Two fast-paced, highly-edited and short-form-doco style films exploring trends in interaction and experience design.
“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
—Elon Musk
Connecting Series is a collaboration between Microsoft Design and Bassett & Partners. The following films have a monstrous amount of sweeping statements, provocative questions and leading thoughts, although do provide an insight into the amount of innovative happening out there:
When everyone is a maker, new possibilities emerge, but with them come new responsibilities about digital transparency, cultural awareness, and the role of the designer.
When digital and physical worlds become one, new behaviors become possible, enabling connected humans with a collective capacity to change the world.
For me, these two films hint at the wider ideas of play, collaboration, experimention, failure, mashups etc—what do you think?
A podcast for innovators, creatives and the madly curious—featuring Warwick Absolon.
Warwick Absolon is Innovation & Technology Manager at AECOM, a global provider of professional technical and management support services to a broad range of markets, including transportation, facilities, environmental, energy, water and government (follow him on Twitter via @warwickabsolon).
PODCAST NO LONGER BEING PRODUCED
Show notes / timestamps : 00:00 Intro / innovation in terms of Warwick’s role
04:42 what AECOM does
06:20 getting buy-in and creating a movement
10:50 gaining leadership support
12:26 innovation manifest
17:22 building of capability / culture / mindset
20:42 questions and collaboration
21:55 Inspiration: Seth Godin, Tim Kastelle, Thought Catalogue and Fast Company.
25:12 Thanks / outro
0:001 DK: Welcome to the fifth episode of the Defining Innovation podcast when I get to speak to amazing individuals doing wonderful things in the innovation space. This episode, I’m speaking to Warwick Absolon. He’s the manager at Innovation and Technology for a massive company called, AECOM. They’re a global provider of global professional, and technical, and management support services to a broad range of market including transportation, facilities, environment, energy, water, and government. As with all podcasts, I started by asking him to define and deconstruct innovation from his perspective.
0:36 Warwick: It’s a very broad topic. And whether it’s good or bad, we look at the most prominent type of innovation that’s out there, and we seem to think that’s the most shiniest, it’s the most biggest, it’s the most bangiest type of innovation there is. And for us at AECOM, that’s not what we do. What we do in terms of the type of work is anything that you can see out there in capital infrastructure world, we design it. so that includes roads, bridges, buildings, any sort of type of mining infrastructure, water infrastructure, etc. So we traditionally do very good engineering.
So for us and people in our industry, to deliver that big shiny bang of innovation doesn’t happen very often, if at all. So what we try and do at AECOM and certainly what I’ve been pushing at AECOM for the last four and half years is to really make it simple, and very broad so the people can understand what actually drives it rather than concentrating on what the outcome is. so for us, the innovation that we’re pushing at AECOM and have been on a sort of multiyear journey is concentrate on being able to come up with an idea, and we all have those. Be comfortable with talking to your colleague about that idea, and be happy, and satisfied that it may actually go in a direction that you hadn’t been thinking of. So it’s all about that having that idea, and it doesn’t have to be new. You do something with it, and you’re doing it because you think it’s actually going to be pretty good for the end client, the end user, for yourself, for the company. so have that as summarized is you have your innovation, it’s the idea plus the action that aims to add value. And that’s something that we have used very successfully. And people can get that.
and when I did a number of, about 153 small group discussions, we spoke about what innovation was at every one of these 153 small group discussions. And yes, they did speak about Apple, and Google, and what it actually means, and there was lots of terms, and lots of ambiguity. And then I told the group, I said to them, “What I think this innovation equals ideas plus action that aims to add value can describe the Googles, can describe the Apples, can describe Facebook, can describe all those big flashy things. but also can describe that incremental thing that you’re doing on a new bridge. That little incremental that you’re doing with a water treatment plant. Look, we may not win innovation award for it, we may not get the best innovation prize at the International Engineering Festival, if there is such a thing. but we always have to be aiming to try and do something better. so we came up wit the idea, do something about it, and that’s as simple as talking about it, and being comfortable that it’s ambiguous, and it could lead you in a direction that you hadn’t thought of. Because our work is not a manufacturing product related industry, we provide service, we provide time. so sometimes our clients come to us looking to do something different. Sometimes our clients come to us just because we can design a road very quickly and easily. So I think sometimes there’s a good connection that we had the opportunity to do different stuff, and sometimes we don’t. So we just need to make sure that we’re very comfortable, that it means many things to many different people. and with us, that doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to do it everyday of the week.
