Cultivating an imaginative culture that behaves creatively, by Michael Eckersley, PhD, HumanCentered

1. Cultivating an imaginative culture that behaves creatively
Cartagena de Indias, Colombia
September 17, 2012
23 June, 2011
MichaelMichael Eckersley, PhD
Eckersley, PhD

2. about us

3. OUR PRACTICES TOUCH RESULT
human research & products new value
discovery
concept consumer
services
development experience
design strategy systems perception
visualization / brands human behavior
simulation
environments system behavior

5. Q: How can an
innovation culture Q: What kinds of
be cultivated in sensibilities, skills,
organizations? and talents should
be sought for to
accomplish such
work?
Q: What would
success look like?
What will new value, Q: What tools,
solutions and processes and
advantages leadership should
resemble? teams be given in
order to succeed?

6. the
context
Organizations are struggling to be
competitive in a dynamic global
economy, to achieve sustainable
growth, and find the future first.
All at the same time.
The challenges are significant...

7. changing ourselves
(1945)
We are shaping the world faster than we can
change ourselves, and we are applying to the
present the habits of the past.”
– Winston Churchill

8. the adaptive corporation
(1985)
The corporate environment has grown increasingly
unstable, accelerative, and revolutionary... The
adaptive corporation, therefore, needs a new kind of
leadership. It needs “managers of adaptation”
equipped with a whole set of new, nonlinear skills.
–Alvin Toffler, The Adaptive Corporation

9. sense and respond
(2003)
“Management is shifting from a stance of
predicting and controlling change to one of
building an organization to sense change and to
respond appropriately – adaptive management”.
–Christopher Meyer
Monitor

10. Work (and workers) today are
very different from the atomized,
industrial work models of the past

11. the gap between what we are
and what we need to be is large
“In the archives of any decent -sized organization, an
unfiltered record will show institutional life in all it’s
boredom and inefficiency. Most initiatives fail. Internal
competition trumps external goals. People are petty,
whiny, and unmanageable.”
–Nicholas Lemann

12. Efforts at change or innovation are
routinely met with stiff resistance.
Norms and best practices have
their place, but new value creation
requires experimentation.
“Powerful constituencies inside the company
collectively beat the change idea into a shape that
more closely conforms to the existing business model
rather than to the opportunity in the market.”
--Clayton Christensen

13. Innovation: a social phenomenon
“Innovation is a social or economic term, not
a technological one, defined in terms of
demand rather than supply. changing value
and satisfaction obtained from resources by
the consumer.”
–Peter Drucker

14. we have built a system of
organizational life that
repels human creativity,
that inhibits innovation

15. Schedules
Goals
Budgets
Margins
Projections
Costs
Teams
Clients
Analysts
too often lost is a sense of
Vendors
PR
cohesion and integrated effort by
Sales
people passionate to create new
Production
value as a Service workers the future
pathway to
Managers
Strategists
Marketers
Designers
Engineers
Administrators
Regulators
Auditors

23. the growth imperative
“90% of all publicly traded companies have
proved themselves unable to sustain for more
than a few years a growth trajectory that
creates above-average shareholder returns.”
–Clayton Christensen & Michael Raynor
The Innovator’s Solution
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

24. Goal:
Create new business models
and organizational cultures that
promote innovative behavior
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

25. how?
the approach:
create the conditions that
foster organic growth, social
innovation, integrative
thinking, creative behavior

26. All we have is us
to produce the futures
we desire
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

27. management as an art:
a systematic practice,
intellectual and practical
–Richard Buchanan, Case Western
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

28. The corporate imagination
is a competency for seizing
opportunities and creating
new ideas, new value
Human imagination is the ability to look at noisy,
ambiguous situations, spot the critical dynamics,
and visualize a more interesting, promising future
than others are willing or able to see. The corporate
imagination is the collective ability of it's people
channeled to supply new ideas and systems.
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

29. What creativity is (and isn’t)
“Creativity is an inspired riff on something
understood deeply”. It is not making something
up out of nothing. The value of creativity to an
organization is in the solutions, the actionable
ideas, the differentiated advantage it provides.
•Creativity is not a characteristic of individuals;
it is a class of activity.
•Ideation is not creativity. Uninformed ideas have no value.
•Creativity changes the systems that give objects meaning.
•Though there may be accidental discoveries, there is no
unintentional creativity.
–from R. Robinson & J. Hackett, “Creating the Conditions for Creativity”, DMI Journal

30. Design and integrative
approaches to management
offer a way to change how
companies think about risk and
opportunity, and act in adaptive
ways to define the future
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

