Design Thinking

I posted about the Human Centered Design (HCD) Toolkit back in December. Since then it has been downloaded over 6200 times. It is now available in its second edition. You can find out more about it on IDEO’s website (and download it for free) here and, if you don’t want to go through the hassle of priniting it, order hard copies from Blurb here.

Dan Pink’s talk is now up on TED.com. Here is what I said about it in my post about TED Global:

The last design thinking related talk of the conference was by Dan Pink, author of A Whole New Mind and Free Agent Nation. Dan is writing a new book on the scientifically proven point that intrinsic rewards are far more effective than extrinsic rewards for motivating creative, innovative behavior. Of course anyone who has run a creative organization has always known this but what Dan will no doubt do is get through to the 99% of leaders running companies who still believe that the carrot and the stick is the right way to promote innovation.

On my way from Chicago O’Hare airport to our office in Evanston today I saw powerful evidence of the state of the auto industry in this part of the world. As we drove along Dempster Street we passed a large auto dealer for Chevrolet and Toyota. The forecourt looked pretty deserted and there were relatively few new vehicles on the lot. What there were, however, were about a hundred old SUV’s and minivans, parked inches apart, all with the same word scrawled in large yellow letters on the them – CLUNKER. It was a surprisingly powerful site. On the one hand it was evidence of a shift in allegiance from the old gas guzzlers to new, presumably, more economical vehicles. On the other hand it was a sad image of what was once an all powerful industry that just got it wrong. As far as I could see almost every one of those clunkers had a Ford, GM or Chrysler badge on it. (Apparently the Ford Explorer was the top trade in during the first two weeks of the program.)

No doubt the cash for clunkers scheme has tipped thousands of people towards new, more sustainable cars but it as also served to underline how poorly the US auto industry has been managed for the last couple of decades.

Lego reported a 23% rise in revenues and a 60% rise in profits for the first six months of 2009. What is the secret that causes a company that sells toys to buck the economic tsunami that has afflicted everyone else? One clue is that in particular parents have apparently turned to Lego’s classic products in the downturn. Does this mean that parents are realizing the value of a toy that can be used many times over and adapted to many purposes as superior to products that deliver an entirely predictable outcome?

I credit Lego with introducing me to the idea of design. In the early 70’s England suffered a series of miner’s strikes that led to power cuts. In an effort to help out my mother, I built a flashlight from a collection of light emitting bricks that my Lego collection contained at the time. With this prototype I hoped my mother would be able to see well enough to cook my dinner. Whether or not it made the difference to our evening repast I don’t recall, but it did make me realize that I could build things that were useful to other people. In other words that I could design. I talk about this in the prototyping chapter of Change By Design.

I hope that this resurgence of Lego introduces more young children to the power of prototyping and the opportunities that design holds.

The Mayo Clinic is hosting a symposium on innovations in health care experience and delivery at their Rochester, Minnesota campus in September. I will be speaking on design thinking and health but should that put you off, their are some great speakers on the roster that will be well worth listening to. They include Clayton Christensen, Larry Keeley, Craig Barrett, Linda Avery (23andme), Denis Cortese M.D. (CEO pf Mayo), Karl Ronn (P&G) and Frank Moss (MIT Media Lab).

Check out the website if you are interested in the debate about where health innovation is going. It could be a refreshing change from the circular arguments we are hearing in the press about health reform these days.

The BBC excitedly reported today that Japan has experienced economic growth for the last quarter. It seems as though much is being bet on Asia lifting us out of a global recession. But an important comment came from the Chinese government which has declared that future growth will have to come from domestic demand and not from exports. This represents a shift and I think may be the beginning of an important new phase. Instead of looking to serve global consumers with global brands that emulate the Sonys and Samsungs of the past, Chinese and Indian companies must look to serving and growing their domestic markets. This will require real innovation. Not just in meeting the price points that the majority of domestic consumers can afford but also to meet the social, cultural and individual aspirations of these newly emerging middle class consumers. They will not be the same as the aspirations of Europeans and Americans.The databases full of marketing analysis collected about Western consumers will be little use in this next phase of global growth. They won’t tell us about how people value education over acquisition of material goods. They won’t tell us about the relative values of community and individual. They won’t tell us about the sacrifices people are willing to make to ensure good health, income stability or adequate infrastructure. It is a long time since Europe and America went through this phase of development. The early 20thC for the US and the late 19thC for Europe. Long before the emergence of marketing and design as tools of consumerism and growth.

What are the implications for the great Asian nations and for the organizations that hope to do business there? How will they build the domestic capacity to serve their own markets instead of relying on the marketing experts and design agencies of the West to translate low cost manufacturing into brands that meet Western tastes? How will the threat of global warming and the rules of global trade effect how they meet this challenge?

One thing I am pretty sure of. The only way to find out is to be there.

Paul Romer’s talk on charter cities is up on the TED site. You can see it here.

Here is what I said about his talk in my TED Global post:

Paul Romer, the Stanford economist, proposed the idea that city states are the perfect vehicle for creating systemic change. They are small enough to be able to change the rules and big enough to have an impact. He used Hong Kong as an example of that happening historically. He proposes building new city states in countries where it has proved impossible to change the rules and behavior of society to create economic improvements.