Leadership lessons

At a high level, I think leadership still comes down to what I previously observed: [know your stuff, and be a good person](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=252). But there are a few specific practices I’ve learned from great leaders and discovered to be helpful myself:

* *Ask people what they think you should do* – Regularly go to your team and ask for feedback and suggestions on your personal behaviors and the overall team operations. They’re supporting you, after all–why not use their full knowledge? As a leader, the ultimate decision may still be up to you, but start the decision process as fully informed as possible. At the very least, asking for input will give people ownership in the team strategy and operation. Show your intelligence by asking good questions, not making up answers.
* Tell your team when and how decisions will be made, and have it be on a predictable, regular schedule. Similarly, make sure they know when it’s time to hold questions for later. Decision time and execution time should be separate but predictable and regular.
* Keep everyone pointed forward. It’s tempting to look sideways at your competitors, backwards at where you were, or straight down at your current location. But as a leader you should keep the focus on your chosen target, encouraging discussion in that direction and discouraging diversions in the others.
* When you ask people to any meeting, ask them to tell you what they want help with and answers to. Similarly, be clear about what you want them to help you with.
* Help each person on your team be the best they can be–individually. People have a wide variety of skills, interests, and opportunities, even in the same type of job. Helping them achieve their individual potential will often seem at odds with achieving the goals you planned. But if you empower people and encourage them to grow, you’ll likely get things you never imagined possible.
* Ask people what they need to do great things. This might be tools for their work, training to become better, resources for a project, connections to other people, or time to reflect and reset. As an individual, one of the best practices I’ve found is simply asking for what you want. As a leader, make sure your people do that.
* Talk about things from others’ point of view. It’s easy to phrase everything in your terms, with your goals and milestones (“Everyone will report weekly to me”). Instead, try to explain changes and requirements from the perspective of your team–how this will change their work, or how it will help them (“Every week I will be available for reviews and feedback”).

More to come…I hope!

My design heroes

A while back, on the advice of a mentor, I started intentionally following the work and careers of a few designers that I admired. It’s been fascinating to see how they approach projects, and to try their methods and principles in my own design work.

Although I currently work as a software designer, only a few of my design heroes are from that field. Since I am interested in how design can influence culture, I follow several artists, writers, and filmmakers. And since I still have a special place in my heart for physical product design, I keep track of interesting industrial designers as well. So far they’re mostly men, English-speaking and from the US; I need to expand that (suggestions welcome!).

Here are some of the design heroes who have inspired me over the years (in no particular order):

• Branko Lukic – Founder of NON-OBJECT, a design firm that specializes in, well, non-objects: conceptual product designs intended to make a point. He recently published a book (and iPad app) that features several imaginary products, each following a different philosophy of design. Basically, industrial design without the industry; since as book reviewer William Wiles writes, “industrial designers are in the vice of the cult of use”. Free from any branding, commercial constraints, or even “target users”, Branko’s designs are unique and evocative. I especially like his pebble-shaped MP3 player, where the form factor and presentation suggests a radically different relationship to “technology”. Branko also does consulting for companies and produces more viable designs; it’s interesting to see the relationship between his “artistic” work and his commercial solutions.
  

  

• Elise Boulding – A peace researcher and workshop leader. With her husband Kenneth she wrote many fascinating essays I’ve read in the collection The Future.

• Kristina Persson – Sweden’s (and the world’s?) first “Minister of the Future”, Persson works with other ministries and organizations to help them focus on the long term issues for their work.

• Margaret Atwood – Perhaps most famous for The Handmaid’s Tale, though my favorite of her work is the Oryx and Crake series. Her combination of storytelling, futurism, and environmentalism makes for great worldbuilding.

• Ian Bogost – A game designer and professor at Georgia Tech, I’ve recently started following Ian’s thoughtful and creative writing at The Atlantic.

• David Eagleman -A neuroscientist and writer who focuses on the uncertainty of knowledge and the importance of diverse imagination. In his incredible book [Sum: 40 tales from the afterlives[(http://www.eagleman.com/sum), he extends the scope of speculative fiction into the afterlife. As with all good speculation, the stories from these imaginary heavens and hells cause you to reflect on this life as well, influencing every reader in new ways. His “possibilianism” movement investigates the limits of science and the role of the unknown in spiritual and scientific practice. His work on time perception is also fascinating and has changed how I get to work every day.

  

• Ian Sands – Director of the Envisioning Lab at Microsoft’s Office Labs group, which works on everything from Outlook plugins to touch interfaces to the famous 2019 productivity vision video. I especially admire that Ian has seemingly invented this role and grown this group within Microsoft, a giant tech company, and I hope that points to the value of this work for many companies in the future. Update: Looks like he recently left to start a new firm called Intentional Futures, consulting on some of these same topics. Should be fun to watch!
  

  

• Genevieve Bell – An anthropologist by training, she’s focused on how people use technology around the world. She also wrote a pioneering book on the effects of ubiquitous computing.
  

