This interplay between humans, technology, and AI is dynamic and involves continuous interaction, collaboration, and feedback between these elements. The future of innovation, by combining these, offers a very rich promise to provide a fascinating and different future.

Firstly, this interplay needs some higher-level thinking to put some insights into what this interplay might look like and lead to:

1. Continuous Interaction: Humans and technology/AI systems interact with each other in an ongoing manner. Humans provide input, instructions, and feedback to technology/AI systems, while technology/AI systems respond with outputs, recommendations, and insights. This continuous interaction allows for iterative refinement and improvement.
2. Collaboration: Humans and technology/AI systems collaborate to achieve common goals. Humans bring their creativity, critical thinking, and domain expertise to the table, while technology/AI systems contribute computational power, data processing capabilities, and pattern recognition. This collaboration enables the generation of innovative ideas, problem-solving, and decision-making.
3. Feedback Loop: The interplay between humans, technology, and AI involves the potential of a continuous feedback loop. Humans provide feedback on the outputs and performance of technology/AI systems, which helps refine and improve their functionality. Similarly, technology/AI systems generate feedback through insights and recommendations that inform human decision-making.
4. Adaptation: Humans and technology/AI systems adapt to each other over time. Humans learn to leverage the capabilities of technology/AI systems effectively, while technology/AI systems learn from human input and feedback to enhance their performance. This adaptation allows for continuous learning and improvement.
5. Shared Responsibility: The interplay between humans, technology, and AI involves an evolving shared responsibility. Humans are responsible for defining goals, setting ethical guidelines, and ensuring the responsible use of technology/AI systems. Technology/AI systems are responsible for providing accurate information, respecting privacy, and adhering to ethical principles.

As we learn to manage and leverage this interplay, it’s crucial to recognize that it is context-dependent and can vary across different domains and applications.

The interplay between humans, technology, and generative techniques (AI) will find adaptive ways to fit together.

I am very excited by the potentials that are rapidly evolving by combining human ingenuity, technology advancements and generative AI coming together into a new interplay for innovation.

The interface between humans, technology, and generative techniques powered by AI is a dynamic and evolving space with significant implications for various aspects of society, work, and daily life. It opens up the potential to explore and realize very different opportunities to add greater innovating value.

We need to imagine what we have wanted to achieve for a long time. If we step back and attempt to reframe innovation using the interplay advantages, we can realize a very different set of value dimensions for innovation and guide rails.

Here are some of those elements that can have the potential to really fit together to offer a really different, dynamic innovation interplay:

1. Augmenting Human Capabilities: Generative techniques powered by AI can augment human capabilities by automating routine tasks, freeing up time for more creative and strategic work. For example, AI-powered chatbots can handle customer service inquiries, while machine learning algorithms can analyze large datasets to identify patterns and insights that would be difficult for humans to detect.
2. Human-Centric Design: Designing technology and AI systems with a human-centric approach is crucial. This involves considering humans’ needs, values, and preferences throughout the design process. By prioritizing human well-being, ethical considerations, and user experience, we can ensure that technology and AI systems serve as tools that enhance human capabilities rather than replace them.
3. Enabling New Forms of Creativity: Generative techniques powered by AI can also allow new forms of creativity by generating novel ideas and solutions that would be difficult for humans to conceive. For instance, generative design tools can create complex geometries and optimize designs based on specific performance criteria.
4. Collaboration and Coexistence: The interface between humans, technology, and AI often involves very different cooperation and coexistence. Humans and AI systems can leverage their strengths and capabilities together. This collaboration can take various forms, such as humans providing guidance and context to AI systems, while AI systems assist humans in processing vast amounts of data or automating routine tasks.
5. Continuous Learning and Adaptation: Given the rapid pace of technological advancements, constant learning and adaptation are essential for individuals and organizations. Humans must acquire new skills and knowledge to interact effectively with technology and AI systems. Similarly, technology and AI systems must continuously learn from human feedback and adapt to changing needs and contexts.
6. Enhancing Decision-Making: AI-powered generative techniques can also improve decision-making by providing real-time insights and recommendations based on data analysis. This can help organizations make more informed decisions and respond more quickly to changing market dynamics.
7. Transforming Workflows: Generative AI-powered techniques can transform workflows by enabling more efficient and effective collaboration across teams. For example, AI-powered project management tools can automate task allocation and scheduling, while chatbots facilitate real-time communication between team members.
8. Raising Ethical Considerations: The use of generative techniques powered by AI raises ethical considerations that must be addressed. For example, using AI in decision-making could lead to bias or discrimination if not designed and implemented responsibly. Organizations must establish robust governance frameworks and adhere to ethical guidelines when developing and deploying AI-powered generative techniques.
9. Societal Impact: The interface between humans, technology, and AI has far-reaching societal implications. It is essential to consider the broader impact of technology on various stakeholders, including individuals, communities, organizations, and society as a whole. This includes addressing issues related to job displacement, economic inequality, the digital divide, and access to technology.

It’s worth noting that this is a rapidly evolving field with new applications constantly emerging.

The interface between humans, technology, and AI is a complex and multifaceted domain that continues to evolve. As technology advances and our understanding of AI expands, new dimensions of this interface will emerge.

While the specific dynamics of this interface can vary depending on the context and application, these general principles can deepen our understanding.

Work validated and researched through the support of ChatGPT 3.5 and Bing GPT4.0.

The post Innovating the future by combining humans, technology, and AI first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Why is design thinking regarded as so crucial to the future of innovation in a world of accelerating interplays between humans, technology and generative AI?

By embracing Design Thinking principles differently in the future of innovation, organizations can foster a more profound culture of creativity, empathy, collaboration, and user-centricity. This can lead to the development of innovative solutions that address real-world problems while considering the interplays between humans, technology, and generative AI.

Firstly, we have the interconnected global marketplace as our context

The change toward an interconnected and conscious global marketplace has been of significant importance, reshaping business strategies, consumer expectations, and societal values.

This shift has prompted innovation to develop tools and design approaches that support these changes in several critical ways based on four global aspects:

1. Learning from real-time data: Traditional analytics models and past performance data may not be entirely relevant in today’s ever-changing business landscape. New analytics approaches powered by artificial intelligence (AI) can identify real-time data patterns, helping anticipate trends and inform decision-making.
2. Moving to the edge: Organizations are becoming more agile by adopting an “edge” approach. This involves moving computing power, data storage, and decision-making to the edge of operations. Technological advances and the pandemic-induced switch to remote working have boosted connectivity and information flows, allowing organizations to collaborate efficiently over distance.
3. Embedding sustainability: Companies are increasingly integrating sustainability into their operations. By embedding sustainability into everything they do, organizations create value for all stakeholders – staff, shareholders, customers, communities, and the planet. Operating sustainably is not only good for the environment but also good for business.
4. A design-led approach to embracing ecosystems: Embedding design thinking, methods, and tools from the outset of ecosystem development helps companies produce integrated ecosystem offerings that delight customers, stave off threats, and create new sources of value

We do need to think through the levels of different support the changes in the global marketplace can bring.

Our innovation tools and design approaches must evolve due to the potential of bringing humans, technology and AI into this interplay thinking.

It is the design-led approach I want to focus on in the remainder of this post and its evolving relationships.

First, we have the growing impact of technology on Design Thinking

Technology continues to provide designers with powerful ideation, prototyping, and visualization tools. Designers can leverage digital tools to create interactive prototypes, simulate user experiences, and iterate designs more rapidly in this interplay environment.

1. Digital Prototyping and Simulation: Advanced digital tools enable designers to create interactive prototypes and simulate user experiences with remarkable fidelity and allow for rapid exploration of design concepts, helping teams visualize and refine ideas in a user-friendly and collaborative manner.
2. Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR): VR and AR technologies offer immersive platforms for designers to simulate and test user experiences in three-dimensional spaces. Designers can use VR and AR to understand how users interact with products or environments, making Design Thinking more central in creating immersive and engaging solutions.
3. Machine Learning and AI-Driven Insights: Integrating AI and machine learning into the Design Thinking process can provide valuable insights. For example, AI can analyze large datasets of user feedback to identify patterns and trends, guiding designers in making data-informed decisions.
4. Design Thinking Software Ecosystems: An ecosystem of software tools tailored explicitly for Design Thinking is emerging. These ecosystems integrate various stages of the Design Thinking process, from user research and ideation to prototyping and testing. Such ecosystems facilitate seamless collaboration and data sharing among cross-functional teams.
5. Data Visualization and Analytics: Data visualization tools enable designers to distil complex information into visual formats that are easy to understand. This supports Design Thinking by helping teams make sense of user data, market trends, and feedback, which can inform design decisions.
6. Collaboration Platforms: Collaboration and project management platforms like Slack, Trello, and Miro provide digital spaces where cross-functional teams can collaborate in real time, regardless of geographical location. These platforms help teams ideate, brainstorm, and iterate designs, making Design Thinking more central to remote and distributed teams.
7. User-Centered Design Software: Specialized software focuses on user-centered design, allowing designers to prioritize user needs and preferences. This software can facilitate personas creation, user journey mapping, and usability testing, aligning with the core principles of Design Thinking.
8. 3D Printing and Rapid Prototyping: Advances in 3D printing and rapid prototyping technologies enable designers to quickly transform digital designs into physical prototypes. This tangible aspect of Design Thinking can be central in industries like product design, engineering, and architecture.
9. Big Data and Analytics: Big data analytics tools allow designers to draw insights from vast datasets. Understanding user behaviour and preferences on a large scale can drive more informed and user-centric design decisions.
10. Real-Time Collaboration and User Feedback: Cloud-based collaboration tools and real-time user feedback collection platforms enable Design Thinking teams to continuously engage with users and stakeholders. This iterative feedback loop keeps users central to the design process.
11. Design Systems and Component Libraries: Design systems and component libraries streamline the design process by providing reusable UI elements and patterns. These resources make it easier for designers to create consistent, user-friendly experiences, reinforcing the user-centred aspect of Design Thinking.
12. Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP technologies can help designers analyze and understand user-generated content, such as reviews, comments, and social media posts, to gain insights into user sentiments and preferences.
13. IoT and Sensors: The Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor technologies enable designers to create products and environments that respond to user behaviour and preferences in real-time, enhancing the user experience and making Design Thinking more central in creating intelligent and adaptive solutions.

