What could you create with four months, the full support of your company, and the mentorship of a team of innovation experts?

Each year in Kuwait, the opportunity to answer this question is given to ten lucky teams by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science (KFAS) — a nonprofit institution created in 1976 by the Emir of Kuwait to promote science, technology, and innovation.  

The annual KFAS Innovation Challenge is a four-month blended learning program hosted by a prestigious university in which teams from Kuwait’s private-sector companies are incubated with support and resources as they work on a project from their own business. Each company is carefully selected and commits to support a team of three to five employees for the duration of the program as they rigorously dedicate their time and attention to developing a new solution for their brand.

For 2018, Innovationship partnered with the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles to act as the Learning Director and design thinking experts for this inspirational program. Working within the KFAS framework and collaborating closely with UCLA Anderson staff, we guided the creative learning journey for the participants. The four-month schedule combined instruction in design thinking, team dynamics, and business model innovation over three workshops, a series of coaching calls, and online collaboration involving over a dozen teachers and coaches.

PHASE ONE: KICKOFF

In January 2018, five members of our team travelled to Kuwait City for a week-long kickoff workshop, where we met the ten teams for the first time. The forty participants were an eclectic mix: a few were from major banks and investment companies, but we also had teams from a hamburger chain, a shipping and logistics firm, and a luxury real estate developer. The teams were welcoming and a delight to work with — a large number of them had been educated in American or British universities and everyone spoke English well. By the end of the week of instruction and exercises, each of the the teams had identified a direction to pursue within their organization, ranging from customer-experience initiatives to the launch of a new restaurant in Los Angeles.

PHASE TWO: DEVELOPMENT

The teams were given nine weeks to focus on their project until the next workshop. They used the design thinking approach we had introduced to them in the first workshop, with the help of coaching calls from our design thinking coach and a team dynamics coach. Workshop #2 in March, also in Kuwait, focused on business innovation, the use of tools like Business Model Canvas, and the preparations for the next phase of implementation for their projects.

That left the teams another month to move their project forward, consider their emergent business model, and begin the process of creating a presentation to “sell” their idea to the leadership of their companies. As the project work grew more intense, so did the demands on their time — most of the participants worked on their project in their “spare time,” since they still had their initial roles and responsibilities to maintain.

PHASE THREE: PRESENTATION

At the end of April, the ten teams all met for Workshop #3: a week in Los Angeles, at the UCLA campus. During their time in California, these new design thinkers got immersed into the professional innovation world, taking inspirational tours and hearing talks at a few prominent Los Angeles-area companies, which allowed them to hear about innovation practices from experts at Riot Games, Netflix, and Disney.

The core of the final workshop allowed the teams to finish and deliver their project presentation, which they would ultimately use to show their bosses the merits of their innovation. The content included the primary design challenge and solution, their plans for implementation, and the learnings of the KFAS program. After so many weeks of work and creative collaboration, the results were impressive, to say the least.

Today, a number of the teams have already launched their KFAS Innovation Challenge projects, including a innovation lab for a bank, a luxury resort home on the Arabian Sea, and an AI-assisted virtual bank teller. It was an honor and a delight to participate in this forward-thinking program and to collaborate with Kuwait’s newest generation of enthusiastic and bold innovators.

LAST WORD: VISITING KUWAIT

We were impressed by our short stays in Kuwait City. Though Kuwait is a conservative country in a conservative region — as an Islamic country, it allows no pork or alcohol — we were pleasantly surprised by its modernity and equality. Almost half of the forty participants were women, who were equal members of their teams. Clothing styles varied based on personal choice, some men wearing more formal dishdasha (the traditional robe known by many names in the Middle East) and others dressed comfortably in jeans and sweaters. Similarly, some women wore hijab and scarves and others wore business casual clothes that would be unremarkable here in California. It was a favorite conversation of all parties to explore cultural differences between life in Kuwait and the United States — and of course most of them knew more about our culture than we did of theirs!

About 70% of Kuwait’s 4.2 million people are expatriates from countries like Turkey, India, Egypt, and the Philippines, creating a rich, diverse culture in service industries — barbers, taxi drivers, hotel staff, and merchants. Enriching the ingredients of this melting pot even more, Kuwait is a shopping destination for many Gulf countries. Visitors from Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates gather in Kuwait City for its bustling souks (the traditional marketplaces better known elsewhere as bazaars), malls, and other stores.

Visiting the popular Souk Al-Mubarakiya, we saw gold and other luxuries, dates and nuts of many types, dishdashas and other garments of fine cloth, and an array of perfumes for men and women, in stalls lining a maze-like group of halls and plazas.

For contrast, we took a tour of the Avenues, a modern mall with over 800 stores that is so large it feels as if you are in the outdoors. A big surprise was the number of familiar American and British stores and restaurants, like Marks and Spencer, Pottery Barn, Olive Garden, and, of course, Starbucks.

