies like the
various tests and elements in conventonal market research.
Cons: What knowledge exactly does a Cultural Probe produce that cannot
be goten some other way? The very defniton of a Cultural Probe is so loosely
drawn that virtually anything that the prober brings back can be purported to
have some sort of value. Then the act of interpretaton can become (a) mystcal,
because there are no hard and fast rules; and (b) overwhelming, since the number
of possible relevant interpretatons is large and in some cases nearly infnite. A
Cultural Probe absolutely sensitzes researchers to the complexity of the social
milieu facing a new product or service, but is this news?
CUSTOMER JOURNEY
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Looking to introduce a new line of outdoor apparel with a new brand, a company asks prospectve buyers and
surrogates (individuals with desired characteristcs) to go through the process of defning their needs, and fnding and buying the product. Their reports become a
journey map.
htp://www.cabinetofce.gov.uk/public_service_reform/delivery_council/cjm.aspx Uk Cabinet Directve, Customer Journey Mapping, feb 6, 2009
htp://www.mycustomer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=133150&d=101&h=817&f=816 Improving the Customer Experience, MyCustomer.com, Jul 31, 2007
htp://www.livework.co.uk/our-work/danish-rail Danish Rail Service Usability: Mapping the passenger experience from A-Z, live|work, Nov-Dec 2007
htp://www.searchenginejournal.com/tracking-practcal-kpis-with-web-analytcs/5755/ About online customer journeys, Search Engine Journal, Oct 3, 2007
htp://www.slideshare.net/whatdiscover/customer-perspectves-on-service-innovaton Slideshow, Customer Perspectves on Service Design, Peer Insight, Oval, Swisscom
Mobile, and Hewlet-Packard, Innovaton in Services Conference, Apr 7, 2007
Links:
13
Defniton: Customer journey is a spatal metaphor describing the
customers mental and emotonal process from the state of becoming aware of his
or her need or want to the moment at which he or she purchases the product or
service. Sometmes it includes the customers use of the product, the experience
induced by using it, and the afermath: whether the customer repeats the
purchase and use of the product or decides to purchase or use another product.
These internal events, diaried by the customer, can be mapped to represent (a)
the process itself and (b) all of the other factors in the environment bearing on
the customers decisions. This map is the customer journey. In a sense, it is the
reciprocal or matching opposite of a customer experience design. When well
done, the customer experiences design at each touch point direst the customer on
the desired journey, toward a purchase.
Current Use: for years, advertsing frms and retail stores have mapped
customer journeys in order to establish the proper force and structure of an
argument to buy their products. How does the customer encounter the product
and then what? Research survey, focus group, secret shopping, and so
forth provides data to build an inital map and then refne it. In the case of
innovaton within a company, the customer journey may have another use: to map
managements response to a demonstrated needed change or new development
(a product or process) and its soluton, the innovaton. Such a strategic use can be
extended to project innovaton acceptance throughout the company and among
the companys customers.
Pros: Mapping a customer journey is a valuable discipline: it totally focuses
the experience designer on the customers thought processes and emotons,
creatng an empathy with the customer that less intmate types of research
cannot. The mapmaker is working with the actual customer events as writen
down or verbally reported by the customer, not a researcher. The customer
can critque the journey map while it is being made or later, adding nuanced
descriptons of his or her thoughts and emotons as they occurred and as they are
remembered -- two diferent sets of impressions! This level of understanding is
ofen unatainable using other methodologies. Because customer journey maps
are usually graphical, they are easily understood across disciplines. Comparisons
among diferent maps are easy. In a company, internal customers maps, although
not common, would be useful for determining the right strategy for promotng a
desired innovaton, at introducton and later during implementaton.
Cons: One customer does not an audience make. Many maps must be
constructed to arrive at a sufciently general rule to guide development of
a product and its introducton to the market, or an innovaton in a company.
Because customer journey mapping is proprietary, each method is unique;
comparability of maps from maker to maker isnt easy. The same is true of the
research that goes into producing customer journey maps. It varies widely, in part
depending on the extensivity of the journey space defned by the researchers
and how many factors are identfed and associated with each customer event.
It may be difcult to give each event the same atenton, in which case it may
become the weakest link.
Links:
DESIGN COLLABORATORIUM
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Business planners within a company partcipatng in a Design Collaboratorium makes a market challenge seeks
suggestons from the DC for how to meet the market with new products that meet usability standards.
htp://www.mci.sdu.dk/m/Research/Publicatons/UCD/fROMUSAB.DIS.fINAL.PDf from usability lab to design collaboratorium: Reframing usability practce, Jacob Buur and
Susanne Bdker, Mads Clausen Insttute, SDU, 2002
htp://www.nwow.alexandra.dk/publikatoner/NordiCHI2000.pdf Ethnographic feldwork under industrial constraints: Towards Design-in-Context, Werner Sperschneider and
kirsten Bagger, Mads Clausen Insttute, SDU
htp://www.tmeshighereducaton.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=400612&sectoncode=26 Research Collaboraton, Harriet Swain, The Times Higher Educaton, 14 february 2008
htp://libra.msra.cn/paperdetail.aspx?id=902647 Understanding experience in interactve systems, Jodi forlizzi and katja Baterbee, ACM Conference on Interactve Systems,
2004
14
Defniton: Designers will recognize the Design Collaboratorium (DC), a
general model for product and service innovaton, as a variaton on the complex
integrated industrial design methods. The DC is unique because it is applying
integrated design practces beyond the confnes of design per se and has been
enlarged to include disciplines beyond design including systems theory, usability
methodologies, user partcipaton in design, and psychology. The DC is a Danish
inventon unitng the development laboratories of Bang & Olufson, Danfoss,
and kommunedata; and the University of Aarhus in a common efort to perfect
integrated, multdisciplinary methods of creatng complex new products.
Current Use: One DC currently exists, in Denmark. But analogues exist in
other natons in the form of inter-laboratory consortums and technology centers.
The Danish DC, however, is more self-conscious and self-analytcal than the
other collaboratons, which evolved as a mater of fact in response to need. The
emergence of new DCs may wait on proof that the Danish DC is efectve and that
the benefts for the three companies and the university exceed their investment.
Pros: In principle, the more points of view and professional evaluatons that
can be brought to bear on a problem, the beter the eventual soluton that
results. The DC defnitely meets the test of variety. At the very least, it is sowing
awareness of the nature of complex problems and what each of the contributng
disciplines ofers for the soluton of those problems. In the ideal case, the DC
will spawn new product and service concepts and possibly actual products and
services that are well suited to the business environment and future markets out
of the gate. If it contributes to the top-line of its sponsor/partcipants that is, if
it results in new lines of revenue it may be judged a success.
Cons: Collaboraton within the same profession is difcult enough; across
disciplinary boundaries and companies in diferent lines of business, the
DC becomes its own case study in dealing with complexity. The physical
infrastructure of the DC is modest, but the social organizaton is demanding. A
problem common to similar collaboratons is the resistance that partcipatng
organizatons ofen have to sharing IP, let alone products that may result.
DESIGNING FOR EXPERIENCE
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A retail client wants to alter its customer base radically, from older to younger and from men to women. To do
this, it needs to totally repositon its brand. It initates a DfE program to totally revamp its customer experience.
htp://www.techgnosis.com/experience.html Experience Design and the Design of Experience, Erik Davis, 2001, Techngnosis
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_economy Experience Economy, Wikipedia
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_design Experience Design, Wikipedia
htp://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2008/id20080411_491286.htm Its All About Experience, Sourab Vossoughi, Business Week, April 11, 2008
htp://www.dux2007.org/ DUx 2007 (Design for User Experience) website, conference held November 2007
Links:
15
Defniton: Designing for Experience (DfE) is the preferred term-of-art for
the practce of cratng and assembling holistc compositons of experiences. A
company or agency produces scored arrangements of experiences also called
touch points to persuade, provoke, and most importantly, initate desired
behaviors among key stakeholders (most ofen today, infuencing buying decisions
among business customers and politcal acton or its lack among citzens). This
meta-practce subsumes design disciplines, environmental psychology, landscape
architecture, theme-park development and tourism, media of all types, and
persuasive disciplines including advertsing and public relatons. Interest in DfE
crystallized afer publicaton of The Experience Economy by Jim Pine and Joe
Gilmore in 1996 and has steadily increased.
Current Use: DfE is a very new practce. Most writng about DfE usually
traces it back to 1955, when Imagineering interdisciplinary design was
use by Walt Disney and his team to create a totalistc immersive experience,
Disneyland, evocatve of certain Disney themes and commerce. (The even older
Tivoli was a major inspiraton for Walt Disney.) Because of the felds youth
and because DfE designers prefer to remain in the background, case studies of
DfE are rare; but hiring paterns and press accounts suggest a coming food of
applicatons.
Pros: DfE is the other side of the human-centric design coin. It posits that
the external environment experiences that individuals have that are not ted
specifcally to a product or service may be as determinatve of their behavior
as are experiences ted to specifc products and services. DfE strives to create a
contnuous experience of the sponsor within the mind of the customer or citzen,
at least when it comes tme to act favorably, in the interests of the sponsor.
In that case, it is incumbent on designers to help craf environments that by
engendering experiences, induce acceptance of innovatons and their sound use.
DfE, it is claimed, will have great power as methods for composing successful
scores become beter known and implemented.
Cons: DfE today is ill-defned and can mean many things ranging from the
development of destnaton resorts (including whole natons, like Dubai) to the
design of interactve websites. As DfE case studies are few, its impossible to
validate the claims of DfEs) supporters. The constructon of full-blown DfEs
may prove difcult as individuals and whole societes alter their attudes and
behaviors in response to unplanned for experiences like climate change and the
skyrocketng price of petroleum-based fuels. That may be like shootng at moving
targets from a platorm that is itself moving in response to change.
DIVERGENCE AND CONVERGENCE
Sample use by DESINOVA company: An ideaton process initated to identfy new product innovatons is tme-limited by the session manager to
maintain predetermined tme proportons for inventon (divergence) and synthesis (convergence), thus resultng in a fnite, manageable number of innovatons to be
tested.
htp://changingminds.org/explanatons/decision/divergence_convergence.htm Divergence and Convergence, ChangingMinds.org, 2009.
htp://designthinking.ideo.com/?tag=divergence-and-convergence What does design thinking feel like? Tim Brown, Design Thinking, Sep 7, 2008
htp://www.innovatontools.com/Artcles/ArtcleDetails.asp?a=152 Creatvity made simple: Divergence and Convergence are critcal to successful ideaton, Joyce Wycof,
Innovaton Tools, Aug 19, 2004
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_and_divergent_producton Convergent and divergent producton, Wikipedia
htp://chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/?p=1265 Divergent and convergent thinking, Chris Corrigan, Mar 10, 2007
16
Defniton: Brainstorming and similar group ideaton processes ofen
produce storms of inventve ideas, because of the diversity of partcipants. This
proliferaton of ideas Is called divergence. Most of these ideas are diferent
from one another. If each of these divergent ideas had to be investgated and
for each a separate conclusion drawn, the group leaders and ideators would
be unable to get much work done except to plow through the inital bursts of
brilliance! fortunately, there is a countervailing mental and social phenomenon,
convergence that seeks closure and then fuses ideas, reducing the sheer number
of ideas to a manageable fow. The complementary processes of divergence and
convergence make it possible to economically ideate and evaluate at the front-end
of innovaton.
Current Use: Divergence and convergence are normal processes of
human discourse and decision-making. for decision-making to be efectve, the
two processes must be balanced which means having an ideaton group or
populaton that also is balance between those who favor divergent, inventve
thinking and those who favor convergent, consolidatng thinking. Here is what
to look for, from ChangingMinds.org: Some people prefer diverging, as it means
the potental of a wrong decision is never reached. These people ofen have a
preference for perceiving. People who rapidly seek convergence ofen have a
preference for the structure of judging. ZING and similar ideaton technologies
enforce a divergence-convergence back and forth among brainstorming
partcipatons.
Pros/Cons: There are no pros and cons for divergence and convergence,
though, in order to be successful, an ideaton process needs both in proper
proporton. Adjustng the proporton correctly requires the ideaton session
manager to know when to signal its tme for the group to reverse its feld, from
divergent thinking to convergent thinking; or at least, to consider when to do so
by consensus.
Links:

ETHNOGRAPHY
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Like the World Bank, a large fnancial insttuton may want to initate a PM that indicates how fnancial markets
and investment opportunites will develop, to educate its users with the caveat that its outcome may not be the truth!
htp://www.antropologi.info/antromag/corporate/ Special Report on Commercial Anthropology, Anthropologi.info website
htp://www.practcinganthropology.org/ Natonal Associaton for the Practce of Anthropology (NAPA) website
htp://www.epic2008.com/ EPIC 2008 (Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference) taking place in Copenhagen in October 2008
htp://www.anthro-phd.dk/ Danish Research School of Anthropology and Ethnography (CU and U of Aarhus) website
htp://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/anthrodesign/ Anthrodesign newsgroup (spirited discussion of ethnographic issues)
Links:
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Defniton: TBroadly speaking, and expanding on Wikipedias stlted
descripton, ethnography is a genre of research and reportng that uses feldwork
to provide a descriptve study of human societes. Ethnographic practce is
derived from cultural and social anthropology, social sciences with reasonably
deep roots. The frst ethnography, in fact, may have frst occurred in prehistoric
tmes, when travelers made notes on communites they encountered, their
mores, and their peoples behaviors. Modern ethnography is a relatvely young
profession most of its practtoners stll are trained as anthropologists and
the applicaton of ethnography for commercial purposes more recent stll. In
fact, commercial ethnography is stll in formaton with an incomplete theoretcal
base and canons and practces that are highly relatvistc. In the USA, there is
constant talk of a split between the establishment, mostly academic American
Anthropological Associaton (AAA) and commercial ethnographers, a debate
mirrored in other natons.
