Innovation Needs More Art, Less Data; More Hope, Less Fear in 2021

The world is VUCA, ‘unprecedented’, and even the pace of acceleration is accelerating!

It’s scary, and not necessarily reflective of reality.

It also doesn’t have to be that way.

Signals of change are everywhere, if you know where to look. But that’s only half the battle. We need to talk about why people would want to look for signals of change in the first place.

I’ll tell you why they wouldn’t. It’s scary. Fear is only a temporary motivator. We need something more enduring.

The problem is the conversations we’re having, and the motivations we’re using to talk about change. We're often telling people they are about to be disrupted, their business is doomed, and the trends are relentlessly churning the world they knew and loved.

Change is a funny thing. It’s largely a matter of perspective, how and where you look, and whether you benefit from the status quo. There are many ways to look at change, but the one that I’ve been noodling on has to do with engaging people to make truly different and lasting choices that affect their behavior and mindset.

To help explain, I whipped up a 2x2 in PPT. Think about the dimensions of change as:

a)     motivation: are you using carrots, inspiring people with positive reinforcement and instilling confidence in them to change? Or are you using sticks, negative reinforcement, and a fear-based approach to alter behavior?

b)    method: are you using rational-seeming data, logic and facts? Or are you leaning on art, emotion and a story to get your point across?

Think of these combinations in how we go about attempting to get someone to do something differently, like flip orthodoxies around about pensions, brush their teeth, or act on climate change.

In these quadrants, starting from bottom right you have:

Myth (story+fear)

• These are the tales as old as time. Stories told ‘round the campfire which impart some lesson about how we should live our lives – and the dangers of not doing so. While they can contain positive elements, for the most part, claim that only one chosen party has access to a privileged truth, and that there are many ways to fail, but only through faith can one avoid the pitfalls and achieve some higher state.
• In an innovation context this looks like: Arrogant thought leaders, mysterious futurists, elitist designers. All who intentionally obscure the truth through jargon and who claim to have an irreplaceable set of skills, all while predicting that the sky is falling. Usually these same people are selling something as the ‘one way’ to innovation enlightenment.  

Media (facts+fear)

• This is the stuff you read and watch every day, even though you know you shouldn’t. 24 hours and unlimited digital column inches to fill, but also some notion of objectivity, and ‘fact-based’ reporting. Erring on the side of more data vs. less, the writer feels as if they have proven their point beyond all doubt, but the reader is left overwhelmed by data without context, hindsight or grounding. Yet we can’t look away because fear is powerful hook; the doomscrolling continues.
• In an innovation context this looks like: Most dashboards that feature lots of data with very little context. Particularly if trying to show the impending disruption of an industry, or an unstoppable trend toward obsolescence.

Science (facts+confidence)

• The perpetual pursuit of deeper knowledge through hypotheses and experimentation. Positive by nature, though aiming to be free from subjectivity, often to a fault. Excludes things that cannot be measured, and discounts N of 1 experiences. Follows the data blindly, leading to progress.
• In an innovation context this looks like: An obsession with large scale quantitative surveys, endless in-market user experiments, and a sole focus on OKRs. The tyranny of metrics. A request for customer demographic data, with no ability to act on it.

Culture (story+confidence)

• Society’s great accomplishments, timeless tributes to our human potential. Ideals that are represented in Word, Dance, Song, Art, Architecture and the standard to which society hopes to attain. Told through evocative stories, people internalize their heroes and strive to act like them.
• In an innovation context this looks like: Leading from the future, through experiential design. Showing, not telling, people the incredible future that lays just beyond the next turn. Building confidence in our ability to do it together, and painting a picture that people can remember, relate to and reinforce through their actions.

My hope is that we can incorporate more of the Culture quadrant into our work next year. The innovation profession can help bring people along by inspiring them, and giving them a story to believe in.

We can do it by realizing what types of conversations are most effective. Chances are taking a fact-based approach with someone of equal intellect but opposite opinion will do little good. A story, a comic, a calendar from the future, just may change the tenor of the conversation.

It's why we created an illustrated children's book called "P is for Pension" to explain complicated concepts like beneficiary to a new audience of toddlers.

A wise person once said, “data tells us what works, while stories tell us what matters.”

What the world needs is not fear, but confidence. What the world needs is not random data, but cohesive narratives and grounded optimism.  

Neither of these are either/or. A little bit of fear can motivate us to act. Our actions need to be consistent with reality, and illustrated by data.

The real opportunity is to realize what type of conversation we’re trying to have. No matter how well intentioned, some arguments cannot be solved with data alone. Nor will lasting change in behavior take place if it is only motivated by fear.

Innovation can bring that, if we choose to let it. Be a force for good, for healing, for reflection and for positive adaption to the future.

That why, on our team, we’ve stopped harping on “disruption” and “radical transformation”. We’ve started focusing on “confidence”, “validation”, and “de-risking”.  

This is the ‘motivation’ dimension of our 2x2. For 2021, I’m excited for us to explore the ‘method’ dimension, to include more art, comedy, design, play and fun to convey our point.

Art and culture will be the key to humanity solving wicked problems like climate change. A small personal example. My son, (age 2.5) loves cars and trucks. All his toys reflect the fossil fuel paradigm. He has little wooden gas stations to fill up his little wooden cars. It wouldn’t be hard for an enterprising toy maker to create a new line of on-trend toys that feature little wooden charging stations, wind turbines and electric trains. Then you’d have a whole generation growing up to expect – and eventually demand – these things at age of majority. Small reframe, big impact. No data required.  

Subtle changes in conversation can make a world of difference.

Change is everywhere, if you know where to look. When you see it coming, it can fit into your story of the world. And when we have a shared belief in the future, anything is possible.

This is our goal for innovation in 2021; I hope it can be yours, too.

“Art is about emotion; if art needs to be explained, it is no longer art.”

-       Pierre-Auguste Renoir