A Baker’s Dozen for Design Entrepreneurs
13 essential sensibilities for Design Entrepreneurs
For a long time, “Design” has always been burdened by its prefixes. Graphic Design, Product Design, Interior Design, Business Design, and so forth. Fortunately, the last few years or so has defined a Designer not by their toolkits but by their sensibilities.
We’re seeing the greatest organizations of our time embrace Design as a sensibility and leadership has pivoted from old top down hierarchies driven by incentives to flat-ish meritocracies powered by meaning-making. (Thanks to Wolff Olins for writing about this shift in their report.) The other day at SXSW I heard John Maeda, Design Partner at KPC&B, present a report on the large and growing number of Designer-founded startups commanding sizable funding rounds at tremendous valuations from top VC firms. It’s no longer news that Design has moved from aesthetic afterthought to the C-suite and proceeded to shape organizations from the inside out.
Design is the act of shifting from an existing situation to a preferred situation. Or, as Designers’ favorite Designer, Charles Eames, put it: “a plan for arranging elements to accomplish a particular purpose.” As such, it’s not that Designers have ready answers to challenging questions. It’s the approach, the methodology, all grounded in a set of sensibilities.
I worked at a magical place called IDEO for four years. IDEO is a global Design and Innovation firm that wrote the book on creating value through Design Thinking. IDEO’s founder, David Kelley, had also started Stanford’s d.school where students (such as myself) learn how to bring Design Thinking into their academic disciplines. Both the d.school and IDEO are places where Engineers, Artists, Economists, and all sorts of people come together to identify opportunity spaces and solutions to fit those spaces. When you work at IDEO, you find that there’s a sort of unspoken kinship — some kind of bond that makes you feel at home among IDEOers from any of the global studios. Several IDEOers got together to compile a set of seven values that became a small hardcover book called the Little Book of IDEO. That document articulated what Bruce Springsteen would call the “Ties that Bind.” The values in the book became more than an anthropological report, they were functional as well. We started using those values to help screen candidates. The values became a rubric for feedback during reviews and subsequently became a blueprint for personal growth. They worked really well for a Design consulting firm and the values are definitely extensible for other businesses.
In my last IDEO project, I lead a program alongside Harvard University’s i-lab and the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology (FCAT) on an unprecedented kind of a program now called Future Lab. We created a summer program for Harvard students to learn about Innovation, Design, and Entrepreneurship. The applicants to the program represented almost all the schools within Harvard University and included both undergrads and graduate students. The program had room for only sixteen students, who would be split into four teams and each tasked to create a business venture poised to tackle some of the exciting tech opportunities that Fidelity Investments hoped to address (e.g. AI, wearable tech, data visualizations, and social media platforms.) When we opened up the application process for the program, I was frankly nervous that we wouldn’t get many applicants. It was a new program, well-planned but un-proven, and we weren’t sure if Harvard students would spend their summer with us working on tech ventures in the financial services industry. I was hoping we’d get enough applicants to cover the 16 available spaces… but was overwhelmed to get 160 applicants who signed up! So now the program became a highly selective program… a 10% admission rate for a pool of students who already came through the filter of being accepted by the famously selective Harvard University admissions process. It’s an interesting position to be in. To have 160 fantastic applicants for 16 seats, but the applicants were mostly young students with little or no work experience (so resumes are not that helpful,) and I certainly didn’t have time to give 160 applicants an interview. That’d be four 40-hour weeks of nothing but interviews. Rather than take resumes and do interviews, we decided to run a “Makeathon” where we gave a Design brief to all the participants who were split into ad hoc teams. Over the frenetic 48 hours of the weekend-long Makeathon, we jumped from team to team to support the process and to recognize the participants who embodied a set of sensibilities that was a custom brew of the IDEO values plus a few extras that I felt were most relevant to Venture Creation.
After this program wrapped up, I left IDEO to join Yieldmo (a Google Ventures and Union Square Ventures backed startup) as Head of Design and had the task of building a Design team from scratch. Everything I learned at IDEO and from the Future Lab program served as a framework for building a powerhouse team that I’m proud and honored to work with every day.
