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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Personas Few organizations know
more about the art of innovation that IDEO, and few have conveyed ways to
increase innovation better than IDEO’s Tom Kelley.
His latest book, The Ten
Faces of Innovation, provides a description of ten different roles that
an individual can play to promote innovation. Kelley calls attention to the
way in which those who assume the devil’s advocate role can do more to
squelch innovation than encourage that the best ideas move forward. A
structured approach that allows any individual to assume one of ten roles can
increase an organization’s ability to innovate faster and better. Here’s an
excerpt that presents what the book is all about, from the Introduction, pp. 6-12: The Human Touch The Ten Faces of Innovation is a book
about innovation with a human face. It’s about the individuals and teams that
fuel innovation inside great organizations. Because all great movements are
ultimately human-powered. Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand and a
lever long enough and I can move the world.” The innovation personas
described in the next ten chapters are not necessarily the most powerful
people you will ever meet. They don’t have to be. Because each persona brings
its own lever, its own tools, its own skills, its own point of view. And when
someone combines energy and intelligence with the right lever, they can
generate a remarkably powerful force. Make sure they have a place on your
team. Together you can do extraordinary things. At
IDEO, we believe that innovators focus on the verbs. They’re proactive.
They’re energetic. Innovators set out to create, to experiment, to inspire,
to build on new ideas. Our techniques may at times seem unusual, but the
results can be truly extraordinary. All
good working definitions of innovation pair ideas with action, the spark with
the fire. Innovators don’t just have their heads in the clouds. They also
have their feet on the ground. 3M, one of the first companies to fully
embrace innovation as the essence of its corporate brand, defines it as “New
ideas—plus action or implementation— which result in an improvement, a gain,
or a profit.” It is not enough to just have a good idea. Only when you act, when you implement, do you truly innovate. Ideas. Action. Implementation.
Gain. Profit. All good words, of course, but there’s still one piece left
out. People. That’s why I prefer
the Innovation Network’s definition: “People
creating value through the implementation of new ideas.” The classic 3M
definition might leave you with the impression that, as a bumper sticker
might put it, “Innovation Happens.” But unfortunately, there’s no spontaneous
combustion in the business world. Innovation is definitely not self-starting
or self-perpetuating. People make it happen through their imagination,
willpower, and perseverance. And whether you are a team member, a group
leader, or an executive, your only real path to innovation is through people.
You can’t really do it alone. This is a
book about people. More specifically, it is about the roles people can play,
the hats they can put on, the personas they can adopt. It is not about the
luminaries of innovation like Thomas Edison, or even celebrity CEOs like
Steve Jobs and Jeffrey Immelt. It is about the
unsung heroes who work on the front lines of entrepreneurship in action, the
countless people and teams who make innovation happen day in and day out. The ten core
chapters of this book highlight ten people-centric tools developed at IDEO
that you might call talents or roles or personas for innovation. Although the
list does not presume to be comprehensive, it does aspire to expand your
repertory. We’ve found that adopting one or more of these roles can help
teams express a different point of view and create a broader range of
innovative solutions. By developing
some of these innovation personas, you’ll have a chance to put the Devil’s
Advocate in his place. So when someone says, “Let me play Devil’s Advocate
for a minute” and starts to smother a fragile new idea with negativity,
someone else in the room may be emboldened to speak up and say, “Let me be an
Anthropologist for a moment, because I personally have watched our customers
suffering silently with this issue for months, and this new idea just might
help them.” And if that one voice gives courage to others, maybe someone else
will add, “Let’s think like an Experimenter for a moment. We could prototype
this idea in a week and get a sense of whether we’re onto something good.” Or
someone else could volunteer to be a Hurdler, and pledge to get the team some
seed funding for an exploration of the concept. The Devil’s Advocate may
never go away, but on a good day, the ten personas can keep him in his place.
Or tell him to go to hell. One important caveat. My feelings about
Devil’s Advocates should not be interpreted as some sort of endorsement for a
“yes-man culture.” IDEO has always believed in constructive criticism and
free debate. Actually, strong innovation roles can lead to more critical
thinking, as team members develop a broader perspective from which to view
projects. But the Devil’s Advocate seldom takes a real stand, preferring to
tear down an idea with clever criticism, and often exhibiting the
mean-spirited negativity associated with that role. Meanwhile, the innovation
roles are intended to encourage people to stand up for what they believe in. So
who are these personas? Many already exist inside of large companies, though
they’re often underdeveloped or unrecognized. They represent latent
organizational ability, a reservoir of energy waiting to be tapped. We all
know plenty of bright, capable people who would like to make a bigger
contribution, team members whose contributions don’t quite fit into
traditional categories like “engineer” or “marketer” or “project manager.” In
a postdisciplinary world where the old descriptors
can be constraining, these new roles can empower a new generation of innovators.
