Innovation is becoming far too complex for the innovation process installed within the (one) organization. It is far too self-contained and not open to the collaborative environment we need today, where others outside the one organization can freely exchange and collaborate on the same platform.

I have argued for some time we do not have an “innovation fit-for-purpose” system, we still are focusing far too much on having separate solutions for the front end (IP discovery), then idea generation, and then keep separately the pipeline and portfolio management. We are still randomly applying a range of tools that individuals have collected for themselves to complete their part of the job and the outputs can’t be shared. We continue to exchange across different social channels, often seen as a necessary evil to be bridged, as often systems do not “speak” to each other.

We fail to connect up all of our innovation process and design. When will we have a fully integrated, end-to-end innovation system? Some software solution providers seem to be working towards it but tend to keep adding pieces and not stepping back and designing a fully integrated process. Why? We are managing innovation at often very sub-optimal levels of effectiveness.

As organizations are being forced to deal in increasing complexity and environmental turbulence and focusing more and more on ‘adapting the appropriate response,’ they are increasingly being forced to respond early and provide back into the marketplace incremental innovation. Stepping out of the incremental trap and looking for new growth curves remains increasingly a difficult one to master. It actually needs a bold move to radically overhaul the innovation process and practices, without risking to disrupting the current innovation system as you go through the changes this requires.

We are caught in a new innovation dilemma

Yet are there any innovation processes, practices, and system solutions up to the job of handling complex products, in highly collaborative environments, where open exchanges are needed, outside the one entity? The tendency is to stay fixed on what they have got within the existing regime and try to extend it out into a more open collaborative system but these continuous “bolt-ons” do not provide enough change, it needs a radical new design approach.

We need to put into place a more robust innovation system and process to handle more complex, radically designed innovation solutions from end-to-collaborative end needed. For me, that is designing an end-to-end collaborative platform solution, one dependent on the cloud, having a robust technology solution that manages the complete innovation process from end-to-end.

Organizations are caught in a real tug of war within much of what they do in business today; in their responses and reactions to many of the dramatic business conditions they are facing, many deteriorating or being challenged by greater global competition or being disruptive by technology becoming a growing part of any innovation design. We are facing a very uncertain future if we base our actions and measure the outcomes on past practices.

I would argue the market is changing, customers are demanding more connected, technological innovation solutions to meet their needs. We need a new innovation thinking model, one where we are pushing to seek increasing new knowledge constantly on learning continuously about what that innovation solution can provide, right up until the time of launch and then beyond in new insights and improvements.

Past practices and systems are inadequate for today’s globally connected world

In our past management practices, we have operated and exploited the linear world for ever-increasing efficiencies and effectiveness as the critical focal point. Innovation has tended to fit within this, hence why we have so much incremental innovation, it is improving on what we have got.  This approach was fine when we operated and relied on stability, predictability and a willing end-user, ready to accept ‘our’ offer of product or service. All three of these conditions are increasingly absent from our world today and will increasingly be challenged in the future.

The world is increasingly being disrupted, are markets are becoming more unpredictable as more competitors enter the global chase for business growth and the end-user has become increasingly savvy in knowing how to search for the best deal or finding solutions that some limited adaption to his/her needs is good enough to get their job done, even on a sustaining basis.

We are not responding to the underlying changes and demands of our customers in many industries still, we give them what we have, until the nimble, new entrepreneurial enterprise spots weakness and recognizes the real need.

To be ready to respond we must be ready to seek out unexpected outcomes, or unmet needs. To achieve this we need to have a deeper digital connection into our customers, a constant two-way flow to be increasingly exposed to new opinions, experiences and learn from all those insights, spot opportunities, adjacencies and new connections to add and define new potential  value that can be offered, within our domain of expertise or recognize it needs to be brought in through a collaborative environment, so as to meet these needs or outcomes..

There is this constant set of discussions about changing structures and models to become more adaptive, agile, lean, flexible and fluid; to react and deal with the increasing turbulence occurring all around us but our innovation system of purpose stays rigid and structured to optimize a “repeatable process” when we often seem to miss one critical point, new innovation should be (radically) different.

We need to shift from ideas into impact and that needs a different delivery approach.

We actually are in urgent need of new innovation management operating model based more on technology solutions that can generate digital innovation and deliver greater impact as a connected solution made up of product, service and technology design.

For the way, we undergo innovation and its development of turning ideas into winning concepts of value, the principles of platforms and ecosystems make a “compelling” sense. It draws in the value of technology, connecting up the access to multiple solutions for the client to assess and incorporate in their innovation needs. It brings in outside expertise and specialization to build a solution that has a greater value proposition as it combines physical product, service design, and technology inclusion. A Nike running show has technology built into it, it offers the service of providing the data knowing how you are performing and delivers the right product designed for the job it needs to do. That is an innovative solution that needs a collaborative design to deliver.

We need to raise up our thinking for future innovation design.

