The Journal of Cultural Conversation - The Power of Design Thinking

Hello from The Journal of Cultural Conversation! Laura has just returned from her Peruvian adventures and I've trekked back from Costa Rica by way of Florida with the fam. All the while we've kept up our blogging, commenting, story-telling antics and anecdotes. We hope you'll join us today for a conversation about the power of design thinking. Click here.

My Year of Hopefulness - Find Your "T"

This morning on the plane home I read an article from Stanford's Social Innovation Review entitled "Design Thinking for Social Innovation" by IDEO's Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt. In the article the talk about looking for team members who have their own "T". The vertical line of the "T" is each team member's unique skill or knowledge that they bring to a cross-functional team and the horizontal line of the "T" is a shared set of characteristics that all of the team members share: empathy, respect for the unique talents of others, openness, curiosity, optimism, a tendency to learn by doing, and experimentation.

I like this approach to team-building because it inherently incorporates diversity into the structure of a successful team while also making sure that team members are cut from the same cloth at a very basic human values level. I also think it's a healthy recipe for building out friendships and relationships in our lives, as well as a good strategy for building a family. It's a formula for accumulating a set of good-hearted, talented people. And isn't that the kind of people we'd all like to surround ourselves with?

How does one go about building a personal "T"? Can empathy, curiosity, and optimism be taught or are these traits we must be born with? Can we build an education system that instills and nurtures these values into our children at the very beginning of their learning years? I'd like to think that we're all born curious, and I'd like to think that our natural creative, empathic nature is so strong that even if we have lost our way, these tendencies can be recovered and strengthened.

And what about that vertical in the "T"? How do we discover what makes us special? Is that something special about each of us something we are born with or is it something that we learn? And can it be changed throughout our lives? I believe that the answer is a resounding "yes" on all counts. My special trait is my storytelling, my writing. While I have a natural inclination for this, it requires practice. I certainly wasn't born knowing how to write well. I needed to put a lot of time and effort into it, though because I enjoyed it and saw a rapid rate of improvement with my practice, I was encouraged to become an even better writer.

I've seen this same pattern with every person in my life: my brother-in-law who is a fine painter, my friend, Kelly, who is a master project manager, my friend, Ken, who is a beautiful dancer and a gifted physical therapy assistant, my friend, Brooke, who is one of the most promising young acting talents on television, and my friend and mentor, Richard, who is one of the most successful and talented fundraisers in the nonprofit field. Incidentally, they all have a fabulous sense of humor and are some of the kindest people I've ever met.

I suppose that there are Mozarts and Einsteins among us, walking around, born brilliant, born as prodigies. I just don't know any. All of the brilliant people in my life, and I am very fortunate to have many, have found and leveraged their "T" because they have worked hard at something they love. And they're better off for this because their hard work also gives them the empathy and appreciation they need to be not only brilliant, but to be imbued with hearts of gold. Their "T"s are apparent in every part of their lives. They give me an example to strive for and are my greatest reason for hope.

My Year of Hopefulness - Make Big Decisions Real

"A problem well defined is half solved." ~ John Dewey

Just when you think you have it all figured out life does something very funny - it changes everything on us. We get thrown an option that we never even imagined as a possibility. This recently happened to me while I was in the middle of making a very big decision. I thought I just had to choose between A and B, A being far superior to B, so superior that it didn't even seem like a choice at all. Enter choice C, a real choice. Houston, we now have a big decision to make and this one is not easy.

I've got several mechanisms for deciding between options. I'm a fan of the pro con lists. I like talking to lots of different people and getting their perspectives on what they'd do if they were me. I've also been known to just wait and see in silence until some helpful piece of info emerges. This latest decision is a bit more complicated. B and C are actually equally great options. I'd be lucky to have the opportunity to pursue either avenue. Now it looks like I'll have the chance to choice, and they will lead me in wildly different, happy directions. This is the classic case of two roads diverged in a yellow wood.

For inspiration in my decision-making, I was reading through some of my books this weekend and came across a few books by ?WhatIf! Innovation. In How to Have Kick-Ass Ideas, Chris Baréz-Brown talks about the very personal decision-making he and his wife went through when they were deciding whether or not to have children. To make their choice, they decided to live their life for a week as if they had decided to not have kids. This helped them live their through the lens of that decision, sort of like a test-drive of a car. After that week they re-evaluated their choice to see if it felt right.

Chris's method is vastly superior than my pro con lists and asking 100 different people what they would do. His method makes the choice more personal and lets us experience some of the consequences that hit us shortly after we make a choice. In truth, I'm a little scared of this process and I'm going for it anyway. I've recently noticed that one of my areas of personal improvement is to see the downside of a situation as clearly as I see the upside. Chris's process will allow me to not only see the downside, but experience it. It brings a certain reality to the situation. If tough decisions need anything at all, it's a healthy dose of reality. I'll let you know what I find in a week!

