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The Ten Faces of Innovation by Tom Kelley
IDEO is one of the world’s foremost design consultancies. They design products for clients with the aim of making beautiful, useful and efficient items. They also design services and processes for clients.
Tom Kelley was the general manager of Ideo at the time of writing this book, which came out in 2005. I missed it when it launched, but having read it I feel must share it despite my general practice of only reviewing the best of the latest.
The easiest way to improve your bottom line is to remove all unnecessary costs until the operation is as lean as possible. Then comes the problem – what next? After a quarter of cost-cutting with good bottom line results, how does one improve the business in the next quarter?
As Tom Peters said: “You can’t shrink your way to greatness.” The only way to grow your business is to innovate.
Ideo has developed a worldwide reputation for innovation, which is why businesses from hotels to supermarkets and hospitals to manufacturers have turned to them for ideas.
Kelley identifies 10 ways in which innovation occurs and which he calls “the 10 faces of innovation”.
There is the Anthropologist and, similar to the profession, being an innovation anthropologist requires immersing oneself in the subject.
At Ideo, the first phase of an assignment is to do a “deep dive” into the subject. Innovation does not come from wild guessing, but rather from deep knowledge.
The famous anthropologist, Margret Mead, believed that the correct way to do field work is to immerse oneself in the subject and “never come up for air until it is all done”.
Kelley describes how a group of Eastern European soft drink marketers improved sales at a railroad station using this technique.
Rather than sitting in the office and guessing, they spent extensive time studying the behaviour of commuters. What did they do as they waited? What did they look at? How did they move? They observed commuters' subtle as well as obvious behaviours.
What they noticed was that commuters would look towards the beverage machine, and then glance at their watches as if they were calculating whether they had enough time to grab a drink.
Acting on this subtle clue, they put a large clock on the beverage machine so that commuters could see how much time was left before their train would depart. Sales soared.
Another “face” is the Experimenter, the most obvious type of innovator.
The Experimenter tries new things and creates prototypes he can adjust if they do not work well enough. Prototyping is an essential feature of Ideo’s method. A prototype is a cheap and rough mock-up of what the final product could look like.
At Ideo they make ideas tangible with sketches, cobbling together crude creations so people can start thinking about them. This is a reversal of the more common process of thinking and then making – the Experimenter makes and then thinks.
Consider the difference between the older television format and the flat panel TV. The geometry of the flat panel is so vastly different to the older design that when it first came out, people had difficulty visualising how it would fit into their homes.
The head of marketing at electronics retailer The Good Guys experimented with how to get people to make faster decisions about purchasing a flat panel TV.
She made a newspaper insert folded like a map that opened into a 42 inch picture of a TV – a full size prototype of a very flat TV. You can envision family members holding it up against various walls, and deciding where it would fit best.
This cheap and effective prototype made decision-making so much easier.
The power of prototypes lies in their capacity to provide the visual or tangible for consideration and improvement.
A very easy way to innovate is to take on the role of the Caregiver, another of the 10 faces of innovation. This type of innovation is not a product; rather, it is the human dimension of innovation.
Think of a superb caregiver in a medical context - the doctor or nurse who exudes competence and confidence. They attend to your needs, answer your questions and soothe your anxieties.
Best Sellers wine shops know that many people who enjoy drinking wine know little about this vast and complex field and are intimidated by the array of vineyards, vintages and varieties.
As a caregiver, founder Joshua Wesson likes to say: “We know wine, you know what you like,” and he has designed his store to combine the two to satisfy his customers.
He has simplified the complexity of wine by dividing the budget white wines he sells into four taste categories: fresh, soft, luscious and fizzy.
The reds are divided into juicy, smooth, big and sweet. From his colour coding to his wine tastings, he makes sure his customers feel confident and competent at choosing wine.
Tiffany, the very high end jeweller, started advertising necklaces from $100 and engagement rings from under $1 000. This is caregiving in another form.
They have lowered the fear factor of walking into a high end jeweller when you have a limited budget, so that you would know the attendant won’t look down at you if you only have $100 to spend.
Simplifying dealing with your firm and making your customer’s experience more comfortable, physically and emotionally, is both easy to do and powerful.
Think of how little it takes to clearly map and inform the public of the steps of any process, from checking into a hospital to checking in for an airline flight.
Have you noticed the fear or confusion of first time patients, or flyers, or visitors? A caregiver, with a parent’s love, would smooth the way with directions and advice.
No matter what work you do, you will find many great ideas and thought stimulators in this one book. It will inspire you to innovate and like a good caregiver, set you comfortably on your way.
Readability: Light --+-- Serious
Insights: High +----- Low
Practical: High +---- Low
- Fin24
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy. Views expressed are his own.