We need a new management practice to deal with our digital world that can extract the value it offers. One real need is for increasing knowledge and then being equipped in interpreting this in our learning, daily routines and activities are becoming paramount to break out of a declining performance cycle.

Our increasing connectivity brought about by our digital world is giving us increasing volumes of insights, richness in options possible at increasing speed. We are in a hyper-connected world, potentially global for all of us and increasingly we will be forced to operate in interdependent ecosystems and platforms that allow us to collaborate and share, driving up awareness and performance and bring these insights into products that match this need.

The world is also shifting in the need to design or extend products to prolong their life. We expect to see extended life cycles to support the limited resources we have available in the world. We will see more digital enter into our innovation practices, in cognitive, automating and in analytics and data collection, to speed up innovation cycle times but to increasingly add different value throughout the lifetime generation of that product offering.

Are we able to update products at scale, to extend their useful value by offering additional value propositions? Do our innovation systems set out to purposefully design for longer lifetime use? The consumer is expecting this increase in a resource-stretched world where essential materials are under increasing pressure and recycling is not extracting enough to offset new demand created by updated versions of something. Think Smartphones here, requiring rare earth metals but just being thrown away in the chase for the latest version.

Our world is shifting from scalable efficiency to scalable learning.

We need to explore and scale differently, we need to spend more time on rationalizing our ideas by validating them. The shift from ideas into scaling and execution calls for a broad, ecosystem-orientated business model and this calls for increased scale, speed and set of collaborations, increasingly built on-platform engagement. We need to accelerate decision-making and through access to an ecosystem of innovation partners, there is increasing access to better knowledge and deeper understanding.

Classic models of management are presently being broken down and rebuilt in new ways based on platform and through a more ecosystem approach, this has such exciting potential for applying to innovation management.

This means a more “open” approach, a highly collaborative one, where the power of many can focus on delivering better, more engaging and valuable solutions. We are expecting a more continuous and collaborative structure that stays in place with customers and partners, increasingly reliant on each other, building up trust and mutual value appreciation.

Collaborating in collective ways helps break down complexity.

You have to be open, prepared far more to share, to build trust and seek out increasing relationships and diversity of knowledge and much of that comes from external sources of new knowledge.

What will be rewarded in this connecting world is agility to respond, the ability to absorb and learn quickly, and the nimbleness to translate and adapt new learning into insights and eventual outcomes, that build out our businesses, keeping them healthy, growing and sustainable. That will only come from a more highly collaborative environment, where multiple organizations come together and contribute their expertise.

An ecosystem design for innovation to extract that scalable learning through a platform design where individual organizations recognize they need to collaborate more openly, on an innovation platform fit for today’s environment, where all involved in the design and delivery of innovative solutions, that include the  final customer, are purposefully engaged to achieve the best resuilt.

The post Recognizing an innovation need first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

This GII report investigates and reports on 129 countries and then analyzes and ranks them accordingly.

When you are caught up in generating innovation within a business these sorts of reports can often pass you by as not so relevant to your everyday job of innovation.

I can certainly understand that but as a barometer of the health and investment going into innovation, it will eventually filter through to you and has more relevance than you first imagine.

This report is mainly for those interested in forming national policy on innovation, or judging where they are within the global race on innovation, yet it tells us all some really important points on the current health of innovation.

Yet the innovation message is for us all. If nothing else read this summary.

The really important message to hearten all involved in innovation is “that formal and informal innovation seems to be blossoming globally” (pg 2) even though the concerns are growing on the effects of both economic and geopolitical uncertainties are taking their toll on global economic growth. The report suggests this is “losing momentum”. As innovation is a major engine to investments and productivity growth around the world this is signaling some problems ahead unless things change.

The suggestion in the report is there are two possible bottlenecks from the innovative perspective might be contributing to the forward-looking innovation investment and adoptions needed

These being, firstly a decline in the level and speed of innovation, partly due to lower investments in research and development and also a continuing uneven adoption of innovation across individual economies and the world at large. This fits very much with the present needs of innovators, managing on the job, are struggling to scale and attract the right levels of investments or have sufficient resources to implement innovation. Then as we continue to run our innovation activities in many unstructured ways, failing to provide a comprehensive approach to innovation from end-to-end we do limit adoption and identification. Both of these policy issues are very much part of the incumbent innovator’s dilemma to resolve. Policy and Reality seem to mirror the same issues.

The scope of “breakthrough innovation” is coming increasingly reliant on digital technologies, automation, data processing and artificial intelligence (AI) the view is this has a longer-term impact and is potentially drawing from the immediate and medium-term innovation as this shift in innovation continues to gather momentum. This longer-term focus might not provide the productivity growth in the medium term as we go through the changes that these technology and digital solutions require. Again, I think this mirrors the current organization dilemmas on making the level of commitment to changing and adapting to technology and what it will bring in any new innovation activity.

