Digital Digressions

Siftables - Realworld digital manipulation

This is so great - saw this at MIT a few years ago and so pleased to see how much further this concept has evolved since then. Imagine if all those complex tasks you perform today with a computer, keyboard and mouse - could be done with gestures, simply by moving blocks around? Sounds like child's play you say. Well, have a look at this, forget touch screens and go for blocks instead!

The LEGO Innovation Model

Innovation is one of those topics rife with debate and often what is innovation to one person is business-as- usual for the next. Communicating an innovation is often half the job of getting it on the shelf and innovators and designers alike, regardless of where they work, often have to be relentlesss lobbyists and use sophisticated tools of persuasion to further their concepts such as fancy presentations, multi-media, eye-popping visuals - you name it, these are the tools of the designer witch-craft. Needless to say, invariably the more skilled you are in all this, the more sought-after you are as a designer.

What we did at LEGO revamping our innovation process flew in the face of a lot of this. We recognised that some of this 'witch-craft' was getting in the way of making solid business decisions. Concepts were bought into, not because they had a solid business case behind them, but because people developed emotional attachments to them or saw it as their ticket to career advancement to push something through, regardless of the cost. To be fair, this happens all over the place, not just LEGO, but the difference is we chose to do something about it. Arguably some of this, along with the very hard work of the entire organisation in many different areas goes some way to explaining our remarkable turnaround from the doldrums in 2003 where our survival as a company was at stake. Last year, we posted our best results ever in the company's entire 75 year history. Perhaps just a little bit of that remarkable turnaround was down to this.

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/About-Design/managingdesign/Design-at-LEGO/

The link above leads you to the full case study published at the Design Council site and it makes not only for some very good reading, but also is a timely reminder of the value a common tool can have in bringing different disciplines together working on innovation that combines design and business thinking instead of encouraging a war between the two. Having a shared language is tantamount to bringing people together and this model in particular has helped us have some hard-hitting, but objective debates about the merits of concepts and collectively understand how to improve them. Only by creating a shared foundation can you have any hope in trying to solve a problem together.

LEGO Play - Constructing knowledge and transforming the world

Every now and so often I get these questions  like 'explain the meaning of life on one page', which get your head spinning and are entirely possible to answer, but never without spending a long time meditating on that answer first. For that particular question I have an answer, which you may or may not agree with, which is: Happiness, but I digress.. This particular question though was on the subject of explaining LEGO play, which although simple in some ways: you put a bunch of bricks together in any way you imagine - can actually be pretty complex if you delve into what is actually happening between the lines so to speak.

So if you ever wonder about that question, here's my take on an answer.. and discuss!

Most of us automatically associate childhood with play more than anything else. Children play as often as they can; play is fun. Play also contains in its very foundation all the most important elements that allow us to learn[1], to make sense of our experience and find our place and voice in the world.

 Give the mind a hand, and give the hand a system (or pattern, or language, or logic)

 LEGO play champions a “low floor, high ceiling and wide walls”[2] approach – meaning the threshold to begin play is low, but only the sky is the limit by virtue of literally endless combinations possible with LEGO bricks. The wide walls is about supporting a broad range of open-ended exploration and discovery, yet underpinning it is a shared build system creating an intuitive set of constraints challenging one to think up iterations to an originally conceived idea. It is the familiarity of this System in Play and its capacity to support infinite variation in expression that encourages exploration of the unknown and a mindset open to growth.

From the day we are born, we learn, thrive and grow in relation to others. Vygotsky in particular emphasizes the role of language and other artefacts in mediating human interaction. Children’s extraordinary talent as learners comes largely from their ability to set the stage allowing them to safely project themselves into the unknown through their imagination[3]. In expressing ideas or giving them form through building with LEGO, we make our ideas tangible and shareable with others which, in turn, helps shape and sharpen these ideas further and in that process we build our knowledge and our view of the world through our own personal experience.[4]

Creativity (as opposed to mere novelty) occurs when you think a thought that is outside the space of thought even conceivable to you[5].

Ultimately LEGO play is not just a matter of giving form to ideas, making them tangible and shareable. It is also a matter of bringing ideas and forms to life by making ourselves part of the play by acting out scenarios, events and stories. Treating our creations as if they were the ideas they stand for is what brings them closer to our mind’s reach and enables us to immerse ourselves with the situation at hand and allows us make a creative leap, in effect transforming our view of the world[6].

LEGO play welcomes young and old, experienced builders and novices, but above all it presents everyone with opportunities for creativity that are dynamic and malleable. The experience of flow[7] often associated with LEGO play is the balance between existing skills and the challenge at hand as well as between the anxiety and impatience in realising your idea.

Much like knowledge is an experience to be actively built, both individually and collectively[8], LEGO is a product that isn't finished when it leaves the factory; your imagination makes it complete. It is a creative material, a catalyst in enabling us to influence the world by building and experimenting, pushing our cognitive boundaries and advancing our collective thinking by growing us as individuals.

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[1] Hans Henrik Knoop, The Danish University of Education

[2] Prof. Mitchel Resnick, MIT

[3] Prof. Edith Ackermann, MIT

[4] Prof. Seymour Papert, MIT

[5] Prof. Margaret Boden, University of Sussex

[6] Prof. Edith Ackermann, MIT

[7] Prof. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Claremont Graduate University

[8] Prof. Seymour Papert, MIT

Avoiding the 3 pitfalls of Innovation based on Insight

Don't get me wrong - I'm a fierce proponent of innovation based on insight. How else would you be able to frame your innovation and understand whether what you are proposing is even relevant, unless you understand the competitive landscape in which you operate? The purpose of this post is not to question whether you need insights or delve into how innovation works or how to fuel it, but instead, assuming you have a smooth running innovation machine - and you work from solid consumer insight - how come things can still go wrong?

