7: Finding and Attracting Key Interpreters
Design innovation is not designer innovation - it is not the consequence of a single person of vision acting in isolation. The author cites a number of catastrophic failures that occurred when a firm put its future in the hands of a visionary designer or an external firm who were entirely uninformed about their industry and their market: their visions were bold, but uninformed because they attempted to interpret without having sufficient information to interpret. So hiring an external agency of "outsiders" and hoping that the come up with a viable idea is not the solution to being innovative.
Successful innovation is done within a domain of knowledge, and is well informed. It is generally a process that involves many subject-matter experts contributing diverse knowledge and applying different perspectives in the investigation and interpretation of information. Just as the great artists generally arise in the context of artistic movements, so do the great innovators arise in the context of a group of contributors and interpreters.
Multiple Voices
The design discourse is not a series of individual monologues in which each participant contributes an individual perspective. Instead, it is a discourse in which the participants play off one another's ideas. It is "a noisy and confused debate wherein several interpretations coexist." It does not result in a singular solution to the problem, but multiple plausible solutions. A company develops its unique vision by sorting through these perspectives and choosing a path to follow among many that seem to have potential.
Verganti presents a study of Italian manufacturers, which shows that diversity is highly correlated with successful innovation. Generally speaking, firms were more innovative when they engaged a more diverse group of designers (some Italian, some from other countries) with diverse backgrounds (not only industrial design) and engaged more external design firms for assistance. It is reasoned that by being more diverse in their design practices, firms get a broader range of ideas that includes more unconventional ideas.
He gives the example of Barilla, a leading pasta manufacturer, who put together an innovation team that included kitchen appliance designers, cookware designers, a wine-maker, chefs, food critics, and sociologists. This is not entirely random, but it includes more than food manufacturers - it takes into account knowledge of the tools and equipment with which the product is prepared, the task of food preparation, manufacturers of foods consumed at the same time as pasta, the appreciation of the consumer, and the meaning of food to society and culture.
Had the firm engaged only food manufacturers, it would likely result in efficiency improvements for its factory but no real change to the product - because the participants would limit their thinking to the way pasta is made. The more diverse group enabled them to consider the entire experience of preparing and consuming the product and the experience of a meal in which the product is consumed. This provides a much broader and more diverse set of perspectives that is more likely to generate innovative ideas.
Choosing the Right Interpreters
The author considers public discourse on the topic of food. Many people express their personal likes and dislikes, the technical aspects of food preparation, and the like - but very few seem to have done much consideration of the meaning of food in a broader sense. These are the right kind of people to include in a design discourse, as the rest are focused entirely on food in its present incarnation and are not considering the potential for something different.
Companies often turn to design firms to get an outsider's perspective, but not all agencies are capable of generating radical innovations of meanings. Most will simply make a more attractive product, or improve the efficiency or effectiveness of the existing product. Few have the ability to ignore the product and discover a new way of meeting the need that the product currently serves.
The number of interpreters who can provide radical insight is very small, and when included in a discussion are often disregarded because their vision is so unlike everyone else's. Where the majority of the group is devoted to tradition, those who seek to break from tradition are silenced - and as a result, the truly innovative ideas that deviate from the current norm are overwhelmed by the chorus that favors business as usual. Innovation is not normative and it is not democratic. The "average" idea is not an innovation - but instead, innovation is an outlier that differs from the norm. It is unusual.
He then scoffs a bit at companies that have design competitions, thinking "we could get tons of great ideas for free." The problem is that such competitions generally result in getting many ideas that are entirely uninspired and only a few that are truly innovative - and in filtering through all the bad ideas the firm misses out on the good ones. They end up going with the most popular idea rather than the best one. Moreover, the very talented interpreters see competitions as a waste of their time - they recognize that they are unlikely to be heard at all, and that what they have to contribute will get no more attention than the contributions of those who are untalented. Moreover, they recognize that the judges of such competitions are seldom designers, and do not have the ability to understand the potential of an idea when looking at a prototype without context.
Back on topic: not only is it necessary to include the right people, but one must also avoid including the wrong people - those with a vested interest in preserving the status quo. These people will fail to provide any innovative ideas and will discourage other participants from doing the same. (EN: This calls to mind many instances in which computer programmers squelched discussion of an innovative design solution because it would be difficult to program given the capabilities of current systems.)
Forward-Looking Researchers
There were very few schools that taught industrial design until the late 1990s - before then, "design" was the province of manufacturing engineers, whose main concern was in building a machine that produces a product efficiently. Engineers are excited to discussing the sophistication of their machines and often ignore the fact that the product of their machinery must be meaningful and beneficial to a person.
