HIP (Hard-Working, Innovative, Passionate)
People Place
A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates
innovation and encourages perseverance.
n Gary Hamel
In an effort to develop future business leaders in
Japan, where I am a university lecturer, I publish a blog in Japanese. Though I
initially wrote about the work of other scholars and executives, I thought the
blog would be more interesting if I could interview management leaders directly.
My only concern was securing cooperation. Successful scholars and business
professionals are extremely busy.
To my pleasant surprise, most have made time for me
despite their often impossible schedules. I am delighted, indeed, moved. Not
only have I enjoyed the privilege of being able to dialog with these individuals,
I have found their talks inspirational. Each has exhibited exuberant passion
and demonstrated the value of sheer hard work. Thinking about how much I have
benefited from the interviews, I decided to establish this English blog to
share them with a wider audience than Japanese readers. I am certain they will
enlighten you. I hope they will inspire you.
Jeanne Liedtka
Darden School of Business, University of Virginia
United Technologies Corporation Professor of Business Administration
1. Can you give us a brief overview of design thinking citing some concrete
examples? What is the background to current theories and practices in this
discipline?
I think of design thinking as just an alternative,
problem-solving approach. In the world of business, we have lots of tools, and
we have a pretty sophisticated toolkit in the area of traditional, quantitative
analysis. Looking at how we prepare our MBA students here at Darden, I think
the toolkit that has been missing is related to helping them on the
idea-generation side of business. If you look at the frameworks we use in my
own field, business strategy, they are frameworks for analysis of ideas, but not
for the generation of them. I have felt for some time that we have an urgent
need in business to help managers with what some people refer to as the “fuzzy
front end” of innovation.
My original work was around organic growth. As a
strategy professor, I was always frustrated by the fact that when I asked
managers about their key strategic challenge, they would always indicate that
it was finding organic-growth opportunities in their business. Though we have
many frameworks in strategy like Porter Five-Forces and SWOT Analysis, none of
these tools help managers think creatively about growth opportunities. Due, in
part, to my frustration, I began doing research on managers who had been very
successful in growing their businesses at a faster rate than their markets were
growing.
Observing them, I saw that they were behaving in ways
that sometimes resembled a scientist, other times a designer. They were taking
an experimental approach, prototyping, placing small bets. Rather than focusing
on the product that they themselves were trying to sell, these managers were
getting to know their customers very deeply, paying attention to what they were
attempting to accomplish. The managers had a learning attitude. Instead of
expecting to arrive at the “right” answer immediately, they expected to iterate
their way there. They expected to be wrong sometimes,
improving their solutions along the way.
When I looked at my research data, I was struck by the
extent to which highly successful growth-leaders in management were naturally
behaving in ways that designers do. I began to think about whether or not it
might be possible to teach those behaviors to a group of managers who did not
find the behaviors as natural. That marked the beginning of my interest in
design thinking. Of course, there was also considerable discussion in the U.S.
business press at the time about companies like
IDEO and Apple. Apple’s high profile got people in the mainstream
business media talking about design in the business world in a way that they
had not previously done.
All of these factors came together, and I started
paying attention to the practices of the design-consulting firms like IDEO,
Frog, Continuum, and Jump. In specific detail, I began looking at what they
were doing, trying to conceive of ways to translate some of their tools and
processes into a language, an approach, that a manager not trained in design
could use. The approach we ultimately created and teach at Darden really
strives to combine the front-end, creative, idea-generation aspects with a
rigorous, analytical, hypothesis-driven back end in prototyping. Our goal has
been to produce a teachable set of materials that all managers could benefit
from in looking for ways to innovate in their businesses.
This way of thinking has been around for decades. When
you look at what we have written and the models we have developed, in many
ways, we have not invented anything new. What we have done is translate what
was already there. We took the concepts of design, often difficult for non-designers
to grasp, and put them in a language managers can understand. User friendliness—creating
resources managers could use—has been our primary goal in this work.
2. Apple, IDEO, IBM, MeYouHealth, and The Good Kitchen have been cited as
examples of companies that have introduced design thinking. To what sort of
business outcomes has this introduction been linked? How can a company measure
the benefits or ROI of design thinking? What costs are typically associated
with the introduction of design thinking?