Interestingly, cognitive science can help us here, specifically the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, who three decades ago explored the benefits and risks of heuristics, or shortcuts in thinking. Heuristics help to explain the time we get it wrong even when having been presented with all the reasonable information and insight, which presumably should have led us to make the right conclusions rather than the wrong ones. There are three errors, which are common when this happens:

Anchoring error - This is when you seize on the first bit of information and basically make your mind up before you have heard the whole argument, even when some subsequent findings may be contradicting what you seized on initially.

Availability error - This is when some surprising findings emerge that remind you of a dramatic past case and you mistakenly apply mental models or conclusions from that case to new findings and rationalise them in the same way, again leading you to potentially make the wrong conclusion.

Attribution error - Despite getting a ton of insight, it can sometimes be very tempting to group these findings into stereotypes and grossly generalise, to see information as ways of confirming what you already know, rather than seeing the little inklings that your stereotypes aren't correct. Here again the information may be correct, but your use of it incorrect.

These mistakes are all very human and can easily happen, but research in other fields are showing just how dangerous these mistakes can be. In the engineering field these errors can lead to countless hours spent hunting for a technical problem in the wrong place, in the medical fields the very same mistakes can lead to gross misdiagnosis and potential patient deaths and of course in design, to redundant products and solutions. To err is human, but to err without learning from your mistakes is plain stupid.

Debunking Popular Myths about Creativity

Like innovation, there are plenty of misconceptions about creativity out there, which makes it all the more confusing when people are extolling the importance of creative skill in the 21st century. To continue my quest to unravel these complex topics this instalment is all about explaining what creativity is NOT.

• You have to be an artist to be creative There are many creative engineers, scientists, financiers etc. creativity is not a privilege reserved to poets and artists alone. Nor is it a characteristic of loners, misunderstood geniuses or crazy people. It is about invention and innovation, often by teams!
• Creativity is a talent that some have and others don’t Viewing creativity as a talent is one of the best excuses for doing nothing. True, some people have a natural curiosity; an active imagination; a relentless energy; and a desire to think differently. But these qualities can be learnt!
• Creative people are mostly rebels (won’t play the game, play mostly by their rules) As we begin to understand the ‘game’ of creativity, we know how minds form patterns [in which they then get caught] and what it takes for people to move across patterns to generate new ideas (serious play). You don’t need to be a rebel to enjoy the sense of freshness that arises from unlocking stifling thought-patterns.

• Creative people are ‘liberated’, free-spirited and child-like. The ‘liberation’ myth is based on the notion that freeing people up from their inhibitions, and encouraging them to be playful and child-like will unleash their creative fibre. Comparing adult creativity with the playfulness of children is difficult. Children are endowed with a creativity bourne out of innocence because their minds have not yet formed as many stifling patterns. The minds of adults, on the other hand, are filled with many useful patterns to be cracked and bridged for the purpose of innovation.
• Tools and techniques are confining This myth rests on the notion that systematic tool-use is contrary to the nature of creativity, which must be ‘free’. According to this view, materials should be malleable (like clay) and user-friendly (like clay). Contrary to belief, however, materials with an integrity (a ‘logic’ of their own) are often more useful in boosting a maker’s creativity - provided, of course, the maker is a fluent user of that tool!
• Creativity occurs as a single burst of genius Despite the plethora of myths pertaining to this, extensive research into both artists’ most famous works and numerous inventions attributed to a single stroke of genius have shown that instead, ideas emerge through a process of fabrication that evolves over time and through hard work

Instead creativity:

• requires both divergent and convergent thinking
• is not a matter of left brain vs. right brain alone
• involves both problem-solving and problem-setting
• balances tradition and innovation, continuity and change
• combines/blends individual and collective contributions
• involves making the familiar strange and the strange familiar

For those interested in finding out more, have look at  Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation by Keith Sawyer, which gathers all the most recent findings in the field of creativity research and also outlines how different disciplines view creativity.

Understanding Innovation

Innovation is one of those words that are very hip these days. Granted, even I have it in my title. Interestingly, it is also one of the most misunderstood words in business today, so perhaps it's worth spending a little time understanding exactly where it comes from.

If you look for the definition of creativity on Wikipedia, you'll find over 60 different versions - most will agree on the basic premises below and beyond that, the views are radically different depending on your scientific or cultural background. Summarising:

• At the simplest level, creativity is about bringing into being something that was not there before
• Creativity is a mental process involving the generation of ideas and concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts
• Creativity occurs when a person thinks a thought that is outside the space of thoughts that is even conceivable to that person Margaret A. Boden

Now creativity is not innovation, although the two are frequently confused for one another. Innovation is actually made up of two halves:

• Imagination: No new ideas can be generated without a person’s abilities to ‘ think outside the box’ or envision alternative ways in her mind
• Creativity: No insights, however brilliant, will ever be realised unless they are projected out, i.e given material form

A person’s creative expression is the visible face of imagination at work.

Imagination and creativity are each faces of a coin called innovation

With this in mind, innovation becomes a process of fueling the imagination and using creativity to bring into existence the ideas at imagination gives rise to. The two go hand in hand and innovation becomes very hard if a) your imagination is stifled or b) you lack the creativity to bring to life the ideas that you've had.

Therefore fostering innovation is about a process to ensure that there is enough food and stimuli for individual and collective imaginations to engage and about creating avenues for creative expressions to materialise and be improved iteratively either by individuals or collectively. Some past blog posts to inspire you:

Avoiding Creative Apartheid 

Why Innovation cannot remain in the realm of the few

The 7 Must-Do's of Innovators

How to Encourage Innovation in Business

The Conditions for Thriving Innovation

That is not to say that these traits all need to exist in a single individual, instead they can collectively emerge in a community, in an organisation, a film crew, and so on. Successful organisations, communities or creative groups accommodate both the acquisition of stimuli to inspire the imagination of members as well as individuals with an ability to creatively realise those ideas. Collectively or individually, an essential part of innovation is the social dimension that fuels imagination and creativity as well as the process of iterative improvement. None of us are as smart as all of us.

