do_matic

Matisse: Constrain yourself to push your design craft

(Mattsse, Goldfish and Pallette, 1914-1915)

On Saturday, I visited the new Matisse show Radical Invention at the MoMA. On display is Matisse's experimentation with his craft between 1913 and 1917. The show (and the curators) explained a couple of things to me.

First, Matisse would give himself a constraint (the same subject matter, the same color palette) allowing him to focus on variation in technique. Why worry about composition or subject matter if you want to focus on something else altogether?

Second, a piece could evolve quite significantly over the course of several years. One style would morph into another. We could see the faint lines of a prior manifestation underneath the end result. The subject would be shaped and reworked ("The Italian Woman" stands out in this respect). Perhaps Matisse was the inspiration for Photoshop tools?

These principles naturally extend to those of us working on our craft or design skills. By picking a direction or a mode of expression or a technique quickly at the beginning of a project, we can focus our energy on learning or experimenting with other techniques.

Design and Innovation: A culture question?

(Some beautiful fungal cultures from Petrichor's Flickr stream.)

I'm in a lot of discussions with clients concerning the idea of creating, developing, instigating and encouraging a more innovative culture.

In these discussions, I've been putting a finer point on the idea of what an "innovation culture" truly is and comparing and contrasting that with other types of cultures. In some instances, a company might not really want or need to create an innovation culture at all.

In particular, I've found myself distinguishing amongst the following cultures (and at an individual level, mindsets):

• Innovative
• Entrepreneurial
• Design
• Human-centered
• Inventive
• Operational or Efficient or Productive

What would you add? What do you see as the similarities and differences of each?

Hey Colin: The future of strategy is design, launch and learn

(Next stop, Eskimo Jo's Flickr page.)

Hey Colin, This is late. Several months ago you asked me "What's the future of strategy?" I've been tossing this around in my head since then. No shit.

You have a William Gibson quote at your desk: "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." So you know the answer.

The future of strategy is: design, launch and learn.

The past of strategy was: deliberate and decide.

And as the William Gibson quote so aptly illuminates, the future is already here. It's Eric Ries, lean startup stuff. It's Clover Food Labs. It's your Business in Beta pattern.

Clay Shirky - The Collapse of Complex Business Models

So, so good...

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/

Thanks to @dave_blanchard for pointing me to it.

I hope it's not an April Fool's joke.

Non sequitur: Questions are the new answers

Working on my Brite Conference talk earlier this week, I wrote this sentence. Then I saw this on the walk to work this morning. I wonder if I saw it before and the phrase stuck.

I'm excited about the talk. It's one of my first times talking somewhat comprehensively (though likely not coherently) about Venture Design.

Line2 in three words: Disruptive. Innovation. Whoa.

When you've been doing this for long enough, your bar for what is simple, good, surprising and disruptive. I've seen a lot of ideas by this point in my career.

Then I read David Pogue's personal technology article yesterday (after being pointed to it by my colleague Sarah L) and simply said "Whoa." I hadn't finished reading it before I started sharing it. Here's an excerpt:

So you have a second line on your iPhone. But that’s not the best part.

Line2 also turns the iPhone into a dual-mode phone. That is, it can make and receive calls either using either the AT&T airwaves as usual, or — now this is the best part — over the Internet. Any time you’re in a wireless hot spot, Line2 places its calls over Wi-Fi instead of AT&T’s network.

That’s a game-changer. Where, after all, is cellphone reception generally the worst? Right — indoors. In your house or your office building, precisely where you have Wi-Fi. Line2 in Wi-Fi means rock-solid, confident reception indoors.

Line2 also runs on the iPod Touch. When you’re in a Wi-Fi hot spot, your Touch is now a full-blown cellphone, and you don’t owe AT&T a penny.

It's a big, big deal. It could fundamentally change: the customer experience, the competitive dynamics within a few industries and the margin model within those industries.

Why is it on the iPhone? Who knows, but it were me it would be because: it's not Google and it isn't a carrier. Dumb pipes.

But wait - maybe not. Time Warner Cable announced yesterday free WiFi in New York City for Cable subscribers.

Horizon Three Innovation: A today problem or a tomorrow problem?

