IDEO's Tim Brown on Using Design to Change Behavior - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

Many large-scale phenomena are the sum of individual actions — sometimes millions or even billions of them. Apple's recent celebration of 10 billion songs downloaded represents 10 billion choices made by consumers to download a song rather than buy it in other formats. In the healthcare space, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported a 50 percent drop in respiratory infections in children, a drop attributable (in part) to the group's campaign to educate millions of children to change their behavior: To wash their hands. But what does it take to bring about such mass behavior shifts? Are there approaches that businesses could use, too, to influence behaviors on a micro level, and gain benefits on a macro one?

Click to read more ...

The Cultural Importance of the Leader Around Innovation - Robert Verganti - Author of Design-Driven Innovation

"When it comes to radical innovation of meanings, a product's culture reflects the culture [values, norms, beliefs, and aspirations] of the executive who has launched it." Is it that important? photo of Roberto VergantiRoberto Verganti: Not necessarily, but if I wish to be a good CEO, a good executive, the product design will be affected by the way I see the world. Coming back to the example of Steve Jobs and Apple, you can see that Apple's products reflect the way Jobs sees the world. It's the way he sees life. This is a good thing. One thing that I like a lot about Steve Jobs is that when he can – and the only restrictions has related to his health – he presents Apple's new products himself. He jumps onto the stage and introduces the products. He likes to say his nametag is on the product.

Click to read more ...

10 steps to customer journey mapping - Mapping out customer experience excellence

A product or service is merely a means to an end. The real deeper value lies in the story attached. I don’t want to own a coffee maker - I need to wake up early with a little help from a cup of coffee. I don’t want to use a train - I want to get home to my wife and children. I don’t want to go to a store and buy a stereo set - I just want to listen to my favourite rock music when I’m home, it makes me unwind after work. Unfortunately, most organisations are not capable of listening to stories. And this is why the gap between "inside and outside" has grown too wide. To stay competitive and survive the changes organisations are presently facing, they need to reassess the way they are structured, function and build relationships with customers. Closing the "reality gap" between organisations and people (employees and customers alike) should be the number one priority. And for this we need a new set of skills, methods and tools.

Click to read more ...

Break Group Think, Outsiders Can Help You to See Things - Paul Sloane

How can you break out of the group-think that affects most large organizations? How can you escape from the corporate frameworks that shape discussions and ideas? Philips is moving from a high-volume electronics manufacturere to a design-led, lifestyle technology company. It needs help to get there so it set up a 'simplicity board'. Philips reckoned it needed a fresh perspective from creative types with no ties to the company. So it formed the simplicity board, a group of external specialists in health care, fashion, design, and architecture. "Philips was too inward-looking," says Andrea Ragnetti, Chief Marketing Offier. "To really embed simplicity into the company's DNA, we needed an element of vision."

Click to read more ...

Design Leads Us Where Exactly - Is 2009 The Year Service Design Emerges

Lucy Kimbell is the Clark Fellow in Design Leadership at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford with a background in interaction design and visual/live arts. Her interest has been in the field of design thinking. This piece is from her recent blog and is an excellent summary of this emerging field. A Google search for “service design” is one way of indexing what is a growing field of practice and scholarly enquiry. On the basis of a search today (December 16, 2009), the term is resonant enough to have a long-ish entry in wikipedia (although it “provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject”). What comes next are links to two consultancies: Engine (based in London) and live|work (ditto). Practice leads theory, then. But although they are leading the field, they are extremely small – 20 people at the former, 13 people at the latter, according to their websites today. This was a year in which service design began to move away from being the province of designers educated and practicing in the art school tradition to an activity in which designers have something important to contribute, but which is not necessarily owned by Design.

Click to read more ...