What Makes a Good Toy?

All the recent attention focused on the toy industry courtesy of safety concerns seem to have not just caused any Chinese-manufactured toys to be viewed with suspicion and sent parents trawling through the Internet in search of advice on the matter, but also caused a wider shift in spending patterns link as parents increasingly worry about finding something for their little ones this Christmas, which won't get recalled in a few months time when someone licks it and finds it poisonous.

This in my mind doesn't just touch on ensuring even better quality control on toys, but brings in to sharp focus two potentially incompatible value-systems: on one hand - the desire for safety and quality; on the other hand - the (almost) accepted transitory nature of many products (temporary diversion rather than long-term joy) and the subsequent unwillingness of some to spend money on products where safety and quality are taken extremely seriously.

Certainly in the toy industry nobody likes to point fingers and it is a matter of ensuring that each manufacturer takes responsibility for this, however with a lot of the focus on price, China has in recent years been a very tempting solution for many trying to keep abreast with a larger consumer trend of continuously wanting everything faster and cheaper than before. Quality takes time, it costs too and that can be a problem if your company's business model can't support the investment in it.

Back to lamenting toys I was recently asked what in my opinion makes a good toy, so here's my personal list of criteria:

1. Age appropriate - small children in particular like to put everything in their mouth and are very  tactile in their play and exploration of the world - that means that the materials used and size are essential in making the toy safe. Older children have better fine motor skills and have stopped 'chewing' on everything to figure them out so can better handle small pieces.

2. Hands on - minds on: children's gross and fine motor skills along with coordination mature earlier than other parts of their brain so it is important that their toys stimulate movement and coordination, both on large and small scale. The ability of the toy to engage your mind and imagination is essential as children learn about both themselves and the outside world through their imagination.

3. Easy to learn but challenging to master - this gives the toy longevity and guarantees interest over time.

4. Many ideas and opportunities - it is important to be able to learn through the toys, but if they do not encourage experimentation and idea generation the learning will be short-lived

5. Fun alone and together - being alone and together is important for kids, both with their own peers but also with their parents, so toys that can handle both enable role-play and storytelling that kids both love to hear and to do for themselves, alone and together.

Now some toys tick all the boxes, others only some, but it's important to remember than there are many kinds of toys, each with their own strengths and a good mix is important too, but above all they must all encourage play, the more the better!

 

 

Five Keys to Engaging the Customer to Produce Real Innovation: Lessons From LEGO

Many thanks to Helle Winding for sending me the link to this excellent post over at marketingprofs.com  where Leland D. Shaeffer takes a deeper look at five specific ways that Marketing can engage the customer in the innovation process, using examples from LEGO Group, where we continue to use these techniques successfully.

5 key points dominate the innovation process:

1. Learn from your Lead Customers
2. Co-design with your customers
3. Empower your customers to create their own designs
4. Let customers 'spead their wings'
5. Help your customers gain recognition for their designs

The article is an excellent insight in to the many initiatives running at LEGO. Only through walking the talk of 'None of us are as smart as all of us' is it possible to truly realise the potential of open source - by giving people a meaningful platform where they are listened to and empowered to collaborate with us. These are immensely inspiring times to be working at LEGO and what makes me want to get up in the morning is the commitment we all have in enabling people young and old to explore and harness their unique creativity. Read more 

Designers as Facilitators of Collective Creativity

Back in the day when I went to design school, the greatest aspiration uniting all my fellow students was to become the next Philippe Starck. The idea of the lone genius, the one people always called upon to create beauty and join form with function, the duck that consistently always laid golden eggs for his clients - this was, and in some circles still is, the ideal for designers.

Creativity and why designers are not artists
What's the difference you may ask. A good question to ask as both rely heavily on their creative skill to create solutions. According to Arthur Koestler, the most-cited authority on creativity, every creative act involves bisociation, a process that brings together and combines previously unrelated ideas. He contrasts bisociation with association, saying that association refers to previously established connections among ideas but that isociation involves making entirely new connections among ideas. Koestler’s definition addresses all forms of creativity, whether in art, science or humor.

So designers, artists, scientists, you name it all rely on creativity for coming up with solutions, but the difference between designers and artists is ego. Designers (at least good ones anyway) divorce their egos from a project early on to immerse themselves in research, ethnographic studies, insights of various sorts to come up with solutions that best serve the needs identified by users. Artists on the other hand delve in much greater luxury, not necessarily materially speaking, but in terms of accountability. Their works of art are born out personal briefs, passions and ideas - not a common need or problem and are specifically bought, because of their personal interpretation of the reality we all live in. It is their synthesis of subjects in to visual, interactive or 3 dimensional form that evokes an emotional and intellectual reaction in an audience. You can argue here that the above is similarly the reason why we buy certain products, because the name of the designer has become synonymous with compelling design that we appreciate. That is entirely correct, in some areas the roles are particularly blurred as is the case with fashion design for instance, where the designers behave more like artists (some more than others), but who are still commonly referred to as designers.

The Advent of Collective Creativity
Fast-forward to 2007 and our CEO at LEGO, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, speaking about collective creativity and its power to create stunning products and solutions; 'Why have 100 designers, when you can have a 100.000?', he poignantly asks. And I think: absolutely! Why not indeed - whereas I can in my mind's eye hear all those designers gasp quietly in the background, this is the sound of their dreams vanishing before them.

What does he mean? Knudstorp is referring to the power of collective creativity. Collective creativity occurs when bisociation is shared by two or more people. We are beginning to see that collective creativity can be very powerful and can lead to more culturally relevant results than individual creativity does. This is what happens with really good collaboration based on teamwork.

