Product Success with Design Thinking

Where does the resistance lie? Design Thinking lists three conditions that must be met for a product to succeed: desirability – developing new, desirable products; feasibility – overcoming internal challenges to produce the product; and viability – engaging customers. Design Thinking relies on iteration – what project managers refer to as progressive elaboration – to…

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Starting From Scratch

It’s easier to come up with an improvement than an entirely new thing. Most innovation techniques emphasize this and rely on it. They avoid the intimidation of the blank page by riffing on something that already exists. In this post, I explore what would happen if we did the opposite. What would happen if instead…

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No Substitutions

The post where I talk about walls and Mexico without mentioning you-know-who Earlier this month, my girlfriend I visited San Miguel de Allende in the central highlands of Mexico. The AirBNB we stayed in north of the city centre was lovely, but I will admit some trepidation walking around the neighbourhood it was in. Many…

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Is The Boeing 737 Max A Fast Fail?

Ignored, denied, and swept under the rug I talk a lot about the need for experimentation. All the management techniques intended to speed products to market involve some form of iteration, feedback and correction. Many suggest we should celebrate failure to counteract the unhealthy assumption that all failure can be avoided with planning, The Boeing…

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Is Growth Hacking Really For You?

Are you Musk material? Or Muskoka material? Either way, growth can help you reach your definition of success. Elon Musk is worth $20 billion. He is building new companies in technology, transportation and energy that will change the fate of humanity. He works 80 hours a day. I’m only slightly exaggerating. Muskoka Mia (she’s never…

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Is The World Changing Faster Than Ever?

A recent conversation led me to rethink the question of whether the world is really changing faster than ever, whether it matters, and what it even means. Check out the McKinsey report that says between 75 million and 375 million people will need to find new employment categories by 2030: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-ins… This video is based…

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Grow Your Business

I recently ran a Growth Sprint which builds on the AJ&Smart model described here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td0ap… The main difference was that the group I was facilitating was not from one single company. Everybody at the table had their own business or side hustle they were looking to grow. I adapted the model and the end result…

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Growth Sprints For Solopreneurs

When “together alone” has two meanings The term “together alone” is used to refer to parts of group exercises where people will work quietly to prepare their own ideas or research to be shared with the rest of the group later. I recently held a growth sprint for small businesses owners. They were “together alone”…

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Show Your Work

Add 2+2 Easy, right? You did it in your head. Now add 25+47. Still easy? How about 174713414+104571? Math teachers urge their students to “show their work” even when the students can find the answer in their head. They do this so that the student can show that the hidden process in their head and…

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Should Tesla Add A Quarter Mile Mode?

What is Maximum Plaid? Never one to shy away from his nerdy impulses, Elon Musk named the launch mode in performance model Teslas “ludicrous mode” in homage to the movie Spaceballs. Doubling down on this, he’s referring to the next more ludicrous than ludicrous mode as “maximum plaid” – another reference to Spaceballs. If you’ve…

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Apollo 11 And The Shuttle

Which was the moonshot? The term moonshot is often used to refer to an overly risky and unproven endeavour. Ironically, the methodical approach taken to develop the technologies that safely brought men to the moon in 1969 was abandoned when the Space Shuttle was conceived. I examine the different approaches, the tragic results, and what…

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Trial and Error

Repeated, varied attempts Trial and error is a fundamental method of problem solving. It is characterised by repeated, varied attempts which are continued until success, or until the agent stops trying. Wikipedia Flailing about? Using trial and error can sometimes be viewed as lacking in sophistication or rigour. This really depends on how one interprets…

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Panning For Ideas

Breathing in, breathing out I have compared the process of divergence (coming up with a large number of ideas) and convergence (narrowing those ideas down to something workable to try) to breathing. This is a useful simile because it drives home the point that you can’t breathe in and breathe out at the same time.…

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Improvement Versus Innovation

Does success breed success? Kaizen is a Japanese word for improvement. In manufacturing circles kaizen is used to describe continuous improvement – constantly refining processes to improve the quality of the outcome. In an earlier article I made the point that the small batches forced by limited manufacturing might created an opportunity for Japanese manufacturers…

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Repeatable Genius

Steve Jobs is one of the most idolized tech entrepreneurs of all time. He put Apple on its path to be the first trillion dollar company the world has ever seen. While many credit this success to Jobs’ product design prowess, in his book titled “The Way To Design“, Steve Vassallo offers another explanation: Steve…

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Change Agents

You and your significant other are sitting on the couch when you begin to feel a chill. You get up and adjust the thermostat. Congratulations. You have made a change. You have demonstrated agency. You are a change agent! Reactions One possible reaction (whether internal or overt) from your SO (significant other) is, “Knock yourself…