Current Use: Ethnography is enjoying a global springtme of new
opportunites in companies and public agencies as executves and managers
seek beter insights into new markets and their customers behaviors, wants, and
needs. The use of ethnography in the development of new informaton services
and telecommunicatons (ITC), for example, is coterminous with the emergence
of the Internet and wireless services as dominant technologies for sharing
informaton.
Pros: Ethnography is inherently human-centric. It points innovators and
designers to user-directed applicatons of technology and technique to serve
peoples needs and solve societal and environmental problems. Its methods place
human beings frst and foremost as the benefciaries of wise innovatons and the
victms of innovatons (or lack of innovaton) that have negatve consequences.
Ethnography is gradually coming to terms with its lack of a coherent theoretcal
base and is developing canons to ensure ethical practces, although their
enforcement is currently ad hoc. Ethnographers bring a new way of looking
at business and civic issues that challenges traditonal mechanistc planning
and policymaking. In the coming years, ethnography may enlarge the societal
conversaton about what is important and what priorites need to be served. for
innovators, ethnography can suggest new user-directed innovaton methods; and
for designers, it can generate new insights for product and service use, and useful
constraints.
Cons: Ethnographys value outside of social science remains to be proven; so
far, most accounts of its value are anecdotal and unquantfed. As a result, in
business partcularly, ethnographic research may be funded but its fndings are
ofen discounted or ignored entrely. Ethnography introduces a new politcal
pole that can be used to distort or defeat innovaton as a process. Commercial
ethnography, responding to the market, ofen resembles market research; its
ethics remain murky.
HEURISTICS
(DeCisionmaking)
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Business developers contemplatng a new line of retail services applies the recogniton heuristc to sort through
various possible service alternatves and paths to them, eliminatng those that resemble past failed atempts.
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristc Heuristc, Wikipedia
htp://tnyurl.com/5jjamp Heuristcs and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitve Judgment, T. Gilovich et al (Google Books website)
htp://gilovich.socialpsychology.org/ Dr. Thomas D. Gilovich, Professor, Cornell University, Social Psychology Profle (includes citatons)
htp://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5423.html Managers Heuristcs, R&D Performance Volatlity, Harvard Business School Working knowledge
htp://www.edit-work.com/framework.pdf What Drives Innnovaton? A Heuristc framework for Corporate Innovaton, Decision Analyst
Links:
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Defniton: Heuristcs is the term of art used to describe human processes
of making decisions and learning that are informal and also the psychological
and cognitve science that studies this process. A heuristc is a specifc informal
method, ofen unique to an individual but more frequently, employed by most
human beings who, afer all, share physiologies and cultural styles. These are
common heuristcs from George Polyas 1945 classic, How to Solve It, cited in
Wikipedia:
Look to the unknown.
If you are having difculty understanding a problem, try drawing a picture.
If you cant fnd a soluton, try assuming that you have a soluton and
seeing what you can derive from that (working backward).
If the problem is abstract, try examining a concrete example.
Try solving a more general problem frst (the inventors paradox: the
more ambitous plan may have more chances of success).
Current Use: Heuristcs are part of everyones daily experience. They
are a universal alternatve to formal, logical methods of solving problems and
innovatng. In additon, heuristcs play a large role in computer programming,
design and engineering, and usability testng (also called heuristc evaluaton).
Innovators make intense use of heuristc algorithms; this may be one of their
defning characteristcs.
Pros: Heuristcs are a part of everyday life. Individuals use them to solve
problems for which they havent the knowledge or tme to apply more formal
logical methods. In many cases, the heuristcs are a more efcient and even more
accurate way of determining the best soluton for a problem (including devising
innovatons for problems that the individuals have not encountered before).
Because most heuristcs are psychologically hard-wired or learned as part of the
process of socializaton, groups can share heuristc methods to apply many minds
to solving common problems and in the process, learning together what works.
A trained decision maker can thus pick and choose among personal heuristcs, or
others that have been described, to create a heuristc toolkit appropriate to the
problem or problems at hand.
Cons: IEach persons heuristc inventory is unique. It contains personal and
collectve biases. Working on a common problem, team members may have to
work hard to arrive at common understandings. Heuristcs-based decisionmaking
is that it is sometmes difcult for individuals to describe for colleagues how they
came to a conclusion, since heuristcs are informal and the language used by each
person to describe them if they can even recall them afer reaching a soluton
will vary. The informality of heuristcs means they cannot be translated into
arithmetc, which means they do not lend themselves to quanttatve evaluaton
although their solutons may.
IDEATION
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Using ZING (see link below) to speed the process of ideaton, a team of designers and business innovators from a
leading infrastructure provider developed numerous ways of characterizing the companys line of work and what could be done to describe and promote potental new
lines of business.
htp://www.haworth.com/Brix?pageID=1374 Haworth Ideaton Group: Performance-Driven Ofce Design, Haworth, Inc., 2009
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_solving Problem Solving, Wikipedia (extensive hyperlinked list of problem-solving techniques)
htp://www.id-mag.com/artcle/Getng_Serious_About_LEGO/ Getng Serious About LEGO, I.D. magazine, undated (2009)
htp://www.hiit.f/u/asalovaa/artcles/salovaara-et-al-interact2005-future-oriented-informaton.pdf [PDf] Use of future-Oriented Informaton in User-Centered Product
Concept Ideaton, Ant Salovaara (htp://www.hiit.f/~asalovaa/) and Petri Mannonen, Helsinki Insttute for Informaton Technology, 2005
htp://www.slideshare.net/jdpuva/brainstorming-and-ideaton-overview [Slideshow] Brainstorming and Ideaton Overview, OVO, Mar 4, 2008 ZING: htp://gemba.dk/gemba-
zing.aspx?lang=da
Links:
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Defniton: Ideaton is a term invented in the 1820s to mean the process
of forming ideas or images. Of course, the frst human being ideated. But
the formalizaton of this process was a consequence of the 19th Centurys
fascinaton with human science, how the body and mind functon. Wikipedias
defniton of ideaton is more proactve: idea generaton. Ideaton is the willful
act of generatng ideas. for each person the precise act is diferent, but there is
enough evidence to believe that ideaton occurs in predictable setngs and that
the ideaton process can be improved upon through human agency. Successful
ideaton that produces many genuinely new and potentally useful ideas is a
personal act but also one subject to the social environment. Ideaton has a
second, related meaning: the ability to envision oneself in the future, a rarer trait
than the ability to come up with new ideas.
Current Use: Ideaton is at the absolute front-end of innovaton. It is the
well that gathers thoughts and experiences, and from them distlls ideas and
visions. Many if not most individuals are ideators from childhood on, some
beter than the rest. Natural ideators may have unusual mental capacites
including a striking ability to think laterally. To harness and enhance ideaton on
a broad scale, however, benefts from a well-stocked arsenal of techniques (listed
and described on Wikipedia; see the link below). Ideas, like electricity, cannot be
stored on the shelf. In place of the electrical batery, ideaton relies on idea banks
and ideaton networks to preserve good ideas for future use.
No Pros and Cons: Ideaton is a necessary process that naturally occurs
when humans engage in problem solving. It can be formalized and applied to
problems having to do with the front-end of innovaton. Ideaton as a collectve
process can be managed. It seems to be the case that the ability to come up with
new ideas is widespread, but that the ability to formally ideate to purposefully
generate new ideas of a partcular type may be a less common human trait.
While the evidence isnt all in, innovaton managers who seek to maximize their
ideaton success rates will want to do advance work identfying individuals with
striking records of ideaton success.
Source: David Armano
INNOVATION MANAGEMENT
Sample use by DESINOVA company: In order to speed development of a breakthrough strategy for one of its subsidiary companies, a large parent
company appoints a company innovaton director and instructs the director to build a team of innovaton managers who will integrate with the subsidiarys operatng
units.
htp://www.innovatontools.com/resources/innovatonmanagement.asp Innovaton Management Center, InnovatonTools, 2009
htp://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5887.html Where Will Management Innovaton Take Us? James Heskit, Working knowledge, Harvard, Mar 5, 2008
htp://www.asb.dk/artcle.aspx?pid=19334 Innovaton Management Program, Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, 2009
htp://tnyurl.com/mckinsey-innovaton-management Innovatve management: A conversaton with Gary Hamel and Lowell Bryan, Joanna Barsh, Mckinsey quarterly, Nov 2007
htp://www.ispim.org/index.php Internatonal Society for Professional Innovaton Management, 2009
htp://www.worldscinet.com/ijim/ijim.shtml Internatonal Journal of Innovaton Management (IJIM), World Scientfc, 2009
htp://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0963-1690 Creatvity and Innovaton Management (journal), Wiley, 2009
Links:
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Defniton: Innovaton management has two components. The frst
component is the management of the business processes that support
innovaton: mission defniton, goal setng, team building, trend analysis and
scenarios, assignments, co-creaton with customers, collaboraton with other
organizatonal units, liaison with top management, customer experience design,
ethnography and other types of human research, involvement with strategic
planning, and so forth. The second component is managing the overall process
of innovaton and the progress of specifc innovatons from start (ideaton) to
fnish (implementaton). An innovaton manager is likely to be balancing many
actvites simultaneously. Because innovaton is seen as cutng-edge, even afer
its been insttutonalized, the innovaton management must take on another task,
presentng the organizatons most ambitous projects to stakeholders: owners
and investors, executve and middle management, workers, business partners,
politcians, the press, and the public.
Current Use: radually innovaton management has become an accepted
business actvity like fnance and marketng, though its stll ofen the junior
member among actvites. This gives innovaton managers the freedom to explore
to innovate that more mature actvites have surrendered. Today, most large
organizatons have a designated informaton manager; some have many and even
executves charged with this responsibility. It remains to be seen how informaton
management rides out the fnancial crisis: innovaton is most valuable during
challenging tmes, but its too ofen seen as the most dispensable. Innovaton
management may have to transform itself for the tmes into a type of recovery
service providing new ways of staying compettve.
Pros: About the frst component of innovaton management, managing
business processes that support innovaton, there is no disagreement: innovaton
is essental to every thriving organizaton, public or private, and it needs careful
atenton and handling. Skilled innovaton management of this type keeps the
innovaton machine running and well situated to contribute to corporate goals
and maintain the innovaton groups (or groups) integrity and vitality, functonally
and fnancially. In larger organizatons, the innovaton manager, especially if he
or she has a high rank, can also play a signifcant, valuable part in directng and
enhancing the organizatons mission, tasks, and capabilites. Its the second
component of innovaton thats dicey. Innovaton managers can bring rigor and
order to the innovaton process, but can they actually improve the quantty and
quality of innovatons that can be implemented and thus demonstrate their value?
Most innovaton managers would respond, Yes! We can and do, and point to
innovatons, especially radical and transforming innovatons as evidence. But.
Cons: How innovaton managers can improve the process of innovaton
remains problematc. Should they encourage broad partcipaton in innovaton
actvites? Should it organize and lead an elite skunk works or distribute
innovaton champions to each operatng unit? And most uncertain, is the role
of the innovaton manager to train as many individuals as possible to become
capable of innovatng? Or is it to cull the ranks of workers (and possibly external
stakeholders) for individuals who are demonstrably capable innovators serial
innovators and who show talent, and then concentrate on supportng their work
as innovators, however they do it? The innovaton management profession and
the research that informs it are each too new for a defnitve answer.
INTERACTION DESIGN
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A portal created to facilitate management of a customers account is assigned to interacton designers for
evaluaton in its inital concepton stage and then for development as a fully functoning system.
htp://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jul2006/id20060728_334148.htm?chan=innovaton_innovaton+%2B+design_top+stories Interacton Design: An Introducton,
Dan Safer, Business Week, July 28, 2006
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interacton_design Interacton Design, Wikipedia
htp://www.designinginteractons.com/ Designing Interactons, Bill Moggridge, IDEO, interactve website (highly recommended)
htp://www.ixda.org Interacton Design Associaton website
htp://www.frstmonday.org/issues/issue12_4/kaptelinin/htp://www.frstmonday.org/issues/issue12_4/kaptelinin/ Excerpts from Actng with Technology: Actvity Theory and
Interacton Design, Victor kaptelinin and Bonni Nardi, MIT Press 2007
Links:
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Defniton: In a very short tme, Interacton Design (ID) has emerged as a
new, self-identfed design discipline and claim to a sizable territory within the
practce. According to Dan Safer of Adaptve Path, author of the leading text on
Interacton Design, ID is the art of facilitatng or instgatng interactons between
humans (or their agents), mediated by products. By interactons, I mostly mean
communicaton: one-on-one (a telephone call), one-to-many (blogs), or many-
to-many (the stock market). The products an interacton designer creates can
be digital or analog, physical or incorporeal or some combinaton thereof. ID
is concerned with the behavior of products, with how products work. A lot of
an interacton designers tme will be spent defning these behaviors, but the
designer should never forget that the goal is to facilitate interactons between
humans.
Current Use: ID gained currency as a profession with the emergence of
new media of communicatons. While Safer emphasizes that ID is applicable
across the board to every system that facilitates human communicatons, in fact
its greatest applicaton remains to communicaton and media technologies: the
Internet, wireless communicatons, kiosks, digital TV, and similar systems.