The metrics you should use to measure outcomes depend
on the problem you are trying to solve. In the area of organic growth, where my
initial interest in design was rooted, measurement is pretty straightforward:
Does design thinking improve your growth rate relatively to what it was
previously? At the same time, I personally believe that the introduction of
design thinking produces many benefits that are more difficult to measure.
However, in any effort, there is usually a set of measurable outcomes that you
highlight—organic growth, revenues and profitability, for example.
In the 3M story, design thinking is used to create a richer
set of conversations between sales people and their customers, and so you can
query the sales people. You can query the customers, too, to determine if they
are having better conversations with sales staff. IBM used design thinking to
redo their trade show. Coming out of a trade show, there is a metric called hot
leads which looks at how many leads you obtain at a trade show based on
attendees’ experience at the show. That is a measurable number. At The Good
Kitchen, they could measure the number of additional meals people signed up to
have served as a result of the design team’s efforts.
So, at one level, there is usually a set of concrete
metrics related to the problem you are trying to solve. One thing I have
learned in working with design thinking over the past few years is that using
it to grow revenues is only one application. In fact, many of the cases we
document involve individuals using design thinking for a broad range of
different tasks like redesign of internal processes. I believe design thinking
holds great promise for these applications, particularly in the government and
non-profit sectors. Because design thinking can be used in many ways, how you
measure outcomes depends on what you intend to accomplish with it.
As I mentioned, a set of outcomes that are difficult
to measure also exists. Although we focus on its ability to improve the actual
content of a solution, as I have looked at design thinking, I have come to
believe it can also dramatically improve the process by which teams work
together. Many of the design tools are collaborative. Looking at the area of
creativity, we realize that a key ingredient to generating creative outcomes is
the presence of diverse perspectives. For this reason, people with different
perspectives are needed on teams aiming at creative outcomes. But as soon as we
put people who are different from each other on the same team, they have
difficulty reaching consensus: They start to debate, fight with one another.
Considerable academic research indicates that many of the benefits of diverse
team are lost due to the time such teams take to get anything done because they
have to first harmonize many different sets of meaning and interpretations.
Design thinking’s collaborative tools help to align
the way a team views the world, their definition of the problem and eventually
their criteria for a really good solution. If you align the team around these
issues early in the process, the endless debates and delays associated with the
choice among different alternatives are greatly reduced.
How do you measure the resulting team learning and
effectiveness? Well, academic researchers are certainly measuring them, but in
the business world the benefits are sometimes difficult to observe. But, I
think these difficult-to-measure-and-see benefits may turn out to be some of
the most powerful outcomes ultimately produced by design thinking.
3. Before earning a Ph.D., you acquired considerable experience in accounting
and finance. Based on that experience, how do left-brain, number crunchers
change following training on design thinking? Can you introduce some
interesting examples from your consulting and training experiences?
The first thing I learned in my organic-growth
research before making the transition to design was that our stereotypes about
the types of people who are creative and those who are not are basically false.
A lot of the individuals in the organic-growth research sample set were
engineers and accountants, people who were not supposed to be creative. This is
part of a problem I believe we have in business. We hold this myth that people
like Steve Jobs are the only source of creativity. By rejecting conventionality, they are wildly
creative. They see things the rest of us do not just because of who they are.
We know, though, that this myth is not true. There are lots of ways to be
creative.
You can be data driven in your creativity, for
example. If you put me in a brainstorming group and ask me to think of ten
novel uses for a safety pin, but you do not given my any data to work with, I
am not going to conceive of many uses. I do not excel in that type of
creativity. But if you give me some deep data about customers I can mine for
insights, I can translate those data into design criteria. Then, if you ask me
to brainstorm with those criteria, I can be quite creative.
This, I think, is the core issue. If we are expected
to be creative in a vacuum, most of us who are accountants and engineers,
people more comfortable with numbers, will not do too well. But those of us
skilled in working with data, skilled in detecting patterns and discerning
themes, are good at data-driven processes. In academia, we joke that we are all
drawn to research on our personal issues. It could well be that I am not one of
those terribly creative people, and so I’m
drawn to design thinking and research because I am fascinated by the creative
process. Because I have a sense of not being skilled in this process myself, I
am very sympathetic to how, as an educator, we can help other people who
likewise do not feel confident in creative endeavors.