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Cutting Rhythms: On-screen Drafting

This Guy Edits “This Guy Edits” is a Youtube channel devoted to the art and science of editing video. In this video, “this guy” Sven Pape discusses on-screen drafting with Dr Karen Pearlman.  Pearlman is a writer, director, editor and author of the book “Cutting Rhythms, Shaping the Film Edit”. A chapter in Cutting Rhythms describes…

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Move The Dartboard

That was easy This Youtube video shows a motor-controlled dartboard that uses sensors and a computer to move the dartboard so that you can throw a dart off target and still hit the bullseye. To me this is an excellent illustration of the power of Design Thinking. Design Thinking does two things – it focuses…

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Design Thinking Questions

Presenting at York Earlier this week I had the pleasure of presenting my talk on Design Thinking to my York University colleagues in various IT departments. The best part of making these presentations is the immediate feedback I get. This time I got three questions I wanted to wrestle with here in greater depth. How…

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Design Thinking And Groceries

South of Fortinos I live in Maple south of Fortinos, the “Italian” version of the Canadian grocery company Loblaws.  (I’m still trying to make “SoFo” – South of Fortinos – a thing.) It’s a scandalously short drive and I sometimes walk to get small loads of groceries.  As a consequence I’m in the store four…

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Design Thinking The IBM Way

Old wine in new bottles d.school describes the Design Thinking process as five steps: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. IDEO has a shorter three step process: Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation. Nevertheless, the two process definitions are very similar. Both d.school and IDEO were founded by David Kelley and many individuals have worked for both…

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Google Duplex vs Automated Grocery Warehouse – Soft and Hard Automation

Two examples of automation Google recently demonstrated their virtual assistant called Duplex. Complete with ums and ahs, the system was able to make a stylist appointment and a restaurant reservation, convincingly human in mannerism and ability to navigate the twists and turns of the unstructured conversation. This automated warehouse by Ocado has countless battery-powered shuttles…

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The Fosbury Flop

Being an Olympian is hard Being an Olympic athlete is surely one of the most gruelling forms of competition in existence. You are competing with the best of the world, all of whom have trained from a tender age and sacrificed time, tears, blood, relationships and even long term health. The difference between gold and…

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Don’t Compete With A Machine

Freed up for new opportunities? There are plenty of headlines predicting millions of jobs being destroyed by robots and artificial intelligence. Our experience with improving technology impacting jobs has, so far in human history, been a net positive, with new jobs emerging as fast as old ones are rendered obsolete. “Historically, technological advances have not…

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Army Staff and Innovation

In my study of innovation, I find it useful to look to a variety of sources. It occurred to me that innovation is no more important anywhere than in the military, where competition can be lethal. This article titled Staff Colonels Are Army’s Innovation Engines has some fascinating insights that are relevant to civilian organizations…

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How Can You Iterate A Whole Building?

Rifle vs guided missile Design thinking emphasizes early feedback and constant course corrections. Whereas traditional planning methods produce extremely detailed plans for an entire project (aim, fire – like a rifle), these more modern approaches only plan a little bit in advance and use feedback to zero in on their target (fire, aim, aim, aim…

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Feedback Is Vital To Innovation

Innovation is creativity that produces positive results Feedback is the mechanism to measure those results. Both design thinking and lean startup innovation strategies emphasize the importance of building in feedback early and often so that positive results can be maximized and negative results can be minimized. Getting feedback Your team has sweated the details to…

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Design Thinking vs Lean Startup

Pot-ae-to, Pot-ah-to? Design thinking and lean startup are innovation strategies. The paper titled “Design Thinking Vs. Lean Startup: A Comparison of Two User-Driven Innovation Strategies” examines these two innovation strategies, their common traits, their differences, and how the two strategies might inform one another or produce a third strategy. Design thinking Design thinking is an…

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Indiegogo – Sobro Smart Side Table

“Your life, reimagined” That’s how the team at Storebound describe their jack-of-all-trades side table. Certainly it captured the imagination of crowdfunders at Indiegogo. 2472 backers have already contributed $1,093,451 USD to this project which originally only sought $50,000 in funding – and there are 20 days left! Innovations SCAMPER – Combine The Sobro side table combines…

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SCAMPER and the 40 Principles

Your problem has already been solved “Every problem has a solution.” The Cigarette Smoking Man, X-Files Both SCAMPER and the 40 Principles begin with the premise that with sufficient abstraction the problem you face can be described in a way that parallels another problem that has already been solved, making the solution evident. This post attempts…