IDEO is one of the world’s foremost design consultancies. They design products for clients with the aim of making beautiful, useful and efficient items. They also design services and processes for clients.
Tom Kelley was the general manager of Ideo at the time of writing this book, which came out in 2005. I missed it when it launched, but having read it I feel must share it despite my general practice of only reviewing the best of the latest.
The easiest way to improve your bottom line is to remove all unnecessary costs until the operation is as lean as possible. Then comes the problem – what next? After a quarter of cost-cutting with good bottom line results, how does one improve the business in the next quarter?
As Tom Peters said: “You can’t shrink your way to greatness.” The only way to grow your business is to innovate.
Ideo has developed a worldwide reputation for innovation, which is why businesses from hotels to supermarkets and hospitals to manufacturers have turned to them for ideas.
Kelley identifies 10 ways in which innovation occurs and which he calls “the 10 faces of innovation”.
There is the Anthropologist and, similar to the profession, being an innovation anthropologist requires immersing oneself in the subject.
At Ideo, the first phase of an assignment is to do a “deep dive” into the subject. Innovation does not come from wild guessing, but rather from deep knowledge.
The famous anthropologist, Margret Mead, believed that the correct way to do field work is to immerse oneself in the subject and “never come up for air until it is all done”.
Kelley describes how a group of Eastern European soft drink marketers improved sales at a railroad station using this technique.
Rather than sitting in the office and guessing, they spent extensive time studying the behaviour of commuters. What did they do as they waited? What did they look at? How did they move? They observed commuters' subtle as well as obvious behaviours.
What they noticed was that commuters would look towards the beverage machine, and then glance at their watches as if they were calculating whether they had enough time to grab a drink.
Acting on this subtle clue, they put a large clock on the beverage machine so that commuters could see how much time was left before their train would depart. Sales soared.
Another “face” is the Experimenter, the most obvious type of innovator.
The Experimenter tries new things and creates prototypes he can adjust if they do not work well enough. Prototyping is an essential feature of Ideo’s method. A prototype is a cheap and rough mock-up of what the final product could look like.
At Ideo they make ideas tangible with sketches, cobbling together crude creations so people can start thinking about them. This is a reversal of the more common process of thinking and then making – the Experimenter makes and then thinks.
Consider the difference between the older television format and the flat panel TV. The geometry of the flat panel is so vastly different to the older design that when it first came out, people had difficulty visualising how it would fit into their homes.
The head of marketing at electronics retailer The Good Guys experimented with how to get people to make faster decisions about purchasing a flat panel TV.
She made a newspaper insert folded like a map that opened into a 42 inch picture of a TV – a full size prototype of a very flat TV. You can envision family members holding it up against various walls, and deciding where it would fit best.
This cheap and effective prototype made decision-making so much easier.
The power of prototypes lies in their capacity to provide the visual or tangible for consideration and improvement.
A very easy way to innovate is to take on the role of the Caregiver, another of the 10 faces of innovation. This type of innovation is not a product; rather, it is the human dimension of innovation.
Think of a superb caregiver in a medical context - the doctor or nurse who exudes competence and confidence. They attend to your needs, answer your questions and soothe your anxieties.
Best Sellers wine shops know that many people who enjoy drinking wine know little about this vast and complex field and are intimidated by the array of vineyards, vintages and varieties.
As a caregiver, founder Joshua Wesson likes to say: “We know wine, you know what you like,” and he has designed his store to combine the two to satisfy his customers.
He has simplified the complexity of wine by dividing the budget white wines he sells into four taste categories: fresh, soft, luscious and fizzy.
The reds are divided into juicy, smooth, big and sweet. From his colour coding to his wine tastings, he makes sure his customers feel confident and competent at choosing wine.
Tiffany, the very high end jeweller, started advertising necklaces from $100 and engagement rings from under $1 000. This is caregiving in another form.
They have lowered the fear factor of walking into a high end jeweller when you have a limited budget, so that you would know the attendant won’t look down at you if you only have $100 to spend.
Simplifying dealing with your firm and making your customer’s experience more comfortable, physically and emotionally, is both easy to do and powerful.
Think of how little it takes to clearly map and inform the public of the steps of any process, from checking into a hospital to checking in for an airline flight.
Have you noticed the fear or confusion of first time patients, or flyers, or visitors? A caregiver, with a parent’s love, would smooth the way with directions and advice.
No matter what work you do, you will find many great ideas and thought stimulators in this one book. It will inspire you to innovate and like a good caregiver, set you comfortably on your way.
Readability: Light --+-- Serious
Insights: High +----- Low
Practical: High +---- Low
- Fin24
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy. Views expressed are his own.