In summary, technology has revolutionized Design Thinking by providing designers with a vast array of powerful tools and resources to ideate, prototype, and visualize user-centred solutions. These technologies make the Design Thinking process more efficient and allow for deeper insights, greater collaboration, and more innovative outcomes, ultimately reinforcing the central role of Design Thinking in the future of design and innovation.

So what about AI and its potential for Design Thinking?

Can we imagine AI increasingly taking over the lead for Design Thinking, not humans? What would be different?

If AI were to lead the Design Thinking process instead of humans, it would introduce some key differences. Here are a few potential ways in which AI-led Design Thinking might differ from human-led Design Thinking:

1. Data-Driven Insights: AI could leverage vast amounts of data to generate insights and recommendations for the design process. By analyzing patterns, trends, and user feedback, AI could provide designers with data-driven insights that inform decision-making.
2. Rapid Iteration and Optimization: AI could facilitate rapid iteration and optimization of design solutions. By simulating and testing multiple design variations, AI could help identify the most effective solutions based on predefined criteria or user feedback.
3. Automated Ideation, Usability Testing and Prototyping: AI could automate certain aspects of the ideation and prototyping process, even in real-time, streamlining the testing phase. For example, AI could generate multiple design concepts based on predefined parameters or user preferences, saving time and effort for designers.
4. Enhanced User Personalization: AI could enable highly personalized design solutions by leveraging individual user data and preferences. AI could predict user behaviour and preferences with high levels of accuracy and design choices can then be guided by these predictions. By tailoring designs to specific user needs, AI-led Design Thinking could create more engaging and relevant user experiences.
5. Continuous Learning and Improvement: AI could continuously learn from user interactions and feedback to improve design solutions through feedback, adapting and improving designs over time. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, AI-led Design Thinking could adapt to changing user needs and preferences.
6. Generative Design: AI can generate design ideas based on specified criteria or constraints. It can present designers with a range of creative options, potentially expanding the design space beyond human imagination. AI if properly managed, designed and trained, can reduce human bias through more objective decisions based on data, mitigating biases related to gender, ethnicity or personal preference.

The essential place for the human touch

It’s important to note, though, that while AI can provide valuable insights and automation in the design process, yet human creativity, critical thinking, and empathy remain essential.

The human touch is crucial for understanding complex emotions, cultural nuances, and ethical considerations; critical thinking and empathy are essential within the design process that AI cannot fully capture. For several reasons

1. Complex Problem-Solving: Many design challenges are complex and multifaceted, requiring the ability to think critically, analyze situations, and make nuanced decisions. While AI can assist with data-driven insights, human critical thinking is essential for evaluating these insights in context and making decisions that balance various factors.
2. Contextual Understanding: Human designers deeply understand social, cultural, and emotional contexts that can significantly impact design decisions. Empathy, in particular, allows designers to connect with users personally, uncover unarticulated needs, and design solutions that resonate emotionally.
3. Creativity and Innovation: Creativity is a uniquely human trait that involves generating novel ideas, envisioning possibilities, and pushing the boundaries of conventional thinking. While AI can assist in generating ideas, truly groundbreaking and innovative solutions often emerge from human creativity.
4. Ethical and Moral Considerations: Design decisions can have profound ethical and moral implications. Human designers make value-based judgments and ensure that design solutions align with ethical principles, societal values, and human rights.
5. Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Many design challenges require collaboration across diverse fields and disciplines. Human designers with varied backgrounds and expertise can engage in interdisciplinary collaboration more effectively, bringing together insights from psychology, sociology, ethics, and other fields.
6. User-Centered Design: Empathy is at the core of user-centered design. Understanding and empathizing with users’ needs, emotions, and pain points is crucial for creating products and services that truly address user requirements and delight them.
7. Adaptability and Contextual Flexibility: Design processes often require adaptability and the ability to pivot in response to unexpected challenges and changing user needs. Human designers can apply their creative problem-solving skills to adapt designs in real time.
8. Aesthetics and Emotional Appeal: Aesthetic design, which plays a significant role in user experience, is human-driven. It involves crafting visual and sensory elements to elicit emotional responses and enhance user satisfaction, which can be challenging for AI to replicate authentically.
9. User Engagement and Feedback: Building relationships with users and collecting meaningful feedback is human-centric. Human designers can conduct user interviews, surveys, and usability testing while maintaining open communication channels to gather insights that inform design decisions.
10. Innovation Beyond Optimization: While AI can optimize existing solutions based on data, human creativity is essential for envisioning entirely new paradigms, products, or services that may not have precedent in the data.

Human creativity, critical thinking, and empathy are integral to the design process because they encompass aspects of intuition, emotion, ethics, and human understanding that are challenging for AI to replicate.

While AI can undoubtedly support and enhance the design process by providing data-driven insights, automating routine tasks, and assisting with aspects like rapid prototyping, it is most effective when working in collaboration with human designers who provide the nuanced, context-aware, and emotionally resonant elements that drive exceptional design outcomes.

The future of design will likely involve a symbiotic relationship between human designers and AI, each contributing their unique strengths to create innovative, value-driven solutions.

Humans will drive Design Thinking for the foreseeable future

While AI can provide valuable insights and automation in the design process, human creativity, critical thinking, and empathy remain essential. Here’s why:

1. Human Creativity: Human creativity is characterized by generating novel ideas, thinking outside the box, and connecting seemingly unrelated concepts. It involves imagination, intuition, and the ability to challenge assumptions. AI can assist in idea generation and optimization, but it lacks the capacity for originality and the ability to envision entirely new possibilities.
2. Critical Thinking involves analyzing information, evaluating arguments, and making reasoned judgments. It requires cognitive skills such as logical reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. While AI can process vast amounts of data from the power of technology and evaluate big data it can provide different insights but not the critical thinking involved in human judgment, context awareness, and the ability to consider ethical implications.
3. Empathy: Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. It plays a crucial role in design thinking by enabling designers to uncover latent needs, understand user experiences, and create solutions that resonate with users on an emotional level. While AI can analyze user data and preferences, it lacks the capacity for emotional understanding and the ability to empathize with human experiences.

Human creativity, critical thinking, and empathy are deeply rooted in our cognitive abilities, emotions, and social interactions. They enable designers to approach problems from multiple perspectives, consider ethical implications, and create solutions that address real human needs.

While AI can augment human capabilities in the design process, it cannot fully replace these essential human qualities. Technology will continue to evolve with even more powerful tools to help ideate, prototype and visualize user-centred solutions.

Yet the powerful combinations of humans, technology and AI can provide a new interplay that requires us to rethink the design-thinking process to enable a process of creativity and design that leverages on this.

The future of design will likely involve a more symbiotic relationship between human designers, technology and AI, each harnessing and contributing different, sometimes unique, strengths to create innovative, value-driven solutions.

** With the help and validation of Chat GPT3.5 and Bing Open AI GPT-4-

The post The future interplays between design thinking, technology and AI first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Within these two posts, I want to provide my thoughts, bridging the present and pointing towards a better design thinking future, one that in my opinion, is urgently needed.

These two posts are not intended as a mapping of the present DT landscape, they are reflective posts coming from what I researched.

The ‘product of my work’ itself is presently being worked through to be available as an e-book in the coming weeks. It has not been easy and often I found a level of confusion that kept forcing me to dig some more and I’m still not sure I have the answers, perhaps just lots of open questions. I think design thinking seems presently fairly messy and I feel is in need of a complete reset.

The intent of the e-book- direct link here ( design-thinking-improving-potential-innovation) is to offer a practical, direct takeaway of design thinking, more of the present practices and then where it is possibly heading. I tried to go linear, gone circular, gone holistic and at times ballistic and sought out tactical and strategic design, recognizing how its orientation has moved through product, service, experience, business model and is lifting design into new ways of orientation at tactical and strategic levels.

As I found out from my research, there is an awful amount of “noise” and “hype to work through to find the past, present and future positions of design thinking. In summary, I think design thinking is undergoing a revolution, a certain maturing but it is littered with a very messy, highly competitive present.