I’d like to share a set of 13 sensibilities, a baker’s dozen, to help distribute those IDEO values that I found so valuable and to contribute to a dialogue of Design sensibilities. I hope you’ll use them to think about how you hire, how you grow as an individual, and how to give feedback to others.
Please do share your thoughts, feedback, and stories. Looking forward to hearing from you. This piece is far from perfect but I hope it’s helpful and that you can help me make it better.
1. Be Optimistic
Design operates in an often frightening but generally exciting space at the crossroads of possibility and tangibility. Designers of all stripes look at challenges in the world and believe there’s a better way. Some more preferable solution. Optimism is a key ingredient to move into that nebulous territory.
A design challenge is a block of marble: There’s a gorgeous sculpture in there and you have to believe it exists in that piece of marble. The right craft, planning, and detail will transform that rock to art but it takes an act of optimism to believe that something lives in the stone. Martin Luther King, Jr. said “faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
Be focused on solutions — rather than barriers — to build a better future. As an Aerospace Engineer myself, I’ve been in far too many early exploratory conversations where other Engineers point out all the reasons why something is difficult. New ideas inevitably have weak legs. It’s easy to point out barriers, but a Designer frames these challenges in terms of solutions. “What needs to be true” in order for something to work.
There’s a book everyone on earth should read called Getting to Yes, published in 1981 and written by Roger Fisher and William Ury. The authors were at Harvard Law creating methods for non-violent conflict resolution for international diplomacy, which is basically identical to Design client services and new venture creation… I believe this book as equally relevant today for any Designer or Entrepreneur.
2. Collaborate
The interesting challenges of our time require many skill sets and perspectives. World-changing innovations are happening between the silos of academic disciplines. It’s fertile territory for innovation and creating value. The most innovative groups are comprised of “T-shaped people.” The kinds of folks who have depth in a core discipline with curiosity and talent across a number of other arenas. They have the craft necessary to make impact with the breadth that allows them to see their effort in a broader context.
At IDEO, I worked with a fellow named Jason. He had been at IDEO for about 20 years. He had seen through a ton of projects, waves of change in the Design world, and probably 100 different teams. We were on a team together one summer and he described each project as “an explosion in reverse.” As we know, Design is the antithesis of a linear process. It’s a cluster of half-steps and somersaults that— when the ingredients are right— lead to a delightful outcome. The team starts at the quiet calm of a new project, the promise of an exciting new challenge. The settled debris of a reverse explosion. And from there the energy grows to fever pitch. Sleepless nights and long working weekends leading up to a dreaded deadline. And when the work has been delivered, the team has achieved Mind Meld and a perfect Design solution sits peacefully on a table (or screen).
3. Embrace Ambiguity
Innovation is about uncovering needs and creating new opportunities. It is necessarily a vague journey and can be uncomfortable at times. Design is like “cutting cubes out of fog,” to borrow the words of Jay Doblin.
There are essentially four kinds of projects. They fall on a 2x2 framework (Designers love frameworks.) One axis is Known and Unknown Outcomes. The other is Known and Unknown Processes.
Known Process, Known Outcome: Paint-by-numbers.
A paint by numbers kind of project is straightforward. You know what you’re going to get and the process is laid out for you. When your challenges fall into this category, your task is to find efficiencies.
Unknown Process, Known Outcome: Holy Grail.
With these kinds of projects, you know the desired outcome but not how to reach it. From curing diabetes to ending world hunger or finding available parking spaces in the city. The what is clear but the how needs work.
Known Process, Unknown Outcome: Movie-making.
When you make a movie, there’s a script, a cast of actors + actresses, camerapeople, set designers, costume people, and so on. The process has been done a million times but so many things happen on the way to the premiere that you can’t actually know what the final product will be like.
Unknown Process, Unknown Outcome: Fog.