Pros: ID focuses the atenton of its practtoners on human acts of
communicaton and technologies and systems that can support and extend the
communicaton processes. It is a more limited design discipline than general
design disciplines, for example, industrial design or graphic design, which are
based on the designers skills. ID is defned by its outcomes. ID is thus more
delimited than traditonal design disciplines, obeys more formal rules, and is
more easily taught and communicated as a practce. Its outcomes are more easily
evaluated: while a conventonal design may or may not be successful, users of ID
innovatons know instantly whether or not a design has been a success. Learning
within the ID community is exponental.
Cons: Because of its relatve youth among design disciplines, and despite its
characterizaton as a fast-learning profession, ID is stll largely a mater of intuiton
and common sense. The profusion of poorly functoning wireless devices (and
a few standouts that work well, like the iPod and iPhone) is testmony to the
uncertain quality of much ID. Perhaps once educaton in this feld has become
more robust, practtoners will be held to higher standards. for the moment,
however, ID solutons are wildly erratc in terms of performance.
Links:
lateral thinking
(six thinking hats)
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A brand manager, concerned about not having a completely thought through plan for migratng a brand from one
market segment to another, convenes a hat wearing session complete with Thinking Hats = and follows de Bonos methodology to arrive at a more holistc plan.
htp://www.debonoconsultng.com/ de Bono Consultng website (dense with material)
htp://www.edwdebono.com/debono/lateral.htm Lateral Thinking and Parallel Thinking, Edward de Bono, Edward de Bonos Web, 2009
htp://www.realinnovaton.com/content/c081110a.asp Lateral Thinking Stmulates Creatvity and Innovaton, Paul Sloane, Real Innovaton, 2009
htp://www.mindtools.com/pages/artcle/newTED_07.htm Six Thinking Hats, MIndTools, 2009
htp://www.managementoday.co.uk/channel/StrategyOperatons/news/674496/ The Gospel according to Edward de Bono, Management Today (Uk), Aug 1, 2007
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Defniton: Edward de Bono, a writer and consultant dealing with creatvity,
coined the term lateral thinking in 1967. According to de Bono, There are
several ways of defning lateral thinking, ranging from the technical to the
illustratve. Lateral thinking literally means thinking sideways. According to
Wikipedia, Lateral thinking is about reasoning that is not immediately obvious
and about ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditonal step-by-
step logic. de Bono further prescribed several techniques for stmulatng lateral
thinking. As an extension of this concept, de Bono devised a simple cartoon now
known as The Hats to describe six diferent types of thinking and how they
relate to create a complete thought process. figuratvely putng on a hat of a
diferent color compels one to think in that manner.
Current Use: Lateral thinking is a personal practce. Because de Bonos
ideas are popular around the world, it is practced widely but usually privately.
By itself, lateral thinking helps one to solve problems; when combined with other
techniques of percepton and cogniton, it can be an important part of the early-
stage innovaton repertoire of problem-solving tools. One can practce lateral
thinking in ones own way, according to rules that are personally palatable and
efectve.
No Pros and Cons: Lateral thinking is a useful technique for working
around mental barriers that conventonal logic cannot overcome. The more one
uses lateral-thinking techniques, the more second nature they become.
White Hat: facts
Red Hat: Emotonal thinking
Yellow Hat: Positve thinking
Black Hat: Critcal thinking
Green Hat: Creatve thinking
Blue Hat: Big picture thinking
leaD-users anD leaD-user Panels
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Prototypical new products are distributed by a maker of outdoor goods to selected lead users who relate their
experiences with the products before they go into producton and distributon.
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_innovaton User Innovaton, Wikipedia (discusses von Hippels lead user concept
htp://www.wu-wien.ac.at/wuw/insttute/entrep/forschung/userinnovaton/leaduser/index Lead User Research, Insttut fr Entrepreneurship und Innovaton,
Wirstschafsuniversitt Wien website
htp://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/papers.htm Downloadable Papers, Eric von Hippel website (also has videos, tutorials)
htp://outsideinnovaton.blogs.com/pseybold/2006/02/lead_users_vs_l.html Lead Users vs. Lead Customers and the Role of Toolkits, Patricia Seybold, Outside Innovaton blog
htp://www.telenor.com/telektronikk/volumes/pdf/2.2004/Page_126-132.pdf Creatng breakthrough innovatons implementng the Lead User method, Erik L. Olson and Geir
Backe, Telenor website
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Defniton: In the 1980s and 1990s, MIT professor Erik von Hippel and his
colleagues pioneered the concept of user-initated innovaton, later refned into
the process of customer co-creaton. So-called lead users who are deemed to
have special insights into their practces are recruited individually and as panels,
provided with alpha and beta versions of technology and/or prototypes of actual
products and services, and then asked to use the devices for some predetermined
period of tme. During and at the conclusion of this test period, the Lead Users
are brought together on a scheduled basis to report on their experience and make
suggestons for improvement to the future products and services.
Current Use: Because of the relatvely high cost of recruitng top talent
to devote tme for Lead User evaluaton, and because it relies on being able
to provide them with at least approximate forms of the fnal products to be
evaluated, this process is most ofen used by large, well-resourced organizatons:
Large laboratories and commercial enterprises. Nevertheless, this type of
innovaton support is common within those strata of product and service
developers to help evolve designs of low-tech as well as high-tech devices and
systems.
Pros: By defniton, Lead Users are considered more knowledgeable about
the things they are evaluatng than laypersons or testers selected randomly to
evaluate new products and services. Lead User Panels multply the value of Lead
Users by creatng multlateral conversatons on the Lead Users fndings and
opinions in which common threads become evident and idiosyncratc opinions
are balanced against dominant main streams of opinions. Another advantage of
Lead User Panels is that they are ted into networks of infuence in their respectve
felds, so that they feed in opinions from larger communites and reciprocally, send
out problems for general consideraton. Individual lead users may also prototype
new products.
Cons: In the same way that Lead User panels can enhance the input of
individual Lead Users, they can also amplify incorrect assessments of a product
or services performance and its utlity in a future market. The Delphi Efect
in which members of a group coalesce on a centrist positon the more they
converse applies to Lead User panels as it does to any group. Another potental
disadvantage of a Lead User panel, and Lead Users overall, is that knowledgeable
individuals are also opinionated and prone to reifying the given wisdom.
minD-maPPing
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A complex service design for managing company-customer sales interactons needs reinventng and a new
implementaton. A mind map of the interacton process is composed to (a) fully understand the process and its elements, and (b) to assemble a beter process for
implementaton.
htp://www.mind-mapping.org/ Sofware for mindmapping and informaton organizaton, Society for Mindmapping and Informaton Organisaton (non-commercial site ofers
artcles on mind-mapping and links over 200 mind-mapping sofware products and reviews)
htp://www.worldofexperience.com/Startpage/start_startpage.asp, htp://www.myworldofexperience.com/, and htp://www.companymap.com/cmc/ The Atlas of Experience
(2000), Louise van Swaaji, Jean klare, David Winner; The Business World Atlas (2006); and Company Mapping
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mind_mapping_sofware List of mind-mapping sofware, Wikipedia (free and proprietary, online and stand-alone)
htp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlabrWv25qq Mind-Mapping, Tony Buzan (claims to have invented modern mind-mapping), YouTube
htp://amakar.com/artcles/pm-tools-and-techniques/110-mind-mapping-risk Mind-Mapping Risk, Project Management Tips (case study)
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Defniton: Mind-mapping is the latest version of the classical analytcal map
pioneered in Classical tmes by Aristotle and other Greek natural scientsts. Mind
maps are used to deconstruct complex paterns of thought, objects, and events;
and to graphically illustrate how these relate to a theme or a larger idea. These
are called mental constructs. In modern practce, mind maps always have at their
center a theme or idea to which all of the other ideas on the map are related,
directly or via other ideas and factors in the environment. A mind map is a way of
indexing ideas, revealing how streams of ideas radiate from a central thought and
divide into sub-thoughts, and interact with other elements as they do. Seen the
other way around, mind maps describe how ideas combine to form larger ideas,
interact with the environment, and ultmately congeal as the central theme or big
idea of the mind map.
Current Use: Mind-mapping is ofen an adjunct to methods of ideaton
including brainstorming, lateral thinking, and scenario building. Mind maps
which can be dynamic with the proper sofware capture all of the known factors
that create a system, contribute to an outcome, or result in a new understanding.
Mind-mapping, like gap analysis, is also used to reveal voids in mental constructs:
items that are uncertain, about which informaton must be obtained; and weak
or nonexistent connectons between elements of the mental map that need
investgaton to determine if they exist and if so, the actual relatonship between
the elements. Mind maps are used to share complex knowledge In an easy to use
graphical form.
Pros: Mind maps are useful tools for describing all of the elements of a complex
system. Because they are inherently modular, diferent individuals can work on
diferent portons of a mind map or make new contributons to portons of the
map that were earlier thought completed. When a mind map is used to index
ideas to relate them in a logical order so that each leads to others it can be
a powerful cognitve assist. A dynamic mind map can be manipulated in three
dimensions, in efect immersing its user in the idea space created by others. A
mind map can be used to quickly orient a team of individuals relatve to a problem
that they are assigned to solve. More imaginatve mind maps that use metaphors
rather literal meanings, while less applicable to conventonal problem solving are
nevertheless capable of producing great insights. The Atlas of Experience (see link
below) has become a surprise bestseller because it has this magic.
Cons: The more complex an idea space, the more complex the mind map to
represent it untl the map becomes do dense as to be visually unusable without
magnifcaton, at which point the image loses its totality. Because human beings
are only capable of holding in their minds about seven distnct items in the same
category, the impressive data-handling of which mind maps are capable is ofen
wasted on its human users. It then exists mainly as a reference. Only a very large
team can master high complexity and that risks a division of the soluton that
requires great energy to reintegrate. The same goes for the use of mind maps.
Another issue is that ideas occur in multple dimensions, more than two or three.
Conventonal mind maps are only two-dimensional and computer-supported mind
maps are only three-dimensional. Lastly, what is mapped is ofen taken as what is
true but of course, most mind maps are incomplete and tme-bound.
MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A leading transportaton company wants to determine which of many alternatve services it can provide that will
prove advantageous with customers and authorites vis--vis the oferings of other transportaton providers vying to serve the markets the DESINOVA company serves.
htp://www.swemorph.com/ Swedish Morphological Society (enter of the Scandinavian morphological-analysis universe)
htp://www.mycoted.com/Morphological_Analysis Morphological Analysis, Mycoted Wiki for Creatvity & Innovaton, Science & Technology, Apr 16, 2006
htp://www.mindtools.com/pages/artcle/newCT_03.htm, Atribute Listng, Morphological Analysis, and Matrix Analysis, MindTools, 2009
htp://www.diegm.uniud.it/create/Handbook/techniques/List/MorphoAnal.php Morphological Analysis, Pros and Cons, Dept. of Engineering, University of Udine, Italy, Aug 8,
2007
htp://www.diegm.uniud.it/create/Handbook/techniques/List/MorphoAnal.php Morphological Analysis and Relevance Trees, European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC),
Insttute for Prospectve Technological Studies, 2007
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Defniton: Morphological analysis is used to assess extremely complex,
multdimensional problems in which relatonships are uncertain, dynamic, and
difcult to transform into solvable mathematcal equatons. It is a computer-
based problem-solving technology created by astrophysicist fritz Zwicky at
California Insttute of Technology (which gives some idea of its origins and
degree of difculty of use) and further developed by Tom Ritchie of the Swedish
Morphological Society. Morphological analysis which means form-based
analysis is used to create and analyze sets of atributes that have relevance
to solving a problem. These can include the three aspects of problem-solving:
the problem or problems, the possible solutons to the problem(s), and the
environment that creates a context for the problem(s) and their solutons. Testng
their power with Bayesian (statstcal) mathematcs one of several methods
reveals how the entre system may respond to changing circumstances. The
results of morphological analyses refect their uses: scenarios for futuristcs,
specifcatons for product development, policies for internatonal diplomacy, and
so forth.
Current Use: Problems for which morphological analysis is preferred to
more traditonal problem-solving techniques have usually been of a size and
complexity beyond the ken of business innovators and designers. Defense
agencies, governments, energy companies, climatologists, and so forth are more
frequent practtoners of morphological analysis. However, as the power of
afordable computers increases to rival supercomputers of the past, morphological
analysis may become a commonly used problem- and soluton-characterizaton
tool.
Pros: Ifor those who practce morphological analysis usually in public and
private laboratories with plenty of computng power and a broad mandate
to experiment with solving complex problems in an uncertain, sometmes
far-of future there is no substtute. Big thinkers, they consider their work
practcal in an unconventonal way. Unlike conventonal problem-solving and
innovatng, which is evaluated mathematcally (How much beter, at what
cost?), morphological analysis discourages a priori simplifcaton of the problem.
Complicated phenomena are not externalized as occurs, for example, when
scientsts, managers, or designers purposely ignore factors for which they have no
suitable mathematcs or data; instead, they are incorporated.. The presence and
interacton of these mathematcal imponderables are grist for the morphological
analysis mill and what makes morphological analysis so intriguing and atractve
for those solving big problems.