  

• Stuart Candy – Stuart studied at the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, one of the few dedicated futures centers in the world. His blog is probably the best archive of “design fiction” work and ideas on the web, and his own work from Hawaii has really pushed the practice forward in terms of product and process. He now works with Arup in their Foresight team, so we no longer get to see all his work publicly. Fortunately a mutual friend introduced us a while back, and I’m looking forward to following Stuart’s work in the “futures”.
  

  

• Jim Jannard – A designer by training and CEO/founder of both Oakley and RED cameras, Jannard is an inspiring example of how a designer can lead a company. And then buy some islands in Fiji.
  

  

• Jane McGonigal – Jane designs games to save the world. Her large-scale, real-world games have addressed issues such as global extinction threats and personal health goals. Her goal is for a game designer to win the Nobel Peace Prize by 2023.
  

  

• Jonathon Keats – A conceptual artist who creates large scale, constructed thought experiments. Past experiments have included copyrighting his mind, trying to bioengineer God, helping trees paint, and a mobile ringtone based on John Cage’s (silent) composition 4’33”. I like Keats because conceptual art is in practice often quite similar to provocative conceptual design, and studying good conceptual art can push my design work further. Keats starts with an abstract new idea (e.g. “what if trees were artists”?) and then figures out the best way to try it out in the world (“tie paintbrushes to their branches!”). Interestingly, he has at least three separate careers, as an artist, a language critic, and a novelist, referring to the latter two as thought experiments as well.
  

  

• Neal Stephenson – I count Neal as a design hero because he is my favorite living speculative fiction author. His past work has moved from futuristic “science fiction” to “historical fiction” to near-fantasy genres, but in each book he spins out a world that works at least a little differently than ours. His most recent book, Anathem, started from an idea for the 10,000 Year Clock, and he decided to write a novel about a society where scientists lived in monasteries, sequestered from the outside world. He also works as a science advisor to a couple interesting companies, Intellectual Ventures and Blue Origin.
  

  

• Neill Blomkamp – Stuart Candy pointed me to Neill, a filmmaker who combines a cinéma vérité style with incredible digital effects to create new believable worlds. His first feature film, District 9, uses a number of innovative techniques and is an incredible example of concept design and philosophical fiction.
  

  

• Robert Egger – Design director at Specialized Bicycles. I’ve admired Robert’s work for literally decades–ever since I started cycling over 20 years ago. While he manages the day-to-day design work for Specialized products, his most exciting works are the concept bikes he builds on the side. They clearly influence the design direction that Specialized takes and are inspirational and exciting on their own. A racing friend helped connect me with Robert once for a meeting; it was amazing to see inside the shop and learn about his process.
  

  

• Will Wright – Will designed SimCity, The Sims, and Spore, among many other innovative games. I especially enjoy his talks, which are always unpredictable and fascinating. Once at a Stanford talk I attended, he opened a Powerpoint deck with hundreds of slides, then scrolled through them calling out topics that he could cover. Based on votes, he then improvised a talk that connected the most requested topics along with random new ideas. Much of his work is similarly focused on emergent themes; using evolving software and games to explore possible new worlds.
  

  

• Anab Jain – Anab does a wide variety of work, from futurist thinking to interaction design. Her Power of 8 project is a great example of collaborative future-casting. One of my favorite projects is her Yellow Chair, which offered free wifi to anyone as well as a chair to sit in. The way she prototypes in the real world is inspiring and fun.
  

  

• Jason Rohrer – Jason uses often-simple computer games to explore philosophical ideas. His Passage, a 5-minute low-resolution game, was perhaps the most moving experience I’ve ever had with software. His lifestyle and process are unique, but it’s clear that they support his amazing work.
  

  

• Jonathan Harris – LIke Rohrer, Harris focuses on using technology to create emotional experiences. One of his creations, We Feel Fine, takes what was emotional (human experiences) but was put in a less compelling format (online blog entries), and seeks to highlight the emotion again. His manifesto on the digital world is also moving and inspiring. Not a lot of updates since 2009 but I’m still curious about what he’s up to.
  

  

• Brendan Walker – The “world’s only Thrill Engineer”, Brendan started out as an aircraft engineer before studying industrial design and starting his artistic and consulting work. He has designed commercial theme park rides as well as temporary experience installations. When we lived in London I visited (though couldn’t participate in) one of these installations, a simulation of an airplane crash and evacuation in the amazing Shunt Lounge underneath the London Bridge. Brendan now runs Aerial, which “specialises in the creation of tailored emotional experience.” Here’s a fascinating interview about his process from 2008.
  

  

• Matt Jones/Jack Schultze/Matt Webb – These guys would each be formidable on their own, but their work together at Berg London is especially fascinating. Their video sketch “The Journey” was one of the most beautiful and elegant concept videos I’ve seen. I suppose they do commercial work to make money, but their artistic work seems like their true passion–and they combine the two well. Overlapped a bit with Jones during my last year at Google and he’s super thoughtful and kind as well as talented.
  