I've been working with a lot of clients lately that use the "Three Horizons" growth framework explained first (?) in The Alchemy of Growth, a book by a set of McKinsey consultants from the late 1990s. Here is McKinsey's enduring ideas explanation of the framework.

For the most part, I'm seeing people misuse this framework. Rather than managing the horizons concurrently, people are using the horizons as a taxonomy for organizing ideas (sounds like a "horizon three idea") rather than to assess relative activity ("do we have a steady stream of S-curves stacked up on the horizon?"). In a sense, they are using the framework to do exactly what it's meant to prevent.

Horizon Three innovation is here today. You just aren't working on it.

WSJ - Even Boulder Finds It Isn't Easy Going Green

This is a great article getting at the behavior change and systemic challenges that even a "granola eating, fleece wearing" kind of place has with going green. Check out the interactive graphics for great economic empathy data.

 

Here's a quick video to whet your appetite:

Inevitability: A tell for disruptive innovation opportunities

My colleague Joe just pointed me to this nice article describing one of the big aspects / inner workings of the Visa business model.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/05visa.html

We do a lot of work in this space and there's lots of room for innovation and designing for users. I was struck by the sentiment in the article that interchange is a God-given right. Hmmm... maybe...

Certainly banks and the associations have real expenses and there is a value they are providing. They should absolutely have a right to capture and compete for that value.

Yet the idea that this situation is inevitable could be a dangerous one to hold onto too dearly within these companies. There are lots of smaller players out there that would gladly halve those fees and take a percentage of the now smaller amount. It's a good message to broadcast to keep competitors at bay and vendors placated...

There are some firms trying to do it, but that are having trouble competing effectively quite yet. The barriers and scale benefits are still difficult for these entrants to overcome. But some big folks, Google among them, are playing with payments.

Where else is there an "inevitable system constraint" in this industry or any industry?

It could point us to other disruption opportunities.

Get generative by thinking small

I thought this Seth Godin post was excellent:http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/you-dont-have-the-power.html

In particular, this passage was inspiring:

Here's a way to think about it, inspired by Merlin Mann: Imagine that next year your company is going to make 10 million dollars instead of a hundred million dollars in profit. What would you do knowing that your profits were going to be far less than they are today? Because that's exactly what the upstart with nothing to lose is going to do. Ten million in profit is a lot to someone starting with zero and trying to gain share. They don't care that you made a hundred million last year from the old model.

That's why I love Discovery Driven Planning with a number like $10MM as a starting point. Why not? Even for the big guys.

Seth is writing about publishing here. I've written a lot about my fascination with the current situation in publishing. Pricing dictated by history and fixed cost hangovers just doesn't make sense to me.

Rita McGrath: Organize for growth and innovation

Rita McGrath has a great post on the HBR blogs on organizing for growth. This quote stood out:

One of the most important jobs a growth group can do is create an opportunity inventory — both of ideas that are floating around in the organization but don't have critical mass, and of ideas that are currently being resourced but perhaps not managed explicitly. Without an organizational home, these critical jobs tend not to get done, hampering the organization's ability to grow.

Check the full article out here:

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/mcgrath/2009/10/create-a-special-unit-to-drive.html

Is quality a commodity?

(Yes, I'll take that one.)

Tim Manners at Reveries points me to this article in the NY Times by Bill Vlasic. The article describes the brand promiscuity that has evolved in the US automotive market. This image makes the point:

Tim at Reveries highlighted this quote:

“Brand loyalty has shrunk because of widespread improvements in the products,” said James Farley, Ford Motor Company’s head of marketing. “The ‘trust factor’ is more or less the same for most cars.”

So is quality a commodity?

Not hardly. Professor Chuck Holloway taught me to be really careful when I used the word "quality." It means all manner of things: availability, reliability, meeting specifications, just plain working as expected, etc.

With an expansive definition of quality, there are all kinds of opportunities for differentiation and excellence. With universally-better or common components, you have the opportunity to focus on quality all along the value chain and in all aspects of the consumer experience. This is happening in consumer electronics where integration is one of the primary drivers of value and consumers are starting to demand less from their goods, rather than more.

My stomach really turned when considering the notion that the 'trust factor' for cars was somehow equal because most brands warrant and make similar claims of reliability.

Is trust solely the realm of product performance? Absolutely not.

Innovation elasticity (or why things get killed)

(Remember these games?)