Cons: Morphological analysis requires substantal computng power. It also
requires tme and efort to identfy, categorize, and arrange in a matrix all of the
relevant factors that may afect the soluton of a problem; then to run analyses
and see how and which of these factors determine likely and less likely solutons;
and then to test the solutons themselves. There is a good case to be made that
one of the great values of business innovators and designers is their ability to
mentally short-circuit complex problems and arrive at intuitve solutons rapidly
and with tolerable, even commendable rates success rates. This is more art than
science, however. Morphological analyses can produce reliable solutons that can
be compared and of them, the best chosen; this gives morphological analyses
their power. But the expense in tme and efort for doing these analyses is
substantal.
OBSERVATION/USABILITY LABORATORY
(testing in a ControlleD environment)
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A retail company initates lab tests a new method for delivering services online or via a POS terminal using
usability techniques.
htp://upassoc.org/ Website of the Usability Professionals Associaton
htp://www.uie.com/artcles/ Artcles on usability, on User Interface Engineering website
htp://culturalusability.cbs.dk/ CBS Project exploring usability as cultural artfact in Denmark, India, and China
htp://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040315.html Why Consumer Products Have Inferior User Experience, Jakob Nielsen, Alertbox, 15 March 2004
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testng Usability testng, Wikipedia
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Defniton: Usability isnt an innovaton methodology per se, but it can be
used to test innovatons, partcularly product and system innovaton. Usability
was pioneered by DEC in the early 1970s to test new computer systems before
they became available to buyers. The method was simple: set up a system, bring
in engineers posing as potental buyers, and observe how the system functoned.
The engineers made copious recommendatons that proved as useful as what
the observers could physically see for themselves. Usability today employs
sophistcated metrics to measure suitability of a design.
Current Use: Today, usability as a methodology has been extended to
everything from new hardware and sofware to new services on the Internet,
including online services like eye-tracking and keystroke monitoring, and even
for non-digital purposes (for example, testng how subjects interact with kitchen
appliances, autos, and clothing. Because usability in this sense requires controlled
conditons, it is usually conducted in a laboratory setng that is made to mimic
real-world situatons as closely as possible. Video and other digital records, on
review help to capture the nuances of product performance and user experiences.
Pros: Usability is easy to understand and it is quite easy to apply parameters
and develop metrics to reveal a range of subject behaviors, and also to detect
where a product is defeatng appropriate use. Usability laboratories are relatvely
inexpensive to construct (depending on the technology assembled to launch tests)
and, once established, inexpensive to maintain. Recruitng usability testers is
considerably easier than recruitng for other types of innovaton methodologies
that require professional preparaton, educaton, and training.
Cons: Laboratory personnel employing usability testng tend to overvalue the
reliability of usability test outcomes. As in the old adage, When all you have
is a hammer, all else is a nail, observers performing usability tests can become
enamored of empirical, usually numerical test results and subject reports. This
can prevent them from understanding the deeper causes of product success or
failure. Because laboratory setngs are inherently artfcial, they can introduce
biases into the test situaton that may make a product soluton seem more or
less successful than it actually is. This is even truer of services tested in-house.
Experience shows that users are spoiled afer a few partcipatons, becoming
biased toward partcular styles.
OPEN INNOVATION
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Looking for a breakout strategy in stressful tmes, a manufacturer puts out the word that it is welcoming ideas,
inventons, and collaboratons with frms in its sector but also companies operatng beyond it. It creates a Wiki to capture and share this knowledge, and to identfy
potental partners.
htp://openinnovaton.haas.berkeley.edu/ Professor Henry Chesbroughs Center for Open Innovaton at the University of California-Berkeley
htp://www.openinnovaton.eu/ OpenInnovaton.eu, the European Unions Internet portal for open innovaton
htp://www.siliconvalley.um.dk/en, htp://www.icdmuenchen.um.dk/en, htp://www.shanghai.um.dk/en Innovaton Center Denmark
htp://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/artcles/2009/02/02/collaboratve_innovaton_for_the_post_crisis_world/ Collaboratve Innovaton for the Post-
Crisis World, Paul Stofels, Chairman of Pharmaceutcal R&D, Johnson & Johnson, Boston.com, feb 2, 2009
htp://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Informaton_Technology/Networking/next_step_in_open_innovaton_2155 The Next Step in Open Innovaton, Mckinsey quarterly,
Jacques Bughin, Michael Chui, and Brad Johnson, Jun 2008
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Defniton: Open innovaton is among todays most popular innovaton-
management themes. Its leading champion is Professor Henry Chesbrough at
UC Berkeley. Derived from the concept of open sofware to which numerous
individuals freely contribute, and which is therefore non-proprietary i.e., open
to amendments and alteratons by its users open innovaton is the ideal form
of collaboratve innovaton. In an open-innovaton environment, all stakeholders
in an organizaton owners, managers, workers, customers, business partners,
and regulators, even compettors -- are invited to submit innovatons for
implementaton. Proactve organizatons seek sources of inventon and innovaton
at conferences, comb published reports and online websites and blogs, and
interact with expert groups professional associatons and university facultes to
discover relevant, high-value ideas and concepts.
Current Use: According to pundits at conferences, online, and in the
press, every organizaton especially companies and public agencies should
be practcing open innovaton. Many do. A. G. Lafey, the CEO of Procter &
Gamble, an innovaton leader, says his company leaves no stone unturned. When
necessary, Lafey turns to compettors to arrange partal truces so that they can
pool technical resources and discoveries to create shareable innovatons. Despite
the popularity of open innovaton as a concept, however, more sharing has
taken place as a result of traditonal business-intelligence actvites and espionage
than openness. Nevertheless, given the shortages imposed on companies
by economic crisis, the social networks that can support open innovaton
for example, Linked In are rapidly growing in size and infuence. Will open
innovaton cease being just over the horizon?
Pros: Open innovaton is graced with any number of virtues, at least in
concept. It is liberated, free, collaboratve, and co-creatve. In many
ways, to listen to its proponents, open innovaton resembles the open research
and development that takes place in universites and public insttutes only,
in concept, open innovaton is even broader, its practtoners leaping across
professional and disciplinary boundaries. Based on the experience of the open
sofware movement, products and services that are invented and developed in
the open will be less expensive, more versatle, and highly reliable, with armies
of volunteers available to answer users questons and contnuously improve the
products and services. Open innovatons greatest appeal may be as an answer
to widespread recogniton that (a) in complex modern society, experts know less
individually and more collectvely; and (b) most innovatons fail, usually for lack of
knowledge that is available outside of the innovatng organizaton or that would
become apparent, collaboratng.
Cons: IIndividuals, companies, and agencies operate in compettve
environments, even in societes where cooperaton is favored. With openness
comes a lowering of barriers to the free fow of informaton, which can destroy
compettve advantage. for this reason, most companies and agencies do
not practce open innovaton or practce it only under very limited conditons
(for example, all invited collaborators sign mutually binding non-disclosure
agreements). The collectve cost of privacy is high: redundancy, partal solutons
to problems, inefectual products and services these and other results damage
the commonweal. But the private cost of openness is perceived to be higher.
Untl companies and agencies are motvated by or forced to assume a
responsibility to the whole society, open innovaton will remain mainly a good
personal practce and a social ideal.
PARTICIPATORY OBSERVATION
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Designers work in a successful alternatve restaurant as wait staf to understand its cultural milieu and its stafs
attudes (for example toward new food-preparaton technology) and then alter the Buying Experience.
htp://champpenal.revues.org/document471.html Champ Penal (Penal field) blog, Partcipant Observaton as a Tool for Understanding the field of Safety and Security, 2005
htp://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/partobs.html Partcipant Observaton Research, The Psychology of Cyberspace
htp://tnyurl.com/5mv8bj Module 2, Partcipant Observaton, qualitatve Research Methods: A Users field Guide, family Health Internatonal
htp://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/10/what_consttute.html What consttutes ethnical partcipaton in MMOG ethnography, Terra Nova blog, Oct 15, 2004
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partcipatory_observaton Partcipatory Observaton, Wikipedia
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Defniton: The philosopher William James (also known as the father of
modern psychology) was perhaps the frst partcipant observer in his case,
observing his own mental state in reacton to memories, events, and expectatons.
James considered it essental to his method of knowing (epistemology) to be
consciously involved in the world. In the same way, partcipatory observaton
today is a method for understanding social behavior by partcipatng in it. The
partcipant observer joins a work team, lives in a community, and takes leisure
tme with the subjects of his or her study. A modern variaton is to involve oneself
in a buying experience or, in the virtual worlds, play a videogame or join a social
network for the purpose of understanding what occurs in these environments.
Current Use: Partcipatory observaton is commonly used to intmately
study group behaviors (among groups like those above, but also in many other
types of groups). In the feld of innovaton, partcipatory behavior can substantally
contribute to trend identfcaton, trend analysis, and scenario planning. Another
type of partcipatory observaton is to place oneself in a group atemptng to
innovate, to discover what promotes and what retards innovaton.
Pros: Partcipatory observaton is one of the mainstays of actve research. It
enables the researcher to get insider the heads of the subject populaton.
(Some would say, it forces this type of mental deep-sea diving.) The partcipant
observer has an advantage over other researchers who must interpret motves
and emotons based on external observaton. They dont know what to look for.
Partcipant observers have inherent credibility when they report on their subject
communites and related phenomena.
Cons: When the US military invaded Iraq, it included among its ranks
embedded journalists. Embedded journalists later complained, as did their
critcs, that living with the soldiers day in and day out impaired the journalists
objectvity in two ways: It limited what they discovered in the environment, and
it afected their ability to interpret what they discovered. Being closely involved
with a subject populaton ofen leads to identfcaton that afects a researchers
percepton and objectvity. Partcipatory observaton limits the researchers ability
to escape the situaton in which he or she is partcipatng. This distorts an accurate
worldview. The reverse is also true: A partcipant observer can skew community
behavior as it otherwise would not be.
PATH DEPENDENCE
Sample use by DESINOVA company: faced with a new compettve environment caused by the fnancial crisis, an insurance provider commissions a
thorough investgaton of the history of fnance in similar past situatons, including the Great Depression in the 1930s. The resultng paths suggest a unique strategic
approach.
htp://www.dime-eu.org/working-papers/ral3/2008-01 Innovaton-systems, path-dependency and policy, Jan fagerberg, David C. Mowery, and Bart Verspagen, EU-DIME (Dynamics
of Insttutons & Markets in Europe), Jul 8, 2008
htp://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/cmsconference/2007/proceedings/apolloanteportas/dobusch.pdf [PDf] Schumpeter vs. Path Dependency: Innovaton Lessons from breaking
through Innovaton Barriers, Leonhard Dobusch, 5th Intl. Critcal Management Studies Conference, Jun 2, 2007
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence Path Dependence, Wikipedia
htp://people.virginia.edu/~hms2f/Path.pdf [PDf] Down the Wrong Path: Path Dependence, Increasing Returns, and Historical Insttutonalism, Herman Schwartz, University of Virginia, 2003
htp://people.virginia.edu/~hms2f/Path.pdf [PDf] Incorporatng Path Dependency into Decision-Analytc Methods: An Applicaton to Global Climate-Change Policy, Mort Webster, Decision
Analysis, Jun 2008 (case study)
Links:
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Defniton: Path dependence is a socio-technological theory. Its axiom is
that past decisions and outcomes limit successive choices and futures. A good
example is the use of automobiles for mobility. Worldwide, substantal public
investment in roads and highways has enabled ease of use and encouraged
private ownership of vehicles, which in turn has made the global auto industry
and oil producers powerful policy actors domestcally and internatonally. These
factors taken together have severely crimped many natons ability to plan for
or support non-automotve public transportaton thus in part setng the stage
for global warming, climate change, and their results. This evolutonary view
of history difers from traditonal historical accounts in which powerful people
dictate events and economic accounts in which economic ratonality dictates
history. On a smaller scale, business innovators deal with path dependence all of
the tme. It must be reckoned with in planning an innovaton strategy including its
implementaton and post-implementaton.
Current Use: Academics in the social sciences, especially history, developed
path-dependence theory. It has since been adopted as a working theory by
strategic planners in government and industry as a way to locate an innovatve
initatve in space and tme, understand its antecedents, antcipate its support
and oppositon, and plan for its adopton and implementaton. Path dependence
is as important as current and future conditons to determining the success of a
companys innovaton initatves, internally and externally.
Pros: Path dependence, like physics, is a plausible theory capable of
convincingly explaining how things work and difcult to ignore. Applied in
business and government setngs, it is a powerful explanatory tool for explaining
how and why prevailing policies and attudes persist. So informed, business
innovators and designers can a) use favorable policies and attudes in their favor,
(b) intelligently plan to change these policies and attudes when they must and
can be changed for example, by calling into doubt the underlying ratonale for
these policies and attudes or (c) work around them if necessary. An old adage
says, You cant get where youre going if you dont know where you are. Path
dependence informs where one is and what forces currently exist and are likely to
be deployed in the event of an innovaton.
Cons: Critcs of path dependence observe that paths are socially constructed
realites, not inherently true but taken as the truth because they are agreed
upon. Path historians, the critcs note, are ofen selectve in the events and
relatonships they choose to compose paths: its safe to do so because, whether
or not a path is accurate, history ultmately produces the same Now. Believing an
incorrect path, especially one created by oneself, can result in a tragic outcome
missed environmental cues, overestmatng acceptance, underestmatng
oppositon, and so on. Because the theory of path dependence is so appealing,
paths assume a quality of inevitability, as The more things change, the more they
are the same. But tme and tme again, history has proven less predictable than
the paths would make it seem.
PERSONAS
Sample use by DESINOVA company: When a new product has been conceived for example, a new type of home (e.g., a collectve housing) it is
populated with personas representng diferent categories of people, to see how they would behave in it.