The two other crucial observations that emerge from this GII report are, firstly “businesses do not seem to engage in innovation processes, products and solutions evenly, leading to slower productivity growth” I view this comment validating the struggle many organizations are facing moving from a closed innovation approach into a more open one, even embracing platforms and ecosystems which point far more to greater growth potential.

Secondly, they worry over “knowledge gaps” are still prominent and possibly growing. Perhaps we are losing more experience in capabilities and competences and becoming a little over-reliant on automating the process would be a question I would have from this comment?

The really encouraging messages for us all are these.

The really encouraging messages that should give belief into the innovator working in the trenches from this report are the following

1. Innovation is recognized by all economies as vitally important to nurture and develop. In the past, it was the domain of the high-income economies but the developing economies are getting the “innovation message, where they have an “abundance” of natural resources they need innovative thinking and policies to boast both economical and social development. The interest in innovation is getting wider appreciation and attention. That is a good thing for innovators in those countries to get the sense of identity of innovations importance and their need to embrace it.
2. Then the recognition that innovation covers “all realms of the economy” and finally “breaking the myth” innovation is solely concerned with science-driven and high-tech driven outputs is a potential breakthrough for the sustaining health of innovation into the future. We need solutions to countless global challenges so we need to recognize innovation’s place within this.
3. The ability to conceptualize innovation has radically altered innovation understanding. The active interest in promoting local, frugal and inclusive innovation is taking hold and blending far more with local cultures, crafts, and skillsets. This recognizing innovation is local, it can evolve in local ways that may on the surface not be traditional but can encourage a platform of new entrepreneurs and creative thinkers to release themselves from the shackles of doctrine and just experiment, explore and discover innovation “their way”.

What I take away here is the changing recognition we are having of the importance of innovation globally.

This bottom-up movement of innovation activity is so much more productive than imposing innovation conditions from the top. The policy should be far more towards enablers and facilitators, measuring engagement and achievement so much differently than we do today. Grass-roots innovation leads to green-shoots of economic and social stimulus and growth. The policy should be more nurturing and more sustaining.

Each of these has stimulated modern-day trend shifts in innovation policy.

• The realization of societal challenges, such as food security, environmental challenges, energy transitions, and health is gaining increased attention and realization that innovation is central to these.
• The organization of innovation is for all. Innovation stimulus or activity is not the focus of one department or ministry, it has become cross-ministerial in the task and collective government attention. This allows for greater potential in public and private collaborations as dealing across ministries was always a significant barrier, that seems to be finally addressed.
• The really major shift is towards dynamic innovation ecosystems. The report is detecting the gravitating from “just” fostering science and R&D expenditure to the striving for the creation and upkeep of sound and dynamic innovation ecosystems. This is absolute (lovely) music to my ears, focusing my time and energy onto dynamic innovation ecosystems.
• The last one is how date-based evidence and innovation metrics are increasing at the center of crafting, deploying and evaluating innovation (policies).

Equally, the good thing is innovation is gravitating into a healthier recognition of its critical role at the national country level.

The report points towards a growing awareness for promoting “increased curiosity of science and entrepreneurship in children and students, on how to make public research more relevant to business, how to promote inward technology transfers and foster business innovation expenditure to be designed into innovation policies to gain increased adoption of innovation and enabling the conditions for this to happen.

The underlying messages from the GII report.

The underlying message one gets is the realization (finally), at national level, to anchor policy objectives into innovation is necessitating investment in these enabling conditions such as infrastructure in research and technology transfer, in education and skills, in promoting entrepreneurs and seek to attract venture capital as occurring, not just as part of past practice for a few developed economies but for the vast majority seeking ways to reduce the divides and gaps, finally recognizing that within their possession is a cadre of innovators who can make a real difference in their national economies but also increasingly on the global stage,.

The report concludes there is true progress in fostering innovation on the ground globally to foster innovation. Now that enables all innovators and can help in recognizing and delivering the foundations for innovation-driven growth, something we all need to work towards.

The post Checking for the global pulse of innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We all need to begin to grapple with what is redefining work in knowledge, skills, our experience, and our necessary abilities to be viable and useful

We continue to hear and begin to see the effects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It continues to impact skills, tasks, and jobs.

The implications are a growing concern that both job displacement and talent shortages will impact business dynamism and societal cohesion. It is the pervasive power of technology integration that will change the business models of all industries.

Yet we are recognizing it will also giving rise to a number of emerging jobs yet to be identified or formulized to be trained in. A proactive and strategic effort is needed but based on what? We need to manage reskilling and upskilling to mitigate against both job losses and talent shortages but prepared the future workforce to be more nimble, agile and fluid. Here is where innovators are going to be well-positioned.