  

• Brandon Schauer – His cupcake model of product strategy was one of the most influential ideas for my design work in the last year. Brandon is excellent at practicing and teaching design strategy.
  

  

• Johnny Chung Lee – Of Wiimote whiteboard and $14 Steadicam fame. Really insightful and creative guy in both hardware and software; he sees through the technology to what it means for people’s experience. I couldn’t be happier that he’s now working at Google.
  

  

• Mark Coleran – The guy behind many of those gorgeous computer interfaces in movies–the ones which look incredible at first but would probably be a real pain to use all day. Still, his design work pushes the boundaries of UI design and of people’s design expectations for products. Coleran has also worked on a couple real software projects, but his work there is much more tame. It’s been interesting to see the Android Honeycomb design team go in a direction clearly influenced by these future visions, and it will be very interesting to see how it works in practice.
  

  

• Jan Chipchase – The most hardcore design ethnographer I’ve seen. Worked at Nokia for many years, focused on emerging markets. His process involves helping teams of engineers, designers, and researchers go into the field, and then guiding their observations into product insights. His passion for people and their unique behaviors and traits is inspiring, and the little bits he shares with the public on his blog are magical and world-expanding for me.
  

  

• Graham Jenkin – I worked for Graham at Google for several years. He’s a great manager but also a very strong designer, and he continually improves his design skills by stretching to take on new projects. Graham is a great example of design leadership in a big company–he builds strong, trusted relationships while also pushing design boundaries. He encouraged me tremendously in my design growth–including the recommendation to identify and track my design heroes. Plus he has a great accent.
  

  

• Jeff Veen – In the young field of web design, Jeff is the elder statesman. From designing Wired.com and HotBot to founding Adaptive Path and MeasureMap, which led him to Google and his work there, and now on to founding more new companies like Typekit, Jeff has pioneered what a designer can do in the web world. He’s also a 6’6″ cyclist, so he’s a somewhat more believable role model for me.
  

  

Notes from Design Driven Innovation

Kindle notes from [Design Driven Innovation, by Roberto Verganti](https://kindle.amazon.com/work/design-driven-innovation-competition-ebook/B002KLOLXE/B002LSI1P0).

*Major impressions*

* While lots of inputs are helpful early in the process, it is ultimately up to individuals to craft pointed visions.
* Focus on the new “meanings” your proposal could bring to people; basically, how will it change their lives in an emotional way?
* One good way to do this is bring in external designers and inspirations; “bridges” to areas that currently have different meanings from your market.
* All design exists in an ecosystem of inspiration, resources, and other designers; engaging with that ecosystem is important.
* Executives need to value design and know how to recruit design leaders. Especially they should appreciate that “the cost of not conceiving a better alternative is often much higher than making the wrong choice among existing alternatives.”
* They also need to have a direction: “No interesting designer in the world will collaborate with a company that does not know where to go,” says Eugenio Perazza
* Imitating other firms is not only a poor strategy for success; it also poisons the well, as innovative designers don’t want to work with imitators.

*What is design-driven innovation?*

> Herbert Simon [said] that “everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” – 334

> The process of design-driven innovation is a research project-that is, it is exploratory, it aims at creating an entire breakthrough product family or new business, and it occurs before product development (see figure 8-1). It is not the fast creative and brainstorming sessions that are typical of concept generation but rather a deep investigation that, like technological research, escapes attempts to imprison innovation in simple, sequential ten-step rules. – 1837

> It also plants in people’s minds what Swedish neuroscientist David Ingvar has called “memories of the future.” The work of Ingvar and American scientist William Calvin has shown that thinking about potential future developments opens your mind so that you are ready to see the signs relevant to those developments if and when they occur. – 2044

> Three capabilities underpin design-driven innovation: relational assets with key interpreters, internal assets (your own knowledge and seductive power), and the interpretation process. – 2097

*Design as “meaning”:*

> He clarified that “when [ordinary people] … are presented with very personal items, they relate these in the following terms: who gave it to them; how it was acquired; of whom it reminds them; in which circumstances it figured prominently; how much care, service, repair, or even affection it consumed; how well it fits with other possessions; how enjoyable its presence is; how it feels; and how close it is to the user’s definition of him/herself.” – 372

> The way we give meaning to things depends strongly on our values, beliefs, norms, and traditions. In other words, they reflect our cultural model. – 640

> It is the only thing that Target could not imitate. And when it comes to meaning, people are very sensitive to authenticity. – 1041

> When people buy purely functional features, they pay less attention to distinguishing the original innovator from imitators: they look instead for the best utility-price ratio. But when people also seek emotional and symbolic value, possessing the authentic original product makes a formidable difference. In design-driven innovation, people do look for the innovator. Competitors can easily imitate a product’s function and even its form, but they will never be able to imitate its real meaning, because that meaning is inextricably attached to the innovator’s brand. – 2069

*Examples of meaningful designs:*

> The owner uses a remote-control device to alter the colored ambient light according to his mood and the situation. The indigo blue atmosphere, called “dream,” slowly dims as the owner gets into bed. Other configurations of the light encourage relaxation, interactivity, creativity, and love. – 365

