It is interesting to see how high-profile innovation practitioners express their views on innovation. I just noticed a reference to an interview of Ivy Ross, Chief Creative Officer for Disney Stores on Bruce Nussbaum’s NussbaumOnDesign blog (who was in turn referencing Diego Rodriguez’s Metacool blog). The interview appears at Ambidextrous and is interesting. In general, Ivy makes some very insightful observations, but I don’t think her comments are always on target.
Ivy makes the statement, “… creativity and innovation are built around trust and freedom. Companies don’t get that. They think it is a process. It is really about creating trust between the people creating and the freedom to go to new places.” If she had said that collaboration is about trust, I could certainly agree; but she is talking about innovation. Innovation is not about trust; innovation is about truth.
The notion of good innovation practice being about truth is well supported in the literature. You don’t have to look hard to find this leitmotif wafting in the papers and publications of many of the most respected names in the field of innovation. For example, when Clayton Christiansen talks about understanding the job that a product performs, what he is getting at is the need to look beyond the producer’s pre-conceived notions about what the function of his product is and discover the truth of what customer needs your product should be fulfilling. The theme can also be found in the work of Jan Carlzon when he talks of moments of truth and the need to recognize every customer interaction as a defining moment. A more recent manifestation of the theme is found in Erich Joachimsthaler’s recent book where he outlines the critical value of understanding the opportunity space that is defined in part by your customers’ goals, priorities, and activities.
So how can people find truth? Reliance on serendipity is not the answer. In fact, to hold such a position in today’s corporate environment is at best irresponsible. It is interesting to note Ivy’s words on her method of seek answers. She articulates the steps as: taking in information, processing it, and reconstructing it. Call me a cynic, but this sounds like a loosely described process to me. The fact is that if you want to break away from the quagmire of fruitless, accidental innovation, then you must embrace the notion of informed design and the structured methodologies for achieving repeatable innovation.
It is good to see that Ivy does acknowledge the basic thesis of informed design. She talks about eating everything (gathering information) and the value of building on the ideas of others. This is at the core of the informed design principle. However, it is also important that people eat the right information diet. In design and innovation, you truly are what you eat. In our information rich environment, we are all awash in data and challenged to find the useful information that will help guide us to new insights. This is why infrastructure is needed to support our innovation efforts.
Ivy is right on target with her statement, “You have to dissect what is the value of that connection.” Here she is pointing out the need to question the motivation and utility of our products—in essence, to surface the truth which is latent in the market and extract the key value driving parameters around which the design process should be focused. It is also important to understand, that she rightly points out that until innovators consider the complete needs set of customers, they will not be able to arrive at the optimal whole product—the right-to-market entirety.
All these factors are essential to realization of value driving innovation competence:
- understanding that innovators should seek to uncover the truth of the market in which they operate
- embracing that innovation process is needed to achieve sustainable innovation
- equipping designer and innovators with the proper tools and infrastructure to help then sift through the vast mountains of information they has available to them
- expanding our innovation vision to consider the customer need set holistically and map those needs into the deliverable value of a client-product connection
These principles will help guide designers and innovators to the truth—the truth defined by customers latent goals, priorities, and activities—and the truth will lead to the freedom of creativity and innovation that Ivy describes.
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Posted by: Graziano | June 08, 2007 at 11:19 AM
I think you misunderstood Ivy's comment. Innovation may be about truth, but neither truth, nor innovation (nor creativity for that matter) will ever surface if there is no trust or freedom.
That is why she uses the word "built around" not "about."
Posted by: maria | June 09, 2007 at 07:35 PM
Hello Maria,
Of course, only Ivy knows what she meant to say, but her words are quite clear: “It is about creating trust between the people creating…”
No doubt, given the context of the question she was answering, it is reasonable for her to assert that a team collaborating on an innovation project will be able to explore more richly if the members feel free to explore unconventional lines of thought. However, not all innovation happens in a team environment. Also, some collaborative teams many be distributed in a virtual world separated by time and space such that the notion of trust is a relative and subjective attribute of the environment.
Keep in mind that innovation is a response to stimuli: dissatisfaction, threats, changing needs, etc. In the absence of a perceived need, there is no motivation to innovate. Many things can stimulate perceived needs including mistrust.
I do agree with Ivy that trust is highly valuable and beneficial in some innovation contexts, but as general statement her comment is off a bit. For innovation, trust is not always required and is never sufficient.
Posted by: James Todhunter | June 11, 2007 at 10:36 AM