Liz Sanders from SonicRim articulates this very well her article on the subject. All people who touch and are touched by the “product” that is being designed should play a role in collective creativity. (By “product” I mean products, interfaces, spaces, etc.) These people fall into two main groups: “makers” and “users.” “Makers” include all the members of development teams from disciplines such as marketing, engineering and design. “Users” include people who shop for, buy and end up using the product.

Collective creativity is already being practiced in industry today by “makers.” In fact, most design firms sell their interdisciplinary product development experience. The biggest opportunity for improving the quality of products that we design today is to practice collective creativity with "users." Others agree. Design critic Rick Poynor has argued that "since design is something fundamental to being human, it can’t be left solely in the hands of designated practitioners."

Architect  Christopher Alexander writes “People need and have a right to determine and shape their own environment. . . . They are the only ones who know in a profound way what they need . . . .Good architecture can only come from wholehearted involvement of the users in the shaping of their buildings and streets.”   

Why is collective creativity important?
To quote Liz Sanders here: Collective creativity, when practiced with "users" in the design development process, can result in useful and relevant innovation. This is important because useful and relevant innovation can be commercially successful at the same time as it is culturally beneficial. The shift from individual to collective levels in thinking and doing is occurring today in many domains. We see this shift taking place especially today in the world of business. Design education needs to keep up with the shift to meet the challenges created by new levels of thought and action.

The changing role of the designer
The days of the super-star designer are numbered. The skills needed to facilitate collective creativity are very different from what the lone genius does in his corner. First there is humility and the profound appreciation of the role ordinary people should have in shaping and creating the project of their dreams. It is no longer the designer who tells the world what the solution should look like, it is the designer who uses his/her expertise in unlocking creativity to enable others, who perhaps habitually are less confident in the creative realm, to unlock their thoughts, ideas and creativity.

At LEGO work continues to expand the ability of ordinary people to create the product of their dreams. An approach pioneered by the Mindstorms NXT development process of involving the Mindstorms community in designing the hardware, software, the toy and pieces for the new robot, has rapidly continued into completely user-designed products sold through the company's LEGO Factory channel, where users can indeed create their very own LEGO model and buy exactly that model as well as be inspired by and buy the creations of others. This of course in parallel with existing product development of LEGO toys, still handled by designers themselves - but even here community interaction is becoming more and more commonplace as the insight and ideas coming from LEGO users are simply too valuable to ignore. Long gone are the days of the lone genius - instead here we are at the advent of collective creativity where the power of many creates far better products and experiences than any one of us could have dreamt up on our own.

Why Innovation Cannot Remain in the Realm of the Few

Last week a long-standing dream of mine finally came true when I had a chance to visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. Even back in the day of studying product design at Central Saint Martins I was always intrigued by the level of experimentation, technical prowess and simply outright genre-busting design and thinking that was going on at the MIT Media Lab and I always wished I could have studied there too. As some of you know, the LEGO Group is a Consortia Research Sponsor and thus chance and fortune collided and enabled me to take part in both the fascinating H20 or Human 2.0 event last Wednesday and the Sponsor day on the Thursday. Both events gave me a unique insight into what it means to be human in the 21st century and how innovation is fuelled on a large scale, seemingly infecting all that enter the Media Lab premises.

Seeing all this made me think of innovation yet again and how the Media Lab was different from many other places I have visited in its attitude and relation to innovation. What strikes you when entering the premises is that innovation is seen a bit like oxygen - it's there, people don't even question it, everybody breathes it and moreover, everybody CAN breathe it, because it is natural. Too often, whether you are in a company or even browsing a bookstore for that matter - innovation seems like the new buzz word, something of a dark art that most people are mystified by, only few people master and more over, a billion-dollar industry exists to tell us how we can become better at it. Of course you will be amused to know that innovation is also part of my job-title, but rather than make me feel special or privileged I feel a strong, sometimes even daunting, responsibility in trying to engender it in everyone around me, empowering people to come with solutions themselves, acting more like a facilitator than some lone genius in an ivory tower.

A book I'm currently reading, called The Upside by Adrian Slywotzky delves into depth explaining what companies do to minimise risk when innovating. He very convincingly points out that not only is it a matter of identifying an opportunity and ceasing it, but how in fact most innovations are likely to fail, even when they are 90% right for the purpose they were developed. Slywotzky goes through a series of examples, including the development of the Prius, the Ipod and others, highlighting just how many steps were required to create these successes and how innovation was present in each and every one of those steps - proving conclusively that innovation has to happen at every level in a company to make such successes as the Ipod to really take off. A product innovation alone wouldn't have gotten Apple to where they are today, but instead a deliberate strategic application of innovation at successive steps of the process, towards the end involving over 50 people, a large project by Apple's standards, but essential in making sure that all parts of the business were optimised to deliver what we now know to have become a legendary example of innovation: the Ipod.

Slywotsky in fact lists a number of principles in his book, which seem to crop up again and again as an approach that works, a formula that ensures that Innovation doesn't remain in the realm of the few, but instead permeates an entire company and ensures that even the tiniest chances of success are systematically increased over time, step by step, by consistently and continuously involving everyone and ensuring that innovation is something everyone contributes to and is part of, rather than a select few.

1. Work fast to pre-empt competition - crazy deadlines mean you get people's undivided attention rather than the phenomenon of mission creep - when deadlines get drawn out, because people get involved in other things in the meantime
2. Share information freely, openly, between all - set up an email sphere in line with what the fifteenth-century mystic Nicolas of Cusa described as 'something whose circumference is nowhere and whose centre is everywhere. Everyone on the mailing list stands equally close to the centre of the action and everyone is capable of being the centre at a particular moment in time - able to draw energy from everyone else in the group to solve today's most pressing problem
3. Encourage young, flexible minds who like to challenge the norm and think in new ways - sometimes this is the only way to stop things being done the way we always have done them. In fact, encourage people to think this way whether they are young or old!
4. Always take pride in asking the toughest questions -about customers, their needs and interests, and the ways the company's business processes can serve those customers better.
5. Plan for version 2.0 - i.e learn from your mistakes and put the learning back in the organisation!
6. Design your business model (distribution, communication etc.) as shrewdly as you design your product!