> The Wii transformed what a console meant: from an immersion in a virtual world approachable only by niche experts into an active workout, in the real world, for everyone. – 728

> And TV commercials for the Wii reinforced the overturning of meaning. Instead of showing virtual images, the ads turned the camera 180 degrees toward the people who were playing-typically representing many ages-as they moved and enjoyed themselves. – 732

> The Wii does not merely add a new functionality (being sensitive to movements of the controller) to a traditional game console, but creates a radically different meaning that is conveyed by all aspects of the product, including the brand, the product name, and the commercials. – 740

> “Doing your physical therapy is pretty boring,” attested a therapist. “If you can make it into an enjoyable activity where you’re moving physically and going through motions that are helping you recover, and as a part of that you’re playing games that are fun, it’s just a great, creative use of the technology.”7 – 776

> Alessi’s diagram to measure the innovativeness of a proposal – 1435

*The context for design-driven innovation:*

> Executives who have invested in radical innovation of meaning acknowledge that rather than start with user needs, the process goes in the opposite direction: the company proposes a breakthrough vision. – 586

> When investing in radical innovation of meaning, companies such as Artemide and Alessi take a step back and investigate the evolution of society, economy, culture, art, science, and technology. – 662

> When we want to develop design-driven innovations, therefore, an interesting question is, What other companies in other industries are targeting the same people in the same life context? Which kinds of other products or services are these people using, or could they use? All these interpreters have some knowledge of the meanings and languages we are investigating. And they would probably be eager to share it and to understand our interpretations, as they confront the same problems and have the same interests. – 1399

> Developing a scenario with noncompeting firms also makes it more likely that a coherent way of living will occur in the market, because the actors will create products and services that fit together both functionally and symbolically. – 1404

> We found, first, that innovators tend to rely on external designers more than their competitors do. – 1492

> If you only have an internal design staff, even an enormously talented one, you are inherently limited by their existing world view and experiences. – 1494

> Successful manufacturers have an average portfolio of 11.9 external design firms, compared with 4.4 for imitators, with companies such as B&B and Kartell having about 30 each. That average does not include Artemide and Alessi, which cooperate with more than 50 and 200 external design firms, respectively, each with a different voice in and opinion on the design discourse. – 1500

> According to Sottsass, “I’m always offended when they say that I play when I do Memphis work; actually I’m very serious, I’m never more serious than when I do Memphis work. It’s when I design machines for Olivetti that I play.” 19 – 1594

> A study by Michael Farrell explains why radical innovations often occur within collaborative circles. By analyzing major shifts in literature, painting, and science, he shows how breakthrough thinking benefits from the interaction, mutual trust, and sense of mission typical of circles. They provide an encouraging, familiar, segregated environment where pioneering minds can explore new avenues. Within this environment, members are more likely to survive skepticism and criticism by the dominant culture. They realize they are not alone, and they sustain each other in early experiments through the frustration of failure. – 1779

> In particular, the design-driven lab embraces four activities: The first concerns *strategy*. The lab is the most attentive observer and champion of opportunities for design-driven innovation…The second role of the design-driven lab is to enable the development and renewal of *relational assets*…The third role of the design-driven lab is to nurture the interpretation process-that is, to *enable* design-driven research projects…Finally, the design-driven lab helps your company address the design *discourse*. – 2189-2205

> The design-driven lab is, rather, an enabler-a methodological repository whose role is to value all these companywide assets and direct, harness, focus, build, and transform them into real value. – 2211

*The role of executives:*

> Setting the direction, attracting and selecting key interpreters, and choosing the vision are the three key roles of top executives who want to promote design-driven innovation. – 2285

> Executives do not need to be inventors, just as art dealers do not need to be artists. Both build their competitive advantage on their ability to identify, attract, and select key interpreters. The successful art dealer is one who is capable of finding the talents of the future and developing privileged relationships with them while competitors are still looking at acknowledged, mainstream artists. – 2298

> On the one hand, they keep an eye on the institutionalized design discourse. – 2319

> Sometimes I have the feeling that some executives are afraid of what they offer. If we asked them whether they would put their nametags on their products and services, they would probably decline, saying, “Our product reflects the merit of our design team.” Or, “We start from what users want. Our product is molded on their needs.” This implicitly also means that if the product fails, or if users are not completely delighted, it’s the responsibility of the design team or the users themselves. But Steve Jobs is saying, “We do not think most users will miss the optical drive.” And given that he is saying that, he is putting his nametag on the product. – 2343

> Many of these executives are entrepreneurs. They have invested their own money. They are therefore extremely interested in financial payback. And they have shown that management practices can be more financially effective when they are not culturally neutral. – 2365