4:42 DK: I love the emphasis on process over outcome there at the innovation kind of, innovation deconstruction, that’s really cool. And I’d love to get you just to briefly give us a take on what AECOM does.
4:57 Warwick: Yeah, look, and if before I was working with AECOM, I was working as a consultant for them in a previous career. And I knew them as an engineering firm. Now what I like to refer to us now is we’re a professional services firm that concentrates on design, and planning, and engineering. So we don’t concentrate on just road, we don’t concentrate on just mining or just transport projects. We look at the whole gamut of infrastructure, and we design it. so we don’t construct it; although a small part of our firm in the American business is constructing it. Traditionally or in general, we are the designers that someone else will construct for us. So in terms of what we do, we design stuff, and it’s big chunky infrastructure, water treatment plants, mining, mining stuff, buildings, and that includes all the stuff that’s inside of it. so air conditioning, electrical work, big energy power stations. Virtually whether you can see it out in the, outside your window, that’s what you design.
6:20 DK: And then in terms of then you talked briefly about 153 small discussions. That was only an internal project you did. Was that to get started, and to get buy in from both bottom and also top down? Tell us how you created a movement, and turned the around innovations.
6:42 Warwick: Good question. And the one of the things that I thought would have been the easiest thing for me to do was to send out an email to our 4,500 people in Australia, New Zealand, and said, “Hey guess what, I’m the innovation person. just letting you know that I’m here if you want to have a chat.” That would have been easy for me to do that. I would have thought about 95% would have gone, “That’s great” and delete, and never had contacted me.
So traditionally what companies do is they hold what they like call brown bag town hall discussions or sessions where someone from the leadership team will come on in. And they’ll say, “Right, I’m coming in on to Brisbane, and I’m going to be talking 12-1 on Wednesday. Hopefully you can come and hear me talk about stuff.” Now again, that’s easy to do. But I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get a lot of buy in because funnily enough our staff are responding to clients. So I wanted to match the message that I was giving to what our, my customers, my clients, and how they worked. I think that’s really important.
Because I have 4,500, or at the moment is probably a little bit less than that, clients that I have to deal with. I not only have more important things to do than read another email. So what I did was I’m based in Brisbane. When I visited Sydney, I would hold 40 small group discussions starting from 8 o’clock on Monday morning and finishing at 5 o’clock on Friday afternoon. And this was in reflection of my clients actually having giving them flexibility. So I didn’t want them to RSVP, I didn’t want them to put their name down on a piece of paper and tell me when they’re going to turn up. They knew I was going to be there. So I wanted to make it as flexible as possible that if those people really wanted to come, there was 40 chances for them just to turn on up. So it allowed them to go, “You know what, 12 o’clock on a Monday doesn’t suit me because I’ve got a client meeting, I’ve got do lunch” whatever it is. “But you know what, geez at 3 o’clock Thursday afternoon that just fits, and I’ll just walk on up.” So that was a great way to build that movement in, build the moment from the ground up in terms of what was the message I was trying to get across. I wanted to get these people on board with what I was doing. And I wanted to get them excited by it.
I knew an email, while that would be easy, would have a very little effect to the people in each of those offices. And the good thing about those 150 odd small group discussions was exactly that, they were small group. so there wasn’t a presentation. It was a discussion from me without a PowerPoint. And even though I had some words, and I had a bit of a structure to it, I could almost guarantee that for every one of those 150 sessions, I said something different each time just due to the way that I was prompted, and the way that I was discussing things, and people were asking questions. So it was small group, you didn’t have to RSVP, you could just turn up, and there was no PowerPoint. So right from the get-go, when people walked into the room, they thought, wow, this is different.
Because usually what we’ve done at AECOM is there’s been a mass email, you’ve had to respond through your calendar entry to say yes you’re going or no, you’re not, and there would be someone there behind a white board in front of a white board with some sort of PowerPoint disaster, and not really engaging with the people in the audience. So when they saw me doing something that was totally opposite, you could get that they were actually excited about being there.
10:50 DK: Now what different, what things did you did, sorry, for the leadership or was the same thing as well?
10:56 Warwick: Yeah, I think from a leadership point of view, it was just getting them comfortable that staff members liked to do this type of stuff. and again, it’s not trying to reinvent the wheel or to go out and be risky because we’re a publicly listed company on the New York Stock Exchange, we aren’t like risk. So that was a bit of a disconnect I wanted to make sure with the leadership group that we’re going to try to do something different, but it’s still going to match our risk profile. So just encourage your staff to have those discussions with you.