Now these are very generic bits of advice and the really interesting thing is reading all the case studies and seeing what combination of general advice (above) was mixed in with strategic measures to address the specific weaknesses of the company mentioned. It's always a mix of both - but interestingly, in each of the successes mentioned, it was the deliberate involvement of all parties to the solution, early on in the process that created the necessary momentum to deal with everything else. Thus innovation should be, much like it is at the MIT, like the oxygen in an organisation - we all need to breathe it and we all CAN and SHOULD, because only then can breakthroughs happen!

The Rules of Creativity According to Kids

Recently I had the pleasure to meet Mitchel Resnick, a professor at the MIT, and listen to his presentation of the Lifelong Kindergarten project. Resnick is famous for his book Turtles Termites and Traffic Jams where he outlines how control emerges from apparently independent behaviour. Another book, by Kevin Kelly, called Out of Control also touches on the same topic and the central thesis in both works is the notion that you cannot know in advance every possible permutation of situations that can happen and subsequently devise centralised solutions for it, instead you can create adaptive intelligence by building seemingly simple layers of sensing and functionality on top of each other, enabling complex intelligence to emerge.

To put it more simply: How does a bird flock keep its movements so graceful and synchronized? Most people assume that the bird in front leads and the others follow. In fact, bird flocks don't have leaders: they are organized without an organizer, coordinated without a coordinator. And a surprising number of other systems, from termite colonies to traffic jams to economic systems, work the same decentralized way. Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams describes innovative new computational tools that can help people (even young children) explore the workings of such systems--and help them move beyond the centralized mindset.

His Lifelong Kindergarten project is a tribute to the value of the iterative (design) process - the power of such processes in enabling learning, creativity and innovation to take place. He explains this powerful notion in very simple terms, but they resonate across all spectrums, because of their inherent power to foster new thinking. Resnick argues that more of life should be like Kindergarten, not in the sense that it's all primary colours and very basic, but that we should strive to create more working environments, projects and creative spaces open to exploration, discovery and learning as opposed to those fixed mindset-inducing situations where people are measured as opposed to encouraged to grow, as I talk about in my previous post.

His take on the creative process is very simple, yet powerful:

1. Imagine - open your mind to possibilities, imagine, be creative - if you don't know how below are some great suggestions by kids who are part of the Computer Clubhouse project in how to come up with great ideas.
2. Create - Based on your ideas, create something!
3. Play with it, try it out, experiment with it, does it work like you intended, why? or why not?
4. Share it with others, find out what they think?
5. Reflect - what does it all mean, the experiences playing with it, sharing it, maybe something can be improved?
6. Imagine how it could be improved, what else could be done, start a new cycle of ideas.

This leads me to a great definition I came across recently - the difference between Creativity and Innovation:

• Creativity - the capacity to generate ideas

• Innovation - the capacity to generate ideas of value to others

This to me is pivotal and explains succinctly what makes great products, experiences, services and what are simply creative ways of approaching those subjects.

Now back to imagination - it can be daunting sometimes, but Resnick provides a great checklist, as developed by kids, on how to get you started:

1. Start Simple
2. Work on things you like
3. If you have no idea, fiddle around
4. Find a friend to work with, share ideas
5. It's OK to copy stuff (to give you ideas)
6. Build, take apart, rebuild
7. Lots of things can go wrong - stick with it.

Now that list of advice beautiful in its simplicity - no need to embellish it with fancy words and explanations, it is there, fair and square and totally valid whatever you are trying to get your head around!

Success is a Mindset

Why is it that some individuals become geniuses, others retire as millionaires, business empires get built seemingly from scratch and in other cases talented individuals never rise beyond mediocrity, regardless of their field or profession? Some attribute this to luck, others claim it is down to what talent we are born with or that we are either smart or not, but in all cases people are wrong. Success is not down to what you are born with, it's about what you make of the things you are born with. In other words, it's down to whether you have a fixed or a growth mindset.

A fascinating series of studies by Stanford Professor Carol S. Dweck have been collected in a newly released book titled Mindset - The New Psychology of Success   capturing the intricate, but crucial differences in how people with these mindsets look at the world and what effect that subsequently has on their lives, their chances to succeed and ultimately their happiness.

The Fixed Mindset
Believing that your qualities are carved in stone - the fixed mindset - creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. So many people are stuck with this all-consuming goal of proving themselves - in the classroom, in their careers, and in their relationships: every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence, personality or character: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser? These aren't just things we pick up as we enter adulthood, but Dweck delicately points out that as a parent, you can have a profound impact on whether your child falls into the fixed or growth mindset, same in schools - in fact society at large seems to have conditioned us to think that talented people always get ahead and those smart enough don't have to work hard - they just do it. The truth is no one just does it - but how can learning even be fun when your whole being is at stake every time there is a test, a competition or a deadline?

The Growth Mindset
The people with a growth mindset have a far more open way of looking at the world and themselves in it - traits are not simply a hand you have been dealt and have to learn to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you are secretly worried it is a pair of tens. In the growth mindset, the hand you are dealt is just the starting point for development. It is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way - in their initial talents, and aptitudes, interests and temperaments - everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

Do people in this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person's true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it is impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil and training.