Working within the innovation space will be one of the best launching pads for being more comfortable for the future of work. Let me explain why

First, we have to recognize “Human capital is still the most crucial asset of any business—in fact, even in an age of ubiquitous technology, it is human skills, creativity, and capability that will form the competitive edge for any organization” (WEF report quote). We will continue to have basic components of a job. Aptitude in Knowledge, in our Skills and our Abilities, to do the job on hand. Then it will also rely on the experiences we have gained in education, in improving on what we know and the work-related experience.

A detailed report for the World Economic Forum in 2018 “Towards a Reskilling Revolution: Industry-led action for the future of work”, in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group, investigated viable and desirable job transition pathways on the Future of Jobs. What struck me was the role innovation plays in all three categories: today’s skills (2018), those that will have demand in 2022, and those that will decline in 2022.

Look at the skills predicted to decrease in 2022, many of which are still being taught in our schools, and many that we continue to traditionally focus on within our present work. Transitioning from skills we find comfortable today to skills that will be new to many of us, is a journey for each of us.

This list of skills we all need to increase is the source of innovation thinking, technology certainly gives us knowledge and insights but it is capabilities to “string this together” in connections that might not be capable to be provided on the pure reliance of algorithms, artificial intelligence or machine learning. Humans are better at making the randomness form connections that are often described as “light bulb” moments or eureka discoveries. We seem to connect more of the unconnected and reform it into a new connect.

We all need to recognize and begin to adapt to this transition that we will all need to become readier to accept being self-managed. That’s a good thing. For many, it is a little uncomfortable to not be supervised but for the innovator within us, it is the pathway to creative freedom. So, we need to look around and see what might help us.

We need to understand how to become more intrapreneurial, agile, and adaptable, and continuously seek out a diverse set of collaboration spaces as places where we can be seen, appreciated, and valued. Working in the innovation space offers you the opportunity to grow and learn what this means and how it works for you.

So, the value of becoming more engaged in being creative, wanting to participate in innovations, will position those people at a significant advantage in the new world of skills we will be needing.

The Big Takeaway for me is the positioning of working in the Innovation Space

Working in the innovation space will greatly enable you to build skills that will become increasingly valuable.

Just STOP here and re-evaluate this skill demand 2018 vs 2022- What do you see? Differences that you need to adjust too and learn now.

Just take this insight into our roles, the role to influence, to change existing roles, to influence and lead others, and lay claim to mastering the skills that are needed in 2022. Prepare yourself, innovators, and take that “future of work” hill.

How can we “give voice” and influence bigger challenges? How can we project ourselves beyond those that know us? By taking a more outward action, even we can get re-engaged to influence and change things that can make a difference. Innovation is a terrific enabler to gain confidence, to show your worth, and to feel like you are contributing to the future. We need to focus on bringing value into what we do, and innovation is one of those uplifting ways to achieve this.

Let’s think about this a little more with some higher-level thoughts.

Recognition of being empowered by innovation

Innovation needs to transform from being some abstract, distant, vague thing that seems still separated in its specialized unit and not seemingly part of the core of the business we work in. Innovation is central to surviving in the future; it is where we provide not just something new but a better advancement on what we presently have. It is far more than a means to make things faster, cheaper, or slightly different; it is a place to show transformation – to become more radical in what can be possible and seen as highly valuable. Breakthroughs in health, food, energy, agriculture, and tourism can all be more “sustainable” for our planet and for us to live better lives.

Have you noticed everyone has a different definition of innovation? We all struggle with our own definitions of what innovation means. So what? Get over it, and let’s recognize that innovation needs to have outcomes that give a certain uniqueness or that sustaining edge to what is presently available.  We need to finally nail innovation down, it aims to improve on what we have. Look for your innovation to be distinctly different, empowering, motivating, and showing engagement.

The Big Recognition Innovators All Need

As you innovate, you grow your personal value. You get exposed to risk and uncertainty, and how you react gives you confidence or can equally drain that confidence away. Whether you gained confidence in your actions or lost it, it is the experience that lets you grow. It helps you navigate unknown scenarios better, and this skill increases the more you expose yourself to risk. Engaging in innovation can have a profound impact on you. Is this why we shy away from innovation when it seems to have far too many obstacles? Or do we push back and overcome these obstacles? As we push back, we are reshaping ourselves to be far more ready for a different future. Not a bad thing in my mind. It all prepares us to be more confident in the future.

When we feel our culture to innovate is wrong, what should we do about it? Should we disengage, or should we show its viability and make your voice one that matters in that validation? We are pushing ourselves as we equally need to push our organizations. We are becoming more entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial in seeking curiosity, creativity, and human capability, to demonstrate why the culture should change, and here’s why in your endeavors you look for those positive climates and environments, that can allow you to innovate.

We all must get far more comfortable with dealing in all the unknowns coming towards us.

The innovation spaces provide plenty of the unknowns; how we go about overcoming them is the gift we have as humans. Machines can help, but humans can recognize and relate far more. We see multiple patterns if we open our minds to them. Machines help us, but ingenuity is with us for a long time.