And again, once they knew that where I was coming from was a very AECOM friendly way. See I hadn’t come from an Apple or a product service industry or a product related industry, they got more comfortable with what I was doing. So because I was not, I wasn’t pushing that far out of their comfort zone, I was pushing enough, they felt comfortable to support, and encourage their staff to attend or at least contact me. So I think that’s just very important just to make sure, that you know what, we’re not going to be the worlds most innovative company ever, but we just need to improve ourselves. And again, once you can tell that, you leadership group that, I think a big sigh of relief goes out.
12:27 DK: So what, how is that manifested now in AECOM after you did all those sessions, you built up a, I don’t know a movement, an understanding, deeper relationship both with leadership and your clients rather than your colleagues. I love how you’re thinking like that. How has that manifested over time now?
12:47 Warwick: Yeah, and this is where all the way along of a multiyear journey it was a thing that I wanted to talk about and think about to do it right, and to make sure that this wasn’t just going to be a six month corporate initiative because my god, we have enough of those, and every company has enough corporate initiatives to pave the streets of our towns. I wanted to make sure that it was sustainable. So the first part, and this would have been those 150 small group discussions was giving people comfortable with word is, getting comfortable that we’re all doing it, and getting people comfortable that we can all do it pretty well on a day to day basis, and become happy that it’s going to be different to different people. So that was the first part.
So the second part was, well we know it, we like it, how can we do more of it? And that was the next stage put into AECOM was to develop what I would like to refer as a train the trainer of course. But I put it together, there was a three-hour course on how you can be innovative or how you can inspire others to be innovative. And what I’m talking about innovation, it’s all about those ideas, and asking the right questions or the questions that will prompt thought. So the first part was getting people aware of this thing called innovation. The second part was how can you do it on purpose? And that was probably a 12-month sort of program that went all across Australia, and New Zealand, and got people enthusiastic about it. Because what I didn’t want to happen is I didn’t want to get hit by a bus, and the people at AECOM go, “Geez, Warwick, he was a great guy, but what did he leave us with? He had all this information, and all this knowledge, and he was the gatekeeper of it all.”
As you can probably imagine, most people in this space are more than happy to give their ideas, and all their resources up. So I wanted to make sure that when I get hit by a bus, not if, but when I get hit by a bus, there’s plenty of other people within AECOM across the A and Zed business, the Australia and New Zealand business who could just do this type of stuff. I didn’t want to be the only person who they had to call to say, “Hey Warwick, we’ve got this client, he’s, they’re trying to build a new road out of Wellington, and we want you to come across to our Auckland office to challenge us to how to think differently.” Hey I love travels as much as anyone, but that was not going to be sustainable for the company, and I think it’s fair for the company to only have the one person to do that.
So I trained up, and I use the words very loosely, trained, I trained up about 250 odd people across Australia and New Zealand from every office who could to do the stuff that I do. So that was all about people get excited, and if they’re in our Wellington office or our Christchurch office, we’re what three or four hours behind usually, and probably a couple of light years beyond sometimes. that they couldn’t go, “Oh geez, I’ve got to get a hold of Warwick now. Hang on, he’s not up yet. Well I’ll just twiddle my thumbs and wait.” Well he knows there’s a dozen people out of 60 in our Christchurch office that that person can just talk to, and say, “Guess what, I’ve got this idea running a session for the right authority (phonetic). Are you available, can you do it? Right, let’s do it.” So I didn’t want to be that stumbling block. So that process of spreading knowledge was really important to me because I didn’t want to be the gatekeeper of it all, and because I found what I’m finding now. So between probably 2009, and 2012, people would be calling me regularly. And when I say regularly, probably 20 phone calls each month to say, “Hey I’ve got this client, I’ve got this project. The client really wants to do something different. Can you come in and run a session?” And I was traveling all over the place. I said, I love travel as much as anyone. But probably in the last 18 months, those phone calls have dropped off. And that’s not because they’re not doing. but the offices or the offices realizing that they got as good as people as me if not better to do this type of stuff. So it’s certainly more sustainable.
17:21 DK: And that building of capability in an organization, that’s just great. And I love the quote that, “Innovation on purpose” that 12 month program, I love that. And that kind of leads onto my next question to you which is just about the culture. How important is culture in an organization, and how do you influence it or have you just by doing that to move into more of an innovation mindset?
17:45 Warwick: Culture is very, very important obviously. And yeah, everyone knows I think the Peter Drucker Quote that, “Culture eats up strategy for breakfast.” And I probably haven’t said it right, but we all know that. and this is where I think what was really good from my point of view was our CEO at the time in a financial, the “Australian Financial Review” in January 2013, so early January, it would have been, he classifies a light news day. He was on the front page of the “Finn Review” and he spoke about creativity in the engineering space.