At some point during an innovation project you ought to wake up in the middle of the night, eyes wide open, screaming into the void: "We're thinking of doing what?"

Although scary to you and your neighbors, this is a great moment. If you aren't waking up in the middle of the night, you might not be pushing hard enough. The trick is to embrace that fluttering feeling and to understand the situation. If you don't, you risk incrementalizing or even killing some really great ideas.

Usually, the business opportunity or experience is stretching "too far" along one or more six key dimensions of growth:

Users: needs, contexts, behaviors, mindsets, jobs, etc
Offerings: product/service, value proposition, pricing, positioning, channel, etc.
Positioning/GTM: how you go to market
Business Model/Culture: margin model and prioritization scheme
Process & Organization: how you get things done
Scope: the business you're in

Your brand, your management and your investors are the "anchors" that snap you right back to what you know you can do today. Business designers should be working with their teams to design novel approaches and strategies to navigate and maintain the right level of tension, balancing growth, opportunities and risk.

Some companies and organizations are capable of stretching more than others; they have higher innovation elasticity. Similarly, certain organizational and innovation governance strategies, like heavyweight teams, help provide slack in the system.

You shouldn't stretch just for the sake of stretching. Nor is it realistic or strategic to stretch infinitely in any direction. People that suggest as much, while often alluring, usually don't know what it takes to get things done. There ought to be some tension in the system. But understanding how nimble you are along each of these key dimensions can help you systematically foresee and deal with the hurdles over time.

Non sequitur: When you sell your magazine business what are you selling anyway?

KazakhstanNewsNet, Portfolio (ironic right?) and other news sites have been reporting the latest chatter about Time, Inc. selling its magazine business.

It just made me wonder, what would I be buying and how excited could I get about what I had and what I could grow? Not only the assets, but also the potential.

If you took an aggressive growth mentality into these businesses, what would you do? Could you even do that?

Why can't... somebody tell me where to set up shop?

I'm going to start putting some ideas up here.

This one popped up when I was walking by a couple of budding restaurateurs (ok, maybe barmen) readying their establishment on 2nd Avenue at 12th Street...

Why can't we leverage the power of location-based information to help companies understand where I should put a store? Or place an advertisement? Or for communities and governments to help have a dialog about what a neighborhood needs?

By coupling mobile phone location-awareness technology with widely available geographic information, the proprietors of this service would sell an integrated analytical offering to developers, governments, small businesses and advertisers. They'd probably start in the top 15-20 MSAs.

The company would likely start as or end up being a strategic subsidiary of a mobile phone company. Mobile phone subscribers would opt-in to be profiled and tracked in exchange for advanced location-based data services or free mobile phone service. These same subscribers could also receive free local information in exchange for their participation or serve like Neilsen families of old.

Systemically, the service would "crawl streets" periodically (think radar sweeps over a particular block for a given time period). A customer could commission a "crawl" and the company could offer a premium service that showed detailed demographic information as well as historical comparisons.

Developers, small business owners and advertisers would use the system to assess locations and neighborhoods. Both subscription and ad-hoc services would be offered. Customers would be able to discover not only what traffic looked like at given points in time, but also where people came from, where they went next and a lot about who potential users or tenants were as people.

The online reporting interface would utilize Google mashups to get street views, data on other complementary and competitive aspects of the area (e.g., competitive businesses, vehicle traffic or a nice park to eat lunch). Developers and advertisers could run "placement" searches across markets, allowing them to drill down on both geographic and demographic information.

The company would likely do a deal with a partner like Trulia to assess corporate real estate rates. Similarly, it would integrate data from sites like Yelp and Zagat to glean sentiment.

The company would have a public-facing, free component that shared basic traffic information and visualizations. Citizens could provide suggestions or insight into certain locations or ask for certain additions to the neighborhood.

I think some of the location-based services (foursquare, Loopt?), data and analytics companies are likely considering this. Does anybody know? I seem to recall a WSJ or NY Times article about a New York-based company running selective monitoring of subscriber traffic flows to profile and create new types of segments.

[Editors note: Jon pointed me to exactly the company, Sense Networks, and the article I was trying to recall. Amazing Jon. Thanks!]

(No street names=other solutions. Japanese neighborhood map courtesy of Kamoda on Flickr and Creative Commons.)