Then there’s Fog projects, which are the dearest projects to a Designer. With a fog project, you know there’s some solution out there but you don’t know what it looks like and you don’t know how to get there and maybe the problem is changing while you’re working on it. It’s these kinds of projects that are best served by the sensibilities outlined here.
4. Learn from Failure
If you’re not making mistakes, chances are, you’re not in rich uncharted territory. When you make mistakes, own them. Celebrate failures.
We had a mantra at the Stanford design program to “fail early and fail often to get to success sooner.” Just be sure to debrief your failures so you can stay reflective, keep learning, and move forward. Some folks at the wonderful advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy made a wall that says “Fail Harder” out of push pins as a reminder to do same.
5. Make Others Successful
One of the biggest disappointments in the Design world is Designers who feel like their clients or users “don’t get it” and therefore aren’t worth the attention. Designers are a passionate lot and ought to have a strong point of view. It’s that point of view and that attention to craft that puts great Designers in a position to impact change, large and small.
Design is about empowering others with tools, artifacts, services, systems, and experiences. Making others successful starts with you. How can you use your craft to advance someone elses? How will your Industrial Design make the Engineer successful? How will your Graphic Design help Marketing be Successful? At IDEO, one measure of success was whether your work helped get the client contact promoted.
6. Take Ownership
Take Ownership is sort of the counterpart to Collaborate but the corollary to Make Others Successful. Collaboration isn’t always about the fireside kumbaya, it’s about measured interdependence.
The Design process at its best is an iterative loop of exploration and execution. Each of these cycles narrows in on your opportunity space and refines the output of the Design team. Those exploratory moments are about generating ideas and your team should be in a state of divergent thinking. When Exploration pivots into Execution, each team member should be in a convergent thinking mode. Great Designers look for opportunities to Take Ownership, leveraging their craft, curiosity, and ambition to move towards brilliant outcomes.
7. Talk Less, Do More
Design is about “building to think.”
The best way to complain is to make stuff.
8. Document Your Process
The data you don’t have is the data you can’t use.
Whether its for reference or reflection, capture your ideas on paper and photograph works-in-progress. It’s amazing how quickly things change and it’s so fun to look back on early prototypes, team photos, and process shots.
We all have pretty great cameras in our pockets with video and slo-mo and time lapse, so no excuses!
9. Be Intentional
“Wherever you go, go with all your heart” — Confucious
Make decisions with purpose. Here’s a provocation for you: when you explain your work, stop saying “because” and start saying “in order to.”
10. Trust Yourself
So now that you’re designing with intent, hopefully you have a strong point of view about the work that you do. Maybe your point of view is about your craft as a calling, like the ultimate pursuit of Graphic Design, or if your POV is about an industry like Healthcare. Either way, you’ve been cultivating a passionate perspective that should come through in your work. Sure, research and testing are important, yet your own intuition is unique and uniquely powerful. Testing should ensure that you are designing towards your intended outcomes but use your gut to get you there.
11. Design for Outcomes
Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO, says to focus on designing verbs, not nouns. Each touchpoint of a product experience should be aimed towards the behaviors you’re looking to create. From the packaging to the copywriting to the customer service. When you design towards outcomes, you’ll find yourself thinking holistically about the experience. Make the right stuff before you make stuff right.
12. Take Chances
Design is hunting, not gathering.
As a Designer and Entrepreneur, you’re looking for new territory and opportunity spaces that haven’t been addressed. There are few rules at IDEO but there are seven rules around Brainstorming. One of the rules is to Encourage Wild Ideas. Those off the wall ideas aren’t necessarily the concepts that get built, but they’re effectively provocations that force the group to consider new approaches or establish new boundaries on a Design challenge. Wild ideas take us on new trajectories that we could not have imagined otherwise. Take chances as you design.
13. Be Generous
The things you keep forever are the things you give away.
Your impact will grow when you share the wealth of your skill within and beyond your team. The actor Jack Lemmon suggested to those that found success in their line of work, “make sure you send the elevator back down.”