Now for someone who had been within the business for multiple decades who had come up through the ranks, engineering, the blue shirt brigade, who don’t like risk, who very noncreative traditionally or what they classify themselves as noncreative to be on the front page of the “Finn Review” and talk about engineering, and the demand to being creative was a huge big sign of approval from Michael. And that I think was very, very powerful. Because within AECOM, I don’t have t-shirts, I don’t have posters, I don’t have any sort of paraphernalia like that so that says, “Hang on this is an innovative company. We just have people just talking and doing some really good work. And I think that was a very good example of Michael who had come I wouldn’t say the full circle. He’s always been pretty supportive of it. but to actually for him to come out and say that in the “Finn Review Report” or “Finn Review Interview” was fantastic in terms of what the culture was. And what I was trying to get across through all these small group discussions is that was one of the things that people kept on saying is, “Look this is great, but what can I do?” So I tried to come across a saying that would give them some comfort. And the saying was, “Guess what, I’ve got an idea that’s not perfect, but what do you think?” So it was almost that’s the giving the permission to go up to someone and say, “Hey Warwick, I’ve got an idea. It is absolutely stupid, it’s not going to work, but I want your input about it.” And that I think was a very telltale sign of me being able to get the leadership people on board. I didn’t want to start up an innovation fund, I didn’t want to start up an innovation program or an innovation competition. All I wanted our leadership group to do was being comfortable with that saying of, “I’ve got an idea that’s not perfect, but what do you think?”
20:42 DK: Its just asking questions isn’t it and inviting collaboration?
20:47 Warwick: Exactly. And this is where for the company that we’re in, it’s not rocket science. We do some really good stuff, but it’s — we’re designing rockets just yet even though we’re doing some work what space stations. It’s that type of just breaking it down, and making it very simple for these guys. I think it was in Chip and Dan Heath’s book, and yeah, they spoke about the, we want you to be healthy program. What the hell does being healthy mean? Does it mean eating less, eating different types of food? Does it mean exercising more? Does it mean do I have to go for a run at lunchtime? It’s all too hard. And in their book making it stick, they spoke about what, for you to be healthy just change your milk choice from you know the full fat to 2% milk. So that saying of, “I’ve got an idea that’s not perfect, but what do you think?” That’s my 2% milk story. So yes, you can cut through everything else, you can keep on doing exactly the same thing, do everything else, but I want you to become comfortable with that saying that you’ve got an idea and you want to just throw it out there, and you want some input into it.
21:55 DK: Very accessible definitely. Look, we need to wrap it up now. But I’d love to ask you before you leave just to give us an insight into who and what is impressing you out there in the innovation space.
22:07 Warwick: Look, I think there’s three things in innovation space. And they’re, and I’m going to say they’re, they provoke different emotions in me, and I always look forward to their emails, their twitter feeds, etc., etc. And this is in no order of importance. Seth Godin, he is a person who I have been following for a number of years now. And in the age of too long didn’t read, he is perfect. He has an email that comes out everyday, my morning, and it just provokes you to think about things differently. So that I think is really important. Great provoker. And it talks about everything. So it’s not just concentrating — I think this morning, it was all about that his focus is marketing. But he will challenge you just to think about things differently. That’s fantastic.
The second one is Tim Costello. Tim Costello I think is one of the best people on twitter in this space. Again because he doesn’t just concentration on innovation. He will throw stuff up on his twitter feed that again will just challenge you. If he thinks that it’s important, and he puts it on twitter, it is great. So you, I think that is really good. So you can — you follow no one else, just follow him, and he will get through all the weeds for you.
The third one is a little bit out there, it’s Thought Catalog. Now Thought Catalog is again, got nothing to do with innovation. But it provokes me to think about things differently. And if anyone out there who actually has followed their twitter feed, they’ll have stuff as broad as what do nice girls don’t do, and to the extent how you can change office environment to think about things differently, and everything in between.
If I had to pick a fourth one just because I have the microphone now, I would subscribe to Fast Company. Their daily or weekly email/newsletter I think again is very, very good, and it’s very broad. I think that’s one of the important things that I like to do is just think about things differently and broadly. If I’m only following the top 20 or the best of, well that’s great, I’m just doing what everyone else is doing. So do something that’s a little bit different. So if your expertise is innovation, well why don’t you tick the box that talks about management, tick the box that talks about culture, tick the box that talks about HR policies. Because one of those things will come through you, ahh, I didn’t know that, maybe I should adapt my communication message.