Did you know that Darwin and Tolstoy were considered ordinary children? That Ben Hogan, one of the greatest golfers of all time, was completely uncoordinated and graceless as a child? That the photographer Cindy Sherman, who has been on virtually every list of the most important artists of the twentieth century - failed her first photography course? That Geraldine Page, a great actress was advised to give it up for lack of talent?

You can see how the belief that cherished qualities can be developed creates a passion for learning. Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it is not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

Who has accurate views of their assets and limitations?
Interestingly, studies show that people are terrible at estimating their abilities. Professor Dweck and her students recently did a study to find out who most likely to have inflated views of their abilities and try for things they are not capable of? It turns out that those with the fixed mindset accounted for almost all the inaccuracy. The people with the growth mindset were amazingly accurate.

When you think about it, this makes sense. If, like those with the growth mindset, you believe you can develop yourself, then you are open to accurate information about your current abilities, even if it is unflattering. What's more, if you are oriented toward learning, you need accurate information about your current abilities in order to learn effectively. However, if everything is either good news or bad news about your precious traits - as it is with fixed-mindset people - distortion almost inevitably enters the picture. Some outcomes are magnified, others are explained away, and before you know it you don't know yourself at all. Howard Gardner, in his book Extraordinary Minds, concluded that exceptional individuals have 'a special talent for identifying their own strengths and weaknesses'. It's interesting that those with the growth mindset seem to have that talent.

The book
Rather than merely going over the differences between the two mindsets, Professor Dweck does an excellent job of also explaining the background to these mindsets, that we may in fact be riddled with both of them, but in different areas or parts of our lives. She further takes a very hands-on approach to explaining how to spot when you are in fixed mindset thinking and then how to move yourself in to the growth mindset thinking instead. The book is littered with case studies of people from all walks of life, explaining how people have conquered their fears of failure to become successful individuals. Despite Professor Dweck being an academic, the book is surprisingly straight-forward, even chatty in places, but ultimately a very approachable book and one of the most useful I have read in a long time. Not only do you learn to examine yourself and your own behaviour as a result of reading this, you also learn to be supportive to your friends, loved ones and partner, and moreover, how to turn your workplace into a positive environment where people thrive. I find my coaching skills have improved dramatically too - highly recommend reading this book!

A LEGO Universe On-line!

Some of you will have already heard the latest and most exciting news by the famous maker of coloured bricks: announced at the Game Developer Conference this year The LEGO Group and NetDevil have joined forces to bring the extra-ordinary and much-loved universe of LEGO to all as a Massively Multiplayer On-line Game (MMOG).

A vast effort is currently taking place to design and program the foundations for the largest, open-ended universe of endless possibilities ever to grace our screens - a universe as deep and creatively challenging as an ocean full of LEGO bricks! Something I always dreamed of as a child: an endless supply of LEGO bricks - perhaps physically a challenge to house, but no longer an impossibility when going on-line. It will be a wonderful place for experimenting, meeting your friends and joining in to play, and true to the LEGO values, if you can imagine it: you will be able to build it!

If you are interested in joining this effort to build and test this universe when we go into Beta, follow this link and sign-up with your e-mail address!

LEGO MMOG

Simplicity ... or too far?

As repeat visitors to this site will have noticed, simplicity has made an entrance in the look of this site of late. The question is, has it gone too far? My firm belief is that simplicity will win the day, and that blogs are there to be read, not give you a headache with visual clutter. Have I gone too far? Does it work or do you think a little more colour wouldn't hurt? Give me your thoughts on the poll on the right and let's see whether we stay minimalistic here on Digital Digressions or go for something a little more in your face..

From Insights to Innovation

Just back from a conference in lovely Amsterdam on the subject of 'Converting Insights into Actionable Results', my mind buzzing with two days' worth of presentations from the likes of Coca-Cola, Volvo, Sony-Ericsson, Procter & Gamble etc. on how they use insights in their respective companies.

In some respects it really sounds like Insights is the new buzzword replacing the now so droll-sounding 'market research', but in many ways people still treat it the same. They agonise over it, mine it, look for it, pay people to come up with it, talk to consumers in hope of finding it - but it seems the true gems of insight are hard to come by. They are retrospectively self-evident, as Coca-Cola likes to put it, but that statement itself makes insights hard to spot, because the ones that are really going to make the difference aren't yet the ones that you have the luxury of hindsight to identify them with.

What also surprised me about this conference is that there is a lot of emphasis on using insights on what consumers want, need and complain about in the beginning of a process to inspire solutions, but very few, if any, have actually set up any process to detail how this feedback changes as a result of action. We use the Net Promoter Score at LEGO to drive the development of our consumer touch-points and to evaluate how successful initiatives are in improving these scores. That is a simple way of validating whether what you thought addressed a fundamental insight, actually does any such thing.

So what is the point about insights anyway? You can take a starting point in anything, to help guide a problem-solving process - but you could say there is value to be had in understanding how to better meet consumers' needs. That in itself may not actually be something you can find out by asking consumers themselves. It is down to you to collect information, process it, digest it, sleep on it, combine it with other things and collectively emerge smarter by having a more compete understanding of the multi-faceted picture, which is the reality for us all these days.

The danger with what people perceive as insights (consumer research) is that they are confused with people's opinion on things. Opinions can change very quickly and aren't really fundamentally useful for anything long-term, as they hold truth only for short periods of time. This means that although you can have a quite healthy turnover and a bunch of seemingly happy customers, they may only stay with you until there is a better alternative around the corner. Their opinions are thus next to useless in telling you what you should be developing next.

A more useful area for insights is understanding people's lifestyles. These change too, but not too often, maybe 5 times in our entire lifetime - when we we are children, teens, life after university and before children, life with children, life after children have flown the nest - the lifestyles at these different life stages are quite different and they tend to last for a few years at least, before there is a significant change. The downside is that the change can be quite radical and both opinions and preferences held whilst in the previous life-stage, may change radically as a result of moving into a new lifestyle.