Now maybe I am one of those accountants who would
struggle, but a lot of other people who started out in accounting turn out to
be great at creative design. One of my favorite stories is about an accounting
firm that does income-tax consulting. They have an organization full of lawyers
and accountants. They have applied design thinking to re-engineer the process
they use to have conversations with their customers based on prototypes. I tell
the story of this firm in my first book on design thinking. This company
demonstrates that an organization of lawyers and accountants can do great
things with design-thinking tools.
This may be due partly to the fact that accountants,
lawyers and engineers seem to have a lot of discipline. They are very attentive
to process. They are willing to endure the hard work inherent in the learning
process, and be persistent in improving their skills. When we give these
professionals a process, they work hard at it. Most of the engineers whom we
teach design-thinking principles apply them when they return to work on Monday.
Working hard at the process, they measure the results, striving to improve
them.
Sometimes the supposedly more creative types continue
doing what they have alwaysdone when they return to work on Monday. They lack
the motivation and discipline, or do not sense the need to work hard at design
processes because they think, “Why do I need a process to be more creative?”
Paradoxically, we seem to have the most success teaching these processes to
people whom you would stereotype as unlikely to be creative.
4. Research has found that the corpus callosum connecting the left and right
hemispheres of the brain is up to 20% denser in women than men. This finding
leads to the hypothesis that women might be more adept at design thinking. Do
men and women appear to differ in their ability to understand and apply design
thinking? What does your practical experience teaching this discipline suggest?
As academics, we all hesitate to generalize about
issues like gender, but at an obvious level, we know that women are more
comfortable with their emotions and with expressing them than men. On average,
women are also more attuned to the emotions of others than men. To the extent
that design thinking begins with empathy and involves doing a form of market
research that includes interviewing people, getting them to talk about their
emotions, women are generally more comfortable with the design process. It is
more the way we have been taught to operate in our societies. Women have been
the keepers of emotions for a long time in many societies. That has been our
role—to raise children, nurture; to coach and attend to others’ needs. Women
tend to be adept at reading others’ needs. These skills are really useful in
design thinking. I think the concept of design thinking seems less foreign to
women in business than to men, which I believe is an advantage.
Anecdotally speaking, I do see a lot of women in
senior positions in organizations where design thinking is critical to the
role. When my co-authors and I wrote the book on organic growth, The Catalyst, one of our challenges was
to find women managers leading growth efforts in their organization to
interview. They were difficult to find. We kept looking for women to represent
the stories of women in the book.
We joked when we started writing our first design
book, Designing for Growth, that we had
to find a few men; otherwise, the book would be
case studies about women. In these corporations, we found a lot of women
in the design-services area, the user experience area. All of the areas
traditionally employing design thinking were disproportionally headed by women.
In my interactions with companies, I have found anecdotal evidence that design
thinking is a field where women may have a leg up compared to many other areas
of business where they seem to be at a disadvantage. This situation is not
surprising given the types of roles that have been traditionally assigned to
women.
It’s quite affirming to women that design principles
are consistent with what they have raised to believe as opposed to traditional
business, which is inconsistent with the way we have been raised to behave. But
we do not want design-thinking to become a pink-color ghetto for women. Then,
design-thinking would probably become devalued in organizations - just too
“soft.” . In this respect, the predominance of women heading business areas
where design-thinking is crucial could be a mixed blessing.
Just a few months ago, we published a project workbook
on design thinking intended to be a companion book to our original book on Designing for Growth. Instead of
focusing on the ten tools, it introduces a fifteen-step process intended to
lead a manager or anyone else who wants to use design thinking through the
process as they undertake a particular project. We have entitled this resource The
Designing for Growth Field Book: A Step-by-Step Project Guide. The purpose of the book is to walk readers
concretely through a specific project, bringing the tools and ideas of
design-thinking into the project space. This book does not contain as much
content on the process. Nor does it include case studies and examples of other
companies like our other books. It’s simply a short workbook intended to serve
as a project guide.
In publishing these books,
we have provided materials at a variety of levels that help managers in
different ways. The first book helps you understand the concept of
design-thinking and the key tools and their uses, as well as what the
high-level process might look like. The second book does not lay out the
process in deep detail or coach you on how to implement it, but instead
introduces ten organizations currently using design thinking. The third book,
in contrast, is a detailed look at how individuals can use design thinking in a
particular project. This is important because you can read the theory of design
thinking and about other organizations using it, but until you actually try it
yourself, until you practice it, you do not really learn it.