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Innovations at Ford

Alan Mulally was a leader at aircraft manufacturer Boeing before he joined Ford as CEO in 2006. While at Boeing, Mulally was involved in the development of several aircraft. He lead the design of the 757/767 cockpit which was one of the first “all glass” aircraft, meaning it relied on screens rather than physical gauges.…

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Airbag Hearing Loss Prevention

Safe The American National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that air bags saved 8,369 lives between 1987 and 2001. Unfortunately, the same technology is having a negative impact on hearing. Seventeen percent of car occupants adjacent to airbag deployments suffer hearing loss, according to a study by Richard Price, a hearing specialist and consultant. And sound To…

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Saturn – Plastic, Not Fantastic

Divide and conquer? Saturn was a division of car manufacturer General Motors (then alongside today’s survivors like Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac) that was started in 1985 as a semi-autonomous company with its own models, designs, dealer network and manufacturing plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee. This was a bold move, because at the time GM was…

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McKinsey – The Innovative Organization

Innovation, critical to organizational health A recent McKinsey’s report identifies the organizational outcomes that make the greatest contributions to organizational health. The second highest score goes to innovation and learning. “We think of organizational health as … the organization’s ability to align around a common vision, execute against that vision effectively, and renew itself through innovation…

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Zara – Fast Fashion

Crowd sourcing I’m as fashionable as the selection at Costco allows, but studying innovation as I do, Zara, the Spanish fast fashion retailer, comes up frequently. Zara has over two thousand stores world wide, each gathering vital feedback from customers. Whereas many retail outlets will respond to customer purchase data, Zara goes a step further…

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River Source Heat Pumps In Scotland

“The refrigeration system makes one end cold and and one end warm.” Dave Pearson, Star Refrigeration This Youtube interview reveals some innovative thinking going into more renewable heating options for Scottish homes. The air conditioning systems we are familiar with in North America typically pump heat out of the building into the ambient air, so…

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Apollo 13 – Finest Hour

Lunar lifeboat An electrical short in an oxygen tank caused an explosion in Apollo 13’s service module. This cylindrical module was tipped with the command module, the bell-shaped capsule that plunged through the atmosphere to return astronauts to earth. Docked to the top of the command module was the lunar module with its spindly landing…

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Enter The Creative Age

Machine competition Machines of our own creation have already rid the world of enormous amounts of physical labour. Our newest machines are poised to rid the world of enormous amounts of work that, until now, required human skill. As recently as 1790, 90% of the US labour force worked the farm. Imagine if food had…

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The Stupendous Splendiferous ButterUp

Like buttah! This 2014 Kickstarter project raised AU$ 360,286 (the Canadian and Australian dollars are very close to parity), dwarfing its original AU$ 38,000 goal with 15,251 backers. The Stupendous Splendiferous ButterUp butter knife has small built in grater holes that cuts the butter into thin curls. This makes the butter easier to spread and because it has a…

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Vantablack – Applications For The Blackest Black

When you look into the abyss Vantablack, short for “vertically aligned nanotube arrays”, is the darkest artificial substance known, absorbing up to 99.965% of visible light. The company Surrey NanoSystems Limited “grows” this forest of vertical tubes on a substrate using chemical vapour deposition. Its light absorbing properties make it ideal for preventing light from bouncing around…

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Musket vs Modern Assault Rifle

The musket: “Brown Bess” The British Army’s Land Pattern Musket, nicknamed the “Brown Bess” was a smoothbore muzzle-loader. Smoothbore Smoothbore refers to the finish of the inside of the barrel of the musket. A smooth bore does not impart any rotational forces to the fired projectile. Muzzle-loader Loading a musket was an involved process. First,…

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Hybrid Airliner Prototype

E-Fan X All-electric airplanes are already in service in limited applications like trainers and for towing gliders. These small planes boast low energy use and low maintenance, but battery capacity and weight remain limiting factors for longer range aircraft. Airbus, Rolls Royce and Siemens are thus employing the same strategy used by automobile manufacturers before…

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Transforming Kayak

Fishing kayak This kayak is a model of Principle 15 – Dynamics, serving as both a streamlined kayak and a stable fishing platform. It’s got stabilization pods that swing out from the hull, a handlebar that rises to help the occupant stand, and a little battery operated motor underneath. Why it caught my eye We…

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Smoke Detector Upgrade

Smoke alarms save lives “An estimated 890 lives could be saved each year if all homes had working smoke alarms.” National Fire Protection Association Working. And that means with a working battery. Wi-fi battery for smoke and CO alarms Roost, a household electronics company, sells a “smart battery” that occupies the 9V battery compartment  that…

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Why Is Fibreglass Insulation Pink?