The most interesting area for insights are people's values. These change hardly at all. Children up to the age of 12 tend to mirror their parents' values almost exactly, whereas ages of 12-25 are characterised by the deliberate experimentation with and independent (from parents) search for your own values. After your 25th birthday you are very unlikely to change your fundamental values on things, and thus - gaining insights of these will be much more useful long-term than anything else. One could argue that this very fact is what creates mid-life crises in people as earlier years of life and career may be linked to highly extrinsic motivations (proving to the world you have made it), whereas lasting happiness in life comes from satisfying your intrinsic motivation. If you haven't discovered that, before settling on your values, you will feel a sense of conflict later on in life, but more about that in another post.

Transforming insights into innovation is another hurdle in its' own right - on one hand it is about finding those golden nuggets, then it's about defining and creating platforms where innovation can happen - areas where there is growth potential, where your company can bring something unique to the mix and which is in-line with where your company wants to go and its brand. After identifying these areas you almost have to start all over again - sifting through your existing body of research to work out what is relevant in the light of the platforms you have identified for innovation. Some will add more depth and relevance to what you have already identified, others will highlight areas where you need to find out more and lastly, any new concept based on these platforms may themselves end up generating more insights in the process of being developed and tested.

But in many cases we are not there yet - the community specialising in insights and research are often not the people charged with implementing activities based on the insights identified, change is hard to digest among these specialists and being put in charge of it is even harder for many. Thus we still end up in the same dilemma as before: we may know what is right, but are we capable of acting upon it?

Scrybe: Where Art Thou?

If you read my rant a while ago about Scrybe you must have gathered how excited I was about this - my problem is: I never made it into the Beta tester crowd! As you might have noticed any cool software worth having these days is something in a Beta mode, primarily housed on the Internet and combining cool functions and features you will have grown accustomed to being housed previously in several different programs (all at an extortionate price), this time all in one and probably for free. Or so it seems. That's why we love them: the promise of simplicity, user-friendliness, productivity with low or no (God forbid!) hassle.

Then you find your holy grail, like I did (see for yourself in this little movie clip below) and what happens? Absolutely nothing. For months. I mean, I have been waiting since about September! And I am cheeky, so every couple of months I go to the Scrybe website to add my email to their list of people who want to Beta test (in case they have lost my previous entry... or because there might be strength in numbers... or submitting entries more times might convince them I REALLY would like this piece of software RIGHT NOW) in any case: to no avail. Every time I type my email address in the little box, I get the kind little reminder - your email has already been submitted. Thank you.

This is sublime irony if there ever was any - so please please Scrybe people, if you have one of those nifty RSS trackers that pings your in-box with an extract every time some poor blogger is writing about your (excellent if I may add) software - here's another poor blogger desperate for all the features and functions you so effortlessly extol on your little video - please: release it already or I WILL throw my PC out the window..

The 7 Must-Do's of Innovators

Having spent the last five years in front-end innovation and now moving into a new role managing an innovation process I have come across a few must-do's when it comes to enabling innovation in companies. Innovation is one of those hip words that is back on the agenda after everyone has cost-cut their way out of trouble and Total Quality Managed themselves until even the morning coffee making adheres to a strict Six Sigma process. There is a lot of expectation on Innovation to deliver prosperity for all. The trouble with innovation is that it is a delicate thing and there are more ways of doing it wrong that there are for doing it right. To keep things simple I have tried to gather some fundamentals into this post, the must-do's if you like - so the thinking is that if you manage to do these you are already halfway there to being a successful innovator.

1) None of us are as smart as all of us
Many companies leave the 'innovating' to a group of select few, thinking that only this way there will be someone dedicated to the pursuit of innovation. There is nothing inherently wrong with this thinking, it is more the attitude and role people play in this situation. Innovators are at best facilitators, great listeners and connectors who bring together people from many parts of the company to distill the best thinking from around and turn it into bankable opportunities. This is the best case scenario, however more often than not these experts are easily be tempted to withdraw from the greater hustle and bustle of the organisation to concentrate on 'innovating' in peace.

For innovation to happen and make it to the market you need everyone and even more importantly, you need everyone's support and insights, because you cannot afford to alienate people from the process of innovation by creating two classes of citizens: those who get to have fun and think of ideas all day long and those, whose job it remains to get on with the daily grind and put food on the table for everyone else. If this is the case you will find that magically, most ideas will get killed before they ever get to market. Why? Because the rest of the organisation became bent on ensuring the ideas from this select crew would never make it further than the Ivory tower. Why? Because by not involving anyone else, there is no reason for anyone else to champion the ideas in the absence of this 'special' group. And ideas get killed. Over and over again.

2) Let a thousand flowers bloom
Unfortunately this rather useful title was first mentioned by Chairman Mao and with very unfortunate consequences. Here appropriated to explaining that not every idea has to be a blockbuster. Sufficient numbers of small or incremental innovations can lead to big profits. And many apparently blockbusting innovations are in fact several clever smaller ideas combined together in an unbeatable package. So you never know where that tiny idea might lead, so let it out!

3) Innovation is everywhere
Don't just stare yourself blind at the next product innovation, innovation can come from anywhere: marketing, production, finance, supply chain, distribution or even the famous janitor who no one ever thinks of asking except in films. And I'm not kidding. It was in fact a janitor who thought of the way to fix a textile company's problem with thread snapping and made the company fortunes. The only reason his idea was heard was because a new executive joined who was committed to hearing out any idea regardless of where it came and his openness and affability encouraged the janitor to speak up. When asked how long the janitor had had the idea he replied '30 years', which goes some way to explaining how much hackneyed focus on a select few 'problem-solvers' alone can cost a business in the long run.

