Thinking INSIDE the Box: how to make the difference by making it differently
Hello my friends!! Today I come to show to you one of the biggest and preferred projects of my life: “Thinking inside the Box” (TIB). The TIB is a content platform (disguised as a toolkit) that helps you to expand your box of “problems” by leading you to understand what you, your team or business need to unlock, and shows you infinite and different ways to do so… therefore, expanding also your “box” of solution! [Oh man, what is he talking about?].
Don’t worry!! Further I will explain it better to you.
But how did it just happen?
Some time ago a large company asked us to create an Open Innovation program with a Learning Management System (LMS), which was basically a platform where we need to, among other things, help any entrepreneur, team, business or startup to accelerate their own ideas… Seems simple, right? But it is not!
Imagine creating an acceleration learning experience where you need to help very different types of professional profiles — from an entrepreneur who wants to start its 1st own business until a well stablished startup operating and under some investments… it seems to be two very different journeys, isn’t it?
Also, we don’t need to be too smart to understand that, due to this amount of different existing profiles and without any previous brief, it would be almost impossible to create such learning path that not only needed to be capable to teach and/or help them to achieve their goals in accelerating their businesses but also kept everyone engaged while doing so. When we were in the design process, we could sense the smell of a catastrophic failure due to the inability to engage our audience from miles away. Not considering also our challenge to create many different learning journeys…
I believe there is no need to mention that we love a tough challenge, right? When we say that it would be almost impossible to acomplish the goal of being not only GENERIC & SPECIFIC at the same time, but also to help them to LEARN & BEING ENTERTAINED (or engaged).
[Oh man, this sound really impossible…] “And it is…”
But Why?
Because we are talking about two pairs of known paradoxes (or contradictions) that involves this system and, according to many specialists from complexity management theories, paradoxes are impossible to solve. However, they can be improved or alleviated in some way. That sounds a bit like the innovation process, doesn’t it? And this is exactly what I want to talk about in this article, how to design for innovation these days and… what tools can be used to do so?
Expansive Design
At the time we had this challenge, led by my friend and mentor Frederick van Amstel (2015), who were already a (or “the”) pioneer in #expansivedesign we knew that we needed to create a sort of game in order to be successful. So, this is exactly what we’ve done! However, before explaining how this game were created and how it works, I feel the need to explain what this “Expansive Design” is.
According to Fred, if there is any typology that shows the main different design approaches to deal with challenges, it would be the three below:
- Processual Design;
- Reflexive Design;
- Expansive Design.
You must be wondering: “what the hell is this?”, “what is the difference between each one?”, “which one came first… or last?”… Yes, I do understand what you are feeling right now…
So, first things first:
They are ordinated like this due to what we believe to be a sort of depth in terms of design complexity (Processual => Reflexive => Expansive).
In his book called “Complexity and Creativity in Organizations”, Ralph Stacey (1996) mentions, the management paradigm in organizations ranges from the analysis of external environments, the difficulty in being agile and acquiring consensus among the parts of the organization, to the search for control and prediction of events that contradict reality. Because of this, three important observations were raised so that managers and academics can better deal with such a management paradigm in complex environments:
- Creativity Lies at the Edge of Disintegration.
- Paradox and creative destruction.
- Links between cause and effect disappear.
So, let’s go back to the “design approaches”:
Design as a process is based on the vision of authors such as Herbert Simon where in his book “The Sciences of the Artificial” (1996) suggests a very structured and rational process that meets the delimitations established in the context. Years later, perhaps where it became much more popular, Tim Brown (2009), David Kelley (2013) and their colleagues from IDEO brought frameworks suggesting the use of a set of tools that were not necessarily ordered, but respecting the double diamond diagram. They named it as the #DesignThinking.
However, it is important to mention that the term Design Thinking existed in the academic discourse much earlier in various forms. According to Ritell (1984), the movement toward a more explicit design method began in the 1960s, which would later be referred to as the first generation, and the subsequent movement in the 1970s and 1980s, known as the second generation. Initially, academics at the time sought to understand how Design professionals managed to successfully deal with situations and/or projects that required skills that were not so easy to define (see “abstract world” in figure above). Hence, these studies led by other authors such as Chris Argyris (1999) and Donald Schon (1990), later from Peter Rowe (1987) were based on understanding the reflexive learning, i.e, how people, specially design professionals, learn by doing. Hence, the Reflexive Design can be considered as the approach that tries to understand how the “designers” think.