> “We portray the manager as facing a set of alternatives from which a choice must be made. This decision attitude assumes it is easy to come up with alternatives to consider, but difficult to choose among them. The design attitude towards problem solving, in contrast, assumes that it is difficult to design a good alternative, but once you have developed a truly good one, the decision about which alternative to select is trivial. The design attitude appreciates that the cost of not conceiving a better alternative is often much higher than making the wrong choice among existing alternatives. – 2480

*How to do the process:*

> First, Ernesto Gismondi says, the company looks at people, not users. When a company gets very close to a user, it sees him changing a lightbulb and loses the cognitive and sociocultural context-the fact that he has children, a job, and, most of all, aspirations and dreams. – 666

> More precisely, the process of design-driven innovation is rooted in three actions (see figure 6-3): Listening to the design discourse…Interpreting…Addressing the design discourse: – 1434

> This process is significantly different from the user-centered processes you are used to. First, the process speaks of deep research rather than fast brainstorming, of developing and sharing knowledge rather than pursuing extemporaneous creativity. This process resembles engineering research (although targeting meanings rather than technologies) more than the work of a creative agency. – 1442

> The process of design-driven innovation – 1949

> You should first identify the life context that is the focus of your innovation strategy. Next you should identify the categories of interpreters who are concerned with that life context. Then you should ask your firm’s organizational units that already have significant contacts with people in those categories to help identify potential interpreters. – 2135

*The role of the individual designer (or “interpreter”):*

> First, a company should define the life context that its innovation project is addressing. For Barilla, that life context is a home kitchen. Second, a company should ask, Who are the interpreters who conduct research on how people could give meaning to things in that same life context, and who are likely to influence the emergence of new meanings? – 1513

> The difference between innovators and imitators seems to stem from which interpreters firms choose. – 1526

> Promoting a vision in which every designer is alike (see the dashed line in figure 7-3) implies transforming design into a commodity: the same qualities appear wherever you look.? – 1542

> Jonathan Ive, Apple’s senior VP for design, acted as a broker of languages: before joining Apple, he had been an independent design consultant in London. His firm, Tangerine, was involved in designing household products (for example, Tangerine was a consultant for Ideal Standard, then a player in the bathroom and plumbing industry). Ive held the perfect network position to give Apple access to a world of household meanings and languages unknown to any other computer company. – 1624

> An important criterion in identifying key interpreters, then, is to look for people who can act as bridges-that is, those who do not belong to your industry but who target your same life context. The more you create bridges to worlds that are relevant for your users but that are unusual for your competitors, the more you have a chance to end up with breakthrough proposals. – 1633

> Indeed, a company that wants to start to create design-driven innovations, but has not yet built an extensive dialogue with the design discourse, may find this second type of interpreter, who helps build the firm’s network, much more useful than brokers who provide solutions directly. – 1645

> By continuing to talk and write about the product’s role and meaning, the members of the design discourse disseminated knowledge of it to a wider audience. In the end they acted as amplifiers of a message they had helped to construct (see figure 8-2). – 1883

*How to work with design interpreters:*

> However, most companies use regional centers only as antennas to detect local trends rather than to mediate local talent. The result is that large corporations often have no knowledge of the rich web of local relationships developed by their units, and they seldom leverage the full potential of global design. – 1704

> Yet if you ask Mendini why he cooperated with Alessi, his answer has a completely different tone: “It is hard for me to distinguish if I’m working for Alessi or if Alessi is working for me.” – 1713

> “No interesting designer in the world will collaborate with a company that does not know where to go,” says Eugenio Perazza, – 2107

*How to introduce meaningful designs:*

> Prototypes make authorship manifest so that the interpreters in the design discourse can help the innovator build and defend its reputation. From that moment on, other companies in the industry will seldom use a similar vision, unless they acquire a reputation as imitators-not only among customers but also among interpreters. And imitators are not considered attractive by elite circles. – 2073

> What makes this imitative strategy ineffective is that market feedback is-at an initial stage-very ambiguous, with several languages coexisting. As we have seen, the design discourse consists not of linear discussions but of open debates, as participants consider different visions simultaneously. Imitators-less skilled at design-driven research-can hardly interpret the meaning of these debates. In the beginning, it is unclear which product will be the winner, as new meanings introduced by an innovator often convert users slowly and take off gradually. Imitators perceive semiotic chaos and eventually chase everyone and imitate everything, launching products with different meanings and languages, further jeopardizing their brand. – 2079

*Followup:*

> [www.designdriveninnovation.com](www.designdriveninnovation.com) – 264

> Regarding media, see Jay Greene, “[Where Designers Rule: Electronics Maker Bang & Olufsen Doesn’t Ask Shoppers What They Want; Its Faith Is in Its Design Gurus](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_45/b4057057.htm)” Business Week, November 5, 2007; Jeffrey E Durgee, “[Freedom for Superstar Designers? Lessons from Art History](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4143/is_200607/ai_n17173866/),” Design Management Review 17, no. 3 (Summer 2006): 29-34. An example of the superstar stereotype is Van den Poop, a fictional superstar designer invented by IKEA to challenge high-end furniture manufacturers. Van den Puup, who appeared in IKEA advertisements in the United Kingdom, is the quintessential personification of the capricious and elitist design guru. A flamboyant figure, physically halfway between Philippe Starck and Marcel Wanders, he dictates the latest rules of luxury lifestyle and throws fits when he sees that IKEA can manufacture similar things at a low price. See his fictional Web site at [http://www. elitedesigners.org/](http://www. elitedesigners.org/). – 2645