He then speaks a bit about architects who design buildings. They serve a client who has a specific purpose in mind, but must at the same time recognize that the company that commissions the building is only a temporary owner - they are commissioned to build a factory, but that factory may eventually be used as a movie studio, an apartment building, a retail store, or any of a myriad of purposes once the initial owner abandons it. They are also aware that their buildings exist in the context of a neighborhood, and must make sense within the urban context.
A nice phrase: "The public doesn't ask for something. You are the one offering them something." The market chooses among the offerings of multiple suppliers to decide which will be rewarded with the revenue they provide - but they are not experts in solving their own needs.
Where does one find the best people to include in innovation efforts? It isn't necessarily those with existing product expertise, but those who show the greatest curiosity and the tendency to do research and experimentation. The "expert" mind is often one that accepts that which is known, whereas the curious mind is open to exploring the unknown and does nto have the cognitive filters that keep experts grounded in current practices.
It's also best to look "upstream" for fresh minds. Those closest to the customer, engaged in retailing and marketing current product offerings, are generally too tightly focused on the existing product lines. The scientists and researchers further from the front lines have a broader perspective. Reaching into the academic world or to those in peripheral industries can also help to broaden the search.
Novel Recombination
Innovation often results by a "novel recombination" of existing knowledge, where pieces of the puzzle are assembled from entirely different domains of knowledge. This is a distinctive benefit of design firms, who work for clients in a variety of industries. Something they learned from designing a bicycle might be applicable to the design of kitchen appliances - and the in-house designers of an appliance manufacturer would never have been exposed to this knowledge.
Verganti gives the example of IDEO, a Palo Alto CA design firm that handles design projects for as many as 40 different industries, and often arrives at innovative solutions when the knowledge of one domain is applied to a seemingly unrelated one.
He then mentions the first-generation iMac, which shocked the market with a personal computer that came in bright colors that "challenged the paradigm of unsympathetic beige boxes." While it was widely mocked as being more like a toy than a piece of equipment, that was the intention of the design: to create a personable personal computer that looked like it belonged in a teenager's bedroom rather than in an office building. The author credits Jonathan Ive, the VP of Design, for this inspiration - stressing that before coming to work at Apple, he had been an independent design consultant who designed household products. The colorful, rounded, and playful shape of the iMac is nothing that would have come from a computer industry insider.
Firms often tend to seek executives who have decades of experience in their own industry, figuring that there is value in this experience - but there is also a limitation to a person who has become institutionalized and accepts, without question, that the status quo is the best way to do things.
He draws a distinction between the culture of the market and the culture of an industry. Specifically, the industry is a subset of the broader culture, and knowledge from one industry transfers to another far more easily that knowledge of one culture transfers to another. To bring a German designer into a wholly new industry in Germany is far more likely to produce innovations the market will accept than it would to bring a German designer to a Italian firm in the same industry. His ideas will certainly be different, but unlikely to be embraced by the market.
Listening to the Whisperers
Companies are very guarded of the knowledge of their innovations. Where anyone makes a presentation at an industry convention or writes an article for the industry press, the ideas they express are often of little real value - they ideas are either peripheral or are last-generation - because firms are loath to leak their source of competitive advantage to their competitors. He mentions that the most valuable insights are often whispered - shared by individuals in a timid manner, without great fanfare. They are talking privately about ideas that they are just kicking around that have not yet been recognized or adopted by their firms.
Many important discussions occur in informal circumstances, chance meetings between entrepreneurs and designers when they happen to meet in odd places. The author gives an account of an executive who became aware of a couple of very profitable ideas while chatting with designers and engineers when on vacation, aboard a cruise ship or skiing in the Alps. A happenstance pairing of people on the golf course or a leisurely conversation in the lounge of a social club often enable two people to connect who would not have met during the course of their normal lives.
This is not to say that looking for ideas (and their originators) in the usual places is of no value. You should still monitor conferences, scan magazines and web sites, read industry periodicals, and the like - but do not underestimate the value of casual social interaction. The most valuable information is often to be found here.
(EN: That's been a personal observation of mine about industry conferences. The formal presentations provide some insight into things that have already been done, but meeting with the speakers at informal social events after-hours is where you get valuable information about what will be done next, and after a few cocktails you get the "real story" that they would never tell when they're on stage.)
The Geography of Design Discourse
The design discourse is global because any product implicitly communicates the ideas of its designer - not to mention that in the present day, the Internet connects designers from around the world. But on the other hand, it is also local discourse, because designers communicate most often and most deeply with those in their geographic area and industry.
