The Ten Faces of Innovation
Tags: #business #innovation #design #creativity #teams #leadership #customer experience
Authors: Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman
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Overview
In ‘The Ten Faces of Innovation,’ I introduce ten distinct personas that drive innovation within organizations. These personas are not fixed personality types, but rather roles that anyone can adopt to unlock creative potential and drive positive change. The book aims to move beyond the ‘Devil’s Advocate’ mentality that often stifles creativity and instead foster a culture of experimentation, collaboration, and human-centered design. By recognizing and nurturing these innovation personas, companies can unlock new insights, overcome obstacles, build stronger teams, and ultimately create products, services, and experiences that delight customers and drive business success. The book will resonate with anyone looking to bring more innovation into their work, offering practical advice and inspiring examples of how real people have successfully embraced these personas to achieve extraordinary results. Each persona represents a distinct skillset and approach, offering a comprehensive framework for understanding and driving innovation within any organization, regardless of industry or size. The book encourages readers to identify the personas that resonate with them and to cultivate those skills within themselves and their teams.
Book Outline
1. Introduction: Beyond the Devil’s Advocate
Negativity and defaulting to criticism kill great ideas. To build a culture of innovation, you must move beyond the ‘Devil’s Advocate’ mentality and embrace roles that foster learning, organizing, and building.
Key concept: The Devil’s Advocate may be the biggest innovation killer in America today. What makes this negative persona so dangerous is that it is such a subtle threat.
2. The Anthropologist
The Anthropologist persona champions deep observation of human behavior to uncover unmet needs and opportunities for innovation. By immersing themselves in users’ environments and experiences, they bring back fresh insights that can lead to breakthrough solutions.
Key concept: Six characteristics of the Anthropologist: 1. Practices the Zen principle of ‘beginner’s mind’. 2. Embraces human behavior with all its surprises. 3. Draws inferences by listening to their intuition. 4. Seeks out epiphanies through a sense of ‘Vuja De’. 5. Keeps ‘bug lists’ or ‘idea wallets’. 6. Is willing to search for clues in the trash bin.
3. The Experimenter
The Experimenter persona is all about rapid prototyping and learning by doing. They believe in making ideas tangible quickly, testing them in the real world, and iterating based on feedback. Embracing failure as a necessary part of the process, they accelerate the path to success.
Key concept: Experimenters delight in how fast they take a concept from words to sketch, to model, and, yes, to a successful new offering.
4. The Hurdler
The Hurdler persona possesses the resilience and resourcefulness to overcome obstacles and navigate organizational roadblocks. They are adept at ‘chunking risk’, breaking down complex challenges into smaller, manageable experiments, and finding creative solutions within constraints.
Key concept: Hurdlers do more with less.
5. The Collaborator
The Collaborator persona excels at bringing diverse teams together and fostering seamless collaboration. They understand the importance of communication, coordination, and shared goals, and work tirelessly to ensure smooth ‘baton passes’ between individuals and departments.
Key concept: Relays are won or lost in the handoffs.
6. The Director
The Director persona is the orchestrator of innovation, setting the stage, assembling the talent, and keeping the production moving forward. They inspire teams to embrace ambitious goals, navigate challenges, and deliver exceptional results.
Key concept: Five Traits of Successful Directors: 1. They give center stage to others. 2. They love finding new projects. 3. They rise to tough challenges. 4. They shoot for the moon. 5. They wield a large toolbox.
7. The Experience Architect
The Experience Architect persona elevates products and services by crafting compelling, multi-sensory experiences. They understand the power of emotion, engagement, and ‘trigger points’ to create lasting impressions that differentiate offerings from the competition.
Key concept: Experience Architects fend off the ordinary wherever they find it.
8. The Set Designer
The Set Designer persona recognizes the impact of physical environment on creativity and innovation. They create inspiring and flexible workspaces that foster collaboration, communication, and a sense of community, transforming ‘inner space’ to support the organization’s goals.
Key concept: The Set Designer can be the ‘X factor’ in a company, the intangible element that helps turn around an organization.
9. The Caregiver
The Caregiver persona champions empathetic customer service and builds relationships based on trust and personalized attention. They go beyond simply meeting needs to anticipate and exceed expectations, creating a sense of loyalty and advocacy.
Key concept: THE CAREGIVER’S GUIDE TO GREAT SERVICE: 1. Curate the Collection. 2. Build Extra Expertise. 3. Small Can Be Beautiful. 4. Build Relationships with Sustainability. 5. Invite Customers to ‘Join the Club’.
10. The Storyteller
The Storyteller persona uses narratives to transmit values, build credibility, and inspire action. By tapping into the power of human emotion and shared experience, they create memorable stories that resonate with audiences and reinforce the company’s core message.
Key concept: Good storytelling cuts through the clutter.
11. In the Mix
Innovation is ultimately a team effort. By embracing a diverse range of personas and fostering a culture that encourages collaboration, experimentation, and continuous learning, any organization can build its creative capacity and achieve extraordinary results.
Key concept: Innovation doesn’t happen on its own, but with the right team, you’re up to the challenge.
Essential Questions
1. How can organizations move beyond the ‘Devil’s Advocate’ mentality and create a culture that embraces innovation?
Innovation is stifled by negativity and a reliance on traditional thinking. To foster a culture of innovation, organizations must actively cultivate personas that encourage learning, organizing, and building new ideas. This shift requires embracing experimentation, celebrating small successes, and valuing diverse perspectives. The key is to move beyond criticism and the ‘Devil’s Advocate’ mentality and instead create an environment where new ideas can flourish and be transformed into tangible solutions.
2. What are the ten personas of innovation, and how do they contribute to the innovation process?
Each persona brings a unique set of skills and perspectives to the innovation process. The Anthropologist excels at observation and understanding user needs. The Experimenter thrives on rapid prototyping and learning by doing. The Hurdler overcomes obstacles and navigates organizational roadblocks. The Collaborator brings diverse teams together and fosters seamless teamwork. The Director orchestrates the innovation process, setting the stage, assembling the talent, and keeping the production moving forward. The Experience Architect crafts compelling, multi-sensory experiences. The Set Designer creates inspiring and flexible workspaces. The Caregiver champions empathetic customer service and builds relationships based on trust and personalized attention. The Storyteller uses narratives to transmit values, build credibility, and inspire action. By recognizing and nurturing these diverse roles, organizations can create a dynamic and thriving innovation ecosystem.
3. How can organizations implement ‘innovation by experimentation’ and embrace an iterative, agile approach to developing new products and services?
Innovation is not just about generating new ideas; it’s also about bringing those ideas to life. This requires a willingness to experiment, to prototype solutions quickly, to test them in the real world, and to iterate based on feedback. Organizations should create environments that encourage experimentation and tolerate failure as a necessary part of the learning process. By embracing this iterative and agile approach, companies can accelerate the path from idea to impact.
4. What role does human-centered design play in the innovation process, and how can organizations integrate this approach into their innovation efforts?
The book emphasizes the importance of human-centered design in creating successful innovations. By deeply understanding user needs, desires, and behaviors, organizations can create products, services, and experiences that resonate with customers and address their unmet needs. This involves embracing the principles of empathy, observation, and continuous learning to ensure that innovation efforts are aligned with the real-world experiences and aspirations of users.
5. Why is storytelling critical to innovation, and how can organizations leverage the power of narrative to drive positive change and build stronger relationships?
Storytelling is a powerful tool for transmitting values, building credibility, inspiring action, and creating heroes. Organizations should embrace storytelling as a way to connect with customers, partners, and employees on an emotional level, reinforcing the company’s core message and building a sense of community. By carefully crafting narratives that resonate with their audiences, companies can create lasting impressions and inspire positive change.
Key Takeaways
1. Embrace constraints as opportunities for innovation.
Constraints can spark ingenuity and lead to unexpected breakthroughs. By embracing limitations, rather than seeing them as roadblocks, teams can tap into their resourcefulness and discover innovative solutions they might have otherwise overlooked. This approach can be particularly valuable in fast-paced, resource-constrained environments like startups or during rapid prototyping phases.
Practical Application:
