Insights from IDEO Blueprint Event

About a month ago, it was IDEO’s Blueprint event. It was a pleasant surprise to receive an invitation to attend the event, which was an “invite-only” event.

IDEO’s Blueprint brings together many innovators and CEOs from different companies to talk and discuss the innovation. Also, IDEO shows it’s latest projects and researches and shares future patterns and challenges they see on the horizon.

I went from Riyadh to Dubai and then took a 16-hour direct flight to San Francisco.

I arrived at the hotel in the afternoon, and because I was not used to seeing San Francisco in the winter, I decided to walk a little towards the bay, it was cold but the view was beautiful.

Alcatraz prison remains in the middle of the Gulf after 57 years of being retired, and on the opposite side is SS Jeremiah O'Brien ship, which retired about 74 years ago.

The next day, I took Uber to the event, it was raining and the traffic was bad. I arrived and took my nice wooden badge and walked with Coe Stafford, the Senior Design Director at IDEO U to meet the amazing community of IDEO. It was an amazing opportunity to meet the great David Kelley and Tim Brown, meeting these guys was like meeting Bill Gates and Larry Page for me. David Kelley is the founder of IDEO, who invented the first mouse for Apple, and created many products that had a great impact. But since IDEO innovates for large companies, you may not hear their name when announcing these innovative products. David Kelley is also the co-founder of the "D-School", the design school at Stanford University, and he is the author of the beautiful book "Creative Confidence".

Today, David Kelley became the 2020 Bernard M Gordon Prize winner for formalizing the principles of design thinking and developing engineering leaders with the confidence to generate high-impact solutions.

As for Tim Brown, he led IDEO for 19 years and he advises senior executives and boards of global Fortune 100 companies. He inspired millions of people through his speeches and his book "Change by Design".

Meeting Tim and David was an opportunity to thank them for the knowledge, experience and inspiration they brought to us, and to chat about some topics, including what is coming after design thinking.

I will start by listing the most important insights from the event:

1. It was interesting to hear David Kelly talking about one of the reasons behind finding IDEO 30 years ago. He said that we just wanted -with his team- to redesign the summer vacation, it wasn't his goal to get to where they are today. Even when I talked to him about his last book, he said that they didn’t intend to write a book that will become very famous, they just wanted to share their knowledge and experience with the world.

2. There was a great session about “Leading Through Uncertainty” for the amazing Suzanne Howard and Coe Leta Stafford.

The traditional style of leadership is no longer relevant in our accelerated world, which is full of ambiguity and uncertainty. We need to shift to "Creative Leadership". With Creative Leadership, we lead more with questions instead of providing answers, we keep building trust as the foundation for creative collaboration, and we focus on having rituals for the team to provide continuity in an ever-changing world. In Creative Leadership, we can convert the tension and uncertainty into opportunities.

3. One of my favorite sessions was “Creative Tensions”. It is an exercise where the presenter asks questions that causes some kind of confusion and tension, and the attendees should go to the right or left depending on their answers, or even they can stay in the middle if they are in between the two options. Then the presenter asks the attendees from both sides about why they chose that answer, and they gave the opportunity for attendees to change their side if they got convinced of a better opinion or point of view. Here are some questions that have been asked:

• It is most important to identify the right question or the right answer?
• Who matters more, the individual or the team?
• Who comes first, the employee or the customer?
• I can solve my biggest problems using, data or empathy?
• In light of the AI revolution, the talent we’ll need most have people skills or tech skills?
• To attract and retain top talent, we will offer, money + benefit, culture + belonging.

Which of these questions made you curious?

4. IDEO CoLab is an interesting project of IDEO that we don't know much about. IDEO CoLab is launched in 2015 as a platform for scientific research in advanced technology like blockchain, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, ..etc.

CoLab's portfolios work at the intersection of industries to create systemic change. They convene their network around key research themes and opportunities and prototype tangible solutions with paths toward the market. Their portfolios include Collaborative Cities, Circular Economy, Open Financial Systems, and Dynamic Workforce.

I have discussed some of the future projects and research areas, I am curious to see a decentralized freelancing system on blockchain, where freelancers will not be enforced to give 40% of their revenue to the current freelancing platforms. Also, I am curious to see solutions for the open and decentralized banking systems.

5. One of the prototypes I like is the Mirror Stage. It is an exploration of what it means to be recorded, analyzed, and reflected in the age of data. You can explore each of the three levels of “anonymizing” and decide for yourself, which is the fairest of them. The prototype is designed to increase public awareness of data collection in the public realm that simultaneously engages people in a conversation about its utility. As you come closer to the mirror, your picture will be masked.

6. In the project below, IDEO worked on the jacket with Levi’s and Jacquard to define simple user experience and gesture language for the Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket. The system can answer questions, do tracking, run music and take pictures while you are driving or running. What caught my attention is that IDEO made 150 prototypes before reaching the final model. Here is an important lesson we want to learn; creative solutions need a lot of experimentation and patience.

7. IDEO looks at the future of food, a lot of researches are done in this field, for example, using the liquid in the can of chickpeas, they have created light, crips meringues - the left part of the image-, and with the beans, they have created crunchy, cinnamon-dusted “churros” to use all parts and represent circularity. I tried it, it tastes good!

Also, they are researching how the food will be grown, how it will be made, and how it will be repurposed. To know more about this, please follow this link.

 8. What I like most about IDEO is that they seek to ask questions that ignite curiosity, rather than providing answers. In a part of the event’s venue, they wrote the following: "WE DON’T HAVE A CRYSTAL BALL. But we do have good ears. And as we listen to our partners around the world, we’ve noticed a few patterns. If you think of trends as waves that build, crest and recede, patterns are currents that run deeper, rippling out into new behaviors. That’s where designers start. How will these patterns affect our lives? What needs and desires will they issue forth? And how might we meet those needs, creating a better future for us all?" I stood in front of it for a quite amount of time! Thinking ...!

I will write another article to talk about the eight patterns that IDEO believes it will affect our behavior in the future.

On the day after the event, I had the chance to spend some time in IDEO with the amazing marketing team. Then I left for another city with a different kind of innovation; perhaps we will talk about it in a separate article in the future. This is a picture of the place to arouse curiosity :)