The integrated whole [Part 1]
The key to successful innovation
Someone a few years ago said to me that…“One day Katie, you’ll realise that it’s more important to work out what to make, than to be involved with making it”. I remember being a bit bitter at the time, thinking what do you know you’ve never made anything?
A few years on and hopefully now a little wiser, I still think that view is wrong and getting wronger by the second. Separating thinking (strategy) from doing (designing/developing) is becoming more and more outdated as the pace of change and disruption in the market is increasing. Successful innovation relies on both working hand-in-hand. In fact, Steve Jobs identified a disease many years ago that I hope I never suffer from…
“You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen.
And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. And you also find there are tremendous tradeoffs that you have to make.” Steve Jobs
A month or so ago there was a great blog in the Harvard Business Review along a similar theme, titled ‘Closing the chasm between strategy and execution’. It emphasised that the best strategists and executors don’t see a hand-off between strategy and execution rather they see it as an integrated whole. For me, that integrated whole is what successful innovation is all about. In my time, I’ve been involved in strategy, research and design and I reckon its the continuous interplay of these (along with technology advances) where the real magic lies. However as with magic, it’s not easy to create. It requires people broadening their knowledge and being pushed outside their comfort zone. I suppose if you think about it, we should all think of ourselves as innovators with the desire to make things better.
In particular, there was one sentence in the blog that I keep coming back to…
“Sounding smart is overrated, doing smart is where the real value lies.” Doug Sunheim
I love that.
I think there is a critical stage in the design process where thinking and doing begin to merge together and that’s concepting. I find it the most exciting part of innovation as things become real. Its the part where ideas take a life of their own and are given the opportunity to evolve into something much more powerful. It’s also the point where you can begin to prototype and shape the experience for both the user and the business. For me, concepting sets the stage for the smart doing to begin.
Smart doing essentially stitches together the ‘why’ with the ‘what’. It’s the ability to launch a service and look back and know why something is the way it is. This knowledge provides a vital foundation upon which to make decisions to evolve and iterate the service.
The good news is that in today’s fast-paced environment the emphasise on doing is becoming critical. The days of devising the perfect 5-year strategy are numbered and being replaced by much more agile and experimental approaches to innovation. This is never so true than in digital space where rapid doing, testing and re-doing is becoming the norm.
So let’s forget the hand-off and work together to perfect smart doing.