25:05 DK: Great. Thank you Warwick for all your time this morning. My morning, your evening, I don’t know where we are in the world. But thank you. I really appreciate it man.
25:15 Warwick: My pleasure.
25:17 DK: Thank you for listening to the Defining Innovation Podcast. I’m your host DK. You can find out more about me on my website. That’s just please follow up on justadandak.com, spelled out J-U-S-T-A-D-A-N-D-A-K.com, justadandak.com. If you know of anybody in the innovation space doing brilliant things that deserve a little bit more focus, and covering, and listen to me asking them weird questions, let us know in the contact form or hit us up on twitter @justadandak. Also don’t forget to subscribe either to iTunes or through the blog, and I’ll speak to you next time.
Chronos versus Kairos time and the power of the moon.
The video above will make you an instant fan of the media-mindful-yoda that is Douglas Rushkoff. The revelation (at least to me) that the rhythms and phases of the moon directly correspond with the neurotransmitters in the brain stopped me in my tracks:
1st week of the new moon—Acetylcholine: associated with new ideas, making friends, and being open minded; 2nd week of the new moon—Serotonin: all about getting things done, being industrious and reaching conclusions; 3rd week of the moon cycle—Dopamine: it makes you want to relax and enjoy being with people (not about work or getting things done); Last week of the cycle—Norepinephrine: makes you very analytical, organising things and moving above the situation to figure out the structures which underline things.
Ergo:
what if schools / universities were structured to reflect the above phases?
How could strategy and ideation departments in organisations / companies utlise this in their R&D production cycles?
Where can this be applied when you’re timetabling a professional development / capability building piece for a client internally?
A podcast for innovators, creatives and the madly curious—featuring Stephen Gay.
Stephen Gay is a design strategist and innovation catalyst at Intuit where he leads business teams through the early phases of design thinking and identifies new opportunities for mobile and platform products (follow him on Twitter via @stephengay).
PODCAST NO LONGER BEING PRODUCED
Show notes / timestamps : 00:00 Intro / innovation in terms of Stephen’s role
01:32 Intuit
02:22 Internal innovation catalyst programme / Design for Delight
03:46 Identifying champions
04:53 Training / professional development
06:07 Mobile scavenger hunt with executive team
10:29 Investing to grow
12:01 Time devotion
14:14 Systems and models
15:58 Developing toolkits
17:41 Next steps
18:52 Inspiration: persuasion boot camp, The Will Power Instinct, Business Model Generation – Canvas.
20:11 Thanks / outro
00:02 DK: Welcome to the fourth episode of Defining Innovation pod cast series. This is DK. I’m interviewing this week Stephen Gay. He’s the design strategist and innovation catalyst at Intuit where he uses business teach in the early phases of design thinking and identifies new opportunities for more violent platform products. I start the interview as I always do asking what innovation means to him and defining it in terms of his job.
00:32 Stephen: Sure. I work for a company, Intuit. I’m actually a design strategist and I lead a small team that I’m actually innovating new products for the company. What does innovation mean? I think the real interesting question is why innovation? So why do we innovate at Intuit? It’s probably two main reasons. I think the most important reason is we want to solve real customer problems. And by going broad and coming up with new ideas to solve these problems, we can take these things that are ambiguous or all tangled up and make them tangible and much more desirable. And the second reason, which is probably the biggest business reason, is it’s a competitive advantage. It’s been proven time in and time out that driving and championing innovation programs in our organization leads to competitive advantages, our stock prices go up, we build better products and our customers are happy. And when you bundle those two together you do some amazing things. And that’s why I’m in it. That’s why I love it.
01:32 DK: That’s brilliant. So tell us a little bit for any one who’s been living under a rock for the last ten years what Intuit is.
01:39 Stephen: Sure so Intuit is a US based company but we’re actually global as well. And we focus on personal finance for consumers and individuals and small businesses. So our two real core products pivot around personal tax and business tax and also small business solutions like payments, accounting, pay roll, and a whole bunch of other products.
02:05 DK: And you’re not a small outfit are you? Just give us a sense of scale there with Intuit.
02:09 Stephen: Yeah we’re about 6,000 or 7,000 employees right now.
02:14 DK: Wow.
02:15 Stephen: We have offices all over the world right now but growing.
02:22 DK: Fantastic. And I came across you through your site and through the work you’re doing there and I Google people doing innovation. And we had a quick chat. So tell us a little bit about how you drive innovation internally around the specific areas about creating champions internally.