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personas Personas, Wikipedia
htp://www.cooper.com/insights/journal_of_design/artcles/the_origin_of_personas_1.html, The Origin of Personas, Alan Cooper, Cooper Design website
htp://www.peterme.com/?p=624 Personas 99% bad? Peterme blog, Peter Merholz, Adaptve Path, 1 Jan 2008
htp://interactons.acm.org/content/?p=262 Persona non grata, Steve Portgal, Interactons of the ACM, feb 2008
htp://www.thewatchmakerproject.com/journal/375/using-personas-to-inform-design Using Personas to inform design, The Watchmaker Project blog, 10 Oct 2006
Links:
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Defniton: Personas literally are the identtes that human beings and
social organizatons assume as they live their lives in society. The term comes
from literary and theatrical traditon, in which characters in a story are called
personas, which the actors in a play or the reader of a story fll in and make real,
physically or mentally. In the feld of contemporary design, personas are invented
characters, archetypes with traits that are intended to resemble the traits of many
actual people condensed into one. They are assembled using demographic and
psychographic research among real people. Researchers and designers imagine
the personas behaviors and extrapolate how real people would behave faced with
similar events and design solutons.
Current Use: Personas are very popular for testng digital systems and
environments that do not yet exist, but which can be fairly well characterized
by their developers that is, their qualites and characteristcs are specifed.
Examples might be online communicaton systems or online stores. In the
material world, personas are commonly used to test new products in concept, to
see how people would adapt to them; and campaigns to have people act in new
ways, for example, working with local development initatves.
Pros: Personas are one of the most controversial of design tools used today,
in part because they were developed for another purpose - storytelling. Over
the last decades, the use of personas has become standard within most design
agencies as a way of dealing with social and cultural factors afectng the
introducton of new products and services. Personas are easier to use as testers
than real people. Theyre economical and can be crafed to emphasize personal
characteristcs most relevant to a new product or service. Personas sharp
reactons enable designers and their clients to quickly detect possible problems
and arrive at more refned solutons, Personas challenge conventonal marketng
assumptons (e.g., segmentaton).
Cons: Personas are 100 percent fabricatons, so their behavior is really the sum
total of their inventors preconceptons. A persona may seem real enough when
defned in the design charrete, but actual human beings may act very diferently
under the same circumstances. A persona may over represent a partcular
personality type or behavior, which then skews design results. Their use may
breed a false sense of security among designers. Personas are sometmes used to
prop up designs or simply to engage in pseudo-research.
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Like the World Bank, a large fnancial insttuton may want to initate a PM that indicates how fnancial markets
and investment opportunites will develop, to educate its users with the caveat that its outcome may not be the truth!
Links:
PreDiCtion markets
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicton_markets Predicton Markets, Wikipedia
htp://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/Predictonmarkets.pdf Predicton Markets, Justn Wolfers and Eric Zitewitz, Journal of Economic Perspectves (Spring 2004),
Wharton School of Business, U of Pennsylvania
htps://bet2give.com/b2g/index.html Bet2Give, a model predicton market in which earnings are given to philanthropies
htp://us.newsfutures.com/home/decisions.html Newsfutures webpage (commercial supplier of corporate PMs)
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Defniton: Predicton markets (PMs), also known as informaton markets,
decision markets, idea futures, event derivatves, and virtual markets are betng
games used in business and by governments to harness the wisdom of the
masses for forecastng future events, reducing risk, and making plans more
certain. As in a stock exchange or futures market, individuals use money or
tokens to bet on the likelihood of future events. If the events occur, they win;
if they dont, they lose. The real winner is the bookmaker who, for very litle
investment, gets a window on the future that may be fuzzy but beter than none.
Like scenario planning, PMs sensitze partcipants to forces in the environment
but PMs are relatvely crude, involve hundreds or thousands of partcipants, and
require litle skill to partcipate (although what you know about the subject mater
may determine your success).
Current Use: The most notorious suggested use of a PM was by a US
military spy agency to predict the futures of overseas regimes. It never was
implemented. Today, the World Bank, major corporatons and marketng
consultancies, governments, and universites operate PMs. Though popular,
PM results remain problematc. They have been wrong as well as right and the
reasons for one or the other remain unclear.
Pros: PMs are a wonderful way to involve large numbers of people in
decisionmaking regarding future events, conditons, plans, and policies. Although
partcipaton in a PM isnt yet available to everyone all the tme except in
Monaco, Las Vegas, and betng parlors around the world, where real money
trades hands both real and experimental PMs are proliferatng. Several are
operatng online at any tme, thereby enabling more people to become future
profcient and one supposes, beter planners. In the case of corporatons and
others applying PMs, their results may be beter than the common mill because
the PMs they run are specifc to issues confrontng the organizaton, and the game
players, usually employees and other shareholders, have good knowledge to
apply.
Cons: Unfortunately, the Wisdom of the Masses, though a reasonable logical
assumpton, has yet to be proven. PMs fail just as they succeed. If players are
misinformed, misled, or partake of a popular delusion (e.g., the earth is fat), the
games they play are doomed to produce faulty and unreliable outcomes. Perhaps
the smartest way to employ PMs is the same as for scenario planning: as an
educatonal, informatonal tool that can also result in social cohesion around a
partcular issue.
PROTOTYPING
Sample use by DESINOVA company: In order to test a new Web-based consumer services, a prototype of the service is tested for one month among a
carefully selected sample populaton chosen to resemble, and trained to react as, the intended service audience.
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototyping Prototyping, Wikipedia
htp://ross.typepad.com/blog/2006/07/ideo_prototypes.html Ideo Prototypes the future Exhibiton (2006), VC Ross Mayfelds blog (with links to podcasts)
htp://designingforservices.typepad.co.uk/ Blog documentng interdisciplinary academic research conducted by Oxford U. on four service design projects and fve events, Dec
2006 Oct 2007
htp://www.springerlink.com/content/v25632/?p=10b08ea2a2c747c2968f742d3b761ed&pi=0 Service Science, Management and Engineering Educaton for the 21st Century,
Springer-Verlag 2008, $129 (website requires payment for downloads of book chapters)
Links:
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Defniton: Prototyping is a common way to test designs. It involves creatng
a working model of the design which, when subjected to critcal review and use,
reveals where improvements must be made for the design to fulfll its purpose.
Ofen, a prototype will result in scrapping the original design or fnding an entrely
new use for it. Prototyping has traditonally been the domain of inventors datng
back to prehistory; in modern tmes, engineers have refned the prototyping
process for developing technology, products, and systems. Industrial designers
introduced prototyping to the design profession. Three popular methods are
paper prototyping, building and running the model in concept (used mainly for
Web design); iteratve prototyping, which takes place over a series of tests; and
rapid prototyping, which features immediacy at the possible expense of reliability.
A recent ofshoot is the prototyping of service designs, a practce popularized by
the Uk Design Council and IDEO.
Current Use: Prototyping is used in every manufacturing sector, in
agriculture (testng new strains), in constructon, and in the design of service
processes and experiences. Which type of prototyping is used depends on (a) the
partcular design disciplines used to create a soluton, (b) the domain for which
the soluton has been created, and (c) the urgency of the designers or the clients
need for the soluton. Service design now almost always involves a prototype
stage that involves representatve end users in the process.
Pros: Prototyping value is self-evident. Inventons that are prototyped are
less likely to fail under the stress of actual use. Designers are familiar with most
prototyping methods and skilled in their use, depending on the designers areas
of expertse. In the case of service design, because there is ofen litle or no
hardware or machinery to redesign only informaton systems and processes
its possible to move rapidly from prototype to actual service implementaton. In
that sense, the prototype is a cost-efectve stage in the fnal product or services
development. The involvement of users with prototypes gives them a more solid
basis in reality than other types of testng that do not involve users. Prototypes,
because they are visible and ofen tangible, can be shared with executve decision
makers in order to gain quick approval of proposed designs.
Cons: Prototyping can lead to spurious conclusions. Because prototypes
generally are tested under controlled conditons, not all factors bearing on the
success of the proposed implementaton may be taken into account. (This is
partcularly true of service designs.) Conversely, a prototype may be tested under
conditons that over estmates the importance of irrelevant factors, leading to a
negatve evaluaton and redesign or project cancellaton that may not have been
necessary. Prototypes of large, dynamic, and complex projects are especially
prone to each type of error.
RADICAL INNOVATION
Sample use by DESINOVA company: (Purely hypothetcal) faced with the long-term or permanent loss of a signifcant share of its customer base due
to the economic downturn, the company transforms itself and ceases to be a product company: now its entrely in services and its product legacy is an asset, not a
burden.
htp://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/innovaton_radical_vs_incr.html Radical Innovaton vs. Incremental Innovaton, Vadim kotelnikov, 1000ventures.com, undated.
htp://tnyurl.com/Innovaton-Playground Radical Innovaton Requires 3 Distnct Capabilites: Ability To See With New Creatve Lenses; Ability To Apply Creatvity And Imaginaton In Solving
Customer Unmet Needs; And Creatvity With New Business Model Design, Idris Moutee, Innovaton Playground, feb 20, 2009
htp://www.ribbonfarm.com/2007/07/23/disruptve-versus-radical-innovatons/ Disruptve versus Radical Innovatons, Venkatesh Rao, Ribbonfarm, Jul 23, 2007
htp://www.ideo.com/publicatons/item/informing-our-intuiton-design-research-for-radical-innovaton/ Design Research for Radical Innovaton, Jane fulton Suri, IDEO, Rotman Magazine,
Winter 2008
htp://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/10/redefning-innovaton-incremental-side-efect-transformatonal.html, Redefning Innovaton: Incremental, w/ Side Efects & Transformatonal,
Avinash kaushak, Occams Razor, Oct 13, 2008
Links:
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Defniton: innovaton initatves vary widely in terms of their scope
and intensity, but for the sake of convenience when discussing innovaton,
practtoners usually discriminate three classes of innovatons: incremental (small
changes in business as usual), standard (larger changes that require executve
partcipaton), and radical (game-changers requiring insttutonal transformaton
and that instll fundamental changes in business and/or government. Of course,
scale is a mater of scope and experience; one companys incremental innovaton
may seem radical to another. Among the three types of innovaton, radical
innovaton is what most people think of when they think of innovaton: the steam
engine, electoral democracy, vaccinaton, Copernican theory, aqueducts, romantc
love, Einsteins Relatvity, evoluton, telephony, digital photography, the Internet,
organized sports, and Coca-Cola.
Current Use: The tripartte classifcaton of innovatons and the meaning
of radical innovaton are universally recognized and understood among
professionals who practce and study innovaton. Increasingly, however, game-
changing is the preferred term among business innovators, meaning an
innovaton has positvely changed the playing feld for industry or government.
Game-changing has a more positve thrust than radical, which has anarchistc
overtones; it relates to the outcome of an innovaton, whether it was successful
or not, and not in relaton to the quality of other innovatons an extremely
subjectve judgment.
Pros: Whether one tries for a game-changer or a lesser innovaton depends on
the situaton: if a company is a leader, perceives no serious challengers, and is
risk-averse, it can muddle through the compettve market and widespread hard
tmes making only incremental or at most, standard innovatons. If its seriously
challenged or facing imminent disaster due to internal problems, however
thats when companies go for radical innovatons. If they succeed, they transform
the market and themselves so thoroughly that compettors are lef competng
in the past while the companies enjoy rich rewards for bold acton. Of course,
some radical innovatons are planned and result from well-informed and well-
constructed strategies and corporate cultures. Virgins multtude of subsidiaries
are well versed in strategic radical innovaton. Apples iTunes/iPod duet succeeded
that way, too.
Cons: Radical innovatons get the press, but more ofen its the less dramatc
incremental and standard innovatons that are successfully and economically
implemented. Radically innovatng frequently can be a go for broke propositon,
gambling the store. A failed radical innovaton is costly, potentally demoralizing,
and as demonstrated by the fnancial crisis, which started with radical innovaton
in fnancial instruments (securitzed debt and wild derivatves) potentally
destructvely of the company and disruptve of an entre industry (or indeed, the
world economy, if the failure is big enough). When radical innovatons succeed,
their authors and champions become business heroes. When they sink, they
usually take the lifeboats down with them.
role-Playing games
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A complex service design for managing company-customer sales interactons needs reinventng and a new
implementaton. A mind map of the interacton process is composed to (a) fully understand the process and its elements, and (b) to assemble a beter process for
implementaton.
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roleplaying Roleplaying, Wikipedia
htp://appliedimprov.ning.com/ The Applied Improvisaton Network
htp://workplayexperience.blogspot.com/ Work Play Experience, Adam Lawrence
htp://terrainnova.org/blog/?p=105 and htp://terrainnova.org/blog/?p=106 Role Playing Games in Innovaton, Parts 1-2, Demitris, Terrainova, May 5 and 28, 2008
htp://www.gdconf.com/conference/sgs.html Serious Games Summit, Game Developers Conference 2009
htp://www.seriousgamessource.com/ The Serious Games Source, hosted by The Think Services Game Group
htp://swi.indiana.edu/ The Synthetc Worlds Initatve, Professor Edward Castronova, Indiana University
Links:
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Defniton: Role-playing is the assumpton as ones own of another persons
perceptons, conceptons, thoughts, likes and dislikes, feelings; senses of sight,
sound, taste, smell, and touch; and especially, the others values, aspiratons,
and life experiences as much as is feasible. Players collaborate with other
players to create realistc historic, contemporary, and future events, cultures,
and societes. In the physical world, costumes may be used to heighten the
players identfcaton with a role (as in living history reenactments). In virtual
space for example, role-playing game environments avatars assume unique,
easily recognizable visual and behavioral identtes. The uses of role-playing as an
adjunct to innovaton are many, including being able to see things diferently in
a new identty and communicatng more or less freely. The increasing popularity
of simple role-playing games and more recently, of complex computer-supported
games, has produced two valuable ofshoots: the frst, games in which innovatng
in the game world is the reason to play, as in Second Life; and the second
ofshoot, so-called serious games or simulatons in which innovatons can be
devised and tested in real world conditons set by the players and simulated to the
limits of their technologies.