Born as a hub of maritime trade, and made prosperous after World War II through its vast oil fields, Kuwait faces a new era. Though it is one of the world’s richest countries, with a high literacy rate and an educated workforce, its economy has been almost entirely dependent on oil and the future may be less rosy unless it can grow its private sector. The goal of the KFAS Innovation Challenge is to help spark new thinking, new processes, and an entrepreneurial spirit across all businesses, and it looks to be a successful endeavor. 

We are grateful for the opportunity we had to share a new mindset — along with specific skills and tools — that can help Kuwait design a future they create for themselves.

“Good artists borrow, great artist steal.” — attributed to several people, but it was probably W.H. Davenport Adams  

If you are pushing yourself to develop new, original ideas, trying to come up with that one thing that no one has thought of before... you might be working too hard.

The ultimate innovation icon, Steve Jobs, said, "Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things."

Creativity doesn’t necessarily involve the birth of a brand-new idea out of thin air, it can also be the application of an existing solution in one field to a problem in another. Consider the classic example of the emergency healthcare staff who visited a NASCAR racetrack to learn about high-pressure team collaboration from pit crews, who can change four tires and fill up the gas tank in ten seconds. The noisy competitive environment at the track is far removed from the sterile hospital environment, yet operating room teams, emergency medical technicians, and other critical-care providers were able to gain insights and critical knowledge that revolutionized healthcare operations around the world.

For example, they realized that the pit crew made pre-assembled kits for dealing with every possible repair scenario: as the driver rolled into the pit, they had the kit pulled out and laid open, with direct access to the tools and parts necessary for that specific repair. In contrast, the emergency-room procedure required the team to assemble the materials and equipment only after the patient’s condition was diagnosed, often wasting critical time in treatment.

Here’s another example. When you think of a cheesecake, health is not the first thing that comes to mind, right? Innovationship facilitated a project in which we guided healthcare professionals through the journey of improving services at community health clinics. In our search for new ways of thinking we found inspiration in an article by the surgeon Atul Gawande*, and decided to visit the same unusual, fast-paced business he used as an example of efficiency: the Cheesecake Factory. How did we make this connection? By reframing the problem statement from “optimizing service efficiency at a medical clinic” to “creating a delightful patient experience” we quickly came to the conclusion that visiting a busy restaurant might provide us with some insights.

While enjoying a meal and a behind-the-scenes tour we had arranged with the manager, several ideas came to mind. The “greeter” at the entrance to the restaurant inspired a new and personal procedure for welcoming patients to a newly designed children’s clinic, and watching kitchen staff handle a huge variety of menu choices led to a new approach to guiding patients during intake. In the end, learning from the restaurant setting helped create a delightful experience for people who usually expect the worst when checking into a clinic.

To make your own unexpected connections, follow this process:

1. Learn to rephrase the focus of your observation in a way that captures the experience underlying your challenge. Consider the examples above: stepping back from the specific setting of the emergency room, the problem was defined as “where do teams respond to a situation with great speed?” Rephrasing the clinic problem as one of “delightful service” allowed us to learn from a leading restaurant.
2. Consider who has already solved this newly defined problem in a different industry.
3. Go on your learning journey with an open mind: immerse yourself in this other experience and let your mind make connections that inspire new ideas.

The world is full of products, processes, and experiences that others have spent time and money developing which may provide answers to your challenges. Instead of trying to think of a solution no one else has ever thought of before, try to find solutions that work in other fields but have never been applied to your particular challenge.

Remember: “Innovation begins with an eye.” Keep your eyes open, find new places to look, and you will find inspiration for original connections that lead to innovative solutions.

*Atul Gawande, “What Big Medicine Can Learn from the Cheesecake Factory”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/13/big-med

Design thinking has come a long way since my days at IDEO back in the early ‘90s when the mere mention of the word “design” saw most technologists and non-designers frowning their brow with skepticism.

What was design thinking before it was design thinking?

Back then, this process wasn’t called design thinking. In fact, it didn’t have a name at all. It was simply what you did when you gathered together a bunch of creative professionals (like engineers and industrial designers) who were experts at making things, and had them collaborate with another bunch of creative professionals (like psychologists and human factors experts) who focused on understanding human experience.

From this clash of perspectives, an organic process emerged, anchored by the rich platform and tradition of Design with a capital D. (For more on the unfolding and impact of design on Silicon Valley, I highly recommend the fascinating book Make It New by Barry Katz.)

And over the past 25 years, while adoption of design thinking has grown substantially, its essential ingredients have remained the same:

• build a diverse team of creative people who love to collaborate

• focus on people’s experience through observation

• ideate, create, and prototype

• test and iterate

• deliver, reflect, and improve

Teach a person to fish and you… gain an enthusiastic fishing buddy!

Today, those familiar with design thinking may understand how the practice of observation is central to its process. However, in those early IDEO days, we spent a lot of time justifying it to clients. They didn’t see why we needed to go out on “observations” to gain inspiration. Weren’t we supposed to be the beacon of inspiration? Couldn’t we just think about it and come up with some new solutions?

We knew that if a picture is worth a thousand words, an experience is ten times more valuable than that. And we realized we had to start bringing clients along on our innovation journey.