02:42 Stephen: Yeah so we have a great program here. It’s called Design for Delight and we basically have a program in place where we train up individuals across the company, they don’t have to be designers. They can be product managers or architects or engineers and we train them up to be called innovation catalysts. And basically these people are champions and given a tool kit of different techniques and facilitation and running workshops to sort of drive innovation around the company. And we lately have been moving this towards a more coaching and embedded model where we ask these innovation catalysts to partner with teams throughout the design process or the billing of a product to go broad at the beginning, to really think about the customer empathy and what the customer is really feeling and then a huge component is rapid experimentation. And over the last six years on this journey the company has seen some amazing results. In fact our founder Scott Cook believes that D for D, Design for Delight is our number one secret weapon to drive innovation and to grow as a company.
03:46 DK: That’s fantastic you have a CEO who already sees the benefit and champions that. And I’d love you to unpick (phonetic) a little bit about how you identify those champions internally.
03:57 Stephen: Sure. So there’s not a secret formula. It’s really driven on people’s passion for design thinking, driving innovation, and helping other teams to succeed. So at the beginning of D for D was really self selecting. People just volunteered. I think there was five people to begin with and then it grew to 20 and then to 40. And now we have a huge wait list for people who want to be an innovation catalyst because the current person who runs the program only has room for two trainings per year but we really now are encouraging people to go to our website we have internally, dford.intuit.com. That’s internal to the company. And they can learn about the techniques, watch videos on how to do them, partner up with innovation catalysts. We actually have a buddy program right now. So the idea is to get basically innovation in their DNA and that’s really our vision for D for D.
04:53 DK: And you talk about the toolkitsthere, obviously you’re going to be training these innovation catalysts up, but what’s the tool kit? How does that break down? Is that a digital one or is that literally just a suite a resources they can tap into?
05:06 Stephen: It’s both, so we have the training classes where we hand out guidebooks and presentations too really (inaudible). So we very much believe at Intuit to learn through doing, through experiential learning. So the tool kit has that hands on element but we also have a website to go to. And for example some of the elements are things like brain storming, leveraging two by twos to narrow, story boarding and concept sheets, we have even modules that are extreme inspiration. So I worked on a product that was geared towards voice interaction and one of the extreme inspirations we did was we went out and talked to people who lost the ability to hear. So how do they interact with technology when they can’t hear? How do they interact with technology with they’re blind where using voice is even that much more critical. And that gives you feet back and inspiration to how to build your product. So we have a whole gamete of different tools and techniques that we leverage.
06:07 DK: Wow I love that phrase extreme inspiration. That’s just awesome man. And tell us a little bit more about the mobile scavenger hunt project. Now when we chatted earlier I got really excited by this so please share with us how you got everybody involved in this mobile scavenger hunt.
06:28 Stephen: Yeah this was a great project. I think in 2010 the world was really moving fast. It was definitely moving towards mobile and I think it was probably moving a little faster than intuit could keep up. And we saw this opportunity that we potentially were missing and we saw that there were potential threats coming from start-ups who were adopting this mobile platform. So we didn’t want to wait too long and our leader Karen Hanson, she wanted to create a real immerse of experience. So how the cadence works at Intuit is we have Brad Smith who’s our CEO. He has his CO off site and then it moves to a leadership off site and then finally cascades across the company to an all company wide plus site. So Karen used this (inaudible) as a — the platforms are really championed this sort of mobile first mindset. Brad obviously, our CEO and our founder and the whole company was really excited about this. But to really sort of reinforce this mobile first we came up with this idea of a mobile scavenger hunt. So the idea was that instead of just sitting in a meeting room and seeing power points or looking at data, it’s how can you really understand the mobile world? Some of these executives were still on Blackberries. They didn’t have access to the app store. Obviously Blackberries didn’t have things like GPS tied to an app with a camera phone and all these different features and functionality that these new devices offer. So we kept this concept of a mobile scavenger hunt and what that entailed was we gave all the executives iPhone and Android phones and we hosted in San Francisco and for about two hours we sent them on this scavenger hunt to find three clues that would lead to a final destination. So for example the first step would be to use your phone to let’s say go find a bakery. So you’d use Google Maps, you’d go to the bakery, and then in the bakery the executives would have to use a translation app to ask for a fortune cookie in Mandrin. And again this real time translation only could be done with the phone. And once they got the phone they’d crack open a custom fortune cookie, which would have one of the clues. And they did a series of these steps. The next one was they went to Geocache where they would scan a key word code and that would launch to YouTube. And so on and so forth. And through this action and competitive nature people rushed through the course in context understood the power of mobile. When they got to the end they were really energized. They had no idea the phone could do this many things in real life, getting around the city, finding things, interacting with physical objects, locations, it was just amazing and it really highlighted that. And it created the sense of energy and urgency around the products.