4) Don't strangle the baby before it's born
The random serendipitous nature of innovation is what usually freaks out anyone whose job it is to stare at a spreadsheet and far too often the rigid controls applied to established product lines and businesses are hurriedly applied to things that are only half-baked and with devastating consequences. The planning, budgeting and reviews just end up strangling the life out of any innovation efforts. Here different approaches need to be put into place and rather than focusing on how much the idea will make when launched, focus efforts on understanding who will want it, why, for what, how often etc. A detailed understanding of the insights to consumers or customers not only benefit the development process, but also highlight mismatches early on.

5) It takes effort to develop an idea, but it takes courage to change it once it has been defined.
It's hard to get things right the first time, particularly if you are truly trailblazing in a new field. Rather than let this get you down, plan to test things often and with real users - why not involve your potential users in developing the idea, this way you are making sure things don't get lost in Chinese whispers, but stay customer-focused at all times. Moreover, on another level, companies need to encourage employees to challenge the status quo, if people are rewarded simply for doing what they committed to do, rather than acting as circumstances would suggest, you end up creating a band of yes-men rather than budding entrepreneurs.

6) Lay off the financials, lay on the love instead
Interpersonal skills, connections, sharing the love - whatever you call it, it is what makes companies go around. Albeit loosening the financial measures on innovation, companies should absolutely demand that interpersonal connections between innovation and the rest of the business are there. No more navel-gazing, innovation is a shared responsibility!

7) Communicate don't procrastinate
The temptation is always to stick the boffins together and assume that as long as they knock their heads together something bankable will emerge. The trouble is that experts and specialists in narrow fields aren't always the natural connectors and communicators, patient and willing to explain in lay-man's terms what the latest great invention is all about. Collaboration is a great lever and connectors are great at unleashing this, so never set up innovation without someone like this on-board. They are worth their gold in building support, connections for the team, bringing people on-board, mobilising help, input and ensuring that there is broad buy-in for the innovation. Moreover, they are great at keeping the team together, it is hard to innovate if no one's in for the long haul, building trust and team spirit takes time and communication.

The Simplest Way to Program Ever - Just Sketch!

Did you ever hope making things come alive would be as simple as merely drawing them on a piece of paper? Did you ever wonder what would happen if your drawings did come alive? Wonder no longer, this wonderful bit of video (sent to me by Edith Ackermann at the MIT, thanks again Edith for making my day!) shows you just how that can happen. Don't be dissuaded by guy with moustache in the beginning, just watch what he does... it's magic! I want one!

The Value of Stupid Ideas

On a plane yesterday I was once again indulging my habit of reading random magazines that I pick up at airports while killing time waiting to board. This time equipped with the latest edition of New Scientist (4th November 2006), I stumbled on a fascinating article about Francis Crick, the man who discovered DNA. Apparently nothing like what we normally associate with the 'mad scientist' stereotype, Crick was neither eccentric, absent-minded or shy, quite the opposite: extrovert, loud and fond of pretty girls, Crick seemed to be doomed to remain the outsider in an otherwise quite insular scientific community.

Although a man so vividly etched in our minds, courtesy of countless science lessons at school, Crick only got going in his career as a scientist at the age of 31 when he finally gained a research studentship at Cambridge. Prior to this Crick had spent time working on anti-ship mines for the Admiralty and coasted his way through college earning himself a second-class degree in Physics. Matt Ridley's biography of Francis Crick, the first to appear since he died in 2004, gives an excellent and fast-paced account of a long, astonishing life: Crick could serve as exemplar for late starters and for those who refuse to quit.

What caught my eye in this very entertaining article was the attitude, behaviour and relationships that Crick nurtured through countless visits to the pub, where he claims his best ideas came to him and were developed through endless conversations, especially with a series of close intellectual partners. Among them were Jim Watson, Sydney Brenner and the young neuroscientist Christof Koch, with whom Crick worked for the last 18 years of his life. Special partner or not, the rules were always the same:

" There was no shame in floating a stupid idea, but no umbrage was to be taken if the other person said it was stupid"

To me I couldn't put it down any better myself - the essence of creative thinking and the openness, frankness and boldness that one needs to display to truly boost creative sessions to the next levels. All too often people either sit and hold in their ideas, for fear of sharing them and others not acknowledging their contribution or even simply for the fear that a 'stupid' question or idea would somehow brand them as 'thick' for the rest of their lives. Thus far too often discussions end up contrived, or silence ensues and problems don't get any closer to being solved because inadvertently everyone's watching each other and taking cues from the collective reluctance rather than pushing the boat out and daring to speak out.

If there ever was a motto for brainstorms - it would have to be the above statement in my mind. Stupid ideas a great if expressed in an environment where people have the guts to say the idea is stupid and why, but moreover, dare to think about what would make the idea less stupid. For any good idea to emerge it will invariably take countless stupid ideas to get the debate going and if everyone can remain objective, refrain from any personal attacks or being spiteful or ironic, those stupid ideas are the blessing which lubricates minds and gets creative juices flowing and before long, behold the truly brilliant idea walk up on stage, take a bow and save the day!

A while ago I wrote about Running Creative Brainstorms, a collection of non-method methods if you like, things I have discovered are essential to the creative process and to getting some really productive brainstorms going. I would now, in retrospect, like to add the above statement to it too,  because in my mind it expresses so well the respect and appreciation we need to have for all our colleagues and team members that participate in a creative discussion - nothing shuts down minds and mouths sooner than a sense of not being valued, appreciated and respected in a team!

Coolest Party Invite I've Seen in a Long Time!

This one I just had to share with you all - the coolest Halloween Party invite I've received in a long time. Get this - they actually handed out these bags with eyeballs in them, not just pictures... for obvious reasons I can only feature the photo of it here..Big shout out to the three nutty professors responsible for what will no doubt be a very cool party:  Brian Ellis, Tim Ainley and Dan Kruse!