There are certain areas where design is known to flourish: Milan, Helsinki, Copenhagen, and New York. There are also local design enclaves that are industry-specific: in areas where there are several companies that produce the same category of goods (garments, automobiles, appliances, computer software, etc.) tend to be in high concentration. It's noted that firms will often establish operations near their rivals to feed off their workforce, but ideas travel among firms even faster than people.
The problem is that firms who see design as their competitive advantage often wish to bottle up their designers, to keep them from leaking information about the upcoming products to others. This is always a mistake, as designers suffocate in a vacuum and become institutionalized, meaning their ideas are no longer innovative. He mentions a few areas that attempted to create an industrial park were firms in similar industries would cluster, in which these experiments failed because there was no collaboration or information sharing outside of the firms involved.
Diversity is a critical factor to innovation. Designers who communicate only with others at the same firm soon develop a cadence and run out of fresh ideas. Even designers who communicate only in their local community have a limited pool of information. The discourse must be global. As evidence, he cites hos own study in Italian furniture manufacturers - the most innovative companies had design departments that we split equally between Italian and foreign designers, whereas less successful competitors had a small minority of designers from the international community.
Attracting Innovators
Talented and innovative designers are a critical asset in a competitive market. Companies recognize this, but also struggle to make themselves attractive to the talent that they require. This is because few of them understand what is appealing to innovators.
Primarily, it is not a matter of only money. While designers contribute significantly to the profit of a firm and expect to be justly compensated, financial success is not their primary motivation. Innovators want to innovate - to work for firms that enable them to apply their insights and problem-solving skills. In companies where designers are merely doing cosmetic work on the same old products, designers quickly become bored and listless, and there are numerous examples of highly successful designers who took a lower-paying job in a less prestigious company because the work was more interesting.
This is also the reason that firms that are already known as innovative are attractive to innovators: the company has demonstrated a commitment to being innovative, which means that it provides its employees the support and latitude they need to do the kind of work they want to do. A firm whose product line is stuck in a rut will have great difficulty attracting innovative minds - while they may say they want to become innovative, their actions speak louder than words, and their culture is generally hostile to innovation.
Location is also a significant factor, as designers tend to congregate in areas where there is a cluster of similar firms. Northern Italy is an area where furniture designers gather, just as Paris is where fashion designers gather, just as Silicon Valley is where computer programmers gather. Talented people come to these locations because of the abundance of opportunity and designers who work in other parts of the world feel they are missing out.
Industry is not the only thing that creates a cluster of innovative people - a school, a cultural institution, or the presence of renowned personalities also draw designers to a specific demographic location. A good example of this is the popular music industry, whose epicenter hops from one location to the next every few decades, generally arising in a location where several artists associated to a popular style are located.
Of course, it is not sufficient to flock to the current center of design innovation - generally, this is what the imitators do in order to hop on the bandwagon of early innovators. To be a leader rather than a follower, a firm must seek out the emerging talent and the emerging epicenter of innovation - it must be at ground zero when an explosion of creativity occurs rather than being among the many who flock there after the fact.
(EN: I'd take it a step further, to suggest that many firms and individuals are attracted to a place where the explosion took place decades ago. It seems a bit ridiculous that amateur musicians still flock to places like Portland, Memphis, and Austin - which were hotbeds of creativity at one time, but not for many years.)
Obsolescence
While it is easy to compile a list of the most influential designers of the past decade, it's nearly impossible to compile a list of those who will become the most influential designers of the next decade - and the author is certain than many of the names in today's list won't be listed, or even remembered, ten years into the future.
Successful designers tend to become "spoiled by success," that once they have been recognized for one specific innovation, their work then becomes variations on a theme, milking their one great idea for all it's worth rather than continuing to be innovative in different ways. They become the paragons of classic ideas, who seem time-locked to the era when their work was successful. Meanwhile, the industry moves on and they become obsolete.
Consider the succession of periods in artistic expression: Impressionism, Symbolism, and Art Nouveau all arose in France within three decades of one another - yet there is no artist who is considered a master in all three schools. The leading Impressionists were not prominent, or even included, in the Symbolist movement, and are remembered in history as icons of the Impressionist movement ... and nothing else. The same thing occurs with design movements - consider architecture as an example.
Companies are even worse than individuals when it comes to resting on their laurels and attempting to milk out the last drop of profit from past successes. Consider the Swatch Group, who revolutionized fashion wristwatches in the 1980s. The company remains in business today, still selling essentially the same product to a dwindling market.
To a lesser degree, external changes in technology and culture also make a given approach to design obsolete - but this is also a tendency of a firm or an individual to cling to the past. It makes little sense to use tools or design products that are no longer relevant to the market, and instances in which there is a resurgence of interest are extremely rare.