So, we invited them to join us on observations to see the things people actually do out in the world. We asked them to immerse themselves in the experience they wished to create. And we showed them how to discover opportunities and get inspired by asking questions and staying open to all possibilities.

When other consulting firms learned what IDEO was doing, they feared we were sawing the branch we sat on. “Our process is what makes us special! Why would we want to share that with our clients? They’ll learn it, run with it, and we’ll never see them again!”

Those fears proved to be unfounded. It turned out that sharing the process with our clients simply made them better clients. And having them take the innovation journey with us allowed them to appreciate our unique approach and expertise even more.

Those results were compelling. And in 2012, some former IDEO colleagues and I decided we wanted to focus our efforts on guiding companies through the process of applying, learning, and adopting design thinking. And with that, our company Innovationship was born.

At Innovationship, we believe the most effective method of teaching design thinking is through immersion, iteration, and guided mastery. And we focus on the integration of learning over time, through ongoing coaching and mentoring.

Through our work, we’ve helped startups, midsize firms, multinationals, and academic institutions around the world bring this essential process into their organizations. We’ve worked with teams at Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Juniper Networks, Kaiser Permanente, PepsiCo (Shanghai), UCLA Andersen School of Management, UTEC (Lima), Wedgewood, and many others to help them adopt a design thinking — and doing — mindset.

Design thinking is for doers. 

These days, the once unnamed process of design thinking has become almost synonymous with innovation. Yet for people who haven’t experienced this human-centered, collaborative, and creative process, the name “design thinking” itself can be a bit misleading.

“How exactly do designers think?” is one question I get all too often, usually after mentioning that I teach design thinking.

It’s a fair question. At face value, the phrase design thinking perhaps conjures an image of a group of designer-types (black shirts, unusual wrist watches, unique shoes) with thoughtful looks on their faces, sitting around a table, perhaps sketching with pencils, pondering possible solutions for an abstract aesthetic problem.

But anyone who has had hands-on experience with the process knows that the scenario described above couldn’t be further from the truth. Because design thinking is actually all about doing. It’s about taking action — observing, brainstorming, prototyping — as a way for thinking through a challenge or solving a problem. It's thinking by doing.

Getting into the right mindset (and bodyset!) is key.

Another way we talk about design thinking is to categorize it as a mindset, a lens through which to look at challenges and discover opportunities in the world. Although, this, too, can be misleading.

In reality, design thinking is not only a mindset but also a bodyset. Because it’s not enough to perceive information and process thoughts — one must be able to act upon the learnings and insights gained from all of that thinking. And those actions require specific skills — whether drawing from the flow of an experience, building a cardboard prototype, authoring a presentation, or going out to do one more observation — you must continually do stuff to keep moving forward through the creative process.

By doing, we generate more opportunities to gather new information, which in turn affects our thinking, then informs our subsequent actions, and the cycle continues.

We use the word “design” to describe this magical cycle of thinking and doing, this mindset and bodyset, but people also use it as an umbrella term that serves to cover all of the specific attributes of an object or a space, like shape, color, size, placement, etc. 

Next time someone says, “I love that design!” ask them what specifically they love. Have them describe the elements they admire, like the shape and color of a car, or the way a restaurant has arranged and decorated its interior.

Then remind them that someone designed those specific elements. Someone spent many hours shaping that car, and they probably tried hundreds of variations before that one was chosen. Someone sketched hundreds of restaurant interiors, then arranged and rearranged those ideas before bringing it into reality. Design is doing.

People will also praise a service like an online purchase or a process like a training program, and those too are the result of design by doing, if less often recognized as such.

Ongoing innovation doesn’t have to be elusive.

When it comes to ongoing innovation, there is no substitute for doing — to actively create something new all the time, be it a story or sketch, a set of insights from interviews or observations, a presentation that captures your latest thinking, or a prototype to test your newest idea.

Thoughtless doing wastes time and resources, so be clear about your intentions as you jump into action. But remember that your action will generate new information, provide feedback and insights, and help move your thinking along.

Keep the mindset of a doer and the bodyset of a thinker — balance thinking and doing in a perpetual cycle that keeps your creative journey unfolding, evolving, and growing to produce unexpected results.

Want a closer look at design thinking?

Ever wondered what makes one company consistently innovative, while another company takes years to turn an idea into a new product or service?

We’ve written a free eBook called The 3 Keys to Innovating Every Day to help illustrate why design thinking is such an effective approach to innovation. The 16-page guide explains how it can help solve complex problems and uncover unique new solutions, and why more companies are embracing design thinking as a way to inspire individuals and teams, and build a creative culture.

Click here to get The 3 Keys to Innovating Every Day, and let us know what you think!

Time flies, seasons change, and before you know it, the annual barrage of articles trashing the validity of brainstorming is once again upon us.

Like an unwanted present re-gifted again and again, these articles are often backed by academic studies that compared some quantifiable measure, such as the number of ideas generated by different methods, and found that more ideas were produced by having people engage in something other than “brainstorming,” such as solitary list-writing.