The Owens-Corning Company produced the first fibreglass insulation in 1938. While fibreglass fibres are naturally transparent, fibreglass batts are held together with a binder that can be dyed. In 1979, Owens-Corning licensed the Pink Panther character from the United Artists movie as its marketing mascot and coloured its product to match. The company trademarked the unique…

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Malcolm Gladwell “Choice, Happiness and Spaghetti”

Malcolm Gladwell’s TED talk “Choice, Happiness and Spaghetti Sauce” is a quick summary of psychophysicist Howard Moskowitz’s experiments on food and happiness. In his spaghetti experiments in the 1980s, Mowskowitz found that the data clearly divided American’s preferences into three groups, which Gladwell described as “people who like their sauce plain, people who like their sauce…

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SpaceX Using Deep Cryo Liquid Oxygen

A dish best served cold SpaceX uses supercooled, “deep cryogenic” liquid oxygen, or LOX, to propel its Falcon 9 rockets. This is colder than more commonly used liquid oxygen which is chilled only to its condensation temperature. Principle 35 – Parameter Change The advantage is that the oxidizer is more dense, allowing SpaceX to cram more onto their rocket.…

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What Happened To The Tweel?

Tweel nice Conventional pneumatic tires use air pressure to maintain their shape and resistance to weight and driving forces yet also cushion the vehicle from road imperfections. Principle 29 – Pneumatics and Hydraulics Michelin has developed an airless tire called the Tweel. This is a merging of tire and wheel into an integrated unit.  Principle 5…

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Compact Toilet Rolls

Ah, the glamour of international travel. I thought this was cool. This is a package of toilet paper we picked up at the nearby Walmart on our vacation in Puerto Vallarta. Notice that the inner rolls are flattened to reduce the overall packaging size. I’d never seen this before. Since toilet paper is lightweight it’s…

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More Lessons from Steve Jobs

This post examines some of Steve Jobs’s application of Principles to building the Apple company. It draws background from this Harvard Business Review article, The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs. Minimizing clutter Steve Jobs was focused on minimizing clutter. This means removing extraneous elements (Principle 2 – Taking Out). When the iPhone was being developed…

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Are Principles Reversible? Thoughts on Disposable Objects

The majority of Principles seem to have a vector, e.g. Segmentation says break it into segments while Merging says put bits together. Some Principles don’t have an opposite among other Principles. This includes Cheap Short-Living Objects which suggests changing something reusable into something disposable, not the other way round. TRIZ Journal wrestled with this phenomenon in…

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Condensing Furnace

As I write this the Toronto area is enjoying a brief winter warm spell – it’s only freezing! Two weeks ago we saw temperatures around 20 degrees celsius below freezing. My house, like most newer homes in Canada, is heated with a high-efficiency, or condensing furnace. High-efficiency furnaces can achieve from 89% to 98% fuel efficiency.…

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Light Bulb!

Multiple light bulb moments The light bulb is often used as a symbol of inspiration, perhaps because of so many ideas that went into creating the light bulb and its impact on modern life. The light bulb wasn’t so much invented as much as improved over time by various people and organizations. Thomas Edison wasn’t…

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Why Not a 4 Motor Tesla?

One motor per wheel The notion of having one motor per wheel in an electric vehicle like a Tesla has been mooted and debated. The consensus seems to be that the pros (electronic authority over torque vectoring – no mechanical bits required, eliminating the weight of a differential) are outweighed by the cons (additional cost…

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Belted Alternator Starter

Belted alternator starter (BAS) hybrid systems first appeared on GM’s 2007 Saturn Vue Green Line. BAS systems combine the roles of starts and alternators into a single motor like conventional hybrid systems, but instead of linking directly to the crankshaft, they are linked to the engine by a belt. This makes it possible to integrate…

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Seeing Sound

In this TEDx talk, Michael Rubenstein, a research scientist, introduces the “motion microscope,” a video-processing tool that amplifies changes in motion and colour. This technique makes subtle motions visible such as the change of colour of a person’s skin as blood is pumped by the heart. Using a high speed camera, the technique can even…

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Thrust Vector Control – SpaceX and Universality

“Engine failure modes are minimized by eliminating separate subsystems where appropriate. For example, the first-stage thrust vector control system pulls from the high-pressure rocket-grade kerosene system, rather than using a separate hydraulic fluid and pressurization system. Using fuel as the hydraulic fluid eliminates potential failures associated with a separate hydraulic system and with the depletion…

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Charity: Water

I recently caught this Scott Galloway interview with the founder of Charity: Water, Scott Harrison. As the name implies, Charity: Water is dedicated to helping people in developing countries get access to clean water. The cause is vital, as they say on their site: 663 million people in the world live without clean water. In the interview,…

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