Current Use: In organizatons, role-playing in the past had mainly personal
and social therapeutc purposes (T-groups and the like). No longer. Today role-
playing, especially serious-game role-playing, has as its purpose improving the
world or some porton of it.
Pros: Role-playing, with able expert guidance, is a challenging way to confront
ones emotonal intelligence, cultural biases, expectatons, biases, and capacity
to live with the past and make the future. Collaboraton and co-creaton abound.
In a game setng, the purpose can be foreordained by the designer or lef to
the community of players ranging from two to hundreds of thousands, online
to decide upon. Games are partcularly good for identfying challenges and
testng solutons. The players can decide how many variables and degrees of
freedom are valuable for satsfactory play. Playing games that represent the real
world (simulatons) gives the players the experience of setng goals and making
decisions under conditons of uncertainty that they can adjust to be more or less
realistc. Players individually or collaboratvely can discover how to characterize
and prioritze innovatons, discovering in the process how much tme and energy
devoted at the front-end of innovaton reduces or increases resources required
to evaluate and implement innovatons depending, as in the real world, on the
games purpose and the goals that have been set.
Cons: As with any tool, role-playing and game playing have their limits in
terms of what can be accomplish through their use. Some individuals have
personalites for which play-actng can become addictve and an excessive misuse
of tme and energy. All games are inaccurate to some degree because modeling
all of the factors and relatonships in any environment is difcult. The solutons
that games produce can be simplistc and inapplicable in all but the most limited
circumstances.
SCENARIO PLANNING
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Using trends and heuristc methods to forecast three possible futures scenarios -- based on key drivers, an
organizaton can develop alternatve plans to cope with antcipated changes in the business and social environment.
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scenario_planning Scenario Planning, Wikipedia
htp://www.well.com/~mb/scenario_planning/ Scenario Planning Resources, Martn Brjesson, The WELL
htp://www.sric-bi.com/consultng/ScenarioPlan.shtml Scenario Planning, SRI Consultng (home of scenario planning)
htp://www.gbn.com Global Business Network website (SRI derivatve).
htp://www.risoe.dtu.dk/business_relatons/products_services/foresight/sys_scenarios.aspx?sc_lang=en Ris DTU
Links:
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Defniton: Scenario planning is the use of various predictve techniques to
forecast possible futures, and then to plan for these futures on (1) the basis of
their likelihood and (2) the consequences of each of these futures. Scenarios are
not intended to depict actual futures. Their purpose is to identfy key factors in
the environment, their interactons and outcomes. Scenario plannings purpose
is to sensitze planners to these factors and other forces in the environment
that require monitoring and possibly, reacton and adjustment in business,
of existng business plans and models; and in the public sector, of policies and
implementaton.
Current Use: Scenario planning achieved prominence during the Cuban
Missile Crisis in 1962 and later in the 1970s, when Shell Oil alone among the oil
companies avoided that decades crises due allegedly to prior scenario planning.
Today, scenario planning is a component of strategic planning as practced by
companies and governments in virtually every sector. Scenario planning ofen
is employed wrongly as a predictve method. Equally problematc is the use
of scenarios, much weaker and less robust than the scenarios used in scenario
planning, to test marketng and design hypotheses against possible futures.
Pros: Scenario planning has three major benefts. The frst is identfying forces
in the environment that might bear on the future. The second, achieved through
constructng possible futures scenarios from the interacton of these forces
sensitzes planners to possible futures it is claimed more holistcally than does
traditonal strategic planning. A third beneft is scenario plannings capacity
for enhancing team building. When partcipants collaboratvely build futures
that they then incorporate in their worldviews, it can be a powerful bonding
experience. Teams so equipped are ofen able to react beter to changes in the
environment than teams that are more loosely bound by formal organizatons.
Cons: The misuses of scenarios are manifold. Everyone would like to have a
reliable crystal ball and superfcially, scenario planning may appear to approach
this standard of predictability. Scenario planning is not intended to predict the
future, however. Moreover, even as a sensitzaton technique, scenario planning
varies in its power by each teams knowledge, intuiton, quality of collaboraton,
and ability to project themselves collectvely into the future. There is no reliable
method to measure the efectveness of scenario planning and no proof that
scenario planning improves planning capabilites.
SERVICE DESIGN
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A retail store wants to complement the introducton of a new category of products with service innovatons that
become associated, in the minds of its current and future customers, with the store brand. Call in the service designers!
htp://www.howardesign.com/exp/service/ Service Design Research (25-year survey), Jef Howard website
htp://www.design.cmu.edu/emergence/2007/ Emergence 2007 Conference, Carnegie Mellon University (next conference, 2009)
htp://www.nd.edu/%7Ejsherry/pdf/2007/fruitfliesLikeABanana.pdf fruit flies Like a Banana, John Sherry Jr., in Mult-Lever Research (Oxford 2007), mind-blowing state of
the art thinking about the role of tme in service design
htp://www.lraworldwide.com LRA Worldwide, customer experience design frm with emphasis on service design
htp://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/kwo/win00/facultynews/index.htm Metaphysical Merchandising: Marketng professor John Sherry explores the postmodern retail
theater and discovers that marketers want you to see God, Mat Golosinki, kellogg Business School blog, Northwestern University
Links:
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Defniton: Service Design (SD) goes by many other names as well:
Customer service design, customer experience design, customer relatonship
management (an earlier, technology-based practce seeking new relevancy), retail
merchandising, organizatonal development, and service ecology. As recently
as the 2007 Emergence conference on service design, there was no agreement
among professionals and academics on the defniton of what consttutes a service
or how it should be designed. A simple way to recognize service design stll
circular is that it is the orchestraton of a collecton of actons and afordances by
which an organizaton and those it serves communicate and connect.
Current Use: According to the Uk Design Council, Only recently have
managers in organizatons involved in the service sector realized that a conscious
efort in applying design techniques to services can result in greater customer
satsfacton, greater control over their oferings, and greater profts. Service
design tends to be associated with retailing and sales, but also with product
development in the many cases where products and services are developed to
complement one another. Its applicaton is becoming universal, though with
diferent degrees of rigor (for example, in defning touch points).
Pros: In the late 20th and 21st Centuries, the growth of the service sector
which technically comprises the provision of everything from medical care
to fast food, including design -- has occurred in developed and developing
natons alike. Service design has grown in parallel, bringing order to the design
and implementatons of services, which before were largely ad hoc processes.
Reciprocally, engagement with the service sector has been good for the design
community, provoking designers to expand beyond their earlier preoccupaton
with physical objects to engage with the intangible world of relatonships.
While modern SD is stll a relatvely young practce, there is a lot of room for
experimentaton and development.
Cons: Service design is an umbrella concept that covers an extraordinary
variety of design actvites. In such a situaton, coming up with a protocol and
pedagogy common rules and educaton is nearly impossible. Thus, service
designers learn primarily by doing, and most jobs require reinventng the wheel.
No agreed-upon metrics exists to measure the value of most services or of their
improvement. Service designers have few constraints to facilitate their mission.
In Service Design today, everything is an experiment!
skunk Works *
(* The term Skunk Works is trademarked by the Lockheed-Marieta Corporaton. However, uncapitalized, skunk works has entered common usage.)
Sample use by DESINOVA company: In order to create a leading-edge innovaton capability for the future, recovery, a DESINOVA company is
investgatng optmal methods of insttutonalizing skunk works-like actvites within its organizaton. The key to its success will be its ability to fnd a leader with ability
and compassion.
htp://www.lockheedmartn.com/aeronautcs/skunkworks/ and htp://www.lockheedmartn.com/aeronautcs/skunkworks/14rules.html The Skunk Works and kellys 14 Rules,
Lockheed-Martn Aeronautcs Skunk Works website
htp://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/92/ibm.html Building a Beter Skunk Works, Alan Deutschman, fast Company, Dec 19, 2007
htp://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11993055 Management Idea: Skunkworks, Economist.com, Aug 25, 2008
htp://www.hrcapitalist.com/2008/09/culture-dead-cr.html Culture Dead? Start a Skunkworks to Leapfrog the Lameness In Your Culture..., kris Dunn, The HR Capitalist, Sep 24, 2008
htp://www.cazh1.com/blogger/thoughts/2006/06/guidelines-for-success-with-your-skunk.shtml Guidelines for Success with Your Skunk Works Project, James. P. MacLennan,
Cazh1.com, Jun 19, 2006 (nominally about sofware projects, but much broader than that and stll a quick read)
Links:
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Defniton: In the throes of World War II, Lockheed Aircraf was given
the assignment to design and develop a new fghter plane in record tme, the
highly successful P-38 long-range fghter. The secret laboratory in which this was
accomplished was nicknamed Skunk Works because of a pervasive odor that
reminded the engineers of the Skonk Works distllery in a popular cartoon.
Lockheed kept the name and the laboratory, run under a set of protectve rules
published by its founder, kelly Johnson, has produced a steady stream of striking
new aircraf, seagoing vessels, and spacecraf. kellys 14 Rules defended the
Skunk Works autonomy for getng things done its own way but declared its
responsibility to always get them done on tme and with the highest quality.
In contemporary practce, a skunk works is a special group within a company,
sometmes fully independent, sometmes within a planning unit, with autonomy
and responsibility for leading key innovaton initatves and providing advice to
other innovators within the organizaton. Untl it became a PR asset, Disneys
Imagineering unit played a similar role.
Current Use: When the Skunk Works frst became public knowledge, in the
mid-60s when its output was unmistakable, other companies rushed to establish
their own skunk works. In many cases, the laboratories became isolated from the
operatonal units of their host companies and thus less efectve at implementng
innovatons. Conversely, given the presence of a hard-working skunk works,
employees in other units wrongly assumed that they neednt innovate. Today,
large companies judiciously run skunk works that are regularly reintegrated with
the other divisions on a contnuous or periodic basis.
Pros: Skunk works and their actvites typically are not widely advertsed.
However, from what we know of the skunk works that have been opened to public
view, they pride themselves on being the elite in their respectve organizatons.
This is a two-edged sword. Being elite means the skunk works have sufcient
resources and the best possible staf to accomplish their assignments naturally,
the most challenging given to them by executve ofcers and divisional
managers. On the other hand, being elite means encouraging envy and lack
of cooperaton among less well-endowed units where conditons are not so
comfortable and where the work can be tedious yet equally exactng. This division
can retard necessary innovaton and change. It needs bridging via the personal
atenton of leaders on each side of the relatonship. In one exceptonal case, the
chief of a skunk works delegated to each of his top staf members a corporate
division and its manager to befriend and assist. Soon informaton was fowing
freely again. The employees in the divisions learned from the skunk works
emissaries and replicated their style. for its part, the skunk works had a waitng
list of volunteers eager to join its ranks.
Cons: IOperatng a skunk works in a company with an innovaton culture and
every front-running company should have one is like gilding the lily, redundant
and not necessarily productve or proftable. Innovatons should proliferate
throughout the organizaton. If the skunk works takes a leading but not exclusive
innovatve role and helps other units to innovate, it can multply its value. If the
skunk works becomes isolated or withdrawn, so secret that not even its colleagues
in the company have an inkling of what it is about, that can destroy trust and
inhibit collaboraton, co-creaton, innovaton, and implementaton.
Defniton: Stage-Gate - invented by Robert G. Cooper - can be defned as a
business process to manage new product development (NPD). It is based on years
of analysis of the factors that defne success or failure on development projects..
The basic principles of Stage-Gate is to ensure optmal use of product development
resources - ie. support viable development projects and kill the bad ones. Stage-Gate
consists of a number of stages typically 5 and concurrent gates from idea discovery
to launch (see fgure). At Gate-meetngs, a review board makes regularly go/kill-
decisions on all ideas and development projects. The structure for each gate consists
of:
- Deliverables from a project that typically follow a partcular format that allows you
to compare diferent projects
- A set of criteria that the project can be measured up against such as market
potental, strategic ft, return on investment etc.
- Output / outcome of the gate review. Resoluton on the go / no-go typically
taken by a review panel - performance and justfcaton must be available for
project teams
Templates, checklists, guidelines etc. are developed to support the ideaton team and
project manager. In theory, the Stage-Gate process ensures only the most prosperous
projects to go contnue through the gate. A portolio system has been developed to
monitor the total amount of development projects.
Current Use: Stage-Gate has since its birth in 1985 become a state-of-the-
art system to manage NPD in larger companies. According to Product Development
Insttute, Stage-Gate is used in 73 pct of the larger North American Corporates*
and in many European companies as well. Stage-Gate are implemented and used
in diferent scales - full scale as well as in more lighter versions to capture diferent
types of innovaton and development projects (ie. radical, semi-radical, incremental
innovaton and line-extension projects).
Pros: Stage-Gate ofers a transparent and simple decision-making model
with a proven track of best practce examples. It combines development stages
with a management model and concurrent easy-to-use tools. It may cut down
development tme, motvate for efcient use of development resources and seed
the soil for a higher success rate in the market. It can be combined with other
methods in the front-End such as Voice-of-Customer, Ethnography, Ideaton etc.