To argue that brainstorming doesn’t work is to simply ignore the thousands of amazing ideas and innovations that came to the world as a result of countless sessions of collaborative creativity that was, for all intents and purposes, brainstorming.

Probably the strangest part of these critical articles often comes at the end, when the author suddenly flips the script and admits that brainstorming actually can be very productive — but only if you do X, Y, and Z. Why give readers tips on brainstorming only after spending eight paragraphs trying to discredit it?

Meanwhile, there is a variety of well-known resources available with tips on productive brainstorming — from Alex Osborn’s original writings in the 1950s to recent publications and videos produced by Stanford’s d.school.

Just pick a method, book a conference room, invite some team members, and dive head first into your brainstorm, right?

Well, many organizations that eventually bring our company Innovationship in to help sharpen their brainstorming skills have started that way — and they’ve all found themselves frustrated and disappointed with unproductive sessions. The primary reason? Along with the new set of rules and skills they’re learning, they’ve also carried into their sessions old behaviors and habits they should have left outside the door.

Achieving a productive brainstorming session isn’t only about what you need to do, it’s very often about what you need to stop doing. It’s about what you need to unlearn in order to master the skill.

So here we go — my list of things you should not do when brainstorming. Work at tossing these bad habits and your sessions will be more creative, collaborative, productive, and, well, delightful.

Nine Brainstorming Bad Habits to Break

1. Brainstorming without a facilitator

Brainstorming is not an anarchist’s free-for-all. Neither is it a debate, a discussion, or a regular meeting. It is a unique event with clear dynamics and rules of engagement. And it requires a skilled facilitator to guide, direct, and shepherd the group through a short, intense, and productive session.

Here’s what usually happens without facilitation: the interaction between participants quickly morphs into a debate; the group never stays focused on a topic long enough to allow new ideas to emerge, and the loudest person in the room takes over and imposes his or her opinions and ideas. The bottom line is that many great ideas go unnoticed and undocumented when a skilled facilitator is not present.

2. Focusing on your own ideas

Unskilled participants often come into the session focused on their own ideas, hoping to share their creative thinking, perhaps even wanting to stand out and be noticed. The thing is, you’re really there to actively listen to the ideas of others. You can always sit down before the session to think about and write down your own ideas. But once you walk into the room, your primary focus should be on the ideas of others. By hearing new ideas that are different from your own, you are opening yourself up to the opportunity of making new connections, conjuring up new images, and generating a new and original idea. That’s the magic of collaborative creativity.

When you listen to a great jazz ensemble perform, you can hear this principle of “call and response” produce magical moments of collective creativity. While the musicians skillfully play their instruments and fulfill their roles, they are constantly listening to each other and responding to notes and phrases they hear, in real time. These inspire them to create new expressions, which, in turn, impact the playing of others in the group. It is therefore not surprising that the first thing great jazz educators teach is not how to play, but how to listen.

3. Judging the ideas of others

Remember, the goal of brainstorming is to generate as many ideas as possible. That’s why it’s important to accept every idea presented at face value. Allowing ideas to be freely shared without scrutiny creates a flow dynamic that yields many ideas quickly, and thus many opportunities for new connections and new thinking to emerge.

And while people may realize the benefit of not judging the ideas of others — all too often they forget to extend the same courtesy to themselves. In more than one session, I’ve seen a participant’s eyes light up in excitement as a new idea pops into her head, and I am curious to hear what it might be. If it takes too long for her to voice her idea, however, it’s clear to me that she’s censoring herself: perhaps she feels her idea is not clever enough, maybe even “dumb.” If I call on her and ask to share what she’s thinking of, she might hesitate, but invariably the idea she shares sparks fresh thinking in the group.

4. Sitting quietly in observation

Do not be a passive observer: build on the ideas of others. After all, this is the main reason for putting heads together in the first place. Someone just shared an idea: how might you build on that? As you listen, try to visualize and imagine their idea at work, and notice what additional functions, features, or experiences you’d want to add to that idea. Or perhaps by free association you get another idea that seemingly has nothing to do with the one before — make sure to share that, too. As you gain more practice, you’ll learn to trust your intuition, to let the ideas flow through you, and to express them in a way that builds momentum towards the unexpected.

5. Staying cool and reserved

Encourage wild ideas and don’t be afraid to get “out there” yourself. You’re all in the room for a common reason, and you’re all working towards the same high-level goal. So, assume that anyone presenting a wild idea is doing it out of some hunch that it might be relevant. If you can’t build on an idea because it simply seems too crazy, encourage the person who shared it to take it even further.

Collaboration in a brainstorming session includes pushing others to the limit of their creative capacity. Make sure, however, that you’re actually encouraging, and not challenging or judging. And don’t hold back: share your excitement and enthusiasm, and you will be rewarded with feedback and encouragement from others.

6. Hiding ideas inside long stories

Be precise and concise in your description of an idea. This, too, is a skill that can be learned and practiced. How might you describe an idea in the least number of words, or in a quick sketch? Like a sculptor who puts his chisel to a piece of marble, remove all the unnecessary stone to leave only the very essence of the idea. We want to capture ideas in a concentrated capsule, which will allow the session to flow quickly as these capsules are shared, played with, and built upon.