09:24 DK: And what were the results around that then?
09:27 Stephen: So I would say for that one particular day we had executives coming up to us and saying, “Wow I had no idea how powerful these phones were. I had no idea it could do this.” And the most skeptical of users before came back to us and said, “Wow I knew the phone could do some of this stuff but you showed me one new app that I was totally blown away by. And one in particular really highlighted was an app called Word Lands (phonetic) where you would hold the phone up to Spanish translation printed and it would real time translate that on the phone screen into English. So it was real time, using augmented reality. Just even one app could get that level of insight and that level of excitement. And I think after that — again the mobile scavenger hunt was a component of that but I think that whole two days really changed how people perceived mobile and over the next two years it went from really negligible revenue in mobile to over 70 million dollars. So we saw a big financial shift in the organization in just two years.
10:29 DK: That’s incredible, the outcomes of that right there. You know got a dollar figure that’s 70 plus million, which is just amazing. So that’s — it’s just so inspiring fellow. I love the words you were using about energizing and emerging to drive people’s thinking about this stuff. I want to for a minute take a perspective, how much did you invest in that program?
10:53 Stephen: Yeah that’s an interesting question. I think from a time perspective, I think that’s a real interesting area. You know to carve out at the executive level two days for executives focused on just that is pretty amazing to itself but as this program cascades, it goes from the CEO level down to the leadership level and that’s 100 people going through this exact same scavenger hunt for two days. Then we go to a company wide level and for that internal company wide conference is everybody really focused on this new initiative. So from just a resource perspective and commitment of the company to really invest in that transformational change, the dollar amount, I don’t know what it would be but it’s really about that level of commitment to innovate. And it’s something you just don’t do in the part time or as an after by product. It’s about really investing in your people, really driving that transformational change and that’s what gets the big results I think.
12:01 DK: It’s fascinating because you have the innovation catalyst program there, then you have projects such as that mobile scavenger hunt. How much of your time is kind of split between those projects that you devise to drive ideas and questions through the company versus the catalyst program?
12:22 Stephen: So right now from a catalyst perspective we’re asked to give ten percent of our time to doing D for D in the every day. And as a designer I’m leveraging that tool kit and that mind set in my projects really every day. But when you’re asked to do that ten percent it’s really volunteering not just for your projects but for other projects. And we bring D for D not just in Intuit. We actually bring it outside of Intuit. So I’ve taken the time to help organizations outside of Intuit champion innovation and understand the tool kit of Design for Delight. And in terms of the transformational change work and I’ve shifted from that team recently but when I was working within that group we would regularly spend cycles to spend time building these really immersive projects. Like the scavenger hunt alone, it sounds really easy but when you’re talking about 100 executives and you’re asking them to go out in the city and do all these different things, you don’t just need one bakery and one Geocache. You need three Geocaches and you need three bakeries and you need three restaurants and you need people at each of those stations sort of standing there to make sure if there’s a problem they’re getting the help. The last thing we wanted was to have an executive lost in San Francisco not being able to move forward. So the amount of detail and effort that’s required to do it right, we prototyped it about three times just to make sure we had all the I’s dot and the T’s crossed to make sure it went off really seamlessly. And the reason why is so they had that moment of insight. They had that real big mindset shift so we could all move forward.
14:14 DK: It’s such a delicious project and thanks for sharing. I want to take a more strategic approach to the questions now and ask you what models or systems or processes you use there when it comes to driving innovation. Do you have steps like that?
14:29 Stephen: So the Design for Delight program has three key principles. And I think a lot of organizations that drive design thinking innovation program probably are very similar but these are the ones we use. It’s really, one develop deep customer empathy. We believe that is one of the three pillars to drive innovation. If you’re not thinking about your customers, walking a mile in their shoes, really building empathy for them you’re not going to be successful. So that’s really pilar number one. The second pillar is really generating broad ideas and then narrowing. We have sessions dedicated to really getting all these great ideas out, on the table so people can have conversations with them and then really narrow based on key criteria. And I think that’s one of the pillars that we know you don’t just jump to one solution immediately. There’s probably a whole bunch of great ideas you need to get on the table to really discuss. The third principle is really conducting rapid experimentation with customers to learn. We’ve been in the last few years really focused on experimentation, building key hypothesis to experiment around to get the warnings as fast as we can to then move forward. And we figure these three pillars are really the key to driving innovation and building delight. That’s at the high level. And then when you get to these lower levels then you can use the whole series of different toolkitsto make these three pillars happen.