We often have a natural reflex to go back into safe mode, especially when it comes to innovation. We see the over-investment in productivity that not only drives out variances, but it can also drive out the space and time for creativity equally. We must fight this. Evolution is not built around today’s operations. We need increased flexibility. In shorter production runs to cater increasingly to individual customer demand, we need to tailor our responses far quicker, and we need to be highly adaptive and agile. So, when you feel that reflective urge to revert, fight it. You become far quicker and skillful in what you do.

Raise your voice; offer sound reasons why a different culture would help find better answers to grow the business and keep your ‘own eye on the ball’ when it comes to your personal learning. You will be in increasing demand in the future with these skills shown above.

Can you push for more “foundation” investment in innovation?

Just reconsider this list of the roles that need greater investment and the ones that will decline and will over a fairly short time have a declining investment in. This becomes a very compelling argument for skill investments, on where to spend the organization’s money to re-equip it for its future. Let machine learning, artificial intelligence take over the “declining list” as its natural place. Fight to make human space in the increasing skills you need, where humans do have a significant advantage.

This transition to positioning ourselves for the jobs in the future is ALL ABOUT the needs of the innovator to get to build their knowledge, skills, and aptitudes in each of these listed above. Go back and look at the list. Innovators need all these and they need to focus on these even more as they are the basis of all work of the future.

My advice, start early and become an innovator and spend your time and energy learning and experiencing all these learning components can offer, to give you a set of experiences that position you for the future.

We need to build our personal roadmap.

We need to be clearer on our own personal ROI. To seek out challenges and opportunities, and go closer to the edge, we do see within ourselves, so much more, far more because we are experiencing the edge; the edge of discovery, investigation, and inquiry.

We gain personal power, and our voices are respected and recognized because we were just that bit bolder, edgier, or ready to take something on. Try it. It is invigorating and sometimes a little scary, but we are in that sort of world. The innovator’s skills will be in increasing demand, so be ready, willing and able.

The post Your Future Lies in Occupying the Innovation Job and Using the Skills it Provides first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I have a group of Ecosystem Mind maps but I thought I’d share this one here to trigger further the thinking that needs to go into building an Innovation Ecosystem. Does it work for you? To be honest I am not sure if it conveys as much as I would like, to reflect on differences when you come to working in innovation ecosystem designs .

To get groups to think more openly about considering innovation in a more ecosystem approach to design and interaction I like to often refer to my mind maps to trigger discussions.

Sometimes it is mine, and mine alone, and I simply talk around it without showing the map, other times I show the map. The problem when you show maps, everyone works through it in their own unique way, however hard you try to get them to work through it in the way you want them too.

I have found mind maps are increasingly highly personal and it can take twice as long to explain something when you show the map to someone else. I think to put the mind map into a powerpoint “stages” it accordingly but it takes away the total map effect.

The key for me in the map shown below is to view considerations differently when you are thinking innovation ecosystems. There are your strategic considerations, there are tactical considerations and then there are value building considerations.

It is when you have these a little more firmly in your mind you have to repeat these different considerations for those other parties that are looking to be within the same innovation ecosystem. They can produce, seemingly, very different aims but it is working around this map you begin to see common goals or objectives.

Partners come into a collaborative ecosystem for different reasons and equally are looking for their own distinct outcomes, they can achieve in partnering with you. You might offer the product, they the service, the logistics, the linkages into technology designed into your innovation, etc., etc. Does the map make any sense to begin to structure thinking around innovation ecosystems?

I know I need to begin a version two fairly soo,n as there is a lot of other parts of this map that are missing to build a complete ecosystem approach. Presently these are ‘captured’ on separate ecosystem mind maps that help me in any preparation or referencing. The problem when you map them they become too complicated and “dense” that you cannot convey all the “connected parts” in an easy, quick way to grasp.

I need to think how to handle this but in the meantime, I just wanted to share my current (earlier version) as something to trigger your thoughts about considering innovation within a more ecosystem way of thinking. I hope you can read it, sorry but I think you will have to squint away on mobiles.

I need to change to a different approach to mapping complexity or linked parts. Any suggestion for me?

The post Facilitating the Innovation Ecosystem Design first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

When we are designing innovation for the future, the search is even more centered around strategically connected value creation.

The task of searching to resolve more complex problems allows Design Thinking to step up and become a far more visible component on how we can go about this.

Design thinking needs to work in harmony with many other thinking skills to make its contribution. Here I outline some of my “must go to” frames or tools.

The need when you “cast out” and look into the future we need to make a lot of connections, these can be really different, seemingly disparate in ideas and approaches. The whole search for diversity can generate so much fresh thinking if we open our minds to the alternatives.

We need to draw on insights, creativity but most importantly have a growing sense of the context we are thinking through to search for new ideas, concepts, and eventual new innovating solutions.

We often get caught up in data far too early, looking for the real nugget that can transform our thinking. I would guard against this, we always need the “larger” context. Never allow the “narrow prism” to dominate until any concept is getting clearer in its final design.

