The second policy booklet (PDF) from the SEE Project was recently published. There will be a total of four policy booklets over the course of the programme.

Design thinking can be a tool for realising social innovation and sustainable development by contributing to long-term behaviour change and integrating the user experience into significantly improved products, processes, services and systems. This Policy Booklet outlines the rationale behind policy intervention in this domain, explores how design can be employed to address social innovation and sustainable development, provides illustrative case studies and proposes policy recommendations. We have applied this framework under four headings: communities, industry, the public sector and policy-making.

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On the 9th November 2009, the SEE project launched its first Policy Booklet on Integrating Design into Regional Innovation Policy (PDF) at the SEE network summit in Copenhagen. SEE is a network of eleven European partners working to lobby our national and regional governments to assimilate design and creativity into public policy. The project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the INTERREG IVC programme.

The SEE Policy Booklet presents an overview of innovation policy priorities in the SEE partner regions. These priorities were identified from national and regional policy documents and contrasted with the strategic priorities for innovation identified by the European Commission. From this comparative analysis six key issues emerged as common across the policy agendas:

• Innovation in Services
• Public Procurement
• Collaborative Clusters & Networks
• Lead Markets & Eco-innovation
• Intellectual Property Rights
• Broadening the Scope of Innovation

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Perhaps the first question should be whether “standard” and “innovation” should even be in the same sentence. However, I feel very strongly that there are certain systematic approaches to managing innovation that might not guarantee you’ll end up with a string of guaranteed innovations, but you’ll stand a much better chance of success if you apply some best practice.

Every day we hear calls to innovate our way out of the current crisis, but there is little practical, step-by-step how-to for organisations to apply. It was with great enthusiasm that I participated within a group to help the NSAI draft a National Workshop Agreement on a Guide to Good Practice in Innovation and Product Development Processes. It’s not a perfect document. How could it be after two day-long meetings? It is a start and highlights the need for a practical approach and more practical tools.

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I’m all about space. A space does encourage or inhibit what takes place in it. I wasn’t aware until today that there was an actual Allen curve that “reveals the exponential drop of frequency of communication between engineers as the distance between them increases.” I’m sure if I had read David’s doctoral thesis on collaborative design teams, he probably cites Allen’s curve.

In an article from The Irish Times about Tom Allen’s upcoming presentation at the Innovation in Complex Social Systems conference at UCD, the benefit of having functional areas where people can meet to exchange information is discussed. Perhaps tea time is a gateway to innovation?

I suppose it’s time to put The Organization and Architecture of Innovation on the reading list.

Irish companies that use design are more successful than those that do not. This fact was borne out of research published by the Centre for Design Innovation in the beginning of 2007. The challenge was to create a practical approach and tools that organisations could use to innovate and grow.

The result was Innovation by Design, an 18-month programme of workshops, research and mentoring for six Northwest organisations that began in June 2007. Precision toolmaker. Agricultural co-operative. Software developer. Third level institute. Airport. Heavy machinery manufacturer. Six very different organisations across six very different sectors; yet all with the common goal to grow their businesses.

Within 15 months different participants have launched new brands; generated hundreds of ideas; explored new markets; created prototypes for new products; redesigned their product development processes; delivered new and enhanced services to their customers; briefed and contracted design agencies; and one even renamed their company. Everyone has applied a design approach to understanding customers’ needs first, which is key to identifying the right ideas to commercialise.

But don’t take our word for it, read about Avenue Mould Solutions, Connacht Gold, Infacta, Institute of Technology Sligo, Ireland West Airport, and Mantis Cranes to see what they have accomplished.

In the end, success of the programme will be judged by the companies that took part and these are their stories in their own words.

Innovation by Design (PDF, 2.41MB)

One of my favorite Guy Kawasaki-isms was “Let a thousand flowers bloom” from his talk/book, Rules for Revolutionaries. The simple idea was that you can’t think of every use of your technology/product, so let it go and see what users with do with it.

End users are a dispersed R&D department, you just need some tools to observe them and potentially integrate some of their iterations back into your development process.

I was reminded of all this while reading this article about user uses of free Internet-based talk technology.

There are a number of nice nuggets in this interview of Scott Berkun on his book, The Myths of Innovation.

People who earn the label “creative” are really just people who come up with more combinations of ideas, find interesting ones faster, and are willing to try them out.

Which leads me to believe that creativity can be taught. Some people may be more naturally gifted at those skills, but skills can be taught, and more importantly learned.

Experience with real people trumps expert analysis much of the time. Innovation is a practice—a set of habits—and it involves making lots of mistakes and being willing to learn from them.

Again, our Innovation by Design programme puts user research right at the heart of the process. Real value is found by talking to the real experts. Your users. It is about applying a set of new habits, as well as opening your mind to new perspectives and approaches to work. I’ve seen the look on faces in our workshops that say, “You want me to do that with one of my customers? You must be crazy.” No, not crazy, just willing to try a new approach, possibly “fail early in order to succeed sooner” and gain some key insights from your users.

The first book I would buy all the designers hired into Crayola would be Orbiting the Giant Hairball. Ironically, the book was written by a former employee of Hallmark Cards, who happen to own Crayola. Even an organisation boasting one of the largest internal creative staffs in the world can develop into a hairball and Gordon wrote the manifesto for creative survival, support and nurturing within the large organisation.

I was reminded of the book again, coming across this video homage put to music by a Stanford d.school student.