SwampFox

We Need to Promote a Creative Culture by Celebrating the Bright Spots and Scripting the Path to the Change We Need

Three very diverse friends gave or recommended books to me recently. I’m impressed that a similar need for a more creative culture resonated with each of them.

• Design-Driven Innovation; Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean, by Roberto Verganti. A recommendation from John Fly, VP of Strategic Planning for Milliken & Company, forwarded to me by Chris Desoiza, VP of the Milliken Research Corporation.
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath. Recommended by Jennie Johnson, Executive Director of the Liberty Fellowship.
• Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin. Recommended by Doug Cone, a free lancer who owns Nullvariable Web Consulting.

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In Design-Driven Innovation, Verganti describes how to create new growth opportunities through design-driven innovation, through which companies define and propose new meanings for products to customers.

Firms that develop design-driven innovation step back from users and take a broader perspective. They explore how the context in which people live is evolving, both in socio-cultural terms (how the reason people buy things is changing) and in technical terms (how technologies, products, and services are shaping that context.) Most of all, these firms envision how this context of life could change for the better. The word could is not incidental. These firms are not simply following existing trends. They are making proposals with which they will modify the context. They are building scenarios that would perhaps never occur (or that would occur more slowly) if the firms did not deliver their unsolicited proposals.

When a company takes this broader perspective, it discovers that it is not alone in asking that question. Every company is surrounded by several agents (firms in other industries that target the same users, suppliers of new technologies, researchers, designers, and artists) who share its interests… All are looking at the same people in the same life context… And all are conducting research on how those people could give meaning to things. They are, in other words, interpreters.

There are three phases of design-driven innovation.

The first one is listening. It is the action of gaining access to knowledge about possible new product meanings by interacting with interpreters. Firms that listen better are those that develop privileged relationships with a distinguished group of key interpreters. These are not necessarily the most famous in the industry. Rather, successful firms first identify overlooked interpreters, usually in fields where competitors are not looking…

The second action is interpreting. Its purpose is to allow a company to develop its unique proposal. It is the internal process through which the firm accesses the knowledge it gains by interacting with the interpreters and then recombines and integrates this knowledge with its own proprietary insights, technologies and assets…

The third action is addressing. Radical innovations of meanings, being unexpected, sometimes initially confuse people. To prepare the ground for groundbreaking proposals, firms leverage the seductive power of interpreters. By discussing and internalizing a firm’s novel vision, these interpreters inevitably change the life context (through the technologies they develop, the products and services they design, and the artworks they create) in a way that makes the company’s proposal more meaningful and attractive when people see it.

The ultimate objective of design-driven innovation is a “technology epiphany”, the time when “a novel technology” emerges and “a company discovers and reveals that quintessential meaning… and in so doing becomes the market leader.” Several times Verganti references Clayton Christensen, suggesting that Christensen's advice to "seek jobs to be done" is similar to the author's advice to "seek new meaning." (See The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth, by Christensen and Michael Raynor.)

The author says several things I agree with passionately.

• The value of knowledge embedded in existing products is lower than interpretations of new meaning that is not yet codified but that are instead whispered--exchanged timidly when they are still in the form of insights. [I talk a lot about informed intuition.]
• Gaining access to the most valuable knowledge in the design discourse does not entail reading reports on socio-cultural trends or scanning the web. Instead, it requires immersion in the discourse. [Innovation is a contact sport.]
• The design discourse is both local and global. On the one hand, the local density of the network is essential, because interactions based on tactic knowledge of the network benefit from geographic proximity. On the other hand, interactions among interpreters worldwide allow them to enlarge the quantity and variety of their insights and provide a global perspective in the evolution of meanings. [One of the greatest untapped assets we have in this region is deep, global relationships.]
• Most global companies use regional centers only as antennas to detect local trends rather than to mediate local talent. The result that large corporation often have no knowledge of the rich web of local relationships developed by their units, and they seldom leverage the full potential of global design.

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Verganti advises large organizations to engage in dialogues with artists, who among others are interpreters of new meaning. Godin comes from 180○ the opposite perspective, advising individuals to become artists.

In Godin’s world of empowered individuals, the evil empire is the predominant “factory” culture that robs people of their creative potential. A “factory” can span from a manufacturing plant to an accounting firm, where people are expected to show up at work, follow the rules in doing their job, and go home. He charges his readers who may have become acculturated to believe they are not innately creative.

At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet. And by the time you were twelve, if you had a lemonade stand, you were an entrepreneur. Of course you can do something that matters. I guess I’m wondering if you want to.

Rather than being a cog in an industrial machine, Godin challenges each of us to be a linchpin.

