Angèle Beausoleil

U of T business expert on why designers have arrived in corporate boardrooms

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 16 Nov 2018 19:22:42 +0000

U of T business expert on why designers have arrived in corporate boardrooms

noreen.rasbach Fri, 11/16/2018 - 14:22

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Design is now being lauded as a much-needed mindset for business leaders – those seeking a customer-centred approach to innovation, reimagining operations and rethinking supply chains and financial models (photo by Shutterstock)

Angèle Beausoleil

Topic

City & Culture

Design

Research & Innovation

Rotman School of Management

The Conversation

Design is heading to a corporate boardroom near you.

Its form is not a chair, handbag or technology. It is human. This new type of designer is equally comfortable in a navy suit or black turtleneck. Fuelled by top-selling business books and management consultant reports, this latest design movement is all about customer-tailored companies thriving in today’s uncertain economic and political climate.

Over the past 15 years we have seen an exponential growth in new design-related jobs – from computer user-interface (UI) and user-experience (Ux) designer, service designer, customer experience designer, business designer and chief design officer. These, and other design roles, were highlighted in Fast Company’s 2016 article, “The most important design jobs of the future.” More recently, design jobs are popping up in unexpected places. Designers are now inside banks, accounting firms, telecommunication departments and manufacturers.

What’s driving this design renaissance?

It is a combination of influence, timing and proof of success.

Business, design and management books, articles and reports (photo by Angèle Beausoleil)

Early influences can be attributed to a series of published works over the past decade, particularly those authored by big thinkers like Roger Martin, design consultancy leaders like Tim Brown and design tech executives such as John Maeda. They, along with small academic and industry communities, have long connected design to business processes, operations and strategies.

The proof has been collected over many years and finally published in 2013 by the Design Management Institute (DMI). Their Value of Design report aimed to nudge the capital markets to invest in design-infused companies as they were surpassing traditional firms with an average of 220 per cent return on their share price value.

SAP is one example of a design-infused company. The German computer software company has integrated design across their global enterprise – from research and development studios to product management and strategy. Their chief design officers receive extensive investment in growing their teams and offering design education for their employees.

The Design Management Institute report was the first to offer proof that a well-designed product, service or experience sells itself.

DMI DesignValueIndex

Top business magazines followed, including Forbes, supporting DMI’s findings in their 2014 article, “What is behind the rise of the chief design officer,” explaining why design is moving into corporate boardrooms.

In 2017, the Harvard Business Review provided more reasons for the need for design leadership, with an article on how CEOs were admitting to costly over-engineered processes, products and business models, resulting in loss of customers, jobs and brand loyalty.

This October, global management consultancy McKinsey published their “The Business Value of Design” report, making the case that integrating design across an entire company will have a positive impact on employees, customers and the bottom line. The report, authored by trusted management consultants, is creating real design buzz in boardrooms.

Design acquisitions by top management consultancies (photo by Angele Beausoleil)

The world’s top management consulting firms have also been actively acquiring design agencies, creating their own design leadership practices, hiring chief design officers (for example, 3M, PepsiCo, Philips, Ford, etc.) and even offering design-thinking training for their multinational clients.

Design has officially emerged beyond products and services of the type offered by companies like Apple and Starbucks to experiences offered by tech giants like Amazon and Uber and strategies like those on offer from Designed in China.

Design and its cousin, design thinking, are now being lauded as a much-needed mindset for leaders – those seeking a customer-centred approach to business innovation, reimagining operations and rethinking supply chains and financial models. Why?

It’s because design is proving to be extremely effective as a creative problem-solving approach for business and an antidote to the over-engineering mistakes of the past.

Packaged goods corporations are seeking to understand how Spanish clothing brand Zara is able to get street fashion trends into the hands of retail customers in record time. Manufacturers are watching Amazon’s bold and encroaching actions in redefining supply chains. Financial institutions are following Apple and Google as they compete with tech companies for mobile payment transactions.

Scotiabank Digital Factory (courtesy of Scotiabank)

In Canada, designers are finding their way to corner offices. IBM is expanding their design leadership studios, Scotiabank is expanding their design teams in their “Digital Factory” and Deloitte is establishing their Greenhouse design advisory group as customer insight departments.

Make no mistake – these are not typical designers, they are armed with graduate degrees in business, strategy and design.

In early 2018, the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management created a new professorship in business design (the first of its kind in the world), to teach and research the next generation of design-leading MBAs. These graduates are uniquely positioned to make a business case for design’s return on investment while also integrating customer needs.

Rotman MBAs with a business design major (Courtesy of Canadian Business and Rotman School of Management)

To better understand customers, companies are starting to rethink their processes and management teams. Designers, not traditional executives, are now heralded as those who will guide global corporations and local governments in offering services, experiences and strategies that both delight customers and shareholders.

Interestingly, Canadian design educator Robert Peters once stated: “Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future.”

It appears companies are finally responding.