I would suggest that design thinking is a current ‘burning platform’ and the term ‘design thinking’ is so loaded it might need to be reworked under different banners to allow it to evolve but it needs to be restated and deepened in its skills, practices, and methodologies.

I certainly get the impression that there is an immense interest in design thinking as being a valuable contributor to being part of a solution within organizations but for the majority of interested parties, it is difficult to sort through the good from the bad in design thinking. Often you miss that certain clarity of knowing where DT can contribute, what it all means to achieve better solution outcomes.

It needs to break free of the magic ‘black box’ and evolve into its promise of being increasingly important to use, open and transparent in what it can achieve and its limitations. It is to balance this out and point to the need to be integrated with other skills, capabilities, and methodologies that tackle real, often complex problems within organizations.

So part two of my reflective summary:

Design thinking becomes the best friend to innovation, strategically and tactically.

When DT is applied to business or social issues it is by making creativity logical, you have its power of contribution, it can transform our innovative solutions. Design thinking is a highly creative problem-solving approach with a toolkit of methods but more a specific mindset where adapting is constant. By doing the same just over and over again brings the same results or dampens the potential to spark different ideas and solutions. Design thinking as something far too prescribed ‘dulls’ the process.

There is hope, actually, it is well beyond a glimmer, we are seeing design thinking recognize it needs to step up and take design thinking into a more strategic position. This will mean that design thinking will change in the future, into a greater, fuller “thinking” mindset that can be applied to these more complex problems at an organizational level and contribute this creative thinking to numerous challenges organizations are facing today. It needs to evolve, otherwise, it simply fades away, into the background of being just ‘helpful and useful’

Where Design Thinking Can Earn its Place

Where design thinking makes its contribution is through a good understanding of the users, making sense of ambiguous information, reframing opportunities, ecosystem conceptualization, prototyping to fail early and often. All this adds up to a creative process. Creativity is one of the key essences contributing to innovation.

Much of DT is working in a parallel space with many different paths to work through broad phases of investigative work. This makes DT seem “fuzzy, ambiguous and strange to many who are more trained in being analytical, often with backgrounds in science and engineering. It is bringing a degree of art and creativity to science and rational thinking. This combination must constantly search for a common language.

The need is for deeper immersion, for synthesis, for conceptualization, for constant evaluation, for exploring prototyping and it is seeking the right combinations that help blend all the different thinking into those valuable solutions. This is why DT can stand alone but is better in a broader system thinking approach. It can be so simple to tackle a specific customer problem, product design or service need, no question, where its design lies in its four elements to work through: of define, create, refine and repeat (as optional but likely) to eventually move towards a winning solution from the work of the combined thinking. The point is today organizations are asking for more out of their design thinking to tackle complex issues as well.

The constant danger is these different “open” steps or stages are equally a strength but also a weakness. For so many, these steps seem so insufficient and unconnected to their past reality. It is the need to connect this all up, to show it is real, it is the intuition, chaotic, divergent, naturalistic inquiry form and we need to offset our current more linear, sequential and reductionist inquiry mindset, so dominate in organizations today. Design thinkers need to tack on this challenge.

Lastly here, as complex problems become ever-louder in need to solve at both tactical and strategic level we must recognize their root causes are:  “often multiple issues, all tangled together, often hard to identify the critical parts and more than often hard to extract from the effect as solving one part often can worsen another or have greater consequences. Breaking up complex problems is tough as they are dynamically linked and deeply nested” (Quote from Chris Lawer in his paper on design thinking and healthcare)

Strengthening our thinking through processes.

The strength of thinking needs to be constantly working at creative blending a design and business thinking,  each time that will need to be different applying different techniques and frameworks. We need to move from that ‘one’ correct answer, often blindsiding us, into the many solution possibilities that take innovation out into new realms of solutions that meet a more integrative thinking that connects ideas more to customer needs.

It is that search for involvement from the diverse voices of users and inventors, it needs to be analytical and intuitive, it needs a blend of deductive, inductive and adductive thinking and that needs huge space and time to allow the thinking to work through. This divergent and convergent thinking, to zoom out, zoom in and connect all the diversity within the thinking and design of the ultimate solutions. The ability to connect, to manage this is the ‘art’ of the design thinker leading the facilitation process.

We often lose sight that if we lack customer or outcome focus we are more likely to fail, and if the construction and framing of the design thinking are not well stated it simply becomes a failure potential before any investment is made.

We move from consuming the idea of design thinking into a deeper participation as it synthesizes our thinking by allowing us all to have imaginations, thus feeding the roots of creativity that leads to innovation that tackles those complex issues we all face. We get equipped to bring all those cross-disciplinary thinkers together to break down the problem in a human-centered design construct.

Presently we are in the middle of this change, seeing how it evolves.

As I have finished in my e-book, I really feel design thinking is about to evolve. I feel I’ve not captured that change sufficiently but the e-book was constructed as more to assist in current DT understanding giving a background to why we need to change within the framing, so it built on a better understanding of the foundations of design thinking.

Within the e-book, currently in the ‘production works,’ I have taken the work of two different design thinking consultants or organizations to ‘cast’ out design thinking into a possible future. They offer more upstream strategic design thinking or take the view that that design is increasingly circular. Both are trying to shift the current race-to-the- bottom narrative you see in many design thinking suggestions into more strategic and broader system thinking levels, recognizing the need for greater change to tackle a growing complexity and mounting frustration that design thinking can’t stand on its own.

One is the collaboration between Ideo and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, focused more around the concept that design is increasingly circular.The Circular Design Guide is a collaboration between the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and IDEO

The other is Humantific who are taking design thinking out and forming it around a more robust set of thinking methodologies, way beyond ‘just’ design thinking but more into “sensemaking” through these different approaches and framing and methodology techniques.Humantific takes a  hybrid approach that looks to integrate the best of human-centered design thinking, strategic problem solving, and information visualization.

Pointing towards a future.

That future can happen if design thinking wants to evolve itself and I think we would all want that, it needs to move beyond its current present often caught up in a “fad” and “hype”. We need to develop it out and put it to use as more advanced problem learning capabilities, that challenge the desire for quick, handy “quick fixes” and think more deeply in strategic design terms to achieve better, more sustaining outcomes. Today, many of the outcomes get ‘push back’ as they did not account enough on the broader context, the system impact, they defined the challenge in far too limited ways and the results were limited, even though their was a lot of creative energy.

In this recent report by RSA an action and research centre called “From Design Thinking to System Change”

“Great design doesn’t always generate impact. As we show in this report, innovations attempting to scale and create systemic change often hit barriers to change, sending them catapulting back to square one. We call this the ‘system immune response’. The particular barriers will differ dependent on context, but might be cultural, regulatory,  personality driven or otherwise…..

“Design thinking alone will not be enough. The core insight of this paper is that solving our most complex problems will require augmenting design thinking with a systems thinking approach as the basis for action”

I think this is our present problem with design thinking as outlined in the RSA report:

“In reality what happens all too often is that the route from innovation to scaling, and thereby systems change, is fraught with obstacles”…..and we create system immune response”

“The point is that scaling is usually far from a linear inevitability and the development of a product or service innovation may be just the beginning of a process of generating impact”

“While design thinking alone provides a compelling process for idea development, it fails to recognize that without due consideration of systemic complexity and power dynamics, even the best ideas can lie on the shelf unused, and thus without impact”

We fail to gain the impact we wanted or identified as we did not fully account for all the system dynamics and all that was necessary to make sustaining change. We end up often just moving the needle just a little and today, that is not good enough.

The recognition of change within design thinking is growing momentum

In a forthcoming online festival, called the Disruptive Innovation Festival organized on November 6^th to 24^thby the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, this might be interesting. They have three main themes. One of these will be on the Future of Design where you can join from anywhere for free, sign up by clicking on the above link.

To quote : “Design has changed forever. Rather than just creating a single product for a single customer, designers of today have a new challenge: to create better systems adapted to a world of connected citizens, unpredictability and digital disruption.”.

There is this increasing need to understand the systemic conditions, the interconnected dynamics at play, the impact on the value chain and the ecosystem, on the business model and understand the organization and societal conditions in which this problem and challenge plays out. These need this deeper thinking so design thinking can marry the impact and understanding these more complex challenges require.

Summary

Design thinking has become a major methodology, it is presently running ahead in the expectations of what it can deliver and does need to re-think on how it is going to take this concept forward. The (real) design thinking community is racing to catch up and respond. The challenge for it is it has multiple voices all offering a wide choice in the past, what ones will emerge to give us a different design thinking future?.

We are presently in need of “buyer be (very) aware” otherwise you end up with a result that does not do the job you had in mind or more critically did not help solve the problem in your or worse still your customer’s eyes. Investing time in knowing what you expect as outcomes mean designing the problem or challenge in far more thoughtful ways, before you embark is critical in any design thinking journey.

Yet be even more ready if it evolves in ‘sudden and amazing’ ways you never expected but to have a clarity of original purpose ever-present keeps design thinkers in that constant analysis, to then be able to embrace the synthesis.

“Holding the course” or “breaking out of the mold” both need the courage and a real trade-craft to systematically test and iterate concepts until they ‘feel’ right. To both ‘conceive and make stuff’ can be really exciting.It is so human-centered and that is what design thinking is all about. How design thinking evolves will determine its position in our innovating world.