If you've never read Chris's book, I highly recommend it. It's a perfect, inspiring read for anyone at a crossroads looking for guidance from one of the world's leading creative minds. Get it here.

My Year of Hopefulness - Use Design to Change Fist Stick Knife Gun

Over the past few weeks I have had a series of fortunate coincidences. I know the universe is always talking to us, that we are always in receipt of messages that connect us and bind us together, that point toward the way we are supposed to take. In my heart I know this, though given my surprisingly thick skull, those messages some times have difficulty reaching my brain. That surprisingly thick skull of mine often has to be clobbered over the head several times in order to "get it".

The series of some of the fortunate events has unfolded as follows:
1.) A few weeks ago I had my very rough draft of Innovation Station, an after-school program, accepted by Citizen Schools, an outstanding organization that exists to help average folks like me put together a curriculum we're passionate about to teach in public middle schools.

2.) Just about the same time that Citizen Schools accepted my proposal, my former boss, Bob, sent me an invitation to attend an event on design thinking hosted by the Rotman School of Management. Tim Brown, CEO of Ideo and one of the featured speakers at the event, just released his first book called Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. It is a powerful "blueprint for creative leaders" in a variety of sectors. Hmmm....sounds like a brilliant jumping off point for an after-school program about innovation, doesn't it? (I'm attending the Rotman School event and writing about it for Examiner and for TJCC; I hope to meet Tim and get his take on Innovation Station.)

3.) This week I have come across dozens of articles about the renewed focus on after-school programs, both from a funding and legislative perspective. Here are some examples: Home Alone, Peering at the Future, The Uneducated American, Paterson Proposes Cuts to Close Deficit.

4.) Last week, my friend, Wayne, took me to the annual meeting for Children's Health Fund, an organization that got its start at a grassroots level in one tiny area of Harlem and has grown to an international organization with the mission to advocate and assure healthcare for every child, everywhere. I want to do the same thing for education and their model and messaging is such an inspiration. They work with Harlem Children's Zone, an organization started by Geoffrey Canada that is a holistic system of education, social-service and community-building programs aimed at helping the children and families in a 97-block area of Central Harlem.

5.) About a month ago, my friend, Dan, told me about a podcast that featured Geoffrey Canada. I just picked up his book Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America. I can't put it down and I think I just found my calling. I googled Harlem Children's Zone tonight and discovered that the two schools where I will be teaching for Citizen Schools are in the same area as the Harlem Children's Zone.

6.) My friend, Amanda Steinberg, and her company, Soapbxx, designed the Harlem Children's Zone website.

7.) The PhD program I've been looking at within The New School was recently highlighted by Bruce Nussbaum, a journalist whom I greatly admire. He writes about design and innovation. He is a professor at Parsons, one of the other schools within The New School. He has been writing a lot about design thinking, social entrepreneurship, and Tim Brown's book. He believes that Design Thinking can transform systems like healthcare and education. So do I. So do a growing number of people. This is about to get very exciting.

As I was getting off the subway tonight and heading home I had the distinct feeling that there is no turning back for me now. I finally get what the universe is trying to tell me. I will not be able to sit still knowing that what I have to offer in the way of business, product development, an appreciation for design, and a passion for education as a tool to build a solid future, so clearly matches an unmet need in the world. This is the mash-up of work I was meant to do.

This journey was a long one. My life's work has been in front of me all along, since I was a kid facing a lot of the struggles that too many kids face. I just didn't know that it should or could be the work of my life. It took me the better part of 33 years to figure out what I was meant to do with my time here. And now that I know, the fear has dissipated completely. The anxiety about my future evaporated and has been replaced by only excitement and a feeling of purpose. Goethe would tell us that there is magic in commitment. He was right. I know that now.

I had lots of wrong turns, lots of dead-ends, and lots of disappointments. Nothing ever felt right, though I had a ton of fun in the exploration process. I wouldn't change any of it. I'm just grateful and glad that I won't have to die with the music still in me, as John Lennon lamented about so many people. Finally, finally, finally I know I'm on the cusp of my life's work. It's stretched out before me like a beautiful winding road, and it's time for me to hop aboard and get going. In those poignant, truthful words of Theodore Geisel, my mountain is waiting.

The beautiful image above is not my own. It can be found here.

My Year of Hopefulness - Citizen Schools

Yesterday, October 7th, was a decisive turning point for me. Amazing since September 30th, exactly one week ago, was a really bad day on a lot of levels. On the 30th, I went out with my friends, Jeff and Brian, to a local restaurant in our neighborhood. After hearing Christa Avampato's a series of unfortunate events, he told me about his philosophy of life. "It's a sine wave."