> “Memphis Remembered,” Design boom, [http://www.designboom.com/eng/ funclub/memphisremember.html](http://www.designboom.com/eng/ funclub/memphisremember.html). – 2671

> Hargadon and Robert I. Sutton, “[Building an Innovation Factory](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Building+an+Innovation+Factory),” Harvard Business Review (May-June 2000): 157-166; – 2683

Knowing what you care about

[Merlin Mann](http://www.43folders.com)’s writing around this time last year was very influential in my thinking during my sabbatical. [Specifically](http://www.43folders.com/2010/02/05/first-care):

> Before you sweat the logistics of focus: first, care. Care intensely.

I think understanding what you care about is vastly underestimated. Mostly, we subscribe to the myth that we care about whatever we’re doing. But when you have to drag yourself to the table every day for more, maybe you don’t actually care.

And that’s ok. You can’t force yourself to care about something any more than you can force yourself to grow another ear. Care is something that comes from the combination of what’s inside you and what you encounter.

You can, certainly, put yourself in situations that give you the *chance* to care about things–for instance, visiting an AIDS hospice center, or meeting with immigrants from another country, or going on a missions trip to a suffering community–and hopefully in some of those situations you will realize that you really do care, about important things. Some people say that great innovation just comes from trying lots of things and finding what works, and I think understanding your passions works the same way. But you can’t force yourself to care about something that you just don’t…care about.

The bit that really stuck with me was [Merlin’s earlier application of this philosophy to “priorities”](http://www.43folders.com/2009/04/28/priorities) (which [I noted at the time](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=3644)):

> *A priority is observed, not manufactured or assigned. Otherwise, it’s necessarily not a priority…*

> When my daughter falls down and screams, I don’t ask her to wait while I grab a list to determine which of seven notional levels of “priority” I should assign to her need for instantaneous care and affection. Everything stops, and she gets taken care of. Conversely – and this is really the important part – everything else in the universe can wait.

Priorities are a reflection of what you really care about, because they are the things you actually do. And since you can’t force yourself to care about something, your priorities are a reflection of who you really are.

How do you apply this? First, understand what it is that you really do care about, by observing what you actually do. If you’re not satisfied with that, go out and seek new opportunities to discover something else you care about. And then, once you realize you care deeply, sacrifice other things for that and you can do truly great work and be happier in life.

I’m still discovering more about the things I truly care about, but this philosophy has already led to a greater focus on relationships and health, and a tremendous reduction in stress about the things I thought I cared about but that I really didn’t. Know what you really care about, and don’t pretend you care about things you don’t.

Intelligence shows more in the questions you ask than the answers you give.

“Don’t think of an elephant” and design

[George Lakoff](http://ryskamp.org/brain/index.php?s=lakoff)’s [Don’t Think of an Elephant](http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Think-Elephant-Debate-Progressives/dp/1931498717) is a political book, but the concept is applicable to many more situations. Lakoff argues that by accepting someone else’s way of talking about an issue–their words and their metaphors–you constrain your responses to what fits in their model of the world. Once you hear the world “elephant”, you can’t help but think of one, and it influences what you do next.

From the intro:
> When I teach the study of framing at Berkeley, in Cognitive Science 101, the first thing I do is I give my students an exercise. The exercise is: Don’t think of an elephant! Whatever you do, do not think of an elephant. I’ve never found a student who is able to do this. Every word, like elephant, evokes a frame, which can be an image or other kinds of knowledge.

I most often observe this in the design process. The tendency of most design teams in business is to accept the language and framing of the market leader, or of your most prominent challenger. By using their framing, you set yourself up to at best create a second-rate version of their product. And worse, by taking your cues from their finished work, you’re really mimicking their thinking from months or years ago. As one of my design mentors often says, “You can’t get new ideas by reading Techcrunch.”

If you really want to design something new, I think it’s important to consciously strip out language and models from your work and communication that have been framed by existing products and companies. Invent your own language, frame the situation yourself. Then you’ve got a chance of doing something new.

It’s natural to want to check out the competition. But as a designer you need to be aware that every time you do, it constrains your thinking.

Play is taking reality lightly

> Play is taking reality lightly” – Pat Kane (slide 21).

Sounds like the design process as well. Lots of great play videos at the link.

Notes from A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Young

[A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Young](https://kindle.amazon.com/work/technique-producing-ideas-ebook/B000AJYAPW)

A good friend and great designer pointed me to this book, a pithy summary of James Young’s learnings from years in advertising. After reading [Steven Johnson’s extended treatise on the subject](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=4043), this resonated with me personally much more.