It allows for portolio management of all development projects which is ofen
modest in the innovaton management process.
Cons: Stage-Gate does not in itself ensure the quality of the content of the
ideas and projects in the pipeline. furthermore, it motvates for a linear project
cycle that does not take into account iteratons that ofen is the defacto process
in many development projects. The model is rather corporate / introverted in
its nature and does not come up with suggestons on how to manage external
sources of innovaton - such as users, customers, suppliers, researchers, experts
ie. open innovaton.
figure/source**

stage-gate
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A larger service company are using the principles of Stage-Gate, though are improving the front-End of
Innovaton by using principles and methods from Ethnography, User Innovaton and Strategic Design to feed the Stage-Gate model with higher quality ideas and
concepts.
www.prod-dev.com Product Development Insttute
** htp://stage-gate.com/ - the ofcial website of Stage-Gate
htp://stage-gate.com/knowledge.php - white papers that describes Stage-Gate
htp://www.stage-gate.eu/ - European partner on Stage-Gate
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STRATEGIC PLANNING
Sample use by DESINOVA company: In order to prepare across all of its operatng units for radically changing travel habits due to the skyrocketng cost
of petroleum-based fuels, a large transportaton company produces and enforces an organizaton-wide strategic plan.
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_planning Strategic Planning, Wikipedia
htp://gbr.pepperdine.edu/032/strategy.html Increasing the firms Strategic Iq, Graziado Business Report, Pepperdine University
htp://www.sps.org.uk/ Strategy Development and Implementaton, Strategic Planning Society (Uk) website
htp://www.nonproftexpert.com/strategic_planning.htm Strategic Planning for Nonprofts, NonProftExpert.com website
htp://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jan2005/sb20050119_9832_sb037.htm A Beter Scheme for Strategic Planning, Business Week, January 19, 2005
Links:
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Defniton: Strategic planning is essental to the running of every
organizaton, whether it takes place formally, in a coordinated fashion, or
haphazardly unit by unit. Strategic planning takes as its fundamental premise
that strategy defned simply as getng from where we are now to where we
want to go is the proper basis for every organizatonal decision. The origin
of the word strategy is revealing: it is the Greek word for both leadership and
military command. Strategic planners favor thinking of themselves as helping
to lead an organizaton; others may see them as imposing control-and-command,
a style of management that is militaristc and hierarchical. Strategic planning can
be dynamic or statc. Its methods tend to favor quanttatve tools, but some of the
most successful strategic planners are more intuitve. Innovators are likely to be
more successful if they can characterize their results in ways that are measurable
or emotonally compelling, depending on the strategic planning methods in use
within their organizatons.
Current Use: Strategic planning occurs in virtually every organizaton,
whether in a large organizatons formal strategic planning unit, in operatonal
units trying to plan for their separate futures, or in the head of a small
organizaton like a family-owned chain of retail outlets. Strategic planning may
take place in a separate unit or it may be folded into other units including general
management, business development, or marketng. Consultants may be brought
in to assist a client organizaton with strategic planning because they are believed
to be more objectve regarding the clients future and their plans can be
challenged.
Pros: Strategic planning gets at the core of organizatonal competency. It
focus management on the future, compelling atenton to what must be done
for an organizatonal to fulfll its mission by achieving goals in the long term,
not just momentarily. Usually it is coordinated and therefore, holistc. Ofen,
strategic planners assume leadership positons within organizatons because
they have the most complete picture in mind of the organizaton functoning in
the evolving public or private environment. Strategic planning, as opposed to
operatonal management, ideally takes into account all of the factors that bear
on an organizatons ability to functon well, using the most complete and diverse
collecton of management tools. Also ideally, strategic planners should be most
open to innovaton as a way of solving problems that are impervious to, or even
the result of, established ways of doing things.
Cons: Strategic planning is a management process that, based on prevailing
conditons, comes into and out of favor as a driver of change and a user of
innovaton. When tmes are good, managements engage in strategic planning.
When tmes are more difcult, managements tend to discount strategic planning
as a luxury. Some executve believe that strategy is the property of executve
management and that planning strategically at lower levels is contradictory.
Strategic planning can constrict innovaton at lower levels. Because strategy is a
fundamental process, when things go well, strategic planning is credited. When
things go wrong, strategic planning is derided as a useless and only history can
tell which judgment is correct..
TRANSFORMATION DESIGN
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Observing a fnancial organizatons lack of market success implementng incremental process solutons, an
innovator-designer team recommends to executve management a transformaton design project for the entre organizaton.
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformaton_design Transformaton Design, Wikipedia
htp://www.designcouncil.info/mt/RED/transformatondesign/ Transformaton Design, Uk Design Council RED website with link to TD paper (PDf) and htp://www.partciple.
net/ Announcement of Partciple, new company formed by former RED Director Hilary Cotam
htp://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?secton=artcles&artcle=61-1 five or Six questons for Irene McAra-McWilliam, ACM eLearn
htp://www.kks.se/upload/diverse_fler/2008/Societal-Entrepreneurship-Programme2.pdf Societal Entrepreneurship Program (Sweden)
htp://www.wie.org/j22/hock.asp, Transformaton by Design, WIE (2002), interview with Dee Hock, designer of VISA Card system
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Defniton: Many designers and design scholars believe that the ultmate
evoluton of design, at least as can be foreseen today, is transformaton design
(TD). Wikipedia ofers an excellent descripton:
Transformaton design is a human-centered, interdisciplinary process that seeks
to create desirable and sustainable changes in behavior and form of individuals,
systems and organizatons ofen for socially progressive ends. TA is a mult-
stage, iteratve process applied to big, complex issues ofen, but not limited
to, social issues. Its practtoners examine problems holistcally rather than
reductvely to understand relatonships as well as components to beter frame
the challenge. They then prototype small-scale systems composed of objects,
services, interactons and experiences that support people and organizatons in
achievement of a desired change. Successful prototypes are then scaled. Because
TD is about applying design skills in non-traditonal territories, it ofen results in
non-traditonal design outputs. Projects have resulted in the creaton of new roles,
new organizatons, new systems and new policies. These designers are just as
likely to shape a job descripton, as they are a new product.
Current Use: TD was a response to then-new Uk PM Tony Blairs call to
acton by the Uk Design Councils RED unit, led by award-winning designer Hilary
Cotam, TD is now applied widely in European public sector projects.
Pros: TD recognizes that true innovatons, expressed as design solutons, cannot
occur unless there is accompanying change in the social setng and among
the partcipatng organizatons and individuals in which the solutons are to be
implemented. This applies even to the innovators and designers who are advising
the solutons! In many ways, the discourse of TD resembles the discourse of
therapy. Context makes a huge diference to the successful implementaton of any
design soluton. Because TD takes into account so many factors, if the designers
can manage the process, the projects overall success is more likely since the
designers are determining the social and environmental contexts for the soluton
as well as the soluton itself.
Cons: TD requirement are large and all encompassing, with many partcipants
to identfy and coordinate, and processes to initate, They can remain incomplete
works in progress forever. TD occurs more ofen in the public sector because
there performance is measured in the long term, by social indicators. In the
private sector, TD is more difcult. Besides the tme and cost burdens associated
with practcing complex TD, how many leaders VDs and CEOs are prepared to
undertake a personal or corporate transformaton, putng themselves or their
organizatons on the line even if transformaton is warranted, even if it means
the life or death of the organizaton? History says, not many.
TREND ANALYSIS
Sample use by DESINOVA company: To beter inform its strategic plans, a health-services organizaton engages trends analysts to describe how patents
currently view and use health services and which new technologies and treatments may afect this use, and how.
htp://www.henrikvejlgaard.com/?id=161 q&A, Henrik Vejlgaard website (Danish trend analyst and author, Anatomy of a Trend )
htp://www.sirc.org/ Social Issues Research Centre website (leading independent European trend analysis consultancy)
htp://iff.org/ Insttute for the future (IfTf) website (pioneering trend analysis organizaton in the USA)
htp://sric-bi.com/Explorer/techlist.shtml SRI Consultng-Business Intelligence Explorer Program (technological trend analysis)
htp://www.cifs.dk/ Insttut for fremtdsforskning
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Defniton: Trend analysis is a technique for surveying the current social,
politcal, and cultural terrain and determining the opportunites for pursuing a
partcular plan or policy. Another term for trend analysis proposed by the eminent
sociologist and policy analyst Amitai Etziioni is environmental scanning, looking
for clues in the immediate environment and long-term that can tell us how best to
bring about a desired plan or policy. There are as many ways to analyze trends as
there are types of trends. These fall into two non-exclusive categories, qualitatve
methods employing awareness and expert knowledge, and quanttatve methods
that employ statstcal tools to parse data. Most analysts use both methods to
complement one another and validate the results.
Current Use: Numerous consultancies provide trend analysis services to
clients in the private and public sectors. In the private sector, marketng and
advertsing have long relied on trend analysis to make their plans. In the public
sector, trend analysis traditonally was used for policy planning and for politcal
campaigns. The popularity of trend analysis has increased as the world has grown
more complex and today, virtually every type of enterprise, public, private, and
third sector (NGOs and non-proft organizatons), uses one or another form of
trend analysis to guide its planning and actvites. Because future realites can be
extrapolated from trends, trend analysis is used to forecast the future.
Pros: Although anyone can analyze trends (and fads, which are short-lived
rends), but experts who are trained and experienced at detectng signifcance
based on their clients needs within the constant welter of social, politcal,
and cultural phenomena produce the most valuable trends analyses. knowing
what existng trends are and their signifcance, clients can then prepare agendas
that exploit these trends and that dont work against them (unless that is a
clients purpose for example, a public relatons frm that wants to change public
opinion). Trend analysis can suggest which innovatons will succeed and which
will not, thus permitng innovators to invest their tme, energy, and resources
most efectvely, developing innovatons that ft with current or antcipated future
realites.
Cons: In the present moment, signifcant trends may be difcult to distnguish
from short-lived fads. A trend analysis that mistakenly but convincingly identfes
fads as trends can be misleading, and even more damaging to an innovaton
project than a trend analysis that is blatantly inaccurate. Because the experts
who conduct most trends analyses belong to professional networks in which
informaton and opinions are shared, entre communites of experts can operate
on faulty assumptons (as todays fnancial sector demonstrates). Trends analyses
that are only qualitatve or quanttatve require further testng.
Defniton: TRIZ is the Russian acronym for Theory of Inventve Problem
Solving. TRIZ is a logical, knowledge- and model-based problem-solving
methodology and technology that reportedly accelerates team solutons. Its
based on (to quote the TRIZ Journal) the hypothesis that there are universal
principles of creatvity that are the basis for creatve innovatons that advance
technology. If these principles can be identfed and codifed, they can be taught
to people to make the process of creatvity more predictable. Sixty years later,
TRIZ is stll a research project in progress, but it is widely used by clients who
seek breakthrough ideas products and services to gain market superiority. Its
soluton path is:
specifc Problem general Problem
general soluton specifc (Creatve) soluton
TRIZ comprises 40 Inventve Principles of Problem Solving as well as various means
of classifying and fltering problems so that the right Principle is applied. The
Principles in each domain resemble the elements of Christopher Alexanders A
Patern Language published to explain the built environment.
Current Use: TRIZ was invented in the 1940s by the late Russian engineer
Genrick Altshuller. With his death the discipline fractured and now has many
practtoners of diferent stripes in many felds. Though most adhere to the
basic TRIZ principles, their oferings come in diferent favors; and there are also
many derivatve methodologies. Some TRIZ are in the public domain, others are
proprietary. Its claimed that major corporatons have made use of TRIZ, but there
is no way to confrm this.
Pros: Practtoners claim that TRIZ makes problem solving scientfc (which
implies that other methodologies and methods are not). By rigorously applying
TRIZ principles and processes, consultants and clients allegedly rip through
alternatve solutons to complex problems and rapidly come up with the best
solutons afer having discarded all of the rest. The infusion of computer power
to TRIZ makes this claim more plausible because if creatvity variables can be
identfed and isolated, running the numbers basically, comparing all possible
permutatons should result in at least a preliminary culling of ideas, which is
useful regardless of TRIZ ultmate value to solving a partcular problem. The
quanttatve component of TRIZ ensures a certain degree of rigor when choosing
variables (Principles) and processing them. Many of the Principles so discovered
are alternately cryptc or commonsense but taken together, they supposedly
create a matrix of innovatons (or at least, rules) that when followed result in a
desired product or service.
Cons: TRIZ has assumed the status of a cult among many of its practtoners, in
the sense that only the anointed experts, like ancient priests, can successfully lead
the way to innovaton nirvana. The TRIZ hypothesis is compelling on its face, but
the tests to which it is subjected leave a lot of wiggle room to interpret whether
it is valid, generally and in specifc instances. Because many of the TRIZ variatons
and their results are proprietary, Its difcult to confrm that TRIZ works the way
its champions say it does, let alone that the results are valuable. Relying on TRIZ
requires a combinaton of science and faith, something that has not stopped
believers from doing good work. Whether using TRIZ was the cause remains to
be proven. TRIZ real power may be its ability to inspire the search for innovatve
solutons to difcult problems with the certain expectaton that they can and will
be found.