7. Speaking all at the same time

Even if you’re all bursting at the seams with ideas, the group should focus on one idea at a time. Avoid side conversations and small splinter groups: all ideas go to the facilitator, and each idea gets the group’s full attention. You don’t want to lose any opportunity for one idea to spark another — even a short remark can trigger a productive train of thought that ripples through the group and gives birth to some great ideas. A good facilitator will make sure each idea gets its fair share of attention: skilled participants can help by listening and pacing their own output.

8. Getting lost in discussion

Spoken words are powerful, and from a young age, we learn to compose complex sentences, debate, and tell stories. Beware of falling down a rabbit hole of words, anecdotes, and explanations. Instead, create opportunities to be visual.

A big element underlying brainstorming is the concept of visual thinking, using drawings, pictures, and diagrams to express ideas. Why do you think emojis caught on so quickly? You can write a long text message expressing your love to someone, or you can simply send them the heart emoji: which do you choose, when, and why?

When you’re engaged in high-speed creativity with a group of people, there’s a great advantage to going visual. In a dynamic brainstorming session, there are two important areas where this is relevant:

• All ideas must be captured and displayed in a way that allows all participants to see them. Whether you’re using a whiteboard, or Post-it notes, or easel pads, each and every idea must be captured and displayed as soon as it is shared with the group. This allows the person who shared the idea to move on and “make room” in their head for a new idea. It also allows the group to scan the surface and be reminded of every idea that has come up, creating opportunities to build on the ideas of others throughout the session.

• If possible and relevant, capture an idea with a sketch. A picture is often worth a thousand words. You don’t have to be a great artist to describe an idea in a picture — line drawings, stick figures, and simple box diagrams can do a wonderful job of expressing a product, process, or service experience.

9. Going on for too long

Brainstorming sessions are supposed to be high-energy, fast-paced, and intense. You want to keep participants on their toes, their minds scrambling around for new connections and ideas. Think of that moment when popcorn starts popping in the pot, and imagine being able to stretch that for as long as possible, to pop as many kernels as you can. But remember you have to stop because going too long means burning the popcorn. Brainstorming is similar in that way. When you go too long, you risk losing the group’s creative intensity and momentum.

Returning to jazz, I’m reminded of a quote from Miles Davis, who, in giving a young musician advice on how to keep a solo interesting, said: “Stop before you’re done.” Just as Miles wanted to keep the audience engaged, you want the brainstorming session to end on a high note. There’ll always be a way to capture more ideas once the session is over. So, stop before you’re done, and make sure to provide participants with ways to add new ideas in the following hours/days.

Taking Miles’s advice and stopping the session before it’s done means people leave the room excited and eager to join the next available brainstorming session.

Brainstorming is an invaluable tool for people in any industry who are tasked with developing strategies and solving challenges. Two heads are better than one, and several heads — up to about 7-10 — might even be better. If you are struggling with unproductive or frustrating sessions, take some time to unlearn what you’re currently doing, and practice these crucial tips to finally enjoy the fruit of this magical session of collaborative creativity.

Oh, and one more thing: do have a good time! To quote David Kelley from the classic Nightline episode about the design of a new shopping cart: “Innovation is very hard work… but it’s also lots of fun!”

Where Does Brainstorming meet Innovation?

What makes one company consistently innovative, while another company takes years to turn an idea into a new product or service? Productive brainstorming is just one important part of sparking and inspiring ongoing ideation.

We’ve written a free eBook called The 3 Keys to Innovating Every Day. The 16-page guide explains how to solve complex problems and uncover unique new solutions through the use of design thinking process, and why more companies are embracing design thinking as a way to inspire individuals and teams, and build a creative culture.

As you sow, so shall you reap.

You’ve heard this proverb before, and you’ve undoubtedly had the experience of realizing its simple truth: the initial conditions of a process will have a dramatic impact on the outcome. To build further on the metaphor, there are parameters that farmers must consider when sowing for next year’s crops: what to sow, when to sow, and how to spread the seeds.

However, one of the critical elements of successful cultivation is too often overlooked: where you sow. You can spend all of your money and time trying to sow innovation into your company, but if the company soil isn’t also enriched — that is, if you haven’t done the work to transform your mindset and culture — don’t expect to reap the fruits of your efforts.

I’m an innovation psychologist. I help companies create new and better experiences for their customers by leading teams to grow their creative confidence and collaborative output. As a consultant, I’ve worked with many organizations around the world on a wide array of projects, and while all enter the engagement with a sincere desire to “be innovative” — some have missed the target because their company culture was not ready to break away from old habits and accept change.

In those instances, it was hard to watch the opportunities missed. Perhaps the most frustrating of these examples occurred with one company that was, in many respects, a dream client: Kodak.

Capitalizing on the Shift to Digital Technology

It was 1994, and I’d just left my position at NASA’s Aerospace Human Factors Research and Design group to join IDEO in Palo Alto. I was fortunate to be part of an all-star team assembled to help Kodak enter the digital revolution heading towards us at breakneck speed.