What about the Expansive Design?
[Wow, this is a whole other world! But…] I don’t intend to bore you with very theoretical stuff. Basically, this design approach uses a different logic of thinking from the two mentioned before. While Process and Reflexive Design approaches use a “Formal Logic” to assess problems, the Expansive Design relies on a “Dialectical Logic”. [“Whattaf…!”]
You must be wondering: “What is the difference between both?”, “How do I operate?”, “What is best?”.
Well, lets assume that, among other not mentioned characteristics, the Formal Logic is based in understanding the relationship between cause and effect and to determine what any thing is and is not, differentiate one thing from another [sorry, this is to deep and I will leave its explanation to any other opportunity]. In contrast, the Dialectical Logic does not use this relationship… Why so?
Since the very beginning of our explicit history — basically, when we became capable to “store and share knowledge” — it seems that the world are day by day becoming more complex, don’t you think? [Jee… another question…? when is he going to start answering things?]
Now, try to follow me: “if we are acquiring more knowledge and using this knowledge to think about any situation or context, it seems that making the relationship between causes (and there can be a lot) and effects makes such an activity increasingly difficult to carry out…”, even considering the existance of cybernetical machines that help us to manage a large amount of knowledge. So, answering about if the world is becoming more complex or not… In my humble opinion:
“HELL NO!! ”
We are just unable to deal with such load of knowledge and yet we need to be as competitive as before. Please, remember, we still have to eat, sell, take and conquer things and, why not, people? In fact we are operating under the same capitalist system. So, it seems we need to find a different way of thinking. This is probably the lead that Dialectical Logic just needed to show its true potential. [Oh gosh, here he comes with more phylosophical bla bla bla]
…
The dialectic has its origin with Plato, a disciple of Socrates, in addition to writing the Socratic dialogues, imprinted his own philosophy on these texts. Plato can be considered the philosopher who, in fact and for the first time, managed to correctly and concretely establish the concept of dialectics (not necessarily dialectical logic). Hegel points out that every idea — thesis — can be contested through a contrary idea, the antithesis. This dispute between thesis and antithesis would be dialectics .
Thus, the process is governed by a dialectical logic. However, we are not necessarily talking about the same thing here. The dialectical logic conceived by Vieira Pinto (1979) aims to offer support for understanding the concept of critical consciousness and is characterized by non-idealistic thinking attentive to the process of movement of reality.
Collective or organizational phenomena can be observed and assessed through how people decide to choose “one side of the problem”. So, dichotomies such as “Right or Left”, “Good or Bad” and many others are visible in the “surface” through people actions. Hence, Expansive Design can be considered an approach that tries to find different design ways to manage these paradoxes…
The Dialectical logic doesn’t intend to make any causal relationship, i.e, it does not try to correlate both cause and effect. According to Henri Lefebvre (1969) there are some “rules and principles” from this logic of thinking (and I am not going to cite it here) but the main principle can be: “dialectical logic is about to understand and be able to relate paradoxes or contradictions…” [hmmm]
How does it actually work in real life?
Why expansive?
Because, if we say that there are two main boxes when we are analyzing contexts, we would say that there are both the problem and the solution box, right? And there is exactly where our paradigm lives.
When using formal logic, where we need to relate causes and effects, we feel bombarded by the volume and flow of information that exists in this world… Info which we need to relate. This feeling is so dizzying that we often decide to stop acquiring more information to be able to analyze the situation… Oops, if this is the box of problem, it seems like we’re reducing it, right? (see the figure above).
Again, it does not need to be any genious human being to understand that there is a relationship between problem and solution… Hence, if we are reducing the space of problem, we are also reducing the space of solution… [ow dude… is it what I do?].
