Author: Victor

Tangible Futures example: Earth from space

Stewart Brand knew the power of this photograph before it was publicly released. In 1966, “…he sold buttons which read, ‘Why Haven’t We Seen A Photograph of the Whole Earth Yet?’ Legend has it that this accelerated NASA’s making good color photos of Earth from distant space during the Apollo program and that the ecology movement took shape in 1968-9 partially as a result of those photos.”

Of course, the photo represented the present state of earth. And technically — like any photograph — it represents the past. But by showing us a whole new perspective, it conjured new ideas about how we share one planet rather than inhabit separate nations. It’s a powerful, tangible representation that implies potential for the future.

Tangible Futures example: Da Vinci’s flying machine

Leonardo Da Vinci possessed one of the greatest abilities to imagine the future potential for humans and work out these ideas as an engineer or designer would. It’s telling that we remember his drawings more readily than his words.

Here is his pen and ink drawing of A Flying Machine from 1490…

Tangible Futures example: Hugh Ferriss’s delineations

Imagine it is the year 1900 and you own a large corporation needing offices in a major city. You want to construct a building that makes a grand statement of your financial strength and contributes to the civic infrastructure. Currently the highest buildings are about 20 stories, but you are told new construction techniques are capable of building much higher. What would such a structure look and feel like? How much usable office space would there be? Would people want to work that high in the air?

Working within the constraints of new building codes and executives’ demands for bigger, more productive office space, Hugh Ferriss issued dramatic depictions of buildings that informed architects and inspired corporations. In his time, these illustrations were radically dramatic, opening the eyes of architects and corporations to the possibilities. Using the raw knowledge of architecture, he created a tangible vision and the visual language to understand the potential of skyscrapers. His style evolved to not only inform but also to elicit emotional reactions.

For a future you can conceive but not quite visualize, how might a film, a simulation, or a prototype business situation change your strategy?

Understanding the future in a tangible way

Tangible Futures, Part 1: Background

I’m starting a series of posts to talk about something we’re calling Tangible Futures, which are tangible expressions of visions for the future. That might sound quite ordinary or quite esoteric depending on your point of view, but having worked on it for several months I’m finding it to be a useful practice for the business community in a number of ways.

In this post I’ll try to tie together some important ideas that people have been brave enough to express:

Companies Need a Vision of the Future. John Hagel:

…Ask these same CEOs and their management teams two simple questions:

  1. What will your relevant markets look like five to ten years from now?
  2. What will your company need to do in order to thrive in these markets five to ten years from now?

Almost always, the answer will come back that there’s just too much uncertainty to have a clear point of view on this. But, here’s the rub: If the senior management team of a company doesn’t have a clear point of view on where the company is headed, why should investors put a lot of faith in the long-term performance of the company?

Business ideas must go beyond communication and help people change. David Maister:

The real question is: what are the methodologies that really help people change their lives when they understand messages like [Peter] Drucker’s and Tom [Peters]’s? What should they/we be doing differently with our books, our speeches, our videos? Is there a more effective way to actually help people change and make a difference on the world?

Strategic Change Is Useless Without Cultural Change. Tom Peters:

If Drucker and Bennis and Collins and Peters and Co… are/were so damn smart-wise, why is corporate performance so shabby in general?… Strategy don’t matter for diddly if the corporate culture is disfunctional or mis-aligned.

To combine these ideas, we could say that companies need a vision of the future that helps them achieve cultural change. This vision could help executives see future opportunities in a new way. The vision could help executives communicate these opportunities downward (or the reverse could happen, employees communicating opportunities upward).

But this doesn’t often happen now. Some of the problem has to do with the way strategies and forecasts are constructed, which I’ll address in an upcoming post. Some of the problem is simply a fault of the media employed: text and images can communicate ideas, but (at least in a business setting) fail to impart the richness of future situations. And they don’t spark strong emotional reactions that inspire people to care and act differently. We have richer, more interactive media at our disposal: film, theater, environments, computer simulation, and so on. It’s time to start employing them in the service of business strategy.

In the next few posts I’ll show some examples, look at how we can integrate this practice with futures studies, and talk a little about how we can start making tangible futures.