On the 30th, I was decidedly at the bottom of the trough. The only good thing about being there is that the only way to move forward is up. Oscar Wilde said, "We're all lying in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars." Today, my stars took shape as Citizen Schools.

For five months I've been writing an education pilot proposal, Innovation Station, that uses theatre to teach inner-city middle school kids in New York City about innovation, product development, and entrepreneurship through an after-school program. Yesterday, the proposal was accepted to be part of Citizen Schools, an organization that supports community members teaching what they’re passionate about to middle school students in public schools all around the country. I go into training in January and will begin the pilot in February in East Harlem. I’ll be blogging about the class (of course!) so that people who are interested in it can follow the progress. You’ll also be able to follow the progress of it on my Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The similarities to what I want to do and what Citizen Schools already supports are truly miraculous. A dream come true! They provide curriculum writing support, in-classroom support for every session, webinars, connection to the school. All the classes conclude with the WOW! Showcase - a series of presentations where the students demonstrate mastery over the material they learned to a panel of experts in the field of the project. The sessions are photographed, filmed, and publicized on the organization's website. All of the things I asked for in my proposal Citizen School provides to every program they support, and then some! It's incredible!

I have to publicly thank my friend, Cari, for suggesting that I reach out to Citizen Schools. 10 days after I spoke with Cari, I’m now officially a Citizen Teacher in training, and I couldn't be happier! I also need to thank a few friends who provided amazing feedback on the proposal at its earliest stages: Liz, Amy, Cindy, Steve, Elizabeth, and the lovely ladies on Owning Pink. Without your valuable input, the proposal would have never been approved because I probably would have never submitted it. Your encouragement kept me going. And to Laura, my amazing writing and business partner, who when I asked her if I could really write this said simply, "of course you can" and promptly moved on to another topic because me doubting myself was just not okay on her watch, or ever for that matter.

Originally, I had set out to print the proposal and send it out to a bunch of schools for review on Saturday, September 5th, the very day that my apartment building caught fire. Obviously, I didn't get around to that. My original plan was not meant to be. And thank goodness. This scenario with Citizen Schools is so much better than my original plan of trying myself to get an individual school to sign up for the pilot.

This process has been a great lesson in stepping up and in not over-thinking a situation and an outcome. We can ask ourselves a million times if we're ready for a certain situation - be it professional or personal. Am I ready for this job, this change, this relationship, this move, this challenge? And the answer is no, we're never ready. And that's okay. By not being ready, we are authentic, we are open to the magic that the world offers our ideas if only we have the courage to articulate them.

I learned through this experience that sometimes we need to shut up and just do. Forget about the if's and but's. We will deal with them when they present themselves. There are people in the world who need the power of our ideas and dreams. We cannot allow our own insecurities to deny them our talents. 'Perfect' is the greatest enemy of 'good'. And good will do just fine.

My friend, Lon, reminded me recently about the fire that closed the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. This year, the repairs were completed and the Cathedral re-opened, more sacred and beautiful than it was before. In a way, I feel like my life and Innovation Station have gone through the same trial by fire. Some things destroyed and re-built emerge more beautiful.

My Year of Hopefulness - In the Beginning

"There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning." ~ Louis L'Amour

Today marked an end and then a beginning, in one single action. After almost a year of considering how I might help children in public schools in New York City, I mailed off two packages, one to Bronx Charter School for the Arts and one to M.S. 223. Inside the packages is a folder with a cover letter, my resume, and an 8-page concept paper that outlines an after-school program that I'd like to pilot beginning in January 2010. The after-school program uses theatre to teach innovation, product development, and entrepreneurship to 6th grade students.

The journey to the concept paper was a long and winding road:

Early Summer of 2008

Began to consider how I could build an on-line innovation kit for kids

August 2008

Changed jobs and got involved in an at-work volunteer program with Junior Achievement of New York. Wondered if I missed my calling and should become a public school teacher.

December 5, 2008

Volunteered for a day-long program at M.S. 223 in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx. Felt scared, responsible, and at home, all at once. I taught economics for a day to 7th graders. I got more of an education than the students did that day. Have been thinking about those kids every day since.

May 17, 2009

Started building my first draft of the concept paper, initially named "Innovation Workbook". It was terrible. I was afraid to show it to anyone because I'd thought they'd laugh at the idea. Put my fears aside and kept working.

June 3, 2009

Wrote the first draft of a mission statement, or what I termed "A Reason for Being". It was awful, though I began to think that I might be on to something.

mid-June 2009

Began to talk to some friends about the concept. No one laughed; they got very excited about the idea and that got me more excited. They had great ideas. I used all of them to build a better concept. My friend, Liz, offered the idea to make this an after-school program rather than try to build it in to the traditional curriculum.