No wonder people try to Think OUTSIDE the box, they do that because we cannot withstand such pression… However, thinking OUTSIDE the box is basically stop relying in what you were relying before: Cause and Effect, remember? If you agree with all of this you have to agree with me that Thinking OUTSIDE the box is basically leave it to chance, right? This is what it is… Its better to have one chance in a billion than none…
PS… I don’t want to go deeper into this, but no wonder why venture capital and startups development seems to be so risky and the formal contracts between investors and founders are the way it is…
In other hand, when we analyze problems through existing (or visible) paradoxes, we do not feel bombarded by the volume of information, since the relationships are not direct, nor do we feel stunned to the point of wanting to “jump” out of the box. In other words, what we feel is a great desire (or comfort) to bring more and more information into this box, expanding it and, consequently, guess what? Expanding solution possibilities.
Now tell me: do you still want to get out of the box?
Returning to the challenge of design an optimal acceleration program.
Now that you know what is the expansive design I am going to tell what THINKING INSIDE THE BOX solution kit is. The TIB is a content platform that can be used for any startup, entrepreneur and/or people who want to create, accelerate (or learn how to do so) its idea.
As mentioned before, we’ve created a game based in “locks and unlocks” that founders can have during its journeys. The process to define it was done through living labs with founders and entrepreneurs that actively work in Brazilian Startup and Innovation ecosystem. After listing and validating the challenges (locks), we have invited experienced entrepreneurs and “design thinkers” to suggest many different ways to deal with those problems, i.e, helping these professionals to “unlock” their businesses.
So, we have shared a physical toolkit to entrepreneurs, founders, professional and students throughout the country, in order to help them to start accelerating their ideas. As you can see in the figure above, this toolkit is nothing more than a bait to take these people straight to the platform, where it is possible to show them countless content, in different formats, about different subjects, so that they not only get an ally to look for your growth goals, but also do it in a having fun.
In figure above it is shown, in the front of the card, the problem of “how to make a business become very unique”. We have to admit this could be a problem for any startup at any time. So, on the other side of the card we suggest to use a tool called “VRIO Matrix”, from Barney and Hesterly (2010). This tool is just one from many other tools that could help you to deal with your problem to make your business become unique. After a brief explanation, you are able to decide if this could be something valuable or not for you to learn. If you really enjoyed this tool, you can learn also what other problems can be dealt with it… Isn’t it something? [ok! I know I am to proud of it].
You must be wondering: “how do you engage people to learn?”
Simple! [just kidding]. We’ve found a way to measure teams performance. Some years ago, IDEO project managers have realeased an study that suggest 6 essential qualities that any team or company need in order to become more innovative.
And of course you will ask me how did we do to correlate abilities and tools, right? I am sorry, this is already a very long post and if you have read it until here, do not hesitate to ask me this question, also, you can ask me how do we learn from people trying to validate their ideas [trust me! we are learning a lot from it] and how do we learn about undestanding what content these professionals want to consume more…?
[oops gotcha again!]
I hope I have brought to you something not “out of the box”, but out of usual… and yet inside the box. [Don’t jump out, dude]
Find me here
REFERENCES
- Kelley T. & Kelley D. (2013). Creative confidence : unleashing the creative potential within us all. Crown Business. Retrieved October 19 2023 from http://images.contentreserve.com/ImageType-100/0111-1/{978802C1-2A19-4147-9FF2-81DDA2373AEC}Img100.jpg.
- Brown T. & Katz B. (2019). Change by design : how design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation (Revised and updated). HarperBusiness an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.
- Rittel, H. On the planning crisis: Systems analysis of the “First and Second Generation”. Vedrifts Okonomen, 1972.
- Simon H. A. (1996). The sciences of the artificial (3rd ed.). MIT Press. Retrieved October 19 2023 from https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=49230.
- Argyris C. (1999). On organizational learning (2nd ed.). Blackwell Business.
- Schön Donald A. (1990). Educating the reflective practitioner (1st ed.). Jossey-Bass.
- Peter Rowe, Design Thinking, 1987.
- Barney J. B. & Hesterly W. S. (2010). Strategic management and competitive advantage : concepts and cases (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall.
- Lefebvre H. (1969). Logique formelle logique dialectique (2a. ed.). Anthropos.
- Amstel F. M. C. van. (2015). Expansive design : designing with contradictions (dissertation). University of Twente.
- Pinto A. V. (1979). Ciencia e existencia : problemas filosoficos da pesquisa cientifica (2nd ed.). Paz E Terra.
- Stacey, Ralph D. (1996). Complexity and Creativity in Organizations. Berret-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco. ISBN: 9781881052890.
