brand driven innovation

Here’s what prof. Dr. Jan Buijs wrote on the DMI conference. We spent the week with him, he’s a great guy and a veteran in all that concerns design, innovation, creativity and education.

Summary Design Thinking
DMI conferences Paris, April 2008

JB thoughts/ideas/concepts/…. after three days of Paris brain crunching. Both the academic conference on design thinking as well as the beginnings of the professional conference about design as the linking force. And getting back all those old memories of earlier design/creativity and innovation conferences and of editorial comments in the famous design/creativity & innovation (research) journals.

jan buijs and me at dmi paris 08

Design thinking as the linking force

Its a linking force between *):

• all functions inside the company
• all relevant (probably all) departments
• and within the “open innovation-concept”: this goes beyond corporate borders (so with and including all outsiders) (think about Fleur’s PhD project)
• clients/customers/users
• suppliers and distributors
• the whole chain (including pre-sales, sales, purchase, USE, maintenance, cleaning, repair, second (or more) use, recycling and or discharging)
• and all other relevant stakeholders from the outside world
• brand, the products & services and the company as a whole, regarding ALL touch points, and ALL strategic issues (values, planning, mission, vision, HRM, etc)

It is based on consumer/user insights:

• Empathy
• “trans-mission Renaults design expedition teams”
• cultural-, demographic-, sociological-, psychological-, and etc-issues are always involved
• empowering the user/client/customer/buyer/…
• but the user is not the designer!

it is Sensorial:

• Visual
• Realistic
• Tactile
• Experiential
• Multi-modal sensorial (sight, sound, smell, taste, feelings including gut-feeling, excitement, hate, disgust, etc)

It is Playful:

• Funny
• Mistakes are useful = learning
• Experimental
• Imaginative
• Playing opens up for risk-taking (better: playing reduces risk awareness; for the child everything is possible)(Viva the homo ludens!!!)

The releveant Design process is:

• Diverging-clustering-converging steps (the famous “Wybertjes (=diamonds) model”)(opening up and closing down don’t bite each other)
• Many iterations
• Defining problem and finding solutions are one intermingled process
• Searching, probing, checking, testing in all possible sequenses and strings
• Pictures, images, schemes, charts, relation diagrams as well as words are used without any priority
• Colorful (pencils are important)
• Analogies and metaphors are important stimuli (helps bridging the borders of the participating other disciplines)
• Intuitive as well as rational
• Linear as well as circular
• Logical as well as chaotic
• Individual as well as team work
• Very confident in insecure situations
• Human-oriented as well as material and objects oriented
• A professional process for professional and skilled users (=well trained & educated designers) only!

• Using specific (design) methods (a.o. stage gate models, PoR’s, brainstorming, collages, context mapping, user tests, prototypes, simulation, focus groups, observation, …..)( see all the design methodology and design theory books)

It is Inquisitive

• Curious
• Learning
• Open minded
• Borderless
• Passionate
• Seeking for surprises (according to Donald Schön – the guy of the Reflective Practice theory- only when surprises are encountered by the professional (= designer) the moves which have been executed will be reconsidered; in all other circumstances you just go on! See PhD theses of Kees Dorst and Rianne Valkenburg)

It is Human Centred:

• People first
• “others too” (including non-users, ex-users, and by-standers, also including other species (dogs, cats, and a.o. the gold fish!)
• societal and political consciousness involved
• history/cultural heritage consciousness involved and should be sensitized
• embedded in the product & the process
• ethnographic / anthropological orientated

It is a Team activity:

• Shared understanding (about process, as well as content, methods, quality, ambition, goals, etc.) (See Maaike Kleinsmann’s PhD thesis)
• Co-design (multi-disciplinary/transdisciplinary/empathy/interested in others)(See Frido Smulders’ PhD thesis)

• Acceptance finding (over all relevant parties/stakeholders/users/people/…..)

• Open to others (See forthcoming PhD thesis Marc Steen, 2008 )

Prototyping is used for:

• Teambuilding (see Concept cars for Renault)
• Inspiration both internal (teambuilding & developing new knowledge) as well as external (showcases)
• Getting shared understanding
• Are a kind of ‘projecta’s” (see graduation project of Lindy Hensen, march 2008). Would be an interesting subject to write an article about!
• Influencing the context (showing what you are capable of) as well as intriguing the context so much that they are spontaneously giving feed back (Patrick le Q about the right color of the prototype for getting the convincing photographs in the journals! And the counting of all “hits” in the popular and professional press of their concept car photo’s and the following reactions)

*) these bold headings and the bullet lists are not (yet) placed in a logical or a ranking order. They appeared during my writing and thinking process, while walking a full day through Paris and occasionally resting at a brasserie or café. The primarily editing was executed in Hotel Saint-Louis Bastille at the end of a long day walking.