July 4th weekend, 2009

I started sending a rough draft of the concept paper to my friends who offered their ideas and were excited about the project. I knew the paper was terrible but the idea was getting better. My friends offered more help, more advice. The concept kept getting better.

July 23, 2009

Named the project Innovation Station while laying on my couch, unsuccessfully trying to take a nap. Decided to use short theatre scripts as a way to communicate the material.

Early August 2009

While reading the book, Eiffel's Tower, decided to feature famous innovators throughout history as part of Innovation Station.

August 2009

Continued to revise the concept paper, did more research. Many friends suggested I dig into data to prove the need and value of my program. Was startled by the statistics I read about after-school programming and public school education in inner-cities. Kept shopping around my ideas and taking any and all suggestions. Wrote 8 full drafts in total.

September 15, 2009

Heard about Bronx Charter School for the Arts. Researched them and thought they may be a good fit for Innovation Station. Put them on the very short list with M.S. 223.

September 22, 2009, afternoon

Made a few last minute edits, and dropped the proposals in the mail to M.S. 223 and Bronx Charter School for the Arts in the hopes that one of them will be the pilot program location.

September 22, 2009, evening

Waiting. Hoping. Nervous Excited.

My friend, Jamie, went to the post office with me to put the packages in the mail. I adore him, even though he can be a little curmudgeonly at times. He is exceedingly generous with help, advice, and contacts, despite his rough around the edges personality. It comes from being so brilliant and highly educated. He is one of the friends I count on to keep me grounded. I try to add more whimsy into his life. "So what do you do now?" he asked. I hadn't thought of what I'd do now; I guess I have been worried that I'd just edit myself to the point of being paralyzed. I never imagined myself sealing up the envelopes and dropping them in the mail. I guess I was worried that I'd never figure it out. "I wait," I said to Jamie.

This morning, my old friends, Fear and Self-ridicule, were back with a vengeance. Maybe this was a stupid idea. Maybe it would never help anyone. Maybe no school would ever be interested. Who am I to think I can write curriculum? I began reading and editing again. And something truly miraculous happened. As I re-read the proposal, I got more excited. I began to think that maybe, maybe, maybe this was the beginning on the a life-changing road for me. Just as I was finishing the proposal, I thought "this might be the beginning of something really exciting. I just might be able to help some kid who's facing the same circumstances I faced when I was that age." And with that thought I sealed up the packages and headed for the post office.

Fearing that I'd have a last minute panic attack, I quickly put the packages under the slotted window for the postman to grab and stamp. There was no turning back once he tossed them into the bin. And away they went, into the abyss of mail, on a very simple mission to try to make a difference in one kid's life. I ran for the door and never looked back. I had to get on with my beginning.

My Year of Hopefulness - Trying to get up that great big hill of hope

For a few weeks I've been going about my little routine called life. In one particular area, which shall remain nameless, I have been a little stuck. I was just going with the flow, or rather I was letting the waters stagnate. Sort of strolling along with my Bruce Hornsby attitude, telling myself "that's just the way it is." Truthfully, that's the way it was because I let it be.

Fighting a battle, particularly one that's uphill, is a tough activity to sign-up for. It's exhausting. It's painful. It's frustrating. And a lot of times it doesn't do any good at all. However, if we spend a lot of time on that battleground and we continually choose to stand at ease, then we get left behind, cleaning up what remains, which often isn't a whole heck of a lot.

Today I decided I had stood around long enough. Yes, this is the way it is but it doesn't have to be always be like this. And no one is going to fix it for me. Why should they? They have their own battles to worry about. I signed up for the gig, I took on the mission, and now I had to make sure I wasn't wasting my time.

So away I went, crafting and planning and convincing that I could clearly perceive a better way forward, and am willing to put my time, energy, and talents into the new venture. I have no idea if it's going to go anywhere. Tomorrow I could find myself still frittering away at the bottom of the hill. I do know that if I stand around twiddling my thumbs any longer, I'll be at the bottom of that hill for a long time to come, and I'd have no one to blame for that except me. Might as well plant my stake in the ground and see who I can get to rally around it.

The image above can be found here.

My Year of Hopefulness - Clay Pots

I was witness to a conversation today that round and round in circle so many times that I began to feel dizzy. The two parties couldn't get out of their own way, despite the fact that both were seeking a common goal. The more they talked, the more complicated and convoluted the conversation became. It was a welcome relief to then dive into the book The Pursuit of Elegance and learn about Mohammed Bah Abba's clay pots.

