#NeoCon10 Keynote Reflection: The Design of Business...

Monday afternoon at #NeoCon10 Dean of the Rotman School of Management in Toronto, Roger Martin led a very  informative presentation with straight forward tools that are said to result in a successful design and business collaborative when implemented. The seminar is entitled "The Design Of Business: Why Design Thinking Is The Next Competitive Advantage". Jim Hackett, the President of Steelcase introduced Martin and in doing so states at some point that, "Design is a competitive weapon". I believe this to be true. Shortly there after, Mr. Martin is applauded to the podium and says, "There's thinking patterns in modern organizations that don't allow there to be as innovative as they would like". I also believe this to be true.

"Everything in life starts out as a mystery." -Roger Martin

So design is a competitive weapon, like a cannon with a bunch of ideas stuffed inside just waiting to be launched. Big corporations as Martin explains it are not so quick to jump on the bandwagon of new ideas because a new a idea does not have a proven record of being successful. Well of course big corp! Who can predict the future anyway? It is better to believe in the future with only the expectation of possibility. The deemed terms that Martin uses throughout the lecture to define these two very opposite methodologies are Analytical Thinking (the reliability factor) and Intuitive Thinking (the validity factor). The best of both worlds would be abductive logic (a creative lead of the mind and then testing the idea).

"Prove it, is the biggest destroyer of innovation, because you cant."

Because corporations believe that designers are a bit too free and designer feel sometimes that corporations can be fire breathing dragons, Roger Martin has strategized these 5 Productive Steps that are said to help the two industries of business and design come together and make magic:

DESIGNING In: Hostile Territory

1. Take design unfriendliness as a design challenge.
2. Empathize with the "design-unfriendly elements"
3. Speak the language of reliability
4. Use analogies and stories
5. Bite off as little piece as possible to generate proof

"The trick is to turn the future into the past."

Leveraging Design In Business 

1. Take inattention to reliability as a management challenge
2. Empathize with the "reliability-unfriendly elements"
3. Speak language of validity
4. Share data and reasoning not conclusions
5. Bite of as big a piece as possible to give innovation a chance