TRIZ
Sample use by DESINOVA company: forced by the inclement economic climate to reconsider its entre business from top to botom, a manufacturer
employs TRIZ to eliminate as many unsatsfactory or problematc business alternatves as possible. It then formulates a new business model and derivatve rules for
operatons.
htp://www.aitriz.org/ Altshuller Insttute for TRIZ Studies (site authorized by Genrich Altshuller)
htp://www.triz-journal.com/ The TRIZ Journal
htp://www.mazur.net/triz/ TRIZ, Theory of Inventve Problem Solving, Glenn Mazur, 1995
htp://www.innovatontools.com/resources/triz.asp TRIZ Problem Solving Resource Center, InnovatonTools
htp://www3.sympatco.ca/karasik/ Ant-TRIZ Journal (Educatng the public in the real TRIZ)
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ TRIZ, Wikipedia (excellent treatment)
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USER INNOVATION
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A retail chain sets up lead-user panels to provide it with the most current, accurate understanding of how its
service satsfes its customers needs and what remains to be done. It callibrates the lead-user advice with customer roundtables to which it invites randomly selected
customers.
htp://userinnovaton.mit.edu/ MIT User Innovaton Homepage, Professor Eric von Hippl and others
htp://usercontributon.intuit.com/ User Contributon System, Scot fosters Wiki
htp://www.wwt.at/projects/research_projects/details/index.php?PkEY=807_DE_O Implicatons of Tool kits for User Innovaton and Design Research Project, Nikolaus franke,
Vienna University of Economics and Business Administraton. Vienna knowledge, Research & Technology fund, 2009
htp://www.ebst.dk/innovaton_og_bdi Programme for user-driven innovaton, Danish Enterprise and Constructon Authority (EBST), 2009 (also in Danish)
htp://www.kks.se/templates/StandardPage.aspx?id=12615 Societal Entrepreneurship, kk Stfelsen (Sweden)
Links:
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Defniton: The concept of user innovaton, or user-driven innovaton, is the
intellectual basis for the many methods of innovaton that require partcipaton
by users: customers in business and citzens in government. MIT professor
Eric von Hippl frst wrote about the concept in 1986. von Hippl identfed end
users as the people who actually use a product or service, not its creators or the
intermediaries who sell or deliver it. von Hippl recommended that manufacturers
and service providers set up lead-user panels to obtain expert advice and valuable
ideas from top customers with a stake in a products development, because
they intensively use the product. Scot Cook, the inventor of Intuit sofware, in
2008 created the User Contributon System as a way to facilitate and broaden
the collecton and review of user generated ideas, opinions, and advice. The
DESINOVA project has user innovaton as one of its foundatonal methodologies.
Current Use: User innovaton is practced in every modern industrial
economy and by every modern government to a greater or lesser degree. The
enhanced global informaton environment supported by the Internet has made
customers and citzens beter informed and capable of more easily sharing their
experiences with planners, business innovators, and designers. This represents
a quantum leap in the intelligence that can be applied to solving problems and
innovaton solutons in the economic and social spheres. The existence of online
surveys, forums, opinion websites, and reputatonal ranking systems makes user
involvement almost ubiquitous. In the feld, applied ethnography, in-person focus
groups, and design events give user innovaton a tangible reality. User innovaton
has been proposed as an essental element of modern democracy that should be
formalized in law and enabled via various systems.
Pros: User innovaton is now an innovaton-management axiom. User innovaton
is now as central to the practce of innovaton as any other single concept. Although
there are critcs who dispute the proftability of user involvement it takes efort or
who credit creatve inspiraton with the best outcomes, most business innovators
pay tribute to the concept (even if they occasionally stray from its tenets in practce).
User involvement has proven its worth. At the least, users can comment on existng
solutons to problems they experience, helping business innovators to zero in
on the proper decision space. Users can make suggestons that lead to superior
innovatons or, in the best case, actually propose innovatons that have extra value
because they originate with the customer or citzen. The Uk was the frst society to
require government agencies and public services to publish charters of customers
rights. Besides penaltes paid for poor service, these charters which are considered
binding contracts also specify how agencies and service providers must interact
with customers who suggest improvements, thus making user innovaton a conditon
of performance and a part of the law. The same ideal of user innovaton and
responsibility to customers and citzens to consider their advice prevails in Northern
Europe, although in most instances it has yet to be turned into law. Swedens Societal
Entrepreneurship takes this to the ultmate conclusion, insttutonalized revoluton
as a soluton for problems too large for conventonal governance.
Cons: The arguments against user innovaton grow weaker, boiled down to two:
(1) the cost and difculty of implementng user innovaton programs and (2) the lack
of quality control when users become involved. A third critcism, now seldom heard,
is that involving users means revealing IP secrets and organizatonal weaknesses. Even
critcal users can become advocates when brought into an organizatons inner circle
of advisors, something the Web makes easier.
virtual WorlDs anD mental moDels
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A designer has her clients executves describe the how they mentally see their business, not just as an
organizaton but also as a structure of connectons and forces. She then creates virtual worlds that can be reviewed and critqued.
htp://sloanreview.mit.edu/wsj/insight/pdfs/3211.pdf Peter Senge, The Leaders New Work: Building Learning Organizatons, MIT Sloan School Management Review, fall
1990.
htp://www.tcd.ie/Psychology/Ruth_Byrne/mental_models/ Mental Models website
htp://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/ Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior, Louis Rosenfeld website
htp://www.managementhelp.org/systems/systems.htm Systems Theory, Carter McNamara, free Management Library
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Defniton: Virtual world can mean many things. Of late, its meaning has
been appropriated by online games and services like Second Life and There, to
indicate alternate realites sustained by informaton technology. A meaning that is
more appropriate to our project, however, and the original meaning, was given by
the organizatonal theorist Peter Senge: the mental, multdimensional picture or
model of an organizaton in operaton held in the mind of an executve, manager,
worker, customer, or other stakeholder. This virtual world can be illustrated
or simulated and thus made interactve, so that its structure can be altered
to produce alternatve methods of operatons and management. Since Senge
provided that defniton in 1980, the concept of the virtual world has grown to
encompass markets, policy domains, and other phenomena; and discreet objects
and forces, like CAD models and GIS.
Current Use: Virtual worlds have been simulated to illustrate how
individuals see their organizatons and what needs to be done to improve the
organizaton or the experience of working within it and with it. Many professions
work with virtual worlds in this way, including planning, therapy, architecture and
civil engineering, and so forth. More recently, online virtual worlds have received
a lot of publicity, but objectve measures of these systems value have not been
encouraging. New technology will make it easier to capture and share mental
virtual worlds.
Pros: Virtual worlds exist in everyones mind. They are a potental universal
language of forms and forces that, when translated into graphics, prose and
poetry, and as freestanding mult-dimensional models, provide almost immediate
shared informaton and frequently, understanding. Scientsts, engineers, doctors
and designers commonly use depictons of virtual worlds to portray invisible and
obscure relatonships among objects and with their environments. Rendering or
building a virtual world model Is one way to make complex phenomena simple
to understand and because they are the basis of simulatons, easier to work with
throughout the product- or service lifestyle.
Cons: Virtual worlds are only as good as the data that informs them. If there
are gaps in knowledge or the facts are wrong, the virtual worlds that result
will also be inappropriate. (Although, a failed virtual world as does any well-
constructed model -- points out where knowledge is lacking or wrong a virtue.)
Ofen, individuals work from virtual worlds that are misleading because they are
incomplete or composed of incorrect informaton purposely induced by others for
their own purposes. New technological forms of virtual worlds (like Second Life)
are not as rich and informatve as the virtual worlds we hold in our minds that an
artst, designer, or therapist can translate into a shareable form. This may change
with tme.
WeB 2.0 anD BeyonD
(mashuPs, WeB tools, soCial netWorks, etC.)
Sample use by DESINOVA company: A growing network of private medical facilites uses the Web to provide informaton to patents; sell its services to
new customers; coordinate services among medical stafs; and manage its inventory of beds, technology, and supplies.
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2 Web 2.0, Wikipedia
htp://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tm/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html What is Web 2.0? Tim OReilly, OReilly website
htp://www.webguild.org/2008/04/shame-on-you-tm-oreilly.php Shame on you, Tim OReilly, Webguild.com, April 24, 2008
htp://www.techsoup.org/toolkits/web2/ Everything you need to know about Web 2.0, TechSoup.com (website for social entrepreneurs)
htp://www.schillmania.com/content/opinion/2005/10/dont-believe-the-web-20-hype/ Dont Believe the Web 2.0 Hype! Schillmania.com
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Defniton: Web 2.0 is the term associated with the entre range of
technical and social innovatons that has emerged to characterize the Web the
graphical, largely inter-human component of the Internet as a thoroughly social
phenomenon. Web 2.0 innovatons include:
Advanced search Google and specialized niche-search
Web-based services Travel, fnance, sofware, entertainment, and other
services ofered via the Web, ofen exclusively (only on the Web)
Mashups Combinatons of services (e.g., maps and travel informaton)
Web-based social networks MySpace, facebook, and many more
specialized communites based on Web connectons; blogging
Convergent media Computer, cellphone (voice and text), video and
audio broadcast, and similar services available across all media
The next evoluton of the Web, labeled Web 3.0, will feature ubiquity
(computng everywhere), embedded intelligence in physical objects, and
semantc wisdom the ability of the Web to antcipate users needs and respond
accordingly.
Current Use: Web 2.0 is a functon of the use of the Internet by large
numbers of people in all walks of life. Its evoluton is a consequence of this use.
The free, commercial use of the term Web 2.0 is now impeded by a highly
controversial trademark awarded to OReilly Books (a computer book publisher).
Pros: The inital use for the term Web 2.0 was as a device to persuade
investors to fund new services, but its proven socially benefcial as a prod to
independent development as well. Being a part of Web 2.0 meant to be on
the forefront of media and communicatons developments. As a result, open-
source and other communal development projects, many without obvious
sources of outside support but ofen with social benefts have become more
common. Another aspect of Web 2.0 is the fuller integraton of ofine life and
online experience: the actvity of people online is not just computer play; its
fundamentally a part of contemporary life in advanced societes. Web 2.0
has another dimension: Web and computer use is now universal, potentally
empowering individuals in the developing world to play a more decisive part in
the global economy and society.
Cons: Many observers believe Web 2.0 is nothing more than a marketng
device for Internet entrepreneurs and the investors who bank them. They say that
OReillys trade marking the term is a direct slap in the face of Web 2.0 advocates,
directly contrary to the Web 2.0 ethos. More to the point, critcs note that many
Web 2.0 services are redundant; trivial in terms of the services content; and
because of Web 2.0s data intensively and personalizaton, terrifcally invasive of
personal privacy. from an economic standpoint, free services like fle-sharing
of copyright material are problematc, with the potental for dampening creatve
inventon.
WisDom of the masses
Sample use by DESINOVA company: Examining the popular and press discourse for key trends that are signifcant to a service companys longer-term
goals, a designer uses Digg to fnd those artcles and online publicatons most highly rated for this purpose.
htp://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Crowds-Collectve-Economies-Societes/dp/0385503865 Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki
htp://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_39/b4002422.htm Crowdsourcing, Business Week, September 25, 2006
htp://www.smartmobs.com/ SmartMobs:The Next Social Revoluton, Howard Rheingold blog (author of Smart Mobs book)
htp://select.nytmes.com/iht/2007/08/08/opinion/IHT-08edcohen.1.html Is there a wisdom in crowds? Roger Cohen, NY Times, August 8, 2007
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Defniton: The Wisdom of the Masses (also known as the Wisdom
of Crowds) is a hypothesis in social science and heuristcs. It claims that the
collectve opinions of a vast number of people will usually produce more creatve
and beter solutons to a problem than the opinion of one or a few experts in a
feld. The hypothesis is testable but not provable, as every report, confrming or
denying, can be dismissed as statstcally insignifcant given the vast number of
decisions that are made by the masses each and every day. Nevertheless, the
hypothesis has produced signifcant products with global audiences used on an
everyday basis: Wikipedia, Digg, Twiter, and so forth.
Current Use: The Wisdom of the Masses is the basis for predicton markets
and similar tools used to forecast future events. It provides a ratonale, if not
an absolute proof, for systems that gather informaton from great numbers of
people, the results of which become proprietary informaton (of risk management
companies or politcal campaigns, for example) or informaton refected back to
the public in order to change popular perceptons and opinions. Most of these
systems are of recent origin and have yet to be thoroughly studied and critqued,
but one of the most common of mood barometers the public opinion survey,
or poll is now considered a relatvely reliable tool of measurement. Most polls
are taken among pre-selected audiences, but increasingly, many are not.
Pros: The Wisdom of the Masses is the logical foundaton (and excuse) for such
common phenomena as trading markets and politcal governance. It is assumed
in these cases that the masses are in fact comprised of large populatons of
individuals who are relatvely knowledgeable. The hypothesis feels right and in
keeping with democratc theory and aspiratons. Even if the hypothesis is not
entrely correct, it seems to produce correct estmates of situatons and solutons
to problems enough so that we can say that something is happening when
multtudes of people contribute their knowledge to a search for the truth.
Cons: Markets fail on a regular basis, throwing into doubt the Wisdom
of the Masses. The alternatve is command and control exerted by one or a
small number of leaders. Since modern societes generally fnd this alternatve
abhorrent, they willingly close one eye when gauging the value of Wisdom of the
Masses as a concept used by business and governments. Even if the hypothesis
succeeds in explaining certain good societal choices, it is not absolutely the case
that Wisdom of the Masses is responsible. The concept remains and may always
be problematc, since it is so difcult if not impossible to prove as a general case.

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