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Thinking and Design
Roger L. Martin, dean of the University of Toronto's
Rottman School of Management, has just written The Design of Business,
a book that sees "design thinking" as the next big thing for the industrialized world. Martin believes that the future will belong not to those who can out-perform or out-sell their
competition, but to those who can out-create and out-imagine them. The production of goods and services is becoming more and more commoditized, and will inevitably migrate to the places where it can be
done at least cost. So he sees the emergence of a new "design economy." Elegant design is what now provides a critical competitive advantage, and business people need to start thinking like
designers.
This observation has organizational implications, as well as process implications. Companies need to move toward more project-like structures and away from large, permanent departments.
Rapid prototyping is more important than a carefully controlled development cycle. The most innovative companies will be willing to start with intuitive, free-form ideas,
working largely from gut instinct. Then they can assess those ideas with traditional analysis techniques to sort the good from the bad. Instead of focusing on what's known absolutely, good designers consider what's possible. That's the kind of thinking that leads to true innovations, like Apple's iPod. It not only became a cultural icon, but helped drive a general re-invention of the entire music industry.
We look back fondly on the days when Knowledge Management was the next big thing, and can see some of the same themes in Martin's work. And so, into the future...
Communication in the Hard Times
There's a new study from HR consulting firm Watson Wyatt on the importance of communication in challenging times. It's available on line for free, and is also presented in a very slick little applet, that makes it more fun to read than straight HTML. That's almost worth a look on its own, regardless of the content.
The study's findings are certainly in line with our experience. The messages may be more difficult to craft when times are hard, since nobody likes to deliver bad news. But companies that shy
away from delivering that kind of information are only hurting themselves in the long run. If workers don't get consistent messages from management, the rumor mill will fill the gaps. And it's a lot
harder to correct misinformation than it is to deliver the right information in the first place.
Watson Wyatt's advice comes down to three things: Be courageous in presenting the message. Be
innovative with delivery options. Finally, be disciplined when it comes to communication, and establish measurement programs that will let you do it well.
New Ways of Looking at the World
If you're interested in information design, there's a very good write up on recent developments at CNN.com. It observes that with the combination of new data streams, new visualization tools and new kinds of computing devices, we're developing entirely new ways of interacting with the world. The data streams include things like Facebook postings and Twitter feeds, which in addition to a fair amount of junk are producing scads of valuable, highly individualized information. Yelp's Monocle feature can drive an "augmented reality" display, that pulls in a live image from an iPhone camera, does a GPS look-up and overlays the image with user reviews from Yelp's database. Mashing up these new data streams and electronic gadgets is pretty cool on its own, but it wouldn't be happening if we were still tied to a PC. It's the arrival of mobile broadband that's really bringing computing power to the world outside.
It's all so new that it's hard to know where things are going. In just a few years of blogging, we've seen citizen journalism emerge as a genuine threat to the media establishment. Google can mine its search history records and map the path of a flu epidemic. Facebook can scan members' status postings, and create a national happiness index. There's a site called Your.FlowingData that intercepts and analyzes the tweets of Twitter users to let them interact with their data and come to a better understanding of personal choices. So we can learn more about each other, and more about ourselves too. Interesting stuff, eh? (And thanks to K Street Associate Don Riemer for the linkage.)
What’s With the Moms?
We've noticed a recent development in Internet advertising in which banner ads are plugging all
kinds of things behind a simple hook: "Local Mom discovers secret." It's interesting, since the local idea can really be localized on the Web. At Knowledge Street headquarters, it's Morristown
Moms who are grabbing the spotlight. Twenty miles away, it's Montclair Moms. They're discovering how to whiten teeth and lose belly fat,
and they're doing it by finding one simple secret. All you need to do is click, and buy something.
Companies can probably draw a lot of eyeballs this way, since they're leveraging the most
trusted icon of all, with the added zing of the local neighborhood. It's not just a mom, it's a mom from your own tribe! In fact, the landing pages behind these ads reinforce the message, since they're
often presented as blogs instead of commercial sites, complete with reader comments and mom's responses.
On a related note, we once considered launching what would now be called a social network
for moms. We got as far as trying to register a domain name, but most of the good ones were taken. So it's nice to see that someone finished the job, and created the Mamapedia, to capture "the wisdom of moms." Mom would never lie to you, you know.
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