*Looking around*

> I venture to suggest that, for the advertising man, one of the best ways to cultivate it is by study in the social sciences. A book like Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class or Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd, therefore, becomes a better book about advertising than most books about advertising. – 120

> Gathering raw material in a real way is not as simple as it sounds. It is such a terrible chore that we are constantly trying to dodge it. The time that ought to be spent in material gathering is spent in wool gathering. Instead of working systematically at the job of gathering raw material we sit around hoping for inspiration to strike us. – 129

> This, I suppose, is because a real knowledge of a product, and of people in relation to it, is not easy to come by. Getting it is something like the process which was recommended to De Maupassant as the way to learn to write. “Go out into the streets of Paris,” he was told by an older writer, “and pick out a cab driver. He will look to you very much like every other cab driver. But study him until you can describe him so that he is seen in your description to be an individual, different from every other cab driver in the world.” – 134

> There are some advertisements you just cannot write until you have lived long enough-until, say, you have lived through certain experiences as a spouse, a parent, a businessman, or what not. The cycle of the years does something to fill your reservoir, unless you refuse to live spatially and emotionally. – 227

> The principle of constantly expanding your experience, both personally and vicariously, does matter tremendously in any idea-producing job. – 235

(reminds me of [Steve Job’s quote about diversity and design](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=3880))

*Combining things*

> With these two general principles in mind-the principle that an idea is a new combination, and the principle that the ability to make new combinations is heightened by an ability to see relationships-with these in mind let us now look at the actual method or procedure by which ideas are produced. – 121

> If the surface differences are not striking we assume that there are no differences. But if we go deeply enough, or far enough, we nearly always find that between every product and some consumers there is an individuality of relationship which may lead to an idea. – 139

> In advertising an idea results from a new combination of specific knowledge about products and people with general knowledge about life and events. – 148

*Stop trying so hard*

> So when you reach this third stage in the production of an idea, drop the problem completely and turn to whatever stimulates your imagination and emotions. Listen to music, go to the theater or movies, read poetry or a detective story. – 188

> This, then, is the whole process or method by which ideas are produced: First, the gathering of raw materials-both the materials of your immediate problem and the materials which come from a constant enrichment of your store of general knowledge. Second, the working over of these materials in your mind. Third, the incubating stage, where you let something beside the conscious mind do the work of synthesis. Fourth, the actual birth of the Idea-the “Eureka! I have it!” stage. And fifth, the final shaping and development of the idea to practical usefulness. – 212

*Follow up*

> The Art of Thought by Graham Wallas.

> Science and Method by H. Poincare.

>The Art of Scientific Investigation by W. I. B. Beveridge.

Notes from Where Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson

(I’ve started reading more books on the Kindle; this is an experiment to see how well clipping and sharing highlights from there works. The numbers after each quote are the Kindle “locations”.)

[Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson](https://kindle.amazon.com/work/where-good-ideas-come-ebook/B003SCJR1U)

*How ideas happen*

> The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself. 362

> Good ideas are not conjured out of thin air; they are built out of a collection of existing parts 417

> Carbon atoms measure only 0.03 percent of the overall composition of the earth’s crust, and yet they make up nearly 20 percent of our body mass. That abundance highlights the unique property of the carbon atom: its combinatorial power. Carbon is a connector. 559

> One flask connected to the chemical soup contained a pair of electrodes, which Miller and Urey used to simulate lightning by triggering a series of quick sparks between them. They ran the experiment for seven straight days, and by the time they had completed the first cycle, they found that more than 10 percent of the carbon had spontaneously recombined into many of the organic compounds essential to life: sugars, lipids, nucleic acids. 573

> The work of dreams turns out to be a particularly chaotic, yet productive, way of exploring the adjacent possible.1146

> Kekulé’s slow hunch had set the stage for the insight, but for that hunch to turn into a world-changing idea, he needed the most unlikely of connections: an iconic image from ancient mythology. 1157

> John Barth describes it in nautical terms: “You don’t reach Serendip by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings serendipitously.” 1224

> The problem with assimilating new ideas at the fringes of your daily routine is that the potential combinations are limited by the reach of your memory. 1276

> The errors of the great mind exceed in number those of the less vigorous one. 1562

> Error is not simply a phase you have to suffer through on the way to genius. Error often creates a path that leads you out of your comfortable assumptions. 1569

> Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to explore. 1571

> Benjamin Franklin, who knew a few things about innovation himself, said it best: “Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified.” 1711
Note: study failures instead of successes in business? biz books and school both…

> New genres need old devices. 1820

*How to measure innovation*

> There are many ways to measure innovation, but perhaps the most elemental yardstick, at least where technology is concerned, revolves around the job that the technology in question lets you do. All other things being equal, a breakthrough that lets you execute two jobs that were impossible before is twice as innovative as a breakthrough that lets you do only one new thing. 210

*Environments that encourage good ideas*

> Kleiber’s law proved that as life gets bigger, it slows down. But West’s model demonstrated one crucial way in which human-built cities broke from the patterns of biological life: as cities get bigger, they generate ideas at a faster clip. 146