Get comfortable with this thinking alternative and what it can potentially give you in tackling your challenge or problem. Also remember DT is increasingly needed to be a more worked at a system level, beyond ‘just’ product, customer experience or service level. This is where the future of design is focused and where much of the current confusion lies, we are in the middle of these changes and they are being worked through in multiple ways, it seems.

Part one of design thinking is here

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The post The limitations, criticisms and new pathways for Design Thinking – Part two first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

This is part one of my thoughts that came out of investigating and researching design thinking Part two link is here.

In these two posts, I want to provide my outcomes, bridging the present and pointing towards a better design thinking future, in my opinion urgently needed.

The ‘product of my work’ itself is presently being worked through to be available as an e-book in the coming weeks.

The intent of the e-book with a direct link here ( design-thinking-improving-potential-innovation) is to offer a practical, direct takeaway of design thinking, the present practices and where it is possibly heading. I tried to go linear, gone circular, gone holistic and at times ballistic and sought out tactical and strategic design, recognizing how its orientation has moved through product, service, experience, business model and lifting design into new ways of orientation at tactical and strategic levels.

As I found out from my research, there is an awful amount of “noise and hype” to work through to find the past, present and future positions of design thinking. In summary, I think design thinking is undergoing a revolution, a certain maturing but it is littered with a very messy, highly competitive present.

I am suggesting that perhaps design thinking is a current ‘burning platform’ and the term ‘design thinking’ is so loaded it might need to be reworked under different banners to allow it to evolve as it equally needs to be restated and deepened in its skills, practices, uses, and methodologies.

I certainly get the impression that there is an immense interest in design thinking as being a valuable contributor to being part of a solution within organizations to tackle their tougher problems as well as those that need a level of creativity to move through in understanding.  For many though, I feel it lacks a real understanding of its value for the majority to sort the ‘good from the bad’ in design thinking or design thinkers, along with the what and where it can really contribute to achieving better solution outcomes.

It needs to break free of the magic ‘black box’ and evolve into its promise of being increasingly important to use, to balance out and integrated with other skills, capabilities, and methodologies that tackle real, often complex problems but more importantly, to be generally understood as a creative, human-centered methodology to get fully behind.

So part one of a two-part reflective summary:

I believe design thinking has a great role to play in contributing to solving problems and challenges, yet we have a series of problems to bring it back to a valuable order, we need to rein in the hype and the lack of a deep design thinking skill-set.

Far too many people are claiming to be design thinkers, after simply attending very limited “crash course” or “boot camps” and do not have the deep investment and experience to be true ‘design thinkers’. If this continues design thinking will fail in its potential to be a really good creative problem-solving approach.

Design thinking has raised a lot of expectations as well as its fair share of controversy. Why are organizations so caught by DT? Often it became the promise of having creative ways to solve solutions and work in harmony with all the rational thinking that dominates much of business thinking today, DT sounded so appealing, it quickly became “oh, we need some of that.”

The ramping up begins

So, the marketing of Design Thinking kicks in, looking to capitalize and add a real momentum. DT got heavily promoted. It quickly became simply sold as a process, just like Six Sigma, it became limited by those jumping on the latest concept not being true design thinkers, apart from attending a short course or two.

Then this new process became a little uncomfortable living alongside more established rational ones, it was difficult to integrate, so as this ‘new kid on the block’ struggled, questions started to raise their head on how does this compliment and add to all the efficiency and effectiveness that is expected around an organization’s dominating mindset. Most lost the plot that design thinking was different. It was so different, it was human-centered, not process-centered.

What was soon realized that extra “fuzziness” can sit uncomfortably in highly organized and rational structures? Design thinking was looking for those “leaps of faith” and lots of ‘being creative’, seeing failure and diversity was actually something akin to being hard to accept and conflicting in ‘being judged’. Fun and engaging perhaps but it needed to be separated and contained.

Organizations have come up against this growing recognition that there is no one “plug and play” system for design thinking.

When you are asked to be flexible, agile, willing to experiment and often fail, sometimes publicly, this can take you into some very uncomfortable territory. You might like the idea but will the boss? When you do not have a clear definition of design thinking of where and how it can actually fit, how it works or means, it continuously suffers from a lack of clear assignment, it makes it feel a little bit of an oddball.

You are left wondering who executes this and how it might be applied and implemented at scale. What answers to what, what links into what? Yet it feels useful and needs to be more embraced for its creative value. So, the short answer is to give everyone a short exposure and let everyone embrace design thinking as the creative avenue for all to explore. It suddenly gets broken down so it can be repeatable, a step-by-step process. Then easy, we all become suddenly design thinkers, or are we?

Then we get the “let’s systematize this” into a familiar, easy to use and follow process

Organizations suddenly turned design thinking into a linear, often gated, by-the-book methodology and suddenly it is not true design thinking anymore, it becomes just another too linear, too slow and not as bright a way to be ‘so creative’ but hey, we are design thinkers, that’s not bad, is it? The dominating thinking about ‘process’ suddenly starts to screw up the ‘freedom’ within true design thinking. It quickly became boiled down to aiding and supporting the incremental innovation.  It loses its real powerful edge of harnessing creativity to solve problems in highly imaginative and insightful ways, it becomes just the encouragement to help thinking along.

Design thinking so often then gets reduced down to supporting small project-related work, happily working at the periphery of the organization, it becomes simply a friend to incremental innovation and change. Leaders start to ask a question about all this design thinking ‘hype’ and began demanding far more from a design thinking process to tackle their complex problems.  Then it is suddenly “Huston, we have a problem.”

Enter the need for a new design thinking way that is emerging.

Design thinking can play a richer role and be a more powerful contributor to bigger problems but it needs to evolve and be seen in a wider context and not seen as specialized, narrow and limited. It can connect to a wider universe of problems and complexity of design itself, over the centuries has broken out of past confines. Design thinking makes us all design-conscious if we allow it too. It is the human-centered design that can draw out the best of our thinking if we do allow it too.

DT encourages us to abandon the linear thinking and keeps us constantly undergoing that looping circularity as the accepted process and that needs resetting mindsets significantly.  DT to evolve in all our minds, away from those past experiments limited to narrow, linear paths of design thinking understanding is highly liberating, sometimes scary but deeply satisfying when you truly break through a complex problem.

We need to connect multiple thinking, diversity and different experiences that so often diverge initially to then collectively find the path to converge, in a common understanding, to translate the combined creative thinking into real action, achieving valuable outcomes.

There is a different pathway ahead, otherwise, Design Thinking in its existing form alone will fail.

Design Thinking will not be evolved if we step back from this wrong path that many have been following in recent years, it will get pushed back and sink into the background, occasionally turned too, in a world far more dominate and schooled in detail-orientated highly rationale process methodology and thinking. Design Thinking can be increasingly integrated towards business and becomes both stronger in the human consciousness for process and culture contributions.Yet to get to this point there is this need to firstly, go back to the design thinking drawing board.

Design Thinkers should restate their value proposition before it becomes too late, to deepen the techniques and avoid moving out of their specialized role of being great facilitator to connect others to thrive and build solutions. Otherwise, there is this risk that DT fails in its real potential as a real creative process to search out imaginative solutions that DO solve complex problems. It is up to the design thinking community to come together on this, as today it is a real mess of conflicting message and extremes, some offering snake-oil solutions, others keeping design front and focused from experience, exploring all the design thinkers options and honing their practice.

Design Thinking should be seen as a specific creative, human-centered process all our thinking should pass through. It needs a new lifting up into both tactical and strategic design thinking.

We need to allow the ‘creative flow to emerge’

Design and good well-trained design thinkers are ‘schooled’ to be naturally creative thinkers, that is their space. They need to extend their toolkit of methods and tools to produce new value through the approaches they undertake. They thrive in the ambiguities recognizing in growing complex problems there will never be a concrete set of predictable answers.

Design thinkers work through the messy and unpredictable business, so typical of innovation and discovery doing analysis and synthesize to push more those unpredictable, surprising creative outcomes. To achieve this DT cannot be a prescribed step-by-step detailed process, it simply passes through stages, loops back when needed and moves forward when it ‘seems’ right.

I recall one comment I read: “thinking does not convey action”. If constructed well, through experienced, trained design thinkers have the ability to draw out all the diverse thinking present, through a fuller inspiration, ideation and implementation mindset. It can offer a creative pathway that promotes a messy, sometimes conflicting, failure allowed, ‘full on’ set of emotions, to energize and tackle complicated problems.

The search is even more centered around strategically connected value creation

As we all are faced with the task of solving more complex problems that are strategic in need, it is for design thinking to step up and become more a key component on how to ‘do’ this. These as relating far more to the customer needs, to solving organizational challenges or market challenges and those more ‘knotted problems’ that corporations and society are grappling with. The ability to extract from design thinking methodologies can significantly help in the future.

Today what is being increasingly demanded is to solve more complex problems in creative ways as essential, then design thinking needs to work in harmony with many other thinking skills to make its contribution.

It certainly needs to mature way beyond a ‘one frame thinking concept’ to achieve this, to be central to finding solutions.

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The post The limitations, criticisms and new pathways for Design Thinking – Part One first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I recently wrote a post “Delving into a complex world- helping to keep pace”.……to help us to keep pace, learn apply and adapt.