To teach these tools to
people who cannot afford to come to the Darden School here in the US to learn
them, we have created a completely asynchronous online course. It’s currently
available only in English, but it will run every few months. Our goal in
introducing this course is to provide an economical option for individuals
interested in teaching themselves the principles of design thinking.
We have also created the website Design at Darden that features teaching resources like videos and
cases. One video, for example, walks viewers through the journey-mapping
process. Another is a short presentation of the visualization tool and how to
use it. Videos on IBM and The Good Kitchen are also available. The website and
materials are free once you register at the site.
5. Pixar and Google are famous for their innovative office environments. Do
you think there is a positive correlation between such office environments and
the prevalence of design thinking in an organization? Do you think particular
office environments facilitate design thinking?
I was recently reading an article on this topic. I
think it is an interesting research area that is just beginning to attract the
attention of academics. We know from an education standpoint that the physical
environment makes a big difference. When we started teaching design thinking at
Darden, we were a traditional, case-method business school. All of our
classrooms were comprised of rows of fixed, tiered desks like those you would
find at Harvard Business School. Though this environment is terrific for
teaching cases, design teaching cannot be taught in such an environment.
Design thinking requires large open spaces allowing
people to sit together at tables and work in teams. People need to be able to
post their ideas on the walls and create visuals. If you think about a
traditional, corporate conference room, a giant, useless table occupies the
center space. The walls are decorated with paintings, allowing no room for
posters and displays. These conference rooms are the complete opposite of what
is needed for design thinking. We learned firsthand that we had to build a new
space in order to do design thinking at the Darden Business School.
I think the same applies to corporations. They do not
need expensive resources for design thinking, just an empty room with tables,
chairs, and lots of wall space. Though this set up is not expensive, most organizations
do not have these sorts of spaces. According to recent research, cubicles are not
necessarily bad because people need some privacy for reflection. A completely
open environment would be too distracting. But the cubicle design needs to be
complemented with lots of space for collaboration. In other words, cubicles are
not awful, just inadequate by themselves.
Because design is intensely collaborative, open spaces
for people to work together are also needed. If you go to a design studio like
IDEO or Jump, you will find that they have these “war rooms.” Project teams get
their own room, where they can leave visuals on the walls. They do not have to
take everything down and clean up for others to use the room. As a result, the
walls of the room actually tell the story of the project and its progress. If
the boss wants a progress update, you just take him or her on a gallery tour of
the room! As you suggest, I do think that creating physical spaces for design
like this holds great potential.
Joseph Gabriella
A long-time resident of Japan, I am currently a
lecturer at Toyo University in Tokyo, Japan. Before returning to academia, I
spent over ten years in industry as a senior manager of multinational and
domestic companies in Japan in the fields of finance, pharmaceuticals, and
hospitality. In addition to pursuing my passion for education, I also continue
to work as a consultant on a project basis, tackling what I call square-peg problems,
business needs that do not fit neatly into a particular consulting-practice
area. Over the past four years, I have completed projects for U.S., Japanese,
and Chinese for-profit and non-profit enterprises. Active as a researcher as
well, I have published academic papers and books in both Japanese and English.
I welcome your feedback on this blog in my ongoing effort to improve it.
jjapan1802@yahoo.co.jp
English Blogs
Venture into Japan
http://venturejapan.blogspot.jp/
Japanese Blogs
http://stepover-us.blogspot.jp/
Yuzo Sugimoto
A graduate of Yokohama National University, Yuzo completed his MBA at Pepperdine University. After acquiring ten years of experience in public finance, infrastructure privatization as well as public-relations utilizing mass media, he returned to his undergraduate alma mater to study for a Ph.D. in Economics. His research focuses on eco-friendly businesses and the marketing strategies of entertainment and fashion businesses. Yuzo has published numerous book in Japanese combining education and entertainment. Titles in his edu-tainment series by Garyusha Press include
V is for Victory: Secrets of Victoria’s Secret’s Success,
What Lady Gaga teaches us about business, An Invitation to Victoria’s Secret, and
President Obama and Hybrid Vehicles.
(The Institute for the International Education of
Students, Tokyo）
© 2014 Joseph Gabriella, Ph.D., MBA. All rights
reserved.