Recognizing that subsistence farmers in Nigeria needed a way to keep fresh produce from spoiling so quickly, he took a common object in Nigeria, clay pots, and combined with a little middle school science to build a refrigeration device. Abba put one clay pot inside another larger clay pot, packing wet sand in between the two. Then, he placed a wet towel over the inner pot and let the science of evaporation do its work. As the water evaporates, it cools the inner pot, and any contents stored inside that pot. Farmers could preserve their produce longer to increase their sales at the market, raising income for those farmers and their families, spurring all of the positive side effects in a community as wealth increases.

So simple. Clay pot, sand, basic science principles. When cobbled together by Abba's creative mind and sense of empathy, these three things transformed a community. Abba's business has expanded throughout Nigeria and into other Africa countries. Abba saw a problem, took what he had, and crafted an elegant solution that could be made available to many at a very low cost. So simple, it make us wonder why it wasn't thought of earlier.

Abba's story made me re-consider the conversation I witnessed earlier today. It made me consider the importance of clarity of vision and the value of a solution that combines design and function in a simple, elegant fashion. And the equation to get to this type of solution isn't complex. Ask three questions: What are we trying to solve for? What assets do we have available to us? How can we use those assets to transform what we've got into what we need?

The photo above can be found at: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/mohammed_bah_ab.php

My Year of Hopefulness - Eye on the Prize

Over the weekend I was working on a new product idea - testing it out by telling friends, making a simple prototype in my apartment, and pulling together a business case for why this product fills an unmet market need. And in all my excitement and positive feedback, I got scared. Very scared. That little tiny voice of doubt was pumping up the volume.

We have to let this little voice in just enough to inform and strengthen our ideas, though not so much that it dampens our enthusiasm and creativity. This is a fine line and I don't always do a great job of navigating it. I can get stressed by my doubt and nerves. And then I take a step back. I remember why a specific idea was so exciting to me to begin with. I'm also very lucky to have great friends and family members who always encourage me.

In these times, it is easy to let doubt get the better of us, to distract us and steal our energy. We have to keep our eyes focused firmly on the horizon ahead of us while being mindful of the experience we've lived through. This is no time for losing heart, and no time to let doubt undermine our potential.

My Year of Hopefulness - Better is good enough

My friend, Lon, sent me an email today that made me consider the value and under-appreciation of incremental improvement.

"The future of America is not in the hands of GM, the government, or the military. It is in the hands of our innovative entrepreneurs. Most of them do "it" just a little bit different than what is out there now. They are not the Apple's of the world. They are those that look for incremental improvement. Those incremental improvements have built America and will save it now from itself. I'm thinking ... for the first time in my life, I am developing the resolve to make it happen."

Consider how often people seek to be the next big thing rather than the next better thing. We give up on good in our quest for perfect, personally and professionally. We look for people to save us, to make things easier for us, to be our inspiration. It is time for all of us to realize that our greatest hope for improvements lie in slow, steady change for the better and the best source of that change stares at us every morning in the mirror.

Think about how much we could do if we recognized and nurtured the belief that we were empowered to improve every part of our lives, even if that improvement is small. Children don't know the phrase "that's just the way it is." This dreaded idea is something that is drilled into us by other adults. Instead, children look at suboptimal situations and say, "why don't we do this instead?". They are natural-born innovators and change-makers. They always seek constant improvement.

Children are not perfectionists. That perfectionist streak is something we learn as adults. Children seek to make things better, whether by a little or a lot. They play and explore and iterate. They're flexible and adaptable. They believe in the concepts of better and original and good effort. They're kind to themselves and to others. Their first thoughts upon encountering a difficult situation are "why?" and then "why not?"

Lon is getting back to these beliefs, and we all need to follow his lead. Thinking like children may be the very thing that saves us from ourselves.

My Year of Hopefulness - Social Designer

"I feel illiterate," my friend, Brian, said to me on Saturday night as we talked about how the age of design has emerged in a big way. Instead of studying business, we should have become designers. There are all kinds of amazing ways that design is changing our human experience for the better, and a lot of new ways that we can take part. One of my favorites is an organization called Social Designer.

With a tag line of "Goods for the Greater Good", Social Designer sponsors design contests and then runs a e-store with the winning designs that supports a variety of nonprofit organizations. "Buy stuff, design stuff, vote on stuff and be an agent of change." There are ways for all of us to take part in supporting Social Designer: create designs and enter them in the contests, vote on the submitted designs, purchase the finished goods with the winning designs, and tell other people about these efforts.

My favorite things about Social Designer is that it opens up the possibility of developing design to everyone. It's not some torturous Request for Proposal process. You don't need to send in your resume or portfolio. And you don't need to be famous or have an agent. You just need to submit a good design that supports a good cause. It's such a logical and simple process that I have to wonder why it took so long for it to be created - a sure sign that Social Designer is really onto something.

