Action Innovation

Exploring the dual nature of design thinking to innovate the next engines of growth.

Design thinking is the origin/inspiration of almost all the movement we see today. It is the philosophy and the mindset behind the attempts of “Lean Startup”, “Business Modeling” to make a relatable and scalable innovation process tangible enough for entrepreneurs and managers alike. Perhaps the movements did not tackle the mindset part hard enough. The focus is some how emphasized on tools and steps rather than emphasizing the philosophy behind them, the “mindset fuel” sort of speak. Some blame Design Thinking, Lean Startup, Business Modeling for not delivering as their expectations. Well, if you are an unexperienced race driver and you are given a brand new Ferrari, you will most probably complain about its performance because you almost certainly will not win any races with it.

It is not the tool, it is the preparation of the mindset using the tool! 

"Hustling innovation" can only take you as far as hustling can take an olive seller who wanted to sell the highly demanded black olives and all what he had is green ones. So he painted them black.

True story by the way!

The superficial handling of design can only create superficial results!

Creating value must get past the buzzwords. A deeper interest in value creation must be inspired beyond entertaining and colorful workspaces/labs! Designing in its nature is holistic and not exclusive. It does not focus on details, but explores the specifics of a interconnected big picture.

Design thinking was and still a bold move to create something better, something new. The balanced “action” of designing for humans what is valuable and harvesting value out of it. It is the creation of value out of delivering value. Organization will not design for what they do not appreciate. Customers will not buy what they do not appreciate either. Balancing the two frame of references is the answer to true value innovation.

Duality?

I remember when I read about Einstein’s photoelectric effect theory that described light’s dual nature, as both a wave and a particle. It was simple, yet it showed deep appreciation of what is observed in nature. Light behaved as both a particle and a wave. Aside from all the technical details behind the theory, one thing I really liked is how this duality allowed light to propagate freely in space. They both created an environment for each other to make that a possibility. They gave each other the right to exist.

The philosophy behind design thinking has not been exactly complete, I humbly assume. I believe that design thinking, like light, has a dual nature. Thus far, it has been primarily preoccupied with designing for the customer (people). But in order for it to propagate properly inside the business space, another side has to be included: the organization (also people). 

A New Framework/Mindset?

I often speak about the four dimensions of business design: desirability, feasibility, viability and adaptability. Based on the human centric design model popularized by IDEO, and adding adaptability (the business environment dimension) to it by Alex Osterwalder, I believe that any organization seeking to create value innovation must consider more than designing a new product or a new business model. They must create the right “Action” to propel innovation inside and outside of the organization.

What do I mean by that?

By appreciating that an organization’s sense of progress is integrated with the potential customer’s sense of life progress. Harmonize what an organization is trying to achieve and what the customer is trying to achieve. They both will make it possible for each other to exist.

To better appreciate the duality nature of the desirability, feasibility and viability, lets break it down:

Desirability: When you are tackling desirability, you need to appreciate how a certain group of people (customer segment) evaluate progress when they hire certain product/service (i.e. their Jobs To be Done). But on the other side you need to understand how ready is your organization’s culture and how much is it willing to contribute to that progress. In other words, empathize outwards (people as potential customers) and inwards (people as the organization itself).

Main Design Balance Criteria: Customer Progress (JTBD) Vs. Organization’s Perception to delivering that progress (Culture).

Feasibility: Once the desirability is evaluated and understood, one must approach the operational/managerial capacities needed to achieve it carefully. A critical balance between how to achieve the customer’s expectations (customer point of view to desirability delivery: UI/UX ) while reducing/eliminating all unnecessary operational/managerial activities to ensure efficient resources utilization and mobilization to meet customer's expectations (organization’s point of view on delivering that desirability efficiently). 

Main Design Balance Criteria: Customer’s point of view to desirability delivery (UI/UX) Vs. Organization’s ability to deliver it (culture/resources/operations) point of view.

Viability: Viability is simply the design’s outcome of the value proposition’s desirability versus the managerial/operational efficiency to deliver it. The business model design outcome. It is the critical balance between efficient operations and maximum value creation of a desirable product/service to a potential customer. It is the quantification of desirability (price) versus the qualification of feasibility (costs).

Main Design Balance Criteria: Customer Value Maximization (Value Proposition Vs. Price) Vs. Organization Value Maximization (Costs Vs. Revenues).

Finally, comes the fourth dimension; adaptability. The resulted design should be stress tested against the environment it actually exists in and adapt. In other words, how both the customer and the organization will adapt to the current environment to keep their sense of progress alive and well in the best way possible.

Design Thinking demands a global and curious empathetic mindset. I believe that putting together this 360 degrees approach will help an organization ask the right questions and hence seek the right answers. It aims to support management look differently at its innovation efforts and strategize better for future engines of growth (three horizons of growth).

It is what I like to call: “Action Innovation”: A series of balanced and contemplative actions created to harmonize the frames of reference of both the potential customer and the organization. And it is not a matter of alignment. It is the consideration of exploring interconnected perspectives/point of views of the same big picture and balancing them to harvest value out of creating value.

This framework is still in its early days and will be followed by more soon. I am putting it out there to open the floor for a conversation with other designers ( two brains are better than one and three are definitely better than two! ).

Innovation is a journey and not a destination!

Thank you.