Time and Service Design

A great outcome of Overlap is that the New York attendees — plus other peeps in our network — have been meeting up and continuing the conversation. Some of the same themes keep surfacing, such as the culture of business consulting firms and design firms, and social action. Another is service design. A fundamental question […]

Marketing Experimentation

Last year I hacked away at an article about the need for a greater degree of experimentation in marketing organizations, but it never really seemed to gel quite right, and eventually I abandoned it. I’m happy to see that Joseph Jaffe completed the task in Manifesto for Experimentation. Successful executives I’ve seen already embrace this […]

Feedback Leads to Expert Performance

Of course we know feedback in human and product performance is important, but this study from K. Anders Ericsson is still interesting. He spent 25 years interviewing and analyzing high-flying professionals and is the coeditor of the recent 918-page book Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. You have to seek out situations where you […]

Old School Scrappy Innovator: William Norris

Thomas J. Watson Jr., the head of I.B.M., which was famed for its militaristic corporate culture, was incredulous over Norris’s operation. So lean, so ragtag, so bafflingly humane. In a 1963 memo, Watson wondered how Control Data achieved with just a few dozen people what he had not with several thousand. Control Data later went […]

Get Real For Free

The [[37Signals]] Getting Real book is now available free online as well as in PDF and paperback formats. With a focus on building web apps, it’s a great perspective on using an agile/craft way of working. It’s also a clever publishing strategy, analogous to the traditional hardcover/paperback progression: Test and then build crazy excitement around […]

Maybe Don’t Call Research “Research”

Here’s a small but important lesson about getting field research done in a corporate environment. If you propose research, folks may hear that word and think R&D, and that’s not capitalizable, i.e. the cost can’t be allocated against a particular product/service. That means the cost can’t be delayed and counted against future revenues (delaying costs […]

Planning a Writing Day

My friend Harry received this useful piece of advice from his writing coach. She suggested you follow this schedule during a day of writing: Spend 10 minutes planning your work Write and write until you are out of ideas and energy Reward yourself with fun work like research

Real Trends and Innovation

I attended the World Futures conference in Toronto recently, and hope to find a spare minute to write up my thoughts on the conference. But one thing that struck me was how markedly different the tone of discussion was between people who relied on forecasting techniques vs. those that relied on trends. The former produced […]

Fortune on Agile Businesses

Fortune magazine has rewritten Jack Welch’s rules on management to reflect changes in the business environment. Jack’s first rule was Big dogs own the street and Fortune says that rule should now be Agile is best; being big can bite you. With the rate of change in business today, it’s hard to argue with the […]

The Difference Between Customer-Focused Innovation and Cluelessness

Last week a friend of mine was telling me about how new products are created at her software start-up. Essentially it consists of salespeople talking to current and potential customers about an existing product and asking, “What else would you like it do to?” That in itself is a fine question that acknowledges the customer […]

The cost of iteration

Iterating on paper? Cheap. Iterating in software? Still pretty cheap. Iterating the Airbus A380? Not so cheap: “Airbus said Tuesday that it would produce only 9 of its giant new A380 jets next year, not the 25 planned, because of numerous design changes…. Small changes, like moving small pieces of equipment, were cascading through the […]

Process Explained

Here’s a wonderful little diagram from Central Office of Design…

Radiate information – First Draft

[ this is a first draft of a chapter in Evolve, comments are appreciated ] Healthy organizations share information promiscuously to speed communication and generate tacit knowledge. Share current, important, non-urgent information using information radiators. In 1966 the New York Stock Exchange installed a huge electronic board that displayed the stock prices of every company […]

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 […]

Balance control with collaboration – First Draft

To solve tough problems, we need the active participation of a diverse group of people. Instead of control residing only with managers, each person on a team should have the authority and responsibility to contribute fully. Rather than command them from above, the team leader should facilitate the team’s efforts. Since the industrial revolution we’ve […]