Context is so important to understand in any problem solving or future thinking

The power of context shifts everything and then gives it ‘shape’. It provides the conditions and the circumstances of time and place and why we need to find and deliver something different. It provides the innovation marching orders.

If we place innovation in a certain set of contexts, then those setting about the task are more sensitive to the needs and understanding, they can relate or can reject this. It can allow them to work more clearly and effectively, not necessarily efficiently as innovation is inherently messy.

Context gives us certain guard rails or borders to help gain a more united focus. Where we go after that, by pushing those borders will depend on those involved by seeing a greater value in an evolving context of mutual understanding. The ‘setting it in context’ allows for dialogue, adding more value to the thinking.

Design Thinking is increasing its role in innovation thinking

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.

Sharing my Four Friends that are good to bring to the party, to align with Design Thinking

I like to refer to four frames or tools that I think should always be available to simply map to when you are in any design thinking phase. These are not in any “magic” order here so assess the value of each and see where and how you would apply these within the thinking you are about to undertake.

I am a great enthusiast for working through the Three Horizon model.

There is a sequence shown here to help aid future thinking. We work through a series of steps discussing what is in the market today, what is changing and then what might take its place in the future. We are structuring discussions based on this visual

You can read about the three horizons by putting “three horizons” in this blog post search box. A useful one to take a quick look at is “The Three Horizons – Providing a Common Language in its Innovation Use” to open up your thinking to this framework and its companionship to design thinking.

 The second view we always need to consider is a “System thinking” one.

I really love this visual for system thinking that outlines the key insights and tools needed to develop and advance a systems mindset for dealing with complex problem solving and transitioning to the Circular Economy. Keep checking if you are connecting your thinking up. Does it go beyond the existing?

“Systems thinking is a context for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static snapshots.” – Peter Senge

Our quest should be finding answers to why innovation is often failing to deliver on our expectations and needs. So, for me “System thinking for Innovation, as a whole” should be grabbing more of our attention.

Yet we seem not to get our heads around this “whole” part so we set about redesigning the parts. Nothing wrong with that, it has lots of moving, sometimes unique parts, improvements are certainly happening, replacing past approaches but they still remain discreet parts but overall innovation performance, does it improve?

System thinking looks at ALL the interacting parts, their interdependence and how one part fits and reacts with another. We get caught up in the linear progression of one part and not considering enough the reinforcing loops or balancing the loops to foster stability or understand the impact across the wider system.

If we don’t have a well-understood view of the whole system of the innovative design, it does not matter how many separate parts we design or apply, the end result is this either ends up the same (disappointing), poorer, as it replaces something we failed to improve what was existing from the end-users perspective, or managed some increased ‘spike’ that needs constantly improving upon to get finally right.

Then I find the Divergent / Convergent approach in thinking as highly valuable

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 but giving each a clear discipline of dedicated time as you do need a very different mindset to think openly then begin to narrow the options down.

Creativity makes use of divergent thinking, which is solving problems with many possible solutions, as opposed to convergent thinking, which is solving problems

The process of figuring out a concrete solution to any problem is called Convergent Thinking. Divergent thinking is the process of thinking that explores multiple possible solutions in order to generate creative ideas. It’s a straight forward process that focuses on figuring out the most effective answer to a problem.

“Divergent thinking” is the process of coming up with new ideas and possibilities. We are more in a creative and intuitive mindset. We explore lots of possibilities and stay more at this point on the conceptual abstractions. We work this through then we go more into  “Convergent thinking”, this is associated with analysis, judgment, and decision-making. We become more analytical, rational, sequential and objective. We begin to explore constraint driven issues. It is the process of taking a lot of ideas and sorting them, evaluating them, analyzing the pros and cons, and making decisions, and exploring options that reveal, over time and discussion emerging value

My fourth frame is Cynefin, a sense-making device

When we are thinking through problems or looking into the future we do need to understand the challenges we are facing. The Cynefin sense-making framework allows you to relate to different domains. The domain where your current problem might lie and then gives you a number of triggers on how you can respond to arrive at a solution or a change.

The Cynefin framework provides a wonderful way to sort the range of issues faced by leaders and us all, into five contexts, defined by the nature of the relationships between cause and effect. Dave Snowden has been explaining these consistently for years. Four of these five are; obvious (formerly simple), complicated, complex and chaotic states and requires us to diagnose situations and then to act in contextually appropriate ways. The fifth one is a disorder, often overlooked or not fully appreciated. It is when something is unclear, it is in a disorderly, highly transitory state and needs to be rapidly stabilized into one of the other four to give it a more orderly state going forward.

Exploring a process of emergent discovery for innovation with the Cynefin framework

The real challenges come from the really ‘new’ in innovation as it becomes greater in new designs, changing functionality, different technology or significant improvements on the existing that involved greater research and development the more you travel around the Cynefin framework.