My Year of Hopefulness - You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness

In this time of budget slashing and cut backs of every kind, I have been working hard to come up with a way to succinctly say why cutting back severely on innovation efforts and investment is a very bad idea. Not only is it a bad idea, in some cases in may prove to be the nail in the coffin for many companies. If they intend to invest in their companies only once the economy improves, they will find themselves far behind their competitors with foresight. Plus, it's cheaper to invest and innovate when times are tough because vendors are willing to make negotiations and compromises that they would never make in fat times.

Until yesterday, I was coming up short on that succinct explanation. I wanted a 10 word sentence to say just what I said in the preceding paragraph. And as if a gift fell out of the sky, someone said to me "you can't shrink your way to greatness." Perfect! 7 words and on-point. We can rise to a challenge or we can steal away from it, hiding under a rock until the clouds clear. It's hard to be brave and courageous in times like this. Some people may even call it fool-hardy. I'd say it's vital.

Look at the alternative: without investment in innovation, we are stalled, suspended in time. We aren't doing anything for our teams, nor are we doing any helpful work to pull us as a whole out of this recessionary situation. I'd argue that it's not our option to invest and innovate now. It's our duty, our responsibility, to ourselves and to one another. We are the ones we are waiting for to save us.

If our goal is to be great, then this is the time to be both prudent and forward-thinking in our spending. This recovery is a long-term proposition so let's decide where we want to be in 5 years, 10 years, and take the steps now that make that goal inevitable as opposed to just a hopeful possibility.

My Year of Hopefulness - Small Audience

Seth Godin wrote a terrific post today relating the contrast between concert opening acts and rock stars to the different grades of marketers. He has some very good advice for all of us: Seek out a small audience who thinks you're a rock star and then grow that audience. Don't go out into the market as an opening act and have the market shape your work based upon something else they love (the rock star). You want to stand on your own two feet and have customers who love you and will back you exactly the way you are.

Many companies are so hungry for growth, so hungry for fast, quick wins, that they do whatever they have to do to their products and services to make them appeal to everyone. Of course some other companies focus so closely on one tiny piece of the market that they exclude others who might also benefit from their products with just a few weeks. So what's a company to do?

A few ideas:
1.) The "Me-conomy" seems endless. The personalization trend can be seen everywhere in the market. Is it possible for a customer to customize some piece or your product or service to make it suit them perfectly? This allows you to serve a number of different groups with just a few minor changes to your product. Think about what adding colors and engraving to the ipod did for that product!

2.) There are a lot of ways to slice and dice a market into segments. Is there a segment that you can serve that's small enough to provide something special to them while also having a wide enough appeal to enough people to meet your costs and profit goals?

3.) Look for holes in the market. Many companies are set on being fast followers. They don't want to get out there, innovate, and build something new. Fear holds them back. They'd prefer to watch others, copy, and paste. The saddest part about this kind of ambition is that it never allows you to be the first in the market to fill an unmet need that makes consumers grateful and loyal to your brand. You're just an opening act in that scenario. You want to be the first association a customer makes with a new product or service. You don't want people to say, "Oh yeah, there's that option, too" about your brand. So get out there, talk to people, and find a way to provide a service or product that makes their lives easier.

While it's fun to play in the market, it's more fun to build a market and delight customers with a product or service they never even thought was possible. Your following will be filled with early adopters at first so learn from them, get their input, improve your offering, and other people outside of that early adopter segment will catch on. Be a rock star.

NY Business Strategies Examiner.com: Businesses Take a Cue from Reality TV for Extreme Innovation Projects

Imagine your office. Imagine your co-workers. Imagine that they become your roommates for 10 weeks.

For the full article, please click here.

Repost of Alex Lee from OXO

Last Spring I was fortunate to be able to attend the GEL conference in New York City. One of the people on the slate of incredible speakers was Alex Lee, CEO of OXO. The fine people at Good Experience who organize the conference sent me a link to a video that is now posted to highlight Alex's talk. I wanted to repost my article, now complete with video, so you can enjoy on the great talk that has had me thinking intently about functional design ever since! Cheers (and thanks to Good Experience!)

You may not know the name "OXO", though you undoubtedly have seen their products in the kitchen gadget aisles. And their anonymity shouldn't surprise anyone - after all, their CEO, Alex Lee, believes that designers should be overshadowed by the simplicity and beauty of their own designs. Whether it's making an incomparable salad spinner or an ingenious measuring cup, the reaction OXO is always looking for from users is their lack of notice of the object. It should be so intuitive and easy to use that its use should go unnoticed, like walking, like breathing.