31. (deductive) (inductive) (abductive)
“Design is a complex problem solving process
whereby artifacts are structured to attain goals”
–Herbert Simon
so what is design?
products conceived functionality
services programmed reliability
brands organized beauty
communications developed elegance
systems built profitability
experiences crafted efficiency
etc. engineered viability
fashioned etc.
etc.
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

32. so what is design?
In most people's vocabularies, design means
veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of
the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could
be further from the meaning of design. Design is
the fundamental soul of a human-made creation
that ends up expressing itself in successive outer
layers of the product or service.
– Steve Jobs
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

33. so what is design?
"Design is only secondarily about pretty
lumpy objects, and primarily about a whole
approach to doing business, serving
customers, and providing value."
"Design... has become central to enterprise
strategy."
–Tom Peters

34. What is design thinking?
1. Conditioned inventiveness
2. Human-centered focus
3. Environment-centered concern
4. Ability to visualize
5. Tempered optimism
6. Bias for adaptivity
7. Predisposition toward multi-functionality
8. Systemic vision
9. View of the generalist
10.Ability to use language as a tool
11.Affinity for teamwork
12.Facility for avoiding the necessity of choice
13.Self-governing practicality
14.Ability to work systematically with qualitative
information –Charles Owen, IIT
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

35. Smart firms are using design to
reshape management practice
“Our interest now is in how to use design thinking, the
methods and concepts of design practice, in the art of
management to shape the organizations in which we
live and work.”
–Richard Buchanan, Case Western
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

36. the conventional
business approach create a develop sell them to
business offerings customers
(predict & provide)
>
build the bridge
>
deeply
a human-centered develop build a
understand
design approach concepts & business
users/
offerings around them
(learn & respond) contexts
adapted from Vijay Kumar, IIT

37. Sources of design innovation
+4 top-down
High Search:
global
innovations
+3 environmental
& market
factors macro economic
+2
market/industry
+1
organizational
0 “street-level” issues & operations
physical/biological
-1
socio-cultural
-2
Deep Search:
psychological
human
-3 factors
spiritual
bottom-up
-4 innovations
Learning Learning
Cycle 0 (time) Cycle 1

38. Social innovation:
Contributor archetypes
the the the the
warrior explorer saint artist
Inspired by Inspired by Inspired by Inspired by self-
challenge, exposure to new connecting with expression,
individually and/ and different and helping making meaning
or with a team, it worlds, imagining others; making the through art,
is all about something that world a better music, acting,
winning. has never been. place.” writing, etc.
adapted from “Cultivating organizational creativity in an age of
complexity.” IBM 2010 Chief Human Resource Officer Study

39. Design thinking offers ways to
reframe old problems, ways of
getting past sapping conflicts
and lousy trade-offs.
It is a distinctively integrative
way of looking at the world.
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

40. Design thinking and integrated
thinking: two sides of the same coin
Integrative thinking is “the predisposition and the capacity
to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads.
And then, without panicking or simply settling for one
alternative or the other, they’re able to produce a synthesis
that is superior to either opposing idea. Integrative
thinking is my term for this process...that is the hallmark
of exceptional businesses and the people who run them.”
-Roger Martin, Rotman, “The Opposable Mind”
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

41. Polarity management is a
mode of integrated thinking
Many of the current trends in business and industry are
dilemmas or polarities to manage, not problems that can
manage,
be solved Distinguishing between the problems you can
solved.
solve and those you cannot is important. The objective
of polarity management is to get the best of both
opposites while avoiding the limits of each.
– Barry Johnson, “Polarity Management”, HRD Press
© HumanCentered 2007, All Rights Reserved

42. Managing polarities
refusing tradeoffs, looking for synthesis
physical Forward-thinking business designs will seek
world
to create new value at the intersection digital world
of the physical and virtual worlds
systems Finding solutions to complex problems design
requires both analytical and creative
thinking thinking styles working together thinking
Complex systems (for example, the human
efficiency body) are able to adapt in an orderly disruption
fashion to unexpected challenges because
their many distinctive parts work
smoothly together
Creative leadership is about seeking opportunities expand the
zero sum for shared value creation, even in the toughest
pie
times and most difficult circumstances
adapted from “Cultivating organizational creativity in an age of complexity.”
IBM 2010 Chief Human Resource Officer Study

43. Social innovation is a human
phenomenon of collective intelligence,
understanding and imagination. The
sweet spot of innovation is more about
the people than about technology or
business models. Mastery is earned not
by power or control, but through patient
collaboration and persistent influence.

44. Cultivating an imaginative culture that behaves creatively
! Muchas gracias!
Cartagena de Indias, Colombia
September 17, 2012
23 June, 2011
MichaelMichael Eckersley, PhD
Eckersley, PhD