They give individuals permission to make their own unique contribution to the
social ecology and performance of the team. Here’s a brief introduction of
the personas: The Learning Personas Individuals
and organizations need to constantly gather new sources of information in
order to expand their knowledge and grow, so the first three personas are learning roles. These personas are
driven by the idea that no matter how successful a company currently is, no
one can afford to be complacent. The world is changing at an accelerated
pace, and today’s great idea may be tomorrow’s anachronism. The learning
roles help keep your team from becoming too internally focused and remind the
organization not to be so smug about what you “know.” People who adopt the
learning roles are humble enough to question their own worldview, and in
doing so they remain open to new insights every day. 1 The Anthropologist
brings new learning and insights into the organization by observing human
behavior and developing a deep understanding of how people interact physically
and emotionally with products, services, and spaces. When an IDEO
human-factors person camps out in a hospital room for forty-eight hours with
an elderly patient undergoing surgery—as described in Chapter 1—she is living
the life of the Anthropologist and helping to develop new health care
services. 2 The Experimenter prototypes new ideas continuously, learning by a process of enlightened trial and error. The
Experimenter takes calculated risks to achieve success through a state of
“experimentation as implementation.” When BMW bypassed all its traditional
advertising channels and created theater-quality short films for
bmwfilms.com, no one knew whether the experiment would succeed. Their runaway
success, which underscores the rewards that flow to Experimenters, is
detailed in Chapter 2. 3 The Cross-Pollinator explores other industries and cultures, then
translates those findings and revelations to fit the unique needs of your
enterprise. When an open-minded Japanese businesswoman travels 5,000 miles
to find inspiration for a new brand, she finds a concept an ocean away that
sparks a billion-dollar retail empire, and demonstrates the leverage of a
Cross-Pollinator. You’ll hear her story in Chapter 3. The Organizing Personas The
next three personas are organizing
roles, played by individuals who are savvy about the often
counterintuitive process of how organizations move ideas forward. At IDEO,
we used to believe that the ideas should speak for themselves. Now we
understand what the Hurdler, the Collaborator, and the Director have known
all along: that even the best ideas must continuously compete for time,
attention, and resources. Those who adopt these organizing roles don’t
dismiss the process of budget and resource allocation as “politics” or “red
tape.” They recognize it as a complex game of chess, and they play to win. 4 The Hurdler knows the path to innovation is strewn with obstacles
and develops a knack for overcoming or outsmarting those roadblocks. When the
3M worker who invented Scotch tape decades ago had his idea initially
rejected, he refused to give up. Staying within his $100 authorization limit,
he signed a series of $99 purchase orders to pay for critical equipment
needed to produce the first batch. His perseverance paid off, and 3M has reaped
billions of dollars in cumulative profits because an energetic Hurdler was
willing to bend the rules. 5 The Collaborator helps bring eclectic groups together, and often leads from the middle
of the pack to create new combinations and multidisciplinary solutions. When
a customer-service manager wins over a skeptical corporate buyer to the idea
of brainstorming new forms of cooperation, and the resulting new program
doubles their sales, he’s playing the role of a very successful Collaborator. 6 The Director not only gathers together a talented cast and crew but also helps to
spark their creative talents. When a creative Mattel executive assembles an
ad hoc team and dubs them “Platypus,” launching a novel process that creates
a $100 million toy platform in three months, she is a role model for Directors
everywhere. Her story is told in Chapter 6. The Building Personas The
four remaining personas are building
roles that apply insights from the learning roles and channel the
empowerment from the organizing roles to make innovation happen. When people
adopt the building personas, they stamp their mark on your organization.
People in these roles are highly visible, so you’ll often find them right at
the heart of the action. 7 The Experience
Architect designs compelling experiences that go beyond mere functionality to
connect at a deeper level with customers’ latent or expressed needs. When an
ice cream shop turns the preparation of a frozen dessert into a fun, dramatic
performance, it is designing a successful new customer experience. The
premium prices and marketing buzz that follow are rewards associated with
playing the role of the Experience Architect. 8 The Set Designer creates a stage on
which innovation team members can do their best work, transforming physical
environments into powerful tools to influence behavior and attitude. Companies
like Pixar and Industrial Light & Magic
recognize that the right office environments can help nourish and sustain a
creative culture. When a business team doubles its usable output after
reinventing its space and a sports team discovers a renewed winning ability
in a brand-new stadium, they are demonstrating the value of the Set Designer.
Organizations that tap into the power of the Set Designer sometimes discover
remarkable performance improvements that make all the space changes
worthwhile. 9 The Caregiver builds on the
metaphor of a health care professional to deliver customer care in a manner
that goes beyond mere service. Good Caregivers anticipate customer needs and
are ready to look after them. When you see a service that’s really in demand,
there’s usually a Caregiver at the heart of it. A 10 The Storyteller
builds both internal morale and external awareness through compelling
narratives that communicate a fundamental human value or reinforce a
specific cultural trait. Companies from Dell to Starbucks have lots of
corporate legends that support their brands and build camaraderie within
their teams. Medtronic, celebrated for its product innovation and consistently high growth, reinforces its culture
with straight-from-the-heart storytelling from patients’ firsthand narratives
of how the products changed—or even saved—their lives. The
appeal of the personas is that they work. Not in theory or in the classroom
but in the unforgiving marketplace. IDEO has battle-tested them
thousands of times in a real-world laboratory for innovation. Every year, we
work on literally hundreds of innovation projects. And where once the bulk of
our clients were start-ups or technology companies, today some of our biggest
clients are progressive leaders of the Fortune 100. They seek us out not just
for help with a single innovation but for a series of innovations. They come
to us to tap into the insights and energy of a talented team, adept at
playing roles like Cross-Pollinator, Anthropologist, and Experimenter. The more important innovation is to your
organization, the sooner you should read The Ten
Faces of Innovation. A lack of facts and weak case studies
means that readers will have to accept Kelley’s ideas on faith. Given IDEO’s success, his message is worth listening to. Steve Hopkins,
January 25, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the February 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Ten Faces of Innovation.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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