15:58 DK: And are the toolkitssomething you’ve put together, commissioned, brought people within the company together and say how do you design? Let’s take a little bit of that compared to how these guys design?
16:10 Stephen: Yeah I think — Intuit’s main office is in Montague, California, which is Silicon Valley. So I think as we hired people we brought in some amazing people in house to learn from what they’ve been doing. I know originally Karen Hanson and her team had gone out to look at how other companies were innovating. So we did our homework to figure out what would work best for Intuit and we really figured out a bunch of toolkitsthat would work well for us. So we kind of took existing patterns in the real world, invented our own, and created it in the Intuit way. And I think that’s kind of really important for businesses to drive innovation is to really figure out how these design thinking innovation toolkitsfit within your own culture. You know extreme inspiration may not be great for all companies but for us it really resonates. And that’s tied to empathy. And then we have these ideas of dune journey lines (phonetic) with customers where you sit down with them and map out their journey. We just did a session recently with ten amazing customers who were focused on a real pain point around managing money. And we sat and mapped out their journey and got into the details. A real classic one that we pulled from externally is the empathy map and that’s a great one to really walk how the customer’s thinking, saying, doing, and feeling. And that we use to capture that. So these are all really powerful tools to get to real big insights, which lead to innovation.
17:41 DK: I appreciate you brining up all that. Those are some absolutely, incredible models there that people can go, and we’ll try and link that up in the show notes. So what’s next for you in terms of your focus around the core products and the innovation cycle?
17:56 Stephen: Yeah so I spent a lot of time at Intuit my first few years really focusing on kind of thinking about the next generation of product, so sort of driving innovation for the next two, three years. And also focusing on these transformational change initiatives, for example one being mobile. In the last year or so I’ve been really getting into the products, working within the business units to build products that are coming out tomorrow. So this has been great for me because I get to really apply all my learnings and lead a team who are driving a whole bunch of new products for this particular business unit. And a lot of that pivots around coaching and mentoring and helping define great visions and even building design principles on how to move forward in a good way.
18:52 DK: Cool, so to close out this interview, like we do with all our pod castees, tell us who is impressing you out there around innovation whether that be a model or brand or organization? Who do you steal your ideas from?
19:07 Stephen: You know it’s interesting. I’ve been pulling a lot of my inspiration from a non-traditional design area. I think a local person, BJ Fogg he hosts a persuasion boot camp here in California and he talks a lot about behavior design. And his work is phenomenal for anyone who wants to understand why users do particular behavior and how can you influence that behavior change? His boot camp I would highly recommend. And I think Kelly McGonigal and Jane McGonigal are both great sources of inspiration for me as well. There’s a great book, The Will Power Instinct and it really talks about again what is motivating these users to do things or not to do things and it all ties into willpower. That’s a tremendous read. I’d highly recommend that. And I know there’s the business model canvas tool (phonetic) is another great way to tie innovation into the business model. That’s another great book as well, another great resource.
20:11 DK: Those are all great stuff and we’ll definitely link those ideas and those links and those resources up so thank you Stephen for giving up your time to talk to us and share, absolutely fantastic insight, so really appreciate it.
20:24 Stephen: Yeah it was my pleasure.
20:28 DK: So that was Stephen Gay, design strategist and innovation catalyst at Intuit. You can follow him on Twitter @StephenGay, that’s S-T-E-P-H-E-N-G-A-Y, that’s Stephen Gay and you can also follow him on his dot com as well. Please leave a comment or review us on the iTunes page, subscribe to our blog, do all those funky things to make me smile. And if you think that we should be interviewing anybody in the innovation space to define it better, drop us a line at justadandak.com/contact.
TEDActive is home to the curious souls and brave doers—a six day cacophony of delight and wonder.
A rich global citizenry of awesomeness and actioneers; gathered around a TED-orbit to collide magnificently in a blossom of conversations / intentions / hopes / purposes etc
Personally, hugs and listening were the currency of the week, and by the end, I felt ‘stretched’ by the experience in a way that I’ll never return to the original state.
Thank you TED and all the people who attended / shared / provoked / talked / listened / drank / sang / danced / signed / smiled / questioned / laughed / cried / hugged / high-fived / hid / exalted / winked / gave / took etc.
Here’s a sprinkling of some choice-quotes from the many talks which struck a chord for some reason or another:
