Shaping Innovation Culture with Design Thinking

The speaker for the October month meet of  NHRD Bangalore was Dr Pavan Soni, innovation evangelist and a passionate teacher. His company Inflexion point offers  programs on design thinking, strategic acumen, and consulting skills. The organization has a clientele that includes Reliance, Tatas, ITC, Flipkart, and Novartis, among others. With a distinguished academic & professional background and a doctorate in the domain of innovation management from IIM Bangalore, we had for the evening, one best suited to speak on the topic.

Pavan started out by stating that innovation is the life blood and need of the hour.Mr Jack Welch was  held the CEO of the century and yet the obituary of GE the company he headed , is now being talked about (presently the company has a total debt of around $115 billion). Any company can go bankrupt without innovation. Hence, the significance and importance of innovation. In fact Toyota  starts the day contemplating  the obituary of the company and discussing how death can be effectively postponed. Such exercises have become necessary in view of hard realities such as recalling 20 million cars by the company. Similarly, it should be a concern for Apple that significant new innovations have not happened since the death of its Chairman Steve Jobs in 2011. 

The speaker said that the HR fraternity needs to ask the question "How innovative are we now ?". The intention of the talk, he said was to nudge the audience to embrace an innovation culture with design thinking and imbibe a culture of learning, unlearning and relearning. Design thinking is not about design. It is about thinking- Can you think clearly? Pavan shared his experience of giving a talk at ISRO Bangalore as a part of their Distinguished Lecture Series. He initially thought  "what could I be telling people who were already engaging with rocket science?". However, he found that all senior executives including the Director were present and stayed till the end of the two hour session. It was not so much about learning from the talk but the signal that was being given to everyone in the organization that innovation is paramount. 

The speaker, on learning that  Scientists in ISRO remain at work for over 18 hours, asked the HR executive with whom he was interacting as to how this was possible/ happening?. After all, ISRO was a Government organization like DRDO and many others. What sets it apart? He received the reply that at ISRO, science means "No hierarchy."  One cannot afford to have hierarchy in  such an organization. An error pointed out or suggestion given by anyone at any level in the organization is required to be seriously taken note of, given the precision and nature of the organization's activities.

Design thinking is all the more relevant in the evolving human- machine equation. The machine is taking over more and more the activities that were earlier performed by human beings. So much so, even beautiful pictures are being created/drawn by machines. Therefore, in order to not be redundant,  human beings have to draw on their unique qualities that cannot be replicated by machines.  Creativity is your ability to create novelty and utility (usefulness) and innovation is commercializing an idea (Getting money out of it). The focus needs to be on the subject rather than the object.

As for example if you are looking at a product 'pen', you ask the question "Why do you need this pen? Is it for writing or as as adornment worn to enhance prestige? The answer would decide how you would create and market it. It is more about solving the problem with the customer rather than for the customer. Innovation starts with the customer's problem and having empathy with it. It is about the time spend on artificial intelligence and emotional intelligence. In design thinking AI and EI coexist. ( Readers may like to check out another blog that I had posted in 2017 on Design thinking-  https://hrdian.blogspot.com/2017/03/design-thinking.html) . Science when perfected becomes art. Art when perfected becomes magic.

The following seven steps would be useful for applying design thinking to develop an innovation culture.

1) Establish clearly the 'Why' and 'What' of innovating- What is the purpose of the innovation? In the VUCA (Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world, there is a need to learn to think slowly and not succumb to knee jerk reactions. Counter intuitive (something that goes against what you believe would be logical, or something that goes against common sense) people practices may have to be developed for promoting an innovation culture. 

2) Hone Variation: Encouraging your people to think differently and being comfortable with people who are not similar to you. Packing your life with multiple affiliations enriches your life and ensures that you are less like a machine. 

3) Offer Broad Guidelines:  Have a few broad, yet clear guidelines, recruit good people and then leave them alone so that they can contribute effectively without interference.

4) Provide liberal resources to experiment. 

5) Tolerate and celebrate failed attempts 

6) Offer asymmetric incentives: An asymmetric incentive (strong rewards for success with weak penalties for failure) structure encourages employees to take on risky projects which is a prerequisite for innovation. 

7) Provide an air cover: This pertains to extending psychological safety to the employees in your zone of influence, to be themselves.  

Empathy is critical in all roles for shaping an innovation culture. In this connection (1) Be a good listener engaged in speaking and listening at a ratio of 1:5 - This also helps to build trust. (2) Park your judgement and postpone it in order to avoid self fulfilling prophecy.(3) Be thick skinned so as to be not discouraged easily by setbacks or negativity.  

The discussion on 31st October at the Chancery Pavilion Hotel Bangalore was an informative, lively and rewarding experience. I conveyed as much to the speaker when I met and shook hands with him after the session.