Alex also made several points about dignity. OXO seeks to design products that are usable by the greatest percentage of the population possible. The goal is to design beautiful products without increasing cost, while maximizing functionality, and never making a user feel like "I'm using this easy-to-use product because I am unable to use another one that is more complicated."

He and the talented design team at OXO have several axioms that they work and live by. Products should be:
Easy to use
Easy to understand
Use honest language
Instructions not required

As far as finding inspiration for worthy design projects, OXO also makes that search simple. They find objects that cause people some sort of pain or frustration, even if they don't know that they are frustrated. And then they develop a design remedy to alleviate the pain. For example, why should I need to get my eyes down to counter level to observe a meniscus to see if the liquid I've measured is at the right level? I should be able to comfortably observe it from overhead. I didn't realize that, but OXO did. Design so brilliant you wonder how you ever did without it...


Alex Lee at Gel 2008 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

My Year of Hopefulness - People Who Get It

I'm doing a little experiment: spend a week jotting down the names of everyone you speak to and divide them up into two groups - people who get it and people who don't. And by "it" I mean whatever you're passionate about. Bookies, movies, innovation, a new idea for a project at work, a vacation destination. "It" means anything that you want others to listen to, believe, and embrace as their own. "It" is something you want others to buy into.

I found that I spend a solid 50% of my time talking to people who don't get it, and won't get it, no matter how much I try to convince them. That is sunk energy. I am spending 50% of my time with people stating my case and I'd have just as much luck with a brick wall as I do with them. I have been wasting too much time on people who don't get it, and who don't get me. 

Today I went to an Innovator's Network meeting - a group of people dedicated to talking openly and honestly, looking for silver linings amidst some very dark and gathering clouds. These were my people. Or at least some of them were my people. 

It took me a while to find them, a lot of time and effort shouting from the hilltops, and chasing a lot of roads that culminated in dead ends. I spent a lot of time feeling lonely and left out, and out of place. And then I walked into this room today and saw all of these people, gathered together, as if they had been waiting for my arrival. I took my seat among them and smiled. It felt good to be among like minds.     

For the image above, click here.

New York Times Customized Widget

The New York Times just released a beta version of "build your own widget". It's a bit simplistic in its current stage, though I imagine they wanted to launch it, see what readers and social media users create, and then make modifications. If only all organizations could take that view of building a prototype, testing it in the market, and then making adjustments without beating themselves up and creating drama for product developers: we'd having many more higher-quality innovations in short-order!

Very easy to use and post, you have only two sets of choices: 1) Select the top articles from a certain section of the paper or use a specific keyword. 2) Choose between 3 and 10 headlines to post in the widget. Then just click "Add to site", choose which social networking platform you'd like to use (currently a very limited selection), enter your log-in info for that page, and it's posts automatically for you. I created an "Innovation News" widget with the top 10 innovation headlines of the day from the New York Times to post to my blog (you can find it in the sidebar on the right-hand side of this page) and to my iGoogle page.

What I love best about the widget is that it will be helpful for my blog readers and many of them also work in or are interested in innovation. It's also very useful to me to get a quick daily snapshot of what's happening in the innovation field. (When I boot up my computer in the morning, iGoogle is my first log-in.)

A few improvements I'd make: 

1) allow for greater customization. For example, I want to pick and choose with more discretion. I always read three NYT columnists: Kristof, Friedman, and Krugman. I'd like to see the top story from the arts, business, health, and world news sections, the innovation article of the day, the Magazine cover story, and a cartoon.

2) make the widget available for more social media platforms. I'd like to post it on my Facebook page and add a link to that widget to the signature of every email I send.

Create your own New York Times widget at http://www.nytimes.com/services/timeswidgets/

The Idea Guy

Some stories would be really funny if they weren't so true. My friend, John, has successfully gotten his hefty graphic design projects out the door for the holiday season. He was right on-time and under-budget. We had coffee yesterday now that he's successfully dug himself out from that pile of work. He was re-counting some of the sad and hilarious moments of the season and one of them really caught my attention. Well, actually one of the characters really caught my attention - his boss, Tom.

John largely does graphic design work for print. However, many of their clients are looking to them for web design work as well, specifically for social media. John doesn't know much about this field so he had to dig in, learn the details, and then reconfigure his skills to get the job done. They had some big budget and time constraint decisions to make on some of his projects. He assembled the details in a clear presentation and then gave the decision options that were possible with the constraints they were under. After a 15-minute presentation, Tom cut in with some SWAG (Super Wild A*s Guess) ideas. Apparently, his company is fond of this SWAG idea to develop things like budgets, business cases, colorful PowerPoint presentations with smiley faces on them, etc. Poor John....

Professionally and tactfully, John explained why they really needed to choose from the options that he had presented. Tom stands up, and raising both of his hands to point at himself, says, "Tom, you're not getting it. I'm the idea guy." And gesturing to the rest of the team in the room says, "You guys need to make the ideas happen. I don't care about the details." Ouch. One of the team members actually rolled his eyes and plunked his forehead on the table. I feel another comedy sketch coming to me. And this would be a funny story, if it weren't true. All we could was laugh as John was telling me this story. Otherwise, we'd have to cry. 

I love ideas; I can't stand "idea people". I'm not talking about people with ideas, innovators, product developers, etc. I'm talking about people who are full of hot air - lots of ideas with nothing to back them up. They have no ability to execute or even think about how it could be executed. And as a result, nothing gets done, the "make it happen" people leave, and innovation stalls. It's a sad state of affairs. 

I have a simple piece of advice for companies that have people who refer to themselves as "idea people". Get rid of them! Seriously. We all have ideas. All of us. The companies and people who win are also the ones who are movers and shakers, meaning they have ideas and they actually do something with them rather than just verbalizing them for their "minions" to do. These "idea people" are dangerous because they degrade others, as happened to my friend, John, and his team. By proclaiming themselves Lord of Ideas, they make everyone else feel small. If companies are going to get through these rocky times, teammates need to band together with a will to win. "Idea people" destroy the team dynamic, and that team dynamic is an asset that companies cannot afford to lose.  

Zakkerz: women of New York, save your pants

A professor at my business school teaches a new product development class and her first set of advice to her students is, "if you want to create a new product, think about what gives you pain in your life. And then find a way to solve it." Chances are if it's causing you pain, it's causing others pain, too. The ladies who invented Zakkerz did just that.

It's a simple product: a pair of strong magnets wrapped at opposite ends of a piece of fabric used to hold pant cuffs in place. "Who needs that?" you may be wondering. Every working woman in New York City, and every other city in this country where commuting to work by public transportation is necessary. I recently gave up a job in New Jersey and the associated commute by car, to work downtown and commute by subway. Great for my quality of life, bad for the hems of my pants. I put on my sneakers or my Privos to get to work - problem is my pants are hemmed for heels. Enter Zakkerz. I cuff my pants, snap on a set of Zakkerz per pant leg, and off I go. 

I just had dinner with some girlfriends having this same exact problem I was having, and recommended the product to them. So simple, and yet so ingenious. It's products like this that make me wonder, "now why didn't I think of that?" I'm glad someone did.  

Get a pair for yourself, available in a variety of colors, at http://www.zakkerz.com/index.html

Where to place our efforts

While in business school, I participated in the Innovation Challenge - a program that asks teams of business school students all over the world to solves a set of business challenges put forward by a handful of sponsor organizations. This year I was invited to be a judge in the competition and just completed the first round of judging. 

Someday, when I am old and wise (or at least old), I'd like to teach a class at a business school for one very simple reason. While I think our business schools may be teaching the fundamentals of how to value a bond and manage a P&L, they aren't teaching a skill that is so crucial to success that many assumed it was an ability that everyone has - being able to write clearly and concisely. This afternoon, I would have settled for written proposals for the Innovation Challenge that were at least free of typos, used correct grammar, and exhibited a grasp of basic English vocabulary. 

Of the 11 proposals I was asked to judge, 2 of them were well-done. The ideas and solutions put forward by 2 teams were innovative and creative with sound success metrics and a long-term vision. Beyond those feats, they were also well-written. The other 9 were awful. Truly awful. Forget about the solutions not being feasible or short-sighted. Several were so badly written that I could barely read them. Those 9 badly-written proposals have nothing to do with talent or education level. It has everything to do with care and concern, or lack thereof. 2 teams put together the best case they possibly could. 9 of them slapped together some sentences in record time and handed it in.  

I considered writing a long set of notes for each team, and then I considered that that wouldn't be fair to the 2 teams that put in so much of their own effort. So I wrote a paragraph for the 9 who didn't care about the project, and saved my lengthy responses and comments for those 2 teams who got their act together.

After I completed my evaluations, I thought about my work experience and my own business school education. No matter what company or set of circumstances are in place, there are always a few people in the pack who shine because they are concerned about the quality of their work and how their work reflects on them. As business leaders, or teachers or judges of a case competition, our role is not to dwell on the ones who don't put in the time or care or concern. That is a road to nowhere. It's important to place the emphasis on the ones who want to do well and will take the time to put together the best they have to offer. That best won't always be perfect - sometimes it won't even be any good. I'm happy to spend time helping those who want to help themselves rather than spending it on people who don't even care enough to run the spell check on their writing before they hand it in.