What a team! On the design side, we had Arnold Wasserman, who was the former vice president of corporate industrial design at Xerox, a senior fellow at IDEO, and later named by Fast Company a “Master of Design.”

On the experience side, there was Jane Fulton Suri, who helped pioneer the human-centered design focus at IDEO, became Executive Design Director and is now Partner Emeritus.

Behind these two prolific leaders, we had some extremely talented engineers, designers, and marketing specialists, including Product Designer Larry Shubert (now a partner at our own company Innovationship), and Mat Hunter, who recently served as Chief Design Officer at the British Design Council.

Needless to say, IDEO did not hold back on this project. Kodak was, after all, one of the best-positioned companies to capitalize on the shift to digital. And we were already seeing some early examples of what digital imaging might offer. I remember carrying around a Casio QV-10, the world’s first consumer digital camera with an LCD screen and live view, and immersing myself in this new experience of instant capture-and-review.

I’d always played around with photography, even had some of my photos published as album covers (yes, LP albums...), and here I was discovering a whole new way to relate to image capture and sharing. And beyond my own excitement and sense of wonder, wherever I went, people would gather around me to glimpse this new gadget I was holding in my hands.

The Revolution will be Digitized

Based out of IDEO’s studio in San Francisco, the Kodak project included weeks of observations and research to fully immerse ourselves in the world of photography. We ideated on:

• The analysis and synthesis of what it means to “take” pictures

• The social aspect of images

• Design and prototyping of cameras

• Conceptualization of the interface between photographers and digital images

• The implications of “photography” in the context of no-cost digital imaging

• Potential social impact of sharing images

There was seemingly no end to this new territory we were exploring. And the immediacy of meaningful insights opened up a whole new world of affordances, providing the perfect platform from which to launch the creativity of a red-hot team of IDEOers.

In painting a picture of Kodak’s role in the coming digital revolution, it was clear the only limitation on our thinking was of our own making, and we pushed each other every day to take our vision for the future another step further.

Transforming How People Approach Their Work

We were using a “design thinking” mindset before the term was formally introduced into the mainstream. And along with the development of product concepts came the rapid evolution of the innovation process.

With the goal of building on their technological expertise, we invited an “innovation team” comprised of executives and managers from Kodak’s headquarters in Rochester, New York, to spend weeks with us in San Francisco, immersing them in the new experience of true exploration and playful invention.

Together, we interviewed high-end photographers, part-time amateurs, and Japanese tourists using single-use cameras at popular SF tourist stop Fisherman’s Wharf. We built quick-and-dirty prototypes, and we sketched a variety of scenarios. By the end of the team’s first visit, we had them thinking “what if?” and using Post-it Notes with confidence and abandon!

On their second visit to SF, we noticed a change in them: our buttoned-up East Coast guests had drunk the Kool-Aid. Upon arrival, they shed their suits and ties, rolled up their sleeves, and dove head first into the uncertainty of innovation.

One of the most memorable moments in this creative journey came while testing some early concepts and prototypes. We decided the best test would be in acting out scripted scenarios that would allow us to simulate the experience of using our early conceptual prototypes — and it seemed clear that the Kodak team should be the ones doing the acting.

One of those prototypes was a digital camera that could share images with other cameras by simply touching the two together. Remember, this was 1994: the only way to share an image was to physically hand someone a printed copy of the original. The scenario we’d come up with was of a college-level girls’ volleyball team taking a road trip to play another school.

I remember watching a cast of Kodak executives and managers jumping around, acting like a bunch of college girls on the bus — taking pictures of each other, sharing them, screaming in excitement — and thinking to myself: “This is amazing! Not only are we getting a glimpse of the future of photography — we’ve been able to teach a group of conservative engineers and administrators how to transform the way they think about their work.”

Sign-Off Doesn’t Guarantee Buy-In

There are many stories of innovations that broke new grounds and propelled companies to incredible heights. This isn’t one of them.

Here’s what happened, in a nutshell: despite the conviction of their own innovation team, Kodak’s leadership back in New York wasn’t ready to embrace the new approach we created together in those many weeks spent in our studio in San Francisco. They were comfortable holding onto their celluloid film and confident sticking with their approach they called “Digital Science,” which reflected their focus on technology rather than on human-centered experience. Their message spoke to the narrow niche of professional photographers who were their captive market. Those early adopters were looking to Kodak to lead them into the digital age, and the concept of “science” might have been a compelling magnet for their needs.

As we dove deeper into the potential inherent in digital, however, and as we all now see around us, the biggest impact of the digital transformation was to open up the world of image capture and use to everyone: today, anyone with a phone in hand is a photographer.

As a result of their insistence on appealing to the head rather than the heart, Kodak was caught standing on the platform as the digital imagery train went whizzing by on its way to the new world of shared images and ubiquitous capture devices.

Within a couple of years, some of the key functions from the innovative concepts we’d created for them began showing up in digital cameras (of competitors). In 1994, Kodak held the future in their hands, and they failed to take the necessary — and scary — bold step forward.

