Learning from “The Ten Faces of Innovation”

I recently read The Ten Faces of Innovation by Tom Kelley, one of the founders of design firm IDEO. Kelley’s overarching thesis is that in order to achieve groundbreaking innovation, you need to integrate multiple viewpoints — personas, the different faces of innovation.

You don’t literally need ten different people to be part of your innovation team. However, you need a core team of diverse people, with each person representing multiple faces of innovation throughout the process. As Kelley writes:

“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.”

Kelley groups the Ten Faces of Innovation into three categories:

1. The Learning Personas
2. The Organizing Personas
3. The Building Personas

Here is a quick overview of each persona, and how it contributes to the innovation process.

The Learning Personas

These personas gather information and knowledge, grow and improve products and solutions. They are externally-focused, curious and humble, open to new insights.

• The Anthropologist: Excels at observing human behavior, developing an understanding of how people interact physically and emotionally with products and services. “Anthropologists embrace human behavior with all its surprises. They don’t judge, they observe. They empathize.”
• The Experimenter: Builds prototypes to translate concepts into physical experiences; learns by trial-and-error. Willing to take risks and make mistakes, discard failures and build on successes. “Experimenters love to play, to try different ideas and approaches… [They] embrace little failures at the early stages to avoid big mistakes later on… Experimenters delight in how fast they take a concept from words to sketch, to model, and yes, to a successful new offering.”
• The Cross-Pollinator: Connects the dots betweens industries and cultures to translate findings from one domain to another. “Cross-pollinators can create something new and better though the unexpected juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts.”

The Organizing Personas

These personas are able to get things done and move things forward within organizations. They know how to navigate organizational processes like project reviews, budgeting and resource allocation meetings.

• The Hurdler: Develops a knack for overcoming and outsmarting roadblocks. Is persistent, energetic and willing to bend the rules to make their project successful. “Hurdlers do more with less… Hurdlers know that you don’t always have to tackle a challenge head-on if you can find a way to sidestep it.”
• The Collaborator: Helps bring people together from multidisciplinary teams, often serving as the bridge to identify common ground. “They bring people together to get things done. They’re… willing and able to leap organizational boundaries to coax us out of our silos to work together in multidisciplinary efforts.”
• The Director: Gathers together a talented cast and crew and sparks their creative talents. “Their main purpose is to inspire and direct other people, developing chemistry in teams, targeting strategic opportunities, and generating innovation momentum.”

The Building Personas

These personas channel the insights from the learning personas and the organizational will from the organizing personas to create innovation.

• The Experience Architect: Designs a delightful, end-to-end experience for your customers that addresses their underlying needs and engages their senses. “A good Experience Architect sets the stage for positive encounters with your organization through products, services, digital interactions… Their experiences stand out from the crowd. They keep you from being relegated to the commodity world, where price is the only point of comparison.”
• The Set Designer: Creates the physical space in order to help your innovation team do their best work.
• The Caregiver: Delivers exceptional customer care by anticipating and proactively fulfilling customer needs. “The best Caregivers exude competence and confidence — evoking that classic phrase ‘great bedside manner’… Good service accomplishes the task at hand while treating you as a person throughout the process.” Caregivers will curate your choices for you; build expertise and provide consulting; maintain intimacy with perceived “high touch” customer service.
• The Storyteller: Creates compelling narratives to inspire internal teams and generate external awareness. “Storytellers weave myths, distilling events to heighten reality and draw out lessons. Going beyond their oral tradition, modern Storytellers now work in whatever medium best fits their skills and their message: video, narrative, animation, even comic strips.”

In Ten Faces of Innovation, Tom Kelley shares a framework for ensuring that you bring together a diverse set of personas within your core innovation team. According to Kelley:

“Innovation is ultimately a team sport. Get all the roles performing at the top of their game and you’ll generate a positive force for innovation.”

Kelley groups the ten faces of innovation into the Learning personas (the Anthropologist, the Experimenter, and the Cross-Pollinator); the Organizing personas (the Hurdler, the Collaborator, and the Director); and the Building personas (the Experience Architect, the Set Designer, the Caregiver, and the Storyteller).

Diverse product development teams that include a product manager, a designer, a user researcher, data scientists, and engineers will likely have individuals that will gravitate towards certain personas. For example, the user researcher may gravitate towards the Anthropologist, the designer may gravitate towards the Experimenter and the Experience Architect, the product manager may gravitate towards the Director and the Storyteller, etc.

Recognize the value that each member of your team contributes to the innovation process. Be sure to exercise each of the different personas throughout your product development. By looking around your team, you may recognize that you lack one of the personas on your team. In that case, stretch your team members by asking them to adopt roles that are different from their natural default. Or call in help to round out your team.

I have seen firsthand from my time as an entrepreneur, as well as a product manager at Twitter and Instagram, how important it is to have a diverse, well-rounded innovation team. If you can express the different personas throughout your innovation process, you’re more likely to exercise your creativity, consider a range of possible solutions, and ultimately delight your customers.