Finding time to read and extend our thinking is a real struggle and going that extra mile to read thought-leadership views can be a step to far, I know but I can’t help myself, it is part of my job and certainly for me, many are really worth it.

In that post I was recommending Deloitte and their thought leadership as a good place to visit.

Now I’m not sure how many of you actually did, so I thought in this post  to pick out specifically two great articles and make a post summary of these, as I feel both of these might be useful, as they challenge and break new ground in thinking.

So I can’t compete with getAbstract or Soundview or many others, offering the service of learning a book’s key ideas in less than 10 minutes but hopefully the two I’ve chosen will beat the time it takes in this one read to cover what I feel cover two topical and important innovation thoughts of the present for many involved in innovation.

The two thought leadership pieces I have chosen.Each of these are in the field of innovation so hopefully they will be of interest and raise your curiosity to dig a little deeper, if not then you have the key insights (from my perspective) here and that should be maybe enough to become more aware.

The two I have decided to summarize are 1) Beyond Design Thinking and 2) Minimum Viable Transformation.

Beyond Design Thinking

Written by Larry Keeley, president and co-founder of Doblin, Inc., an innovation strategy firm known for pioneering comprehensive innovation systems and the famous “Ten Types of Innovation”. A ‘given’ place to begin framing your innovation.

Beyond Design Thinking – reflecting on its place

Here Larry is discussing another really important system, about Beyond Design Thinking and let me pick out the key thinking within this article:

It opens with “Corporations have grown enamored with design thinking” and although design is in the ascendance, as it is powerful, effective and transformational if practiced or approached right, its trend needs examining. The key to design thinking is it begins by imagining a solution that does not exist yet, and then set about outlining a pathway to realizing it. Normally we make an assessment of a problem and seek correcting it.

What is at the heart of design thinking?

Design thinking has at its heart the generation of (lots of) ideas, build prototypes, try many things, build narratives about them, test everything, do more of what works and all the time show a clear bias for action, looking to shoot for the moon, or even Mars. All exciting, motivating stuff.

The creep is we are beginning to make design thinking a panacea – we start believing it can fix the ‘dry stuff’, the overly rational planning approaches to optimize around predetermined and deeply analyzed market segments, we are actually abusing design thinking. Larry argues that certainly conventional approaches to planning are overdue for reinvention; design thinking is sometimes treated as superficial to truly deliver on grand expectations. It falls down attempting the wrong things or trying to fit design thinking into the events of the day.

Certainly I’ve seen or witnessed many brainstorming or management meetings that have asked along a design thinking expert, who pulled out of the hat, like the magical rabbit, a wondrous show to excite, determine and mostly fill an otherwise boring day. We all got terribly excited until the magic wore off and it didn’t make a scrap of difference. This is not what design thinking should be for.

It is crafting analysis with synthesis, it is expecting divergence and convergence

As business rushes to embrace design thinking, it does move tradecraft beyond simply plain, vanilla analysis, it does embrace synthesis that helps build bolder and more newsworthy things. It can help firms build breakthroughs and contribute to the ‘genesis’ of profound insights and that alone can become the basis for an innovation team to put in the hard work of building (and validating) a breakthrough conceived through design thinking.

It is suggested in the article “put simply, analysis without synthesis is predictable and commonplace, design thinking without deep analysis is reckless.” It is seeking how to do both in integrated, even dazzling new ways.

To quote again: “when we have such highly contested markets….. it becomes a real skill to imagine a better world, make it tangible, build narratives about it and then work through the dozens of obstacles that anything new faces throughout its development”

Even more so “in a world where connectivity, collaboration, interdependence and user engagement all converge to build modern integrated ecosystems, where we formerly thought of industries”.

The quest for elegant integration of our innovation solutions

So Larry Keeley is suggesting within this article beyond design thinking we need to find “elegant integration” as effective innovations today are more about this elegant innovation of the known than the primary invention of the new. This is what is driving industry transformation everywhere.

The road ahead for the design field is three fold: use information deftly to manage complexity, great design is a critical catalyst and acceleration to the overall advance you seek and you should avoid labeling this design thinking as it is informed analysis, seamlessly synthesized into a coherent, beautiful solution.

As we transform from examples like Candy Crush, Alibaba, and countless others have as their shared property: they fuse together insights that come from sophisticated analytics, with experiences that are brilliantly designed to be easy, smart, convenient and entirely understandable.

That is where the power of design thinking turns products into platforms, offering deep solutions and your industry evolves into an ecosystem. It is down to getting all the parts right, needing analysis and syntheses to work together.

My second summary: Minimum Viable Transformation

This is written by one of my favorite thought-leaders, John Hagel III, who has written here with Jacob Bruun-Jensen about minimum viable transformation and he has a follow up article of the same name over on LinkedIn focusing more on the edge to create new business value. Let me summarize the two, hopefully enough for it to make sense.

To succeed in today’s networked economy, businesses must participate in dynamic, evolving networks of diverse organizations. And while such networks can be difficult to navigate, they offer companies the opportunity to evolve their business models, deepen skills and knowledge, expand into new markets, and scale operations.

To stay viable amid accelerating change, businesses themselves must change more frequently—and in ways that use their business ecosystems as fertile ground for collaboration and transformation.

As an aside, I am spending increasing amounts of time on understanding ecosystems for innovation and its management, but that’s for another day.

Scaling edges that might become our new core

One method used to scale edges is minimum viable transformation. Scaling an edge is a promising arena that can showcase the potential of a fundamentally different, highly scalable business model that could even become a new core. Starting at the edge gives the transformation team far more freedom to test and experiment, and more ability to learn and react quickly.

Here, when we are at an edge, a company pulls together the essential elements of a new business model into a barely working construct, one specifically designed to test key risks.

Acknowledging and embracing minimum viable product principles

Minimum viable products, for example, are like prototypes—except that instead of being tinkered with internally, they’re immediately thrown at the market and subjected to trial by fire.

So why would a company do such a thing? The minimum viable product is all about identifying flaws and working to improve them as rapidly as possible. It’s designed not as proof of concept, but to test hypotheses and unearth unknowns that could sink a new offering.

For companies seeking to reinvent not only their products but their business models, minimum viable transformation allows for rapid iteration on the unknowns of a new business model—anything from minute changes to operational processes to full restructuring of the go-to-market strategy. At its core, it’s a strategy for gathering validated learning about individual business model elements, then assessing how those elements interact and combine to form one cohesive strategy.

The need today is to innovate at the level of the Business Model

Rethinking the fundamentals of how a business creates and captures value has become a priority, we are in a different era, the past one was of slow change and stable industries yet we still saw rapid convergence. The sheer acceleration and changes in technology, customer desires and the need to build ecosystems is making the Business Model far more important to focus on than product and service innovations.

The problem is we are still not clear how shifting business models is supposed to get done. Taking the trend “minimum viable product” populated by Eric Reis and his Lean Start-up methodology – it suggests by pulling together the essential elements of, in this case, new business models, into barely working prototype models, specifically designed to test key risks, you learn from ‘lightweight’ and readily adaptable versions of potentially new business models to take them forward or rethink your original hypothesis.

Both MVP and MVT are like prototypes but they are simply not passed around and tinkered with internally, they are immediately thrown at the market and subjected to trial by fire. In Eric Reis’s view it is all about identifying flaws and working to improve them as rapidly as possible.

This minimal approach must be specifically designed, not as a proof of concept but I repeat, to test hypotheses and gain knowledge about the biggest unknowns that could sink any new offering.

Each change from minute operational change to global restructuring is better understood by iterative discovery but with full disclosure to customers, who surprisingly are very willing to join the journey of learning. This becomes a validated learning journey.

The whole approach to this minimum viable transformation is looking for understanding to reduce the risks of large-scale change. The core principles of MVP – validate learning, rapid prototyping, frugal creativity along with thinking MVT for reducing risks, increasing understanding of scale and speed makes for a potentially appealing approach to working on new Business Models.

Why explore new Business Models at the edge?

Focusing on “scaling edges,” allows for identifying promising “edges” for the organization, then grow that edge until it becomes a viable new core or complementary line of business. Such an approach can make it possible for businesses to reinvent themselves while minimizing potential risks—and maximizing impact.

An edge is a growth opportunity that has the potential to scale—so much so that it can catalyze change, eventually becoming effective enough to replace the core of the business. A true edge should align with larger trends disrupting the industry. Edges involve fundamentally different business models and practices from those of the core.

Edges give the transformation team far more degrees of freedom to test and experiment with new approaches to evolving a fundamentally different business model.

We finish this with five guidelines for transformation on the edge

Today corporate transformations must be designed and executed quickly and routinely—not as once-a-decade events. Management teams are looking for best practices that increase speed and reduce the risk of pursuing business model innovation and change. That’s where minimum viable transformation comes into play. Before diving in, management teams should consider these five principles:

1. Learn how to learn. The central goal of minimum viable transformation is to learn from a true field experiment.

2. Pick up speed. There’s a reason this approach starts with the word “minimum”: The learning has to happen fast. As soon as a company executes the idea it’s pursuing, it shows its hand to competitors— who will quickly respond with their own strategies.