According to Clayton Christensen, current Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and author best known for his book, The Innovator's Dilemma, which introduced his theory of "disruptive innovation" into the field of business: each year 30,000 new consumer products are launched—and 95 percent of them fail. So, while perhaps, statistically, Kodak’s failure to even develop our concepts is unsurprising, it was no less disappointing for those who put many hours, dollars, and good intentions into making the most of this incredible opportunity.

Even still, whenever I catch up with old team members, we can’t help but remember the Kodak project as one of our favorites. We were fully engaged in exploration and pushing the envelope. We were bold, playful, inspired, and inspiring. And we all learned lessons we continue to refer to today. What else can you ask for in a project?

I happened to see Jane a few weeks ago, and the Kodak project came up. I told her I still think of those days, and she replied, “Funny, I just spoke about that project this morning!”

“What could we have done differently?” she asked. I didn’t have an answer for her at the time. But after a bit more reflection, I realized there is one thing we might have done differently.

We were able to inspire the visiting innovation team to leap with us into the undefined future of digital imaging — as well as into an entirely new innovation mindset. At IDEO’s studio in San Francisco, together we held in our hands concepts that would have revolutionized the unfolding of digital imaging and could have propelled Kodak to heights it was never able to achieve.

What we were not able to do, however, was to make an impact on the conservative cultureof Kodak in Rochester, New York. We simply trusted that the innovation team of Kodak executives and managers who partnered with us in California would be able to carry the torch and light the fires back on the East Coast, and we were wrong. That company culture, established in 1888, and built solidly on the foundations of photographic film, was just not ready to adopt the kind of mindset necessary for digital innovation.

Culture will Eat Innovation for Breakfast

We should never underestimate the momentum of an existing culture and its inherent resistance to change — nor the fear that innovation awakens in those who have not experienced the extreme and uncertain nature of creative exploration.

The French philosopher André Gide said: “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” In 1995, Kodak leadership looked into the vast ocean ahead, and could not muster the courage necessary to lose sight of the safe shores of film photography. And so they missed the opportunity to sail new oceans.

Given this seeming “immunity to change,” how might we go about tilting and shifting a company’s course towards a more open mindset and creative practice? Here are some important points to consider:

• Leadership is key. As expected, without inspiration and permission from the top, the change necessary for ongoing innovation is nearly impossible. Leadership must be part of the experience: rubberstamping innovation by delegating it to others does not work. Companies who want to blaze new trails are far more successful when leaders work to instill a desire for innovation — and the courage to fail — at their business’ core.

• Change is a journey, not an event. Throughout the process, it’s important to create strategic opportunities along the way for those who are not on the innovation team — from leadership, through management, and down to individual well-wishers —to shift their perspective, get inspired, and join this journey into new territory.

• Timing is critical. When a team goes off and engages in a dynamic innovation process, the team may travel so far that the ideas it brings back don’t make sense to those who stayed behind. It’s as if a group of people traveled to the future and came back with stories that baffle current thinking. So, presenting these new ideas to the uninitiated is a delicate business. Present an idea too early in its development, and it could be rejected before its full potential has been explored. On the other hand, if the team disappears for too long and develops the idea too much, its sophistication might make it seem too complex, and hard to accept. It’s important to remain mindful of this delicate balance and to grease the wheels of innovation by maintaining good communication between the team and key decision makers.

I am sorry to have missed the opportunity to see those concepts and prototypes grow into revolutionary products. At the same time, I am grateful for having shared that wonderful journey with an amazing cast of characters: it opened my eyes to what it takes to create lasting cultural change and I’m a better innovator for it.

The Key to Innovating Every Day?

After over thirty years in human factors, product innovation, and experience design, I co-founded Innovationship in 2012, to focus our efforts on how best to guide companies through the process of discovering and integrating design thinking.

Since then, we have helped startups, midsize firms, multinationals, and academic institutions around the world bring this essential process into their organizations.

We’ve written a free eBook called The 3 Keys to Innovating Every Day to help illustrate why design thinking is such an effective approach to innovation. The 16-page guide explains how it can help solve complex problems and uncover unique new solutions, and why more companies are embracing design thinking as a way to inspire individuals and teams, and build a creative culture.

How can I learn to think up wild ideas?

Can I become more innovative or is it just a natural gift?

Where do new ideas come from?

We often get asked these sorts of questions from people searching to inject new ways of thinking into their work, hoping to find a secret formula for great ideas that will give them the leading edge. If you’re one of them, you’re not alone. Professionals around the world search for ways to climb out of slumps, inspire their teams, and spark the future of their companies.

The good news is that enhancing creativity is doable and often much easier than you think! Better yet, not only is it possible, it is critically important that you develop new skills for your personal and professional progress. Be warned that the methods for sparking a creative ideas are not one size fits all, and what’s more, a thought-trick that worked well for you in one situation is not guaranteed to do so in another. But when you find the one that is just right, results are wonderfully rewarding and delightful.