JB 17/04/08

First impressions about friday April 18.

Miguel-Angel Munar (lawyer by training, since a couple of years CEO of Roca, the Spanish based global market leader of bathroom ceramics and accessories). Good story about how design became their main strategic instrument for innovation and growth. But for the biggest in the field ( 40 million versus # 2 less than 20M and #’s 3 & 4 10M or something), and with nice profits, it is difficult to convince the company to change. So the well known struggle between operational excellence and innovational excellence. Sales: “ why do we need to change, we are selling like hell and make good profits!”.
This innovation/design strategy is developed in cooperation with Park (which gives a nice feeling for me as one of their educators).
One of the tricks is the Innovation Lab. A rotating system in which 5-6 designers yearly are relieved from daily business to participate in develop ping future concepts (once again a kind of “projecta’s”). Do nice user tests: going to the Amazone to investigate hygiene and living with water for free, and going to the Sahel to investigate hygiene practices in a context with no water at all.
In their company vision for 2020 they want to become “the global leader in defining bathroom experiences.. And “the only way to escape the commodity world is to design and innovate”. And “from cheap products to rich experiences”.

Clive Grinyer (Now Orange France, next month Cisco)
Nice critical story about the weaknesses of Design. Only 4 % of the product innovations are successful (9% in pharmaceuticals).But also design is usually used to put lipstick on a pig, which does not make the pig nice!.
Organized his story around friends (Jony Ives, Philipe Strack), family (father, wife), Bosses and the rest of the world (a.o.) Gordon Brown.
It was a cry to the colleagues of design to do something about it.
A nice and juicy story/ Used his father for a strong example of “user misunderstanding”: his father is around my age, travels a lot, and knows about “old” technology (has a MGB as a hobby). During the design process of Heatrow airport they had discovered that people like Clive’s father went often to the loo. So they decided to put more loos on the new terminal 5. Asking his father about his peeing needs, dad explained that the only place you can hear the announcements for flight changes etc. is in the loo’s ! So it is not their bladder, but their hearing!
He summarized this experience as: “design should more often go to the toilets of life”. Made me think about our meeting at Boeing during the study tour a couple of years ago (the gas damper to avoid hard noise of the toilet set while flying in turbulence!).
He was talking about the total customer journey.

Surya Vanka, Microsoft.
We had met before on the beer bust on sunday evening. He knows Tjeerd Hoek. And so loves Delft!
At MS they release 4 new products every week. Vista is translated into 130 different languages. 360 different NPD-teams work at MS. Therefore customers experience complexity (he showed a picture of a plane cockpit) and changing is very seriously, due to all the millions of present customers.
Some nice quotes:
“fail fast”
“design has an important role to play in moving innovation in a human oriented way”
“lead with design; valdate with the user”. (the DMI website will shoe the nice slides)

PY Panis, chief designer at LeGrand (switches, etc)
Nice story about how important design is in strategic thinking, and how to circumvent the present distribution channel (= electricians). The DIY shops showed great support for new designs. Now a website supports this.

• “design is not just about style”
• “design should be everybody’s business”
• “design as the magic potion (remember Asterix):
• Especially interesting because switches are completely irrelevant in the design of an ordinary house (as seen from the end user).

Some afterthoughts about earlier sessions:
Children in focus groups about future car design always talk about the missing the loo (PlQ)
The Medici effect: innovation always happens on the crossroads. (Kone)

General remarks:

• In the academic conference about 50% women, in the professional about 30%
• Brigitte de BdM is charmed with Delft. A visiting professorship is welcomed. She now works at Brunel, but that is ending in September 2008…….
• Our graduates are doing fine in this domain (a.o. Tim, Frans, Marjolein, Ruth, Erik, Christa, Priva guy replacing Judith)
• Delft is respected and well known.

These last recordings are made in the Thalys, setting next to Max of Mexx.

The last stint between Rotterdam and Utrecht I have used to memorize the most important people I have met during the conference (by heart, not by looking in the list of participants):

• Brigitte Borja de Mozota
• Rachel Cooper
• Tom Lockwood
• Sabine Junginger
• Kathryn Best
• Brigitte Wolf
• Tonni-Matti & Markuss
• Monika Hestad
• Caroline Meads
• Partick Le Quement
• Liebeth Svengren Holm
• Marcus Janke
• Surya Vanka

JB 18/04/08

Tags: brigitte borja de mozota, clive grinyer, design management, design thinking, dmi, european conference, jan buijs, kathryn best, miguel-angel munar, paris, patrick le clement, py panis, rachel cooper, sabine junginger, surya vanka, thomas lockwood

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