You often diverge/converge constantly as you work through the potential answers. The mindset here is different and it is more one that is based on the detection. Innovation is far more demanding, pushing frontiers, exploring discoveries, dealing in a series of exchanges and recognizing emerging patterns to piece together as real ‘new to the world’ innovation activities.

We need to recognize different types of innovation need to be managed differently

You need to build flexible systems that adapt, are dynamic and responsive and need that bandwidth for innovation exploration. It is a series of challenges evolving to be exploited, not reduced or eliminated.

It is deciding what complexity your innovation might have within the innovative design and then set about building the right capabilities and framing these appropriately, where they matter.

Taking a Design thinking approach to innovation is great. What I am suggesting we do need to consider the System, we need to place any problems or challenges into the ‘greater’ context. To help we need to reflect upon the different horizons aspects (3H), and we also need to wrestle with what problems we are tackling through the Cynefin sensemaking framework and finally, allow ample time to Diverge and then Converge all the diversity of these multiple perspectives.

To have a good understanding of these different thinking-through frames allows you to explore and exploit far better. Design thinking is well suited to addressing problems, but it is the context and what you are setting out to address, that these other frameworks have great value to explore or understand, equally as well.

The post All things considered for Innovation Thinking 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.

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.

 I wrote this in my last article and I thought some might ask “what the heck does he mean by that?” So I owe an explanation, perhaps partly to myself as well.

I’ve often heard and read that innovation is either an ‘art’ or a ‘science’ but we do seem it always struggle to combine them.  Why is that?

I finished that particular article (bit.ly/NlrOpV ) with this:
“The art of innovation needs to be broken out of the science that needs to be applied, and then knowing its entire component parts then recombined in sustaining, thoughtful ways. We do need to harness the energy of innovation and we are not yet fully achieving that”.

Let’s begin at the beginning when art and science were one
The development about the preparation and properties of different materials went hand-in-hand with the development of the art of painting, pottery, metal-working in the 19^th Century. Jonathan Ashley-Smith in his paper “Science and Art: Separated by a Common Language” does a far more extensive job of reflecting on this period but this is my ‘potted’ summary.

This was the time of the ‘renaissance man’ where you sought out knowledge on the latest scientific discovery or the ones on art or exploration. We wanted to combine our knowledge. The 19th century was the time of wondrous discoveries; they needed to be pursued by all enquiring minds. A universal polymath.

It was later in that century we began to separate more than integrate. This specialization became fashionable. Schools, universities began to separate art and science to make it extremely difficult to study both simultaneously.

Science became governed by organization and rules, art allowed freedom of expression and to act more intuitively and the separation continued to be reinforced well into the 20th century.

Science demonstrated truths, observable facts, was systematically classified and projected out that trustworthy view to us that discovering new truth (or new innovation) was clearly in this domain, we needed to strengthen this, we as society needed to reinforce it.

Art became intensely personal, reflecting the ideas of the originator and the interpreter; it was not the same irreversible  force that science was becoming, for forging new paths, for generating wealth, health, new industries leading to prosperity.

Art began to take the back seat. We have had to wait until design became fashionable to ‘allow’ it back into the business, less at arms length, late in this last century and more integrated in this one.

Specialisation was established in both the art and science field and over time became ‘culturally’ separated. We made choices on which served our needs and business clearly chose science. We all could have mutual comprehension and appreciation, that was understood but the two sides were separated even further.

This remained throughout the 20^th century although each side grappled and often wanted to embrace the other, it struggled to find the real means to re-combine and achieve this, with some notable exceptions.

Art and Science are the book ends for innovation

I was reading an article about the great disconnects between Art and Science by Kristi Charish, and I loved the way she explained her thoughts, in particular: “art leads to scientific innovation and science inspires art.

Like a pair of book ends they work best in tandem and change the way we view the world. Without one you can’t have the other and there is a lot to celebrate in that!”

So have we fast-forwarded so much?

I think we still see art and science operating in different worlds, in different compartments and they often don’t combine as we would like. Yet she is right, they do prop up innovation but we do need to stop using them as the ‘book ends’ and bring them into the middle to combine more and more until they are ‘fused’ as one. The very best, the breakthrough, the new discoveries happen when we combine in today’s world.

It is these ‘emerging’ fusion points of art, design, engineering, and science coming together and coalescing that are giving us great innovation. Art and design provide innovation with analogies and compelling stories, alternative structures, inspiring techniques, challenging methods and knowledge to push our boundaries and our minds.

It inspires us to then often push science, technology and engineering more and more to translate this. Just think of architecture of great buildings, pushing the boundaries of function and design with availability or the technology and design of the iPad or iPhone that pushed those boundaries of the accepted, and changed the norm for measuring the future.

Divergence and convergence

I use this divergence and convergence approach an awful lot. We build far too much on convergence without exploring divergence as much as we should. We promote convergence so we can execute things efficiently, effectively and as quickly as we can, we are rewarded by what we have completed. Yet the ‘art’ of divergence plays an equal role.