Angéle Beausoleil is an assistant professor, teaching stream, in business design and innovation at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How to innovate: A U of T expert's recipe

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 04:00:00 +0000

How to innovate: A U of T expert's recipe noreen.rasbach Wed, 04/11/2018 - 00:00

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau participates in an armchair discussion highlighting the federal budget’s investments in Canadian innovation at the University of Ottawa in March (Justin Tan/The Canadian Press)

Angèle Beausoleil

Topic

Global Lens

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Rotman School of Management

The Conversation

Subheadline

The Conversation with Rotman's Angèle Beausoleil

Innovation doesn’t just happen – it is designed by humans for humans.

While economists discuss new theories, scientists develop new technologies and industrialists exploit new markets, the process of innovation is first and foremost socially constructed. To navigate its complex and risky path requires courage and knowledge – courage to learn the recipe, and knowledge of the techniques.

The innovation conversation is happening everywhere. Inside boardrooms, at cafés and in government offices, many people talk about it. But few are doing it and for those who are doing it, even fewer are doing it well. Like high-school sex, some education is required.

So where and how do we learn to innovate? Our parents can’t teach us. Our bosses are trying to learn alongside us. Even post-secondary courses only provide us with rudimentary frameworks and passive business cases. If innovation is a dynamic process, how can we learn to “do it” safely and empathetically?

There’s no question the innovation process is complicated. Its complexity stems from the many interactions between humans with diverse backgrounds, mental models, systems and ranks. It involves organizational cultures, economic climates and egos.

So how might we learn a process that fundamentally signals uncertainty, ambiguity and risk inside our companies? By admitting it is something that can and must be learned.

Innovate or die

Organizations that don’t keep up with their customers’ needs will die. This provocative and incentivizing statement has led many firms to dive into the innovation process.

Unfortunately, most jump in without first asking why, how or what they are seeking to change. Asking the right question at the right time is critical to succeed at innovation adoption.

Consider the following: Are you seeking to change what you offer to your customers (e.g. product/service innovation)? Are you wanting to change how you operate or organize yourself to design and deliver a new offering (e.g. process innovation)? Are you eager to change where and who consumes your innovation (e.g. positioning innovation)? Or are you feeling forced or intuitively seeking to change the why in your current practice or business model (e.g. paradigm or cultural innovation)?

By first asking these questions, organizations begin with a clear context from which to adjust the recipe as needed.

A man walks past a company sign at a Nortel Networks office tower in Toronto in February 2009 (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

Nortel is one infamous Canadian company that suffered an untimely death.

Findings from University of Ottawa researchers on the dramatic rise and fall of Nortel point to its failure to foster a resilient culture. Their study highlights the company’s neglect of its customers and the inflexibility of management to adapt to a new environment.

Canada’s technology darling, BlackBerry, initially showed innovative promise by launching a mobile device and system that would be used across boardrooms and college dorms. Then, without an internal process and prioritization on understanding changing consumer needs, it faced a new competitor called Apple’s iPhone. Enough said.

A Canadian flag flies at BlackBerry’s headquarters in Waterloo, Ont., in July 2013 (Geoff Robins/The Canadian Press)

Governments, like corporations, must respond to customer or voter needs. Vancouver’s municipal government is currently engaging in service innovation through a collaborative initiative called City Studio. Through co-creative city planning projects with municipal staff, students and the greater Vancouver community, user needs are identified and embedded into proposed solutions.

Canada Goose jackets are seen in this 2013 photo (Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Canadian Press)

Canada Goose is flexing its innovative prowess by leveraging its positioning of Canadian-made coats and growing demand from a global marketplace. Moving forward, however, the company will have to consider how to maintain production costs and profits through supply-chain process innovation.

The basic recipe for innovation

From extensive field and desk research on innovation process models, we can reduce the process into key components or ingredients.

The process typically begins with a perceived need or problem, then involves researching the need or problem, moves to testing and developing the framing of the need or problem, and finally into making decisions on how best to solve that need or problem and bringing that problem-solving idea to market.

Innovation Process Recipe. Freepik

Directions:

Ask yourself what you need to change. (Product, service, position?)
Gather a team that represents all key stakeholders for that change across functions, systems and markets (your key ingredients)
Prepare an innovation intent framework that is part need-finding, part problem-framing and part problem-solving.
Collect and combine need-finding data, then form insights.
Wrap your insights into problem-framing ideas (prototypes) and let stand until all stakeholders have had a chance to reflect.
Whisk customer feedback into prototype mixture.
Prepare final prototype for implementation.
Bake innovation and test for rejection or adoption.
Save your recipe and continue to experiment with new ingredients.

The innovation techniques

To learn the recipe for innovation, you must be ready and willing to engage and practise with diverse techniques, based on your “innovation” output (e.g. product, process, culture, etc.).

Innovation techniques range from agile qualitative and quantitative research methods to popular design thinking tools and strategic frameworks.

If Canada wants to improve its innovative capacity and develop “innovation-ready citizens,” it needs to acknowledge the lack of innovation literacy and actively support the best practices in teaching and learning of the innovation process.

Developing a corporate and individual creative confidence will ensure Canadians survive new economic cycles. It begins with a basic recipe, crafted by humans and with repeated practice.

Angèle Beausoleil is an assistant professor, teaching stream, in business design and innovation at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.