We are all creatures of habit, so one thing you might try is to break your habitual way of work to give your mind a chance to see things differently. Here are three common work habits that might be holding you back — change them to give yourself the chance to see the world differently and discover new ideas:

1. Break your internal clock.  Are you a morning person? Do you wake up early to get your best work done before “your day” begins? Or are you a night owl, waiting for everyone and everything around you to quiet down so you can start thinking and creating? Try flipping your clock. If you thrive in the morning, find a way to stay up late for a couple of nights. You might have to make room for a nap in the afternoon, or drink an extra cup of coffee — whatever works.

If you prefer quiet nights, push yourself to wake up very early, and be ready to face your creative challenge before anyone or anything else distracts you. Make sure to have your creative workspace ready at this new time for you to explore new ideas: have paper, whiteboard, tablet, laptop, or other tools and materials you might need to capture your thoughts.

2. Break your sounding board.  We all have people we turn to, the go-to colleagues and friends we approach when we face a creative challenge. These people and their clear, honest feedback are treasures, both personally and professionally. But consider that most of the time, people reach out for feedback from those who will support them and confirm what they want to hear. If you’re trying to develop new ideas, strengthening your old ideas is not the right solution. Find someone you would not naturally turn to for advice.

If you’re a rational and logical numbers person, steer clear of your engineer or finance buddies and instead look in your circle of friends for someone with a more intuitive and holistic way of thinking who can give you a few minutes’ help on a burning problem. You might even discover that the task of explaining your challenge to them clearly and concisely will help you see it from a new angle as well. Likewise, if your comfort zone is mostly found with more abstract thinkers, find a good analytical, objective friend who might push you to uncover new ways of seeing your challenge.

3. Break your environment.  Our surroundings affect the way we think and inspire us to make unexpected connections, so changing where you do your work can help change your patterns of thought. Walking on the beach, sitting in a busy coffee shop, listening to music, wandering through the aisles of a hardware store, sitting at the airport — you would be surprised at the great variety of inspiring spaces that people use to boost their thinking.

Don’t be afraid to make the change dramatic. Do you usually enjoy the quiet of the beach? Go sit in the train station instead. Need the hustle and bustle of a coffee shop to concentrate? Find a bench away from the crowds in a local park and take in the natural ambiance. This will not be easy, but it’s worth making the effort, because a forcible physical shift can result in a forcible mental shift too.

We are all creatures of habit. And the better we get at what we do and the more experience we get under our belt, the more our patterns of thinking and working can get ingrained. Pushing yourself to work outside your habitual comfort zone is a great way to discover new thoughtscapes and build a dynamic and flexible mindset.

So find a few minutes in your schedule to prototype and test a new way of thinking creatively by breaking the routines you’ve boxed yourself into. And asks those around you how they get inspired: you’ll be surprised at the great variety of tricks people use, and might just discover one that serves you well next time you’re searching for an unexpected solution.

Look around you. Seriously; stop reading for a minute, and look around you. Everything you see — literally every thing — was designed by someone. The chair you’re sitting on, the clothes you are wearing, the walls and ceiling and floor, the screen and device on which you are reading these words... everything. And not only tangible things: the sites you visit, the services you use, the restaurants you frequent, notice that all of them are the result of design.

This eye-opening exercise is based on a comment made by David Kelley in the now-classic 1999 Nightline profile of the design and innovation company he founded, IDEO. David made this point to emphasize the role of design in our world, and to highlight how transparent design had become to most people. Since everything is designed, we’ve stopped thinking about it; much like we don’t walk around with constant awe that there is air everywhere for us to breathe. 

This observation calls attention to a key element of the designer’s mindset: realizing that everything was — and can be — designed by someone creates produces a relentless quest for creative expression, a fiery drive for innovation. Designers look around and say, “If it was designed by someone, it can be redesigned!” It can be shaped and modeled to be better in some way: more useful, more user-friendly, more desirable, less wasteful. The list of potential improvements is endless, limited only by the imagination.

When Steve Jobs stood on stage holding the first iPhone on that auspicious day in 2007, he knew that he was holding the prototype on which the next iPhone — the iPhone 3G — was already being designed and built. Jobs was the ultimate designer: for him, the whole world was a playground, a prototype for him to study and observe, poke and test, and continuously introduce new ideas into.

You, too, are a designer. Whether you’re designing a toy, writing code, defining a new business strategy, treating a patient, or delivering a speech: your actions and what you deliver have an impact on the world around you by changing the experience of people.

Looking at the world around you and everything you do as a prototype will make you see opportunities for innovation everywhere. When seen through this lens, the world is filled with prototypes that were placed out there for you to learn from, build on, and improve. Your work, your colleague’s work, your competitor’s work — it’s all open for enhancement, change, and transformation.

So now once again, take a pause in reading, and look around. This time, focus on some specific object. Study it. Think of it as a prototype for something better, and ask yourself, “If I were in charge of redesigning this, what would I do? How might I make this better, more useful, more friendly, more beautiful, more effective, or less harmful to the environment?”

Today is a prototype for tomorrow. What you observe and do today can serve you to reflect, learn, and design our tomorrow in a new way.