> The argument of this book is that a series of shared properties and patterns recur again and again in unusually fertile environments.224
Innovative environments are better at helping their inhabitants explore the adjacent possible, because they expose a wide and diverse sample of spare parts—mechanical conceptual—and they encourage novel ways of recombining those parts. 495

> The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table. 515

> Building 20 resisted those calcifying forces for a simple reason: it was built on the cheap, which meant its residents had no qualms about tearing down a wall or punching a hole in the ceiling to adapt the space to a new idea. 747

> Building 99 was created from the ground up to be reinvented by the unpredictable flow of collaboration and inspiration. All the office spaces are modular, with walls that can be easily reconfigured to match the needs of the employees. 750

> Liquid networks create an environment where those partial ideas can connect; they provide a kind of dating service for promising hunches. They make it easier to disseminate good ideas, of course, but they also do something more sublime: they help complete ideas. 853

> The groups that had been deliberately contaminated with erroneous information ended up making more original connections than the groups that had only been given pure information. The “dissenting” actors prodded the other subjects into exploring new rooms in the adjacent possible, even though they were, technically speaking, adding incorrect data to the environment. 1622

> The best innovation labs are always a little contaminated. 1630

> Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings. 2324

> In the private sector, the proprietary breakthrough achieved in a closed lab turns out to be a rarity. 2621

> Innovative thinking was much more likely to emerge from individuals who bridged “structural holes” between tightly knit clusters. Employees who primarily shared information with people in their own division had a harder time coming up with useful suggestions for Raytheon’s business, when measured against employees who maintained active links to a more diverse group. 1918

> Apple calls it concurrent or parallel production. All the groups—design, manufacturing, engineering, sales—meet continuously through the product-development cycle, brainstorming, trading ideas and solutions, strategizing over the most pressing issues, and generally keeping the conversation open to a diverse group of perspectives. 1974

*How to keep track of your thoughts*

> Keeping a slow hunch alive poses challenges on multiple scales. For starters, you have to preserve the hunch in your own memory, in the dense network of your neurons. 947

> We can see Darwin’s ideas evolve because on some basic level the notebook platform creates a cultivating space for his hunches. 953

> Darwin was constantly rereading his notes, discovering new implications. His ideas emerge as a kind of duet between the present-tense thinking brain and all those past observations recorded on paper. 955

> The great minds of the period—Milton, Bacon, Locke—were zealous believers in the memory-enhancing powers of the commonplace book. In its most customary form, “commonplacing,” as it was called, involved transcribing interesting or inspirational passages from one’s reading, assembling a personalized encyclopedia of quotations. 962

> Each encounter holds the promise that some long-forgotten hunch will connect in a new way with some emerging obsession. 1000

> You need a system for capturing hunches, but not necessarily categorizing them, because categories can build barriers between disparate ideas, restrict them to their own conceptual islands. 1004

> Bill Gates (and his successor at Microsoft, Ray Ozzie) are famous for taking annual reading vacations. During the year they deliberately cultivate a stack of reading material—much of it unrelated to their day-to-day focus at Microsoft—and then they take off for a week or two and do a deep dive into the words they’ve stockpiled. By compressing their intake into a matter of days, they give new ideas additional opportunities to network among themselves, for the simple reason that it’s easier to remember something that you read yesterday than it is to remember something you read six months ago. 1280

> I use DEVONthink as an improvisational tool as well. I write a paragraph about something—let’s say it’s about the human brain’s remarkable facility for interpreting facial expressions. I then plug that paragraph into the software, and ask DEVONthink to find other passages in my archive that are similar. 1318

> But imagine if the FBI had been using a networked version of a DEVONthink archive instead of the archaic Automated Case Support system. The top brass at the Radical Fundamentalist Unit would still have read the search warrant request for Moussaoui’s laptop and thought to themselves, “This sounds like a pretty shaky hunch.” But a quick DEVONthink query would have pointed them to the Phoenix memo, to another hunch about flight training and terrorism. 1464

*Designing for context*

> Designing an incubator for a developing country wasn’t just a matter of creating something that worked; it was also a matter of designing something that would break in a non-catastrophic way. 319

> This is not the wisdom of the crowd, but the wisdom of someone in the crowd. It’s not that the network itself is smart; it’s that the individuals get smarter because they’re connected to the network. 679

*Follow up*

> In 1964, Arthur Koestler published his epic account of innovation’s roots, The Act of Creation. 680

> (In a New Yorker essay, Malcolm Gladwell wonderfully described this trend as the West Village-ification of the corporate office.) 728

> For more on Apple’s design and development processes, see Lev Grossman’s “How Apple Does It.” 3566

We’re all Pete

> In describing [Mad Men], Matthew Weiner has said: “We’d all like to be Don but actually we are all Pete.”

From [a long and interesting interview with Vincent Kartheiser](http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/apr/25/vincent-kartheiser-mad-men-interview), who plays Pete Campbell on the show.