Adaptive Path Blog

Vijay Kumar of Institute of Design hosted a recent discussion with representatives from Yahoo, HP, Daishinsha, and Pitney Bowes. The discussion focused on how to better integrate methods and tools for innovations into organizational processes. My thoughts from the discussion:

• Use the right words. Designers attempt to integrate methods (e.g., ethnography, vision prototyping) by talking about the process and tools, not the benefits. This typically leads to failure, as the organization and people from other disciplines already have tools for getting from point A to point B. By speaking about and comparing benefits rather than activities, the best approaches might be easier to adopt.
• Read the organization. To sell benefits, it’s critical to know what the organization values. Why is the organization set up how it is today, and what does the current culture value?
• Systemitize innovation processes. Process templates are valuable for presenting how groups of methods and tools can be combined to form an overall approach. The approach of each template stresses different resource/time requirements, output, etc., balancing flexibility with predictability.
• Know what services you provide. Black-boxing a service within an organization (e.g., a UX design group, a product design group, or a research team) can been a successful way to gain control over process/methods and presenting services as a range of cost/benefit tradeoffs to others in the organization.
• Get people’s attention, but know where to go next. User research seems to be a great catalyst for change within organizations. Showing real customers to the organization energizes people and removes the abstraction of charts, segmentations, etc. The trouble is, how to follow it up and continue to deliver value in just as vivid a way?
• Beware of missing methods. There’s a lack of tools/methods to support continuous innovation. There’s the need for innovation tools that address or consider the organization. For example, customer-facing solutions might cross over organizational boundaries and be more difficult to commercialize. What tools/methods could help navigate these issues?

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 21st, 2006 at 7:54 pm and is filed under Conference Commentary, Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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