3. Embrace constraints. Much has been written about the counter-intuitive effect of constraints—they don’t foil creativity, but fuel it. It’s worth noting that the very constraints we’ve been talking about here—few bells and whistles and scarce time—take real creativity to address. At the very least, they compel a focus on the goal—the need to learn and reduce risk around the key objective.

4. Have a hypothesis. To succeed, transformation initiatives must clearly articulate both the need for change and its direction. Such a statement of direction helps identify key assumptions driving the change effort (assumptions that will need to be tested and refined along the way). Leaders will also need to develop metrics that measure short-term progress.

5. Start at the edge. Find an “edge” of the current business—a promising arena that can showcase the potential of a fundamentally different, highly scalable business model that could even become a new core. Starting at the edge gives the transformation team far more freedom to test and experiment, and more ability to learn and react quickly.

In short, these five key principles can help bypass traditional barriers to transformation, ultimately supporting more effective response to mounting performance pressures.

In Summary

Both of these articles come from a significant report, the full report is “Business ecosystems come of age“. The notion of business ecosystems is now a crucial focal point for innovation, analysis, and strategic planning. Businesses are moving beyond traditional industry silos and coalescing into richly networked ecosystems, creating new opportunities for innovation alongside new challenges for many incumbent enterprises.

The world is entering an era in which ideas and insights come from everywhere, and crowds, clouds, collaborators, competitions, and co-creators can fundamentally help define our shared future. The business environment is being permanently altered as a result.

We require the thinking of thought leaders to emphasize and point us to ideas that we can adopt, experiment with and learn to our own benefit. For this learning, you need the time to read, explore and experiment.

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Publishing note:  This blog post was originally written on behalf of Hype and with their permission I have this added to my own site

The post Deeper read or quick summary- finding the time first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

• I like the principles of “demonstrating, validating, sharing and discussing” as you ‘plug’ into each other so you can achieve active dialogue on ‘given’ subjects on a solid ‘give and take’ approach.
• Often we constrain ourselves in working out the prescribed agenda of needs before we get into any dialogue, I think this is a huge mistake. We should make conversations creative, a rich mix of development techniques that generate good interactions and create that growing bond and identification.
• We need to allow time to let discussions and exchanges grow and flow and sometimes they can move into unusual directions that lead to even better creative exchanges for value building.
• We need to seek a bias for action, by simply keeping on asking the basics of “for whom, why are we discussing this, how can we proceed, when and what issues stand in our way?”
• I like the idea to start off any potential innovation conversation with a belief of its change possibilities; it opens us up to what both parties can truly get out of the collaboration.

The need is for both sides to feel they are gaining from any collaborations

• We should always start with the belief that we need to gain mutually, and often just simply recognizing that you might ‘just’ simply gain personal knowledge and insights that could offer value somewhere ‘down the line’.
• Each side constantly needs to track back to a sense of worth and that comes from allowing time for feedback and open thinking. Take your time to really engage in mutual conversations, they prove to be increasingly valuable over time.
• By the use of design thinking techniques can certainly help in providing a greater dimension to provide ideas to flow, makes exchanges and creative moves towards solutions. Learn the techniques and then try it as an alternative way to work and create together.
• We need to practice “circles of conversation” where they loop around, move around the parties and you gain increasingly from the positive reinforcing loop of different conversation strands.
• Lastly, we all bond, sometimes not so much with the problem but far more with the person explaining the problem, so mixing up the expected problem statement with personal experience and your values makes for a far more positive atmosphere, leading to fruitful conversations you might not have initially expected.

Why is collaboration so important to our future?
As we engage, we learn.
We can’t imagine what we don’t often see; others open our minds to new possibilities. We can stay anchored in what we see and do, or if we are prepared to let go and have this ‘freedom’ to look for mutual exchange we can scale new heights. Conversations, exchanges and collaborations give us the experience to learn.
The huge value of collaborative exchanges is how it opens up our minds as we sometimes realise that we were ‘vested’ in selective thoughts that were less informed than we expected. Opinions can fall away as better ones replace them.
We need to let go, unlock the knowledge that comes from collaborations. Just remember outsiders are not insiders, they have different perspectives and do not expect to ‘shoe horn’ their opinions into the one size fits all.
I’d argue to remain as open as possible, so as to allow yourself to simply open up in a world of mutual collaboration, it can lead to some powerful innovation ideas. Build trust, value your own instincts and permit judgement calls to be pushed off until you have allowed the other party to explain their potential contribution, and then jointly work towards the solutions.
Make your collaborative efforts move just beyond open innovation into relationships that continue the learning process for all sides. Make all your collaborating endeavours stimulating, then you move into that higher creative, co-creating gear and it is a far more rewarding place to be.
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Publishing note:  This blog post was originally written on behalf of Hype and with their permission I have republished it on my own site. I recommend you should visit the Hype blog site where they have a range of contributors writing about a wide-ranging mix of ideas and thoughts around innovation, its well worth the visit.

The post Achieving a higher collaborative gear first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Do I throw myself off the building or decide to listen a little longer? It really is forcing me to think.

Today it seems whenever I pick up a business book each chapter has a section on it.

Also, I seem not to be able to not fall over all the articles extolling its virtues, I mindlessly “Google it” and you can see your whole life flash before you, if you decided to investigate this seriously.

What am I talking about? 

Well, nothing other than Design Thinking. I know, most of you are so heavily into this you feel you might as well ‘flip’ over to the next article but are you, really?

Design thinking is a mindset

If we believe we can make a difference and even have gone that one step further, many never seem to get there, where we have an intentional process to get us to new relevant solutions that do actually create a positive impact. Then we are getting closer to that ‘magic point’ of transforming ourselves and those complex challenges, into opportunities to be designed and developed to make that difference. Now that would not be such a bad place to be.

Someone has talked me off the ledge, I give in and I want that embracing mindset

• One that allows me to be human-centred where empathy and understanding of others’ needs take precedence.
• One that allows me to be even more collaborative, where I can link my (great) mind with the views of others, those who can bring multiple perspectives into my own thinking.
• A place where optimistic thinking prevails, where you chase for solutions that overcome multiple constraints and the work becomes an enjoyable process.
• Finally, somewhere where it is allowed that you become ’experimental’, given permission to fail and learn from your mistakes. Why? Because you become resilient, you bounce back with different ideas, you seek out important feedback on them, and then you learn to iterate even better than before.

You are a work-in-progress of that forward momentum. You become an experimenter and this ‘magic pill’ called design thinking is all about learning by doing. You begin to believe and gain new confidence that new, better things ARE possible and you can make them happen. That gives you real optimism.

So I’ve come off the ledge, have you?

What will design thinking get you? The chance to be more involved in collaboration, one that permits me to be more creative to boost my confidence and where I can learn new ways to engage with others in a defined process and a process that will help me get unstuck, sounds like it is more fun than where I have been. Maybe somewhere near you, there is a Design Thinking AA group all chanting “one day at a time”.

So what does this Design Thinking process look like?

(Image source: IDEO)

So we need to start learning how to put this design thinking into more everyday practice

Design thinking really is ‘design doing’ or ‘design making’ than simply just thinking. It leads to the upfront framing before solutions are explored. The framing and solutions need to be separated. The pleasure of design thinking is it’s an iterative process, it wants you to experiment, build prototypes to develop your knowledge, go out and test them, talk about them and progressively validate the concept.

It brings ambiguity into a sharper understanding that eventually moves from all the divergence that initially surrounded it, into a growing convergence. It allows you to move from a concept or initial idea, through a number of working hypotheses, eventually into a final product, business model or service, that is not just new to the world but seen as valuable and an improvement on the existing solutions.

The great thing about design thinking: it’s evolving itself
We are relating design thinking to a great set of tools that can help identify and execute opportunities for growth and innovation. Darden Business School has been leading from the front in this, alongside Ideo and if we just consider ten of these, can you within your organization feel comfortable that you are actually applying these in your innovation practices?

These are:

• 1) Visualization
• 2) Journey mapping
• 3) Value Chain analysis
• 4) Mind Mapping
• 5) Rapid concept development
• 6) Assumption testing
• 7) Prototyping
• 8) Customer co-creation
• 9) Learning launches and finally
• 10) Storytelling

How many of these practices are you building into your innovation process to explore and exploit?

I’m very much into Divergent and Convergent thinking
You need both to explore and exploit the multiple possible solutions.

Divergent thinking is the ability and opportunity to offer different, unique or variant ideas adherent to one theme, while convergent thinking is the (eventual) ability to find the ‘correct’ solution to the given problem. You encourage and ideate many solutions, both possible and impossible, and then use convergent thinking to move towards a realizable resolution or solution.

I use this ‘divergent and convergent’ structure for many of my workshops, it allows for broader engagement and involvement and that eventual drawing together from this process. Once or twice you have to be nimble on your feet to move from one to the other but the discipline comes from timing these as shared spaces.

The focus becomes one on Validity

Seeking valid answers is the crux of Design Thinking. The process really is a “knowledge funnel” according to Roger Martin, ex Dean of Rotman School of Management. You keep ‘driving’ towards this eventual ‘validity’ by encouraging a future-oriented view. To think in the ‘future’ we do need to think differently, as most of our minds are caught up in the here and now and that tends to keep us locked in the status quo.