John Maeda of the Rhode Island School of Design  offered a good take on differences that make sound sense to me. Let me explain this in my way, partly borrowing.

Artists and designers are firstly divergent thinkers and make many uncomfortable, those often schooled in business and facts, that are impatient with achieving results but always from expected tangible positions.

We struggle with intangibles or theory. Artists and designers expand our horizons of possibilities and can make us ‘connect’ far more, if we are prepared to let go and ‘see’ alternatives.

It is this melding of divergence of designers and artists combining with our convergences of science and engineering that allow us to ‘find’ often that exceptional innovation that has combined all the disciplines or parts.

Art and design can give us less constraint and this provides often the vision for the factual minded to explore the realms of impossible to make it possible. Innovation always comes from a human starting point of observation or questioning. Art allows more for intuition, less on studying prediction, working in known rules.

Modern art and modern physics have been combining, each providing to the ones ready to look and invest in the other, those multiple perspectives, those different dimensions of possibility to shift their thinking.

So we need to rebuild and recombine

Specialization has a place but has it been pushed too far? Often we hear that the world is “complex”, or the issues cannot be resolved by the best minds in the ‘given’ area, well we need a new way based on total knowledge. Piero Scaruffi offered his view in a talk on “Bridging the gap between Art and Science” at Swissnex, in San Francisco in 2007.

He remarked “the digital age is providing us the opportunity to rebuild the continuum …has enabled an unprecedented degree of exchange, interaction, integration, convergence and blending” Scaruffi suggests we are able to move out of the discrete spaces we have found ourselves in and finally recombine knowledge in new ways.

He argues we live in a context specific world that is based increasingly on knowledge-specific society, so different from the last time art and science came together in a knowledge-deprived society to offer this new continuum. Perhaps we are about to arrive at the age of the “rinascimento l’innovazione”, the innovation renaissance period.

Why can Art and Science combine?

Firstly all of what we do comes from us as humans as its starting point for innovation; it is linked to experiences and questioning. Every human activity is to some degree artist.

The problem we always face is that dogma rules, and in this case of science and art we do have a given mindset to keep separating whereas we should be combining in new and novel ways.

We have built up stereotypes and prejudices that need challenging. Science chases progress, Art really does not, it just looks to make change and it does this from evolving multiple perspectives. Sometimes, Science is often constrained by a far too linear approach and this needs somehow changing where we need to think in less rigid, structured ways today.

We are demanding, no, expecting, more in the future. Art and Science agree they are both forms of exploration, one explores the imaginary more and then this challenges and pushes the scientific and engineers to find the answers. They both change our reality and innovation should always be pushing our expectations that little bit more.

Perhaps the ‘combining’ definition lies here?

Amy Kelly wrote in her paper “Art-Science Connections: An investigation of creative innovation” for her thesis, proffered an all-encompassing definition of art and science, offered by one of the people she interviewed, that also helped me understand why art and science can be combined:

“ He then gave me his idea for a definition that both confirmed my original hunch and contradicted my original hypothesis, that art and science are essentially the same.

He said that there is “art” and there is “science” in the disciplines of both art and science. “Science” can be thought of as the mastery of concepts and skills; it is what stems from a strong sense of commitment during times of little inspiration.
Science is learning the rules, techniques, and methods of the activity a person is engaged in.

“Art,” on the other hand, happens after mastery of the science. It manifests itself when a person inserts his or her own creative will into the process, or “breaks the rules” in some way, allowing one to exceed normal limitations.

Art occurs when a person realizes that he can indeed bend rules in order to see things in a different light. Often, this may follow one’s entry into “the zone” which facilitates the creation of new, unique ideas. Art isn’t science or vice versa.

Art transcends science. When looking at art and science in this way, it is easy to understand that all scientists are not artists”

“The art of innovation needs to be broken out of the science that needs to be applied”.

We come back to my statement that needed explaining. Both art and science are integral, they, when they combine, help us understand the world we have and the world of possibilities we can aspire too.

We need both order and insight and it is these two book ends that when we bring them together, then often we have those ‘awe-inspiring, breath-taking, stunning, wonderful moments that transform our lives or the lives of others.

To quote Piero Scaruffi again: “art and science cause a fundamental change in the nature of reality itself”

As I said “We do need to harness the energy of innovation and we are not yet fully achieving that”  embracing both art and science together will enable us to move from evolution to revolution, sometimes called enlightenment periods, as we need to meet some difficult challenges that cannot be incremental, but far more radical in their solutions and this requires cross disciplines to come together.

Let’s seek out growing ‘mutual comprehension’ and harness the power of art and design, science and engineering and stop talking about them separately, shall we?

I’ve drawn from papers or interviews from Jonathan Ashley-Smith, Kristi Charish, Piero Scaruffi, John Maeda and Amy Kelly- thanks

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