Imagine an organization with an employee who can accurately see the truth, understand the situation, and understand the potential outcomes of various decisions. And now imagine that this person is also able to make something happen.

Why on earth would you ever begin to consider the possibility of firing her? Inconceivable.

Every organization, every nonprofit, every political body, every corporation desperately seeks this person. This is our leader, our marketer, our linchpin. She creates forward motion.

There are bosses who might be threatened by someone who can create forward motion, but the shareholders and owners and board of every organization on earth desperately want forward motion. The distinction is subtle; calming your boss’s anxiety is the first step to getting the organization to embrace the change you’ll be making.

Doesn’t matter if you’re always right. It matters that you’re always moving.

Godin suggests that everyone is an artist in some realm. Your art is what no one else can tell you exactly how to do. The key to great art is empathy for others and creativity in your response.

Your art is the act of taking responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people…

No one has a transparent view of the world. In fact, we all carry around a personal worldview—the biases and experiences and expectations that color the way we perceive the world.

It is fascinating that Verganti and Godin both live in a world in which major organizations and creative individuals need each other.
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Growth requires change, and in Switch the Heaths suggest fostering change by managing the Rider, the Elephant, and the Path. The Rider is the rational side of our brains. “Find the bright spots” of what is already working and encourage people to do more of that is easier than asking people to fix a problem. Typically the easiest path is the status quo, so “script the critical moves” making it easy for people to take the first steps on the new path forward. It is important to “point to the destination” so people can see how life can be better when the change has occurred.

Then you need to deal with the Elephant, the emotional side of our brains. This is tougher, but this subconscious part of ourselves often overwhelms our best intentions. You need to help people “find the feeling.”

Analytical tools work best when parameters are known, assumptions are minimal, and the future is not fuzzy.

But big change situations don’t look like that. In most change situations, the parameters aren’t well understood, and the future is fuzzy. Because of uncertainty that change brings, the Elephant is reluctant to move, and analytical arguments will not overcome that reluctance.

In almost all successful change efforts… you’re presented with evidence that makes you feel something. It might be a disturbing look at the problem, or a hopeful glimpse of the solution, or a sobering reflection of your current habits, but regardless, it’s something that hits you at the emotional level.

It is easy to get overwhelmed with the enormity of the task, so you need to “shrink the change” by limiting the initial investment and helping people to quickly feel like they are making progress towards the goal. For change to stick, you need to “grow your people” by visualizing how people in the changed situation should act. The Heaths highlight Brasilata, a steel can who asked employees to become “inventors’ down to signing an “innovation contract”. As the company successfully acted on employee innovations, the mantle of “inventors” became a source of pride and strength with employees.

We regularly make a “fundamental attribution error… of attributing people’s behavior to the way they are rather than to the situation they are in. The last area of focus is “shaping the path,” starting by “tweaking the environment.”

If you want people the change, you can provide clear direction (Rider) or boost their motivations and determination (Elephant). Alternatively, you can simply make the journey easier. Create a steep downhill slope and five then a push. Remove some friction from the trail. Scatter around lots of signs to tell them they’re getting close.

“Building habits” and “rallying the herd” are core to shaping the path.

People are incredibly sensitive to the environment and the culture—to the norms and expectations of the communities they are in. We all want to wear the right clothes, to say the right things, to frequent the right places. Because we instinctively try to fit in with our peer group, behavior is contagious, sometimes in surprising ways.

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At InnoVenture Southeast 2010, "Over 2 Days 7 Senior Leaders and 60 Passionate Champions describe the future they are creating," which is another way of saying defining new meaning. In the past year, we have begun having smaller forums to have conversations with trusted colleagues of specific champions.

As I followed up with senior leaders who presented at InnoVenture Southeast, consistently they were seeking ways for their organizations to grow. To do that they need connect with the most passionate, tenacious and creative people in and around their organizations with the best informed intuition about how to create the future.

A major challenge we face is that while all people are innately creative, to a large extent our culture represses that. Yet the same people who aren't particularly creative at work, lead an exceptional new program at church or have a spectacular yard at home. Create a different cultural context, and you will find that people can be much more creative than they are today. Create a framework for people to be more creative at work, and success with beget more success as people learn from one another.

Going forward, InnoVenture conferences should focus on identifying new meanings for customers that can be the basis for large new growth markets. Perhaps our forums become more proprietary dialogues with key trusted colleagues about how to create proprietary insights, technologies and assets around these new meanings.

More broadly, we need to promote a creative culture in South Carolina by building support for education as the key driver of economic prosperity. In particular, we need to start by finding and celebrating the bright spots in education at all levels, and then scripting the critical moves for people to engage so that when necessary we can rally the heard to produce the change we need.