We need to design in a different mindset. Envisaging a future state is not easy, it requires observation, imagination and potential for configuration. We need to seek out patterns; we need to keep re-framing our thinking. Design thinking becomes an essential part of that set of abilities.

So to be relevant, you need design principles

(Image source: IDEO)

If we think about inspiration, ideation and implementation we already lift ourselves out of our everyday. What does it take to seek out and strengthen those higher-impact connections and relationships? What does it take to move beyond the existing and strive to define some more high-impact challenges, then how do we amplify the potential impact?

We need principles, and design thinking can allow you to follow a clear pathway to the realization of better innovation. Can you feel it is beginning to surround you too?

Jump but this time jump into design thinking, it might help you turn your ideas into those things that can really have an impact on your future and your organization.

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Publishing note:  This blog post was originally written on behalf of Hype and with their permission I have republished it on my own site. I recommend you should visit the Hype blog site where they have a range of contributors writing about a wide-ranging mix of ideas and thoughts around innovation, its well worth the visit.

The post Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

There is a sense of urgency that is growing at the corporate level, to master this ability to design different business models and then set about executing them, to combat the multiple ‘disruptive forces’ swirling around in the present and near-term business environment.

Reinventing the Business model is such a big ask in the complexities to overcome, the legacies, the vested interests, the distribution of created wealth (dividends, bonuses, performance) are all ‘locked into’ the existing business. Many of those necessary bolder decisions get caught up in horrible compromise.  Parallel managing is both an art and a science but it always needs clarity.

Addressing the current dilemma within business models

So we have a classic dilemma, we need to manage and extract as much as we can from the existing business but simultaneously begin to reinvent, to design something different.

Caught up in this dilemma, increasingly the large organization is questioning how it can use the Business model canvas in more effective ways. I believe there are many exciting options available.

Business models need a common language, they need to be easily described and here is the fundamental value of the BMC – it can set about supporting a common understanding, it can be used to describe in multiple ways.

Here is my view  

Move the thinking. Move the emphasis. Today the BMC is discussed more as the blank canvas to start new ideas and concepts and its present focus has been in its use for start-ups and entrepreneurs. From these opening sketches, the canvas does a great initial job to describe these ‘emerging’ concepts. We need to change this emphasis point.

The possible new dimensional values of the Business model canvas.

Make the Business model canvas as a multiple describing and communicating tool. We should shift our thinking and open our minds up to its (BMC) greater value within the larger organizations

These are clearly:

• To simply explore new business models as the book, the Business model generation, originally sets out, in the how what and where of doing this through the business model canvas approach. To experiment with all the advice, tools and experiences that have been built up since this book first appeared.

The richer and perhaps broader dimensions that large organizations should explore:

• To ‘map’ changes to existing business models as they evolve or need to pivot differently. Steve Blank has explained this insignificant detail and terms as the BM dashboard that ‘indicates’ the important changes and these become the focal point of necessary discussion, knowing what is changing, to focus the thinking and see what changes need supporting differently.
• Then why not to sketch out competitors positions to explore possible opportunity gaps. This should become one of those consistent ‘habits’ that so many large organizations often have a real blind spot to undertake, they just keep assuming nothing has ‘visibly’ changed. Then they get caught out and surprised when they see their share slipping away as the competitor has made a directional change and this was not spotted and communicated to all parties who ‘need’ to know. The BM Canvas can spot and track competitors.
• Use it as a designing dashboard for innovations that have or could have an impact on existing business models. Whenever you have any major BM change you capture it on your BM Canvas so all above and below in the organization can picture this to see the possible risks this change might bring.
• Use it to compare business model components across each of the countries within the organization, where more often than not different models are being applied to build businesses in multiple ways. This enables all involved to quickly focus on the differences on these operating models and how the market formation is occurring to get quickly into the strategic discussions, implications, and requirements this ‘specific’ approach takes.
• When you are pitching for internal funds having a clear BMC as the visual focal point provides the top picture that others can quickly see and appreciate the why and how – they ‘see’ the value and the $$ potential,. This can offer ‘intelligent inquiry’ not getting bogged down in detail and getting involved in the running of the business but supporting owners or business managers with different experiences and knowledge to compliment theirs, so as to conduct the type of ‘intelligent’ and strategic conversation needed, instead of many that needlessly occur today.
• To have ready alternative scenario’s for volatile business conditions as ‘early warning scenarios’ that have mapped out potential changing conditions showing where, why and how the business model might be adjusted or radically changed. The earlier ‘warning system’ pays in volatile times that we are all facing at present to be more aware and ready for rapidly changing conditions, possibly already ‘worked up’.
• Managing multiple portfolios of business is a complex challenge to spot ‘commonality,’ to detect change, different opportunities or simply recognizing there is a growing ‘drift’ of direction that needs addressing. You can use the BMC as the detection kit, the reoccurring adopted format practice to capture these different portfolios.
• Rapid concept brainstorming to move into prototyping evaluation and market testing. Testing many different variations in small bite-sized bets is rapid prototyping, do this through the effective use of the business model canvas. Testing fast in the actual marketplace new business models and then learning from them to improve the approach is absolutely critical. Get the customer involved and engaged, get your potential partners grouped around the BMC to build and extend out, the internal thinking.
• The business model needs to be constantly tested for its potential in its recurring value, and it needs a canvas to constantly challenge its present position and worth.

There are multiple ways the business model canvas can be explored in exciting new visual ways so as to describe effectively in a common format and capture the wealth of different opportunities.  To invent, to communicate and explore the ‘richness’ within the potential value that is simply laying underneath the different components that make up a business model.

Let’s keep moving the conversation forward on where the business model can work in creative ways within large organizations. Do you have any further ideas?

The post The Age of Large Business Model Reinvention first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Well in the Business model canvas we have the cost side, the back-end, made up of the activities, resources and partnership aspects and a revenue side, the front end, made up of customer segments, channels and customer relationships. It is the ‘net worth’ of all these blocks that makes up their contribution to the Value Proposition.

It is the nine building blocks when we put them together, tells the complete story, a little like a business model balance sheet. Balancing this out thoughtfully does need that bringing it all together, so as to give others the compelling story and begin to mobilise around and attract the necessary resources.

My question though is this: “is the BMC understated at the back-end today and should we strike a different balance for more established organizations?”

What happens when one side perhaps gets over emphasised?

Very much the orientation of the business model canvas is presently skewed towards the front end – the market facing part and rightly so. You are in search of a new business model, you will never find it in the building. As Steve Blank rightly stated “you have to get out of the building” to validate your assumptions or hypothesis, to search for the value in the real marketplace.

The present BMC creative energy focuses are mostly placed on the front end as  many of the emerging tools, methodologies and creative work seek to explain and explore this in novel ways, helping to work out if you do a have a meaningful business emerging or not. You want to test your ideas or concept as soon as possible. As you learn, you pivot, learning what makes sense to customers, what might not, making continuous adjustments to confirm the business idea.

Now we need the same creative energy application channelled to the back-end to draw out the supporting aspects that underpin the new business model.

Today, the BMC is well accepted for start-up’s, for entrepreneurs but still does struggle to gain the real momentum it deserves and can contribute within larger organizations. Why is this?

The back-end and its lack of real attention just might be holding the BMC back for large organizations. Now we need the back-end to have the same ‘explosive’ forces and focus, as the front end. Let me explain why:

So for me the understated side of the BMC is the back-end.

Here we are looking to ‘plug in’ the key partners, the key activities and the key resources. If you look at any introduction to the BMC you get these as short explanatory introductions to these three parts

Key Partners – what can partners do better than you at lower cost (and thus leverage your business model)

Key Activities – What activities do you need to perform in your business model and how easily?

Key Resources – What resources does your business model require? These are seen as the assets required offering and delivering the other described elements within the BMC.

Perhaps these are just not deep enough in explanations, even for a starting point for a new business model design. These prompters as they initially stand, inadequately address the existing organisations deeper issues in my view.

The ‘drag’ in adoption performance might lie at the back end

The Business model canvas and by extension BM design, struggles with the back-end, this tends to always ‘lag’ as we address ‘breaking opportunity’, especially in established organizations. There is too much invested legacy. This is the ‘drag,’ the anchor weight, that holds bigger businesses back in investing fully in (radical) business model design. We need to open this up, in finding solutions that resolve this back end of the BM canvas.

Originally when Alexander Osterwalder was working through his thesis that ‘spawned’ the BMC, he was talking far more of a multi-layer set of approaches where you had a more defined planning level – the strategic layer, following by the architectural level – the business model layer and then the third level, the implementation level for the process layer. He suggested (at the time) layers ( or you can say stacks) were acting like glue between strategy, business and processes. I think he was right. We need to layer and glue.

We need to ‘layer and glue’ at the back-end

The BMC frame does not need to be changed as resources, partners and activities can be a sufficient ‘catch all’. What we need to actually do is raise often the ‘thorny’ issues, of existing structures, conflicts and possible solutions to overcome these.

This time we don’t get out of the building to learn, we ‘work’ the existing building (or organization) to begin to identify and test aspects of your emerging business model across all the internal ‘touch points’.

We are equally looking to discover and validate in our initial explorations , to pivot and stay agile and aware. To ‘flush out’ roadblocks, internal barriers and search for novel solutions. To keep gaining acceptance and recognition.

Here we are exploring existing infrastructure and looking at what would be needed that would be different to support a new business model. To build anew or extend.

I think it is time to let the infrastructure skeleton out of the cupboard.

We have to acknowledge and talk through the fact that big organizations have involved processes, they operate in complex ecosystems that are difficult to navigate, negotiate change with and seeing where you need to pick certain parts of the value system apart to accommodate the new. Perhaps it is easier to ‘start anew’ or spin out the new business as the antibodies can come rushing in to kill anything life threatening.

The other issue is the reputation risk.

Can you accommodate a small, lean and light weight business in its early stages as it tries to sit alongside the big brothers of existing businesses? Many of the larger organizations have thresholds for revenue size that are telephone numbers to even think of creating something even more ‘demanding,’ a new business model.

You struggle everywhere within established organizations to make the necessary changes to adopt new business models, there is so much vested interest. Yet new business models are desperately needed. So lets address  back-end constraints head on?

We need to tackle complexity far more and early on.

Often the complexity within our organizations; the politics, the whole need to convince established positions & overcome legacies will hold most simply back from exploring business models, on a broad, bolder front. They don’t want to acknowledge the necessary holistic fit of all nine building blocks. They attempt to retrofit what they see into the existing back ends, into their known and existing paradigms.

This limits the potential not just of the visionary power of the BMC but the whole design of any new business model. Often new BM’s are squeezed into the existing:  the push through existing channels, sold to existing customer segments, delivered within the existing supply chain, managed through the same resources and invoiced through the existing systems. We compromise, perhaps, the greater potential by not reflecting deep enough on what new BM’s can give us.

There is nothing wrong with leveraging what you have, exploiting existing resources and structures but as you are drawing on what you know (exists) you can stay blindsided to what it can potentially offer. If you don’t ‘opened up’ your mind and thinking that little bit more you can constrain a new concepts real, sometimes game changing, potential.

We need to ‘ratchet up’ existing visual methods and tools.

This is the exciting place to be, designing new tools and visualisation but let’s focus fully across the whole Business Model Canvas.  We do need to talk more ‘content,’ more purposeful design at the back-end, if the bigger organisation is going to sign up in the way it can, but equally, make it creatively applied.

We need to think how architecture and agility can combine; an opening exploration of operations, systems, applications, and of thinking different ways to be agile thus providing a more transition planning approach to underpin the emerging business model’s design.

Alex talks sometimes about a CAD equivalent for business model design in the future. Perhaps he has something there. We need to design the structure, work through modification, analysis and search for optimisation no different from the front end. This is why we need the Business Model Design Architect as central to this required repositioning, to manage the complete design of any business model’s new blueprint.

My call here is that we need to broaden the  back-end conversation.

Let’s get the conversation going on the back-end and then unleash the multiple designers within this part, not just the huge community of IT related architects already out there working on many of these internal problems. We need creative design, ingenuity and understanding, all combining in new ways.

We need to step up one big huge level within conversations around Business Model design in existing organisations. We need to seek creative, visually stimulating solutions to the complexity that lies within the four walls of organisations. Let’s address the internal complexity and all learn by openly exploring this. We need to get the toolsmiths working on forging the internal BMC foundry, block by block.

To play back to the team designing and orchestrating the BMC, we do need to create better conversation at the back-end of the BMC. We need a new depth in the visual tools needed to capture this side of the canvas.

Otherwise, we don’t stay at beginners level Alex, we stay locked into start-ups and entrepreneurial check lists as the use for the business model canvas and that would be such a pity. Addressing the architecture of the back-end is essential.

We need to address the existing organisation far, far better in the back-end

Until we address this back-end far more, then I think the BMC will stay considerably  constrained, especially for established organisations. It might simply remain a check list, or as Steve Blank chose to depict it as the Business Model dashboard, or it is only a starting block A4 white board to begin to explore new ideas for start-ups and entrepreneurs.

It might not become the real ‘catalyst’ for exploring new business models as I believe it can be in established organizations. That would be a real shame, if the back-end stays a clear liability on the business model balance sheet. The back-end is hugely different within the established organization and the business model canvas needs to tackle this urgently, in a host of highly creative ways that we have seen extensively applied to other parts of the BMC. Lets get a better balance in our thinking.

The post The Understated Back-End of the Business Model Canvas. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Those without a legacy or are really agile usually are in pole position to explore new opportunities quickly. Also to start with a blank business canvas is exhilarating. It seems we are in the era of the Entrepreneur or are we?

The entrepreneur has a great chance to pioneer, to quickly expand and seize those opportunities to disrupt those occupants serving a known market. The art of discovering the unmet needs of not just existing consumers but attracting in the ones presently outside the focus markets is such a valuable place to attack.

The constraints within the existing organizations

Designing the new business model seems an awful lot easier than if you were involved within the’ poor old’ established organization locked into its structures, systems, existing markets positions battling with satisfying existing shareholders. Just moving those conflict points along within the organization often seems certainly from the outside, in perpetual conflict. There is a real challenge to see things differently and design differently!

The established organization has to combat this increasing threat from all these “usurpers”. There is a strong call for change in existing organizations but there are often complex ecosystems to overcome and the demands for new structures and approaches to resolving these are increasing.

The ever increasing call for more C-EX’s of something

It seems we are continually called upon to add more chief officers in innovation, in information, in knowledge, etc., etc. to address the constant gaps found within existing organizations inability to adapt, focus and design the business. Specialisation is needed but we seem to increasingly lack the function of pulling this all together.

The Chief Executive seems to be so out on a limb defending, cajoling, managing and simply reacting to constant crises across their shortening tenure; we are losing the bigger picture perspective when it comes to designing the business to shape it towards the future.

We need to manage the cross-cutting concerns in functionality, in constraints, in unlocking the resources successfully. Yes you could argue this is the role of the Chief Operating Officer but they seem far more focused on squeezing every bit of juice they can find from the existing operations. I hated it when the COO came knocking, you knew it was going to hurt. So who is this person then?

This person, I call the Business Architect who designs and develops the business ecosystem.

This person or function has to hold distinct views of the five essential aspects that impact across the organization. They are seeking out the unique ways for the internal competencies, processes and assets to combine and relate in seizing ‘breaking’ new business model design. They must have a comprehensive overview:

1.       They have the business strategy view and then are capable to break these down into the essential parts to tackle and address the strategic needs. They provide the strands for traceability to make sure these components are being actively worked upon

2.       Check and test the business capabilities and flag where gaps are found, assign the resource and focus to bridge these gaps and set about the building of the lasting capabilities needed to meet the business design needs

3.       Seek out and make sure the flow of business knowledge is occurring by applying a clear absorptive capabilities structure that sets about capturing, facilitating, accelerating and diffusing knowledge for it to flow throughout the organization and to its partners.

4.       Possess the best business operational view or be part of the inner team to support operational structures that cut across functional and organizational boundaries. This includes working the boundaries to extend and push any key design parameters, such as open innovation, platform innovation, collaborative ventures that extend and build on the existing entity.

5.       Have a clear view on the operation– perhaps not the responsible oversight but is able to capture, explain and link roles, capabilities and map these to the challenges being tackled today but designing those that need to be taken forward to build the future in more adaptive designs.

These five aspects have been discussed in numerous Business Architecture papers before and are suggested to provide the integrated view of the organization.

The absolute difference, for me, is not having these buried within the IT department but given the critical centre piece role of being the Chief Business Model Design Architect across the organization with an essential seat within the C-level team. They are responsible for the value configuration, building the necessary capabilities and focusing on the key activities and resources that are needed to implement change for different business models. They are a real change maker.

So we need strong business model design architecture today.

This person and his team design the business logic. It sets about to understand and describe the building blocks of business model design. It is the master of the Business model canvas, it understand the importance of the parts, their interlocking nature and can describe the rationale of how the organization creates, captures and delivers value for today’s business and is constantly exploring the future alternatives and having these designed into the future considerations.

The Business Model Architect designs the different blueprints. They work out offering through all the means necessary the common understanding, facilitate the roadblocks and design constraints so as to align the strategic objectives with the demands placed on the design of the organization. They work the team, they cut across boundaries, they set about ‘creating’ the organizational framework and deliver the “how we do it”, they are the business design translators.

They seek to design constantly what is needed, they look to instigate and demand changing capabilities to increase flexibility, to optimize and to adapt what is in place with what is needed to deliver the opportunities identified for giving new growth.  They map, model and design. They make design more dynamic to adapt to change.

Maybe they are tasked with offsetting  the entrepreneur out there, presently determined to disrupt their business. It is time for exploring all the value points of being the ‘incumbent’ and it needs this holistic business architecture approach.

They have and own the Architecture mandate for the organization for designing the architecture framework necessary for the business model and its design, not just for today but for the future.

The challenge is to provide them with all the tools and immense ingenuity available to them if they can harness it correctly, which I believe they can. ‘Locked’ within the organization is plenty of latent energy wanting to find new ways of working, new designs, structures and processes.

The design of new business models needs a clear focal point within established organizations. The very catalyst is that you need the Architect to orchestrate and completely manage this design process.

The post The (Re)birth of the Architect for the Business Model Design first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.