Wal-Mart enters the consulting biz

This is interesting…

Wal-Mart Stores, whose all-in-one retailing model has forced scores of competitors to close their doors over the last 40 years, is turning to an unusual business plan: helping its rivals.

The giant discount retailer, under increasing assault by critics, announced a wide-ranging effort yesterday to support small businesses near its new urban stores, including the hardware stores, dress shops and bakeries with which it competes.

Wal-Mart said it would offer those businesses financial grants, training on how to survive with Wal-Mart in town and even free advertising within a Wal-Mart store.

…

Wal-Mart will hold seminars to coach the businesses on how to compete with the giant discount stores — by, for example, intensifying customer service, for which Wal-Mart often receives low marks. An annual report on trends in Wal-Mart’s business will be distributed exclusively to those companies.

Setting cynical PR claims aside, this plan both makes a lot of sense and very little sense. Teaching businesses unfamiliar with differentiation is great, and just what they need to compete with Wal-Mart. But who wants customer service advice from a company that sucks at customer service? I’d bet the best form of training would be a collection of video case studies (no classrooms, no books) of small businesses that continued to succeed even after Wal-Mart came to town. Simply amplifying messages from managers of successful small businesses will be more valuable — and more authentic — than anything Wal-Mart itself could say.

Hire us, Forrester says so

Though we probably wouldn’t refer to ourselves as a design agency, these are kinds words from the folks in Cambridge…

Tap design agencies for a jump-start on culture and process.
Many companies turn to outside agencies for help designing self-service channels or products — but the more lasting value of the partnership is often the agency’s ability to influence its client’s culture and process. In addition to sharing their design methodologies, agencies can help clients navigate politically dangerous waters, get people in different organizations talking to each other, and break down barriers to conflict resolution. Seek out agencies — like Management Innovation Group — that actively aim to improve corporate culture and process through design projects.

from Culture And Process Drive Better Customer Experiences

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Categorized as MIG

Business Innovation Factory

BIF is one of the few organizations of its type on the US East Coast: “The Business Innovation Factory is a community of innovators collaborating to explore… business model innovation through a series of experiences designed to get ideas off of the white board and onto the ground as quickly and cost effectively as possible. ” They have some interesting events coming up.

Homogeneous Architecture

My business partner Jim just returned from doing a presentation in Turkey. Notable comment: “Istanbul looks more like San Jose than Constantinople.”

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Categorized as Cities

In Vancouver

I’m in lovely tho’ rainy Vancouver to co-teach our seminar. If you’re in the area do come by and say hello.

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Categorized as Travels

Do the easiest thing that could possibly work – First Draft

When you have a new idea and you’re not sure it will work, create a tangible version of it as quickly as humanly possible. Even if it is very rough, something tangible helps you reach a solution.

I’m sure you’ve been in this situation. There’s an important problem that needs to be solved before the team can move on with other work. It’s a complex issue, maybe it’s charged with emotions, and no one has an answer. You and your team stare at the paper, out the window, or up at the ceiling wondering how anyone could possibly purchase such an ugly light fixture. Short of the day ending or receiving divine inspiration, it is at this point that you should pick up a pencil/marker/keyboard/tool/whatever and do the easiest thing you can imagine that would solve the problem.

When you’re trying to solve a problem and you’re stuck it’s because you’re trying to solve it in your head. Just as you can do simple calculations in your head but need a calculator for everything else, you can’t solve tough business problems in your head.

When you draw, build, write, or use something that is physical, your physical senses help you understand more about the situation. You more fully understand the problem than if you only thought about it. Financial analysts do this by writing calculations on the back of a napkin or playing with numbers in a spreadsheet. Designers do this by sketching on paper or carving foam in the shape of a product. Engineers do it by combining parts they have on hand to make something new.

This is not about conceiving a six billion dollar payroll system or a drug that cures cancer. It’s a way to make progress on one particular idea. It’s about making a physical thing you create quickly, learn from, and throw away.

It’s important to ignore how well you’re doing what you’re doing, because that will distract you from accomplishing the goal. This may go against our usual inclinations to do things “right.” We’re taught to think things through and carefully design a solution. But when you’re stuck we need to overcome this tendency. Free your mind from all the rules you normally follow. Pick up the pencil and just sketch.

