Design & Innovation

Innovation or reverse innovation. Philly.com in my opinion has reached a new low for measuring their advertising results and developing a new media plan. They have added fake advertising to their site. If you scroll down to the bottom of one their fake ads this is what it reads:

“The Derrie-Air campaign is a fictitious advertising campaign created by Philadelphia Media Holdings to test the results of advertising in our print and online products and to stimulate discussion on a timely environmental topic of interest to all citizens. All names, identities, characters, persons, whether living or dead, companies, situations, offers, products, services, and other information appearing in this campaign and the associated website are fictitious. Any resemblance to real or fictitious names, identities, characters, persons, whether living or dead, companies, situations, offers, products, services, or other information, is purely coincidental and unintentional. In other words, smile, we’re pulling your leg.”

It is definitely something new, but how can you test the likliness of someone clicking on an add, if you you’re not even bring truthful to your cusomters. Something might be eye catching if it’s totally off the cuff versus if it is for say, orbitz.com or something of that nature.

With advertisers struggling to meet their sales quotas they need to think outside the box, but perhaps using design thinking principles and utlizing their readers to help design their products they would have more success.

I have to admit that I find the “Dyson man” mildly annoying and get a kick out of the commercials where he says that he has devoted his life to developing the perfect vacuum. Now really? Devoted your life … some people devote their lives to curing cancer, others to helping address world hunger, and Mr. Dyson man …. the perfect vacuum. Joking aside, I must say that I appreciate the design thinking that has gone into Dyson’s products. The newest product that they are promoting is the roller ball vacuum …

In case you haven’t seen the commercial, the roller ball platform is designed to increase the range of motion and enable the vacuum to have greater maneuverability in relationship to standard vacuums like the ones we all know and love.

I have to admit that this innovation seems to make a ton of sense and am surprised that vacuum manufacturers have not considered it before. You see plenty of minor “upgrades” to vacuums like HEPA filters and additional attachments, but rarely do you see a “disruptive” innovation like the Dyson’s ball vacuum. Couple this innovation with the extra strong suction power (sometimes almost too strong - I know someone who works in the flooring industry and says it can actually suck so hard it starts to pull the fibers right out of your carpet!) and we can see why the Dyson is becoming such a hot item on wedding registries and homeowner’s lists!

Another good article from this month’s Inc. was about P&G’s concept for using innovation for growth and how small businesses and entrepreneurs can use this process regardless of their size, industry or product type. The goal is to design processes that will ensure companies continue to innovate repeatedly and reliably. Because most of are still business minded and are looking for a step by step process, I thought this article might helpful for bringing your ideas to life!

The steps identified include:

1. Find out where to play, and playing in a market that is underserved. There are better chances than inventing a new technology that may not be needed or may be only a trend. This involves selecting a strategy that make sense for the small company and not trying to be something that you can’t possibly be.

2. Use your customers to develop your product or service offering. In my case, because we do PR on behalf on many of our clients is to involve them in the marketing plan and brainstorm process so that the most well rounded plan is developed with their customers in mind. The more successful they are, the more successful we are.

3. Generating new ideas through brainstorms. One new insight was “In small companies some people invent and many people execute, but everyone must observe.” The more I read about new ideas for design, the more I think of new ways to incorporate in our business and in my every day life. The article talks about those that generate ideas should partner with another employee to gain feedback on its viability and to hash out details.

4. After the ideas are harvested, the next step is find out which ones are the most promising. Every quarter P&G project teams lay out their ideas and research on a poster board. It is as time for others to comment and ask questions and help to improve the idea. The best ideas may be implemented as a product.

5. Prototyping is the obvious next step, which bring us back to IDEO, Gehry etc. and the importance of design at the beginning stages. The author suggests that the sooner you have a visual the easier it will be to make improvements or adjustments. In this stage utilizing those that will use the product is particularly important because they will be your biggest asset or detriment depending on how well the design is executed.

6. For small business that have good ideas, they might not have the capabilities to take them to market, therefore a really good idea if marketed properly could be developed and manufactured through a larger company. P&G and other major consumer products companies are looking for these opportunities all the time.

7. As the company grows, it is important that the design team grows as the company grows and that they are implemented in all aspects of the business. Design thinking can be found in any discipline, from marketing to accounting to IT. In this stage it is also important to teach the new employees to use the same design thinking process so that as the business grows, each employee learns how to innovate for themselves. Although innovative companies usually are made up of innovative people, those that make the operation decisions must help breed innovation.

This morning I read an article in the WSJ about strategies for small business who used design elements to help “seal the deal”. The first case study was about a small manufacturing company in Ohio called Riten Industries. The company had realized that customized parts was beginning to be a larger part of their business (also the most costly and needed the most resources). Because their company was so small they lacked depth to get these things done. They needed a design solution that would help them solve this problem. The one they came up with a web site overhall that included a portion where customers can create a custom drawing or modification of an existing product and submit it virtually to get a price quote. Although the upfront cost was nearly $40,000 it was a huge opportunity cost saving, and more importantly the customer was involved in the design process. Their solution enabled them to see into the mind of their customers rather than estimate what types of products they would need. Their sales and web traffic were up as as a result and 80% of visitors who submited a design ended up buying their product!!!

This truely is design thinking at it’s finest.

Wow, what a whirlwind of a week it was in San Francisco.  Now that I have had time to decompress, sleep in, and review my notes I figured I would share some insights from each of the visits last week.  May end up being a few posts.

Matt Mullenweg – Founder of Wordpress and Automatic.  What I found most interesting from Matt’s discussion was how the company distributes workflow and how the employees communicate with each other.  For a company of that size where the employees are scattered across the world the passive chatting through blogs and twitter makes sense.  The chatting results in real time discussion and a better alignment of work to prevent duplicated efforts.  I know much larger companies are trying to implement similar systems.  It will be interesting to see how they manage liability and communication.

Yahoo – The best part of the visit with Yahoo was the range of presentations.

Marc Davis’ presentation on the future of mobile computing was interesting from a futuristic point of view.  However I thought his most apt point was when he said that “the most fundamental design problem is the design process itself and we must rethink most basic assumptions.”  In a way I think this is where the process of design thinking starts. 

Klaas Kaasgaurd’s presentation on customer insights was unique because he really spoke to the overlap of market research and user centered research, by saying both are important.

Luke Wroblewski’s presentation focused on three main points that have caused design to be more important in business.  First the fact that markets are maturing faster means that design as a method for differentiation matters sooner in the business or product life cycle.  Second, design thinking allows companies to better adapt to the continuous flux of information in today’s society.  Third, due to the increased complexity of peoples lifestyles and products design helps to invoke meaning and apply context.  

Here’s an interesting video that features a talk by Timothy Brown of IDEO, on “Innovation through Design Thinking”, delivered last year at MIT.