You might even use techniques you know to be incorrect because they help you move more quickly. This is good. The are only two guidelines here:

1. Do it quickly
2. Create something tangible

Try it now

When faced with a tough problem, start by working with the familiar, asking, “Is there something that already exists that addresses this problem? What sorts of things that already exist might address this problem?”

It may help – even just to save face in front of co-workers – to start by saying out loud as you grab the pencil, “This is something we’ll throw away later, but for now let’s try drawing something that will solve the problem. We can create the actual solution later.”

——

This has been adapted from:

The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work, A Conversation with Ward Cunningham, Part V, by Bill Venners, January 19, 2004

Simplest or Easiest

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Categorized as Evolve

Open-source business sucks! No wait, it doesn’t!

Sigh. The current issue of the Economist has a story called “Open, but not as usual: As “open-source” models move beyond software into other businesses, their limitations are becoming apparent” which I had to read to learn about these limitations. But the article — while mentioning the usual glitches — is generally bullish on open-source business, praising it by the end of the article.

The tension in the article is derived from what seems to be common misunderstandings about open-source software, that 1) open doesn’t equal unstructured, and 2) open doesn’t equal innovation.

So after they duped me into reading the whole article I’ll refrain from honoring them with a link to spare you, dear reader, the trouble.

Would you come to a business design conference in the U.S.?

Cumulus has planned a conference titled Design Thinking & Innovation: Towards an Asian Perspective in Singapore with Victor Margolin as keynote speaker…

…debating about these topics are a challenge for a symposium aspiring to offer an egression, not a series of positional parametric rhetoric on design issues, but a kind of cynosure to engage, postulate and clarify divergent views on design thinking and innovation, particularly from an Asian perspective.

I think a similar event held in the U.S. — based around discussion rather than presentations — on the topic of business, design, and innovation would be well-received. If it happened, would you go?

Apple’s R&D investment – too low or too high?

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”
— Steve Jobs, Fortune, Nov. 9, 1998

This Street.com story on Apple’s under-investment in R&D has been making the rounds with the exclamation that more money does not equal more innovation. As a principle, I agree with that, and in fact it’s one of MIG’s axioms that “innovation is not expensive”. But by this we mean you can’t simply throw money at the problem, you have to tap into the capabilities of people. That said, money — especially to a hardware company with proprietary software — doesn’t hurt, and it’s worth looking more deeply into Apple’s situation to understand what’s going on.

  1. The Street article compares the most recent R&D spending as a percentage of sales (“While sales have grown at a compounded annual rate of 27% over the last four years, R&D spending has grown at an average rate of just 5.6% per year over that period.“). This masks the exponential increase in recent sales (65% net sales in Q4 2005). Since innovation is a function of how people work, scaling R&D simply to match sales could be futile and possibly harmful as an organizational development change. Just because accounting usually measures R&D as a percentage of sales doesn’t mean it should be managed that way.
  2. In absolute terms, Apple’s R&D investment is up $59 million in Q4 2005 over Q4 2004. For all we know this might be a good, sustainable R&D investment rate for them.
  3. The IDC analyst quoted in The Street article of course doesn’t know the reasons for the drop in R&D investment (nor do I). The article does mention an equally plausible theory is that Apple is learning how to be more innovative with less money, e.g. through management innovation that ultimately leads to other kinds of innovation. And isn’t doing more (sales) with less (R&D investment) a good thing?
  4. The comparison to other companies in Apple’s industry is a good idea, but the comparison is restricted to R&D as a percentage of sales. It ignores the effectiveness of that R&D investment vs. other factors and the directionality of the R&D-to-sales relationship. Just consider where, with regard to new markets, Apple is heading and where Sony is heading.
  5. Where the article really misses the point, IMHO, is by saying, “But even with all of Apple’s market and business prowess, the company is still, fundamentally, a technology company.” It may not be in the IT analysts’ interest to say so, but the nature of R&D investment is changing (at least in Apple’s industry) from solving tough technical problems to solving tough design problems.
  6. Finally, it’s ironic that analysts who have historically criticized Apple’s returns now criticize their frugality! I tend to think the traditional IT analysts will always find a way to not love warm, fuzzy Apple.

When everyone realizes Apple faces more design than technology issues, analysts will start to ask how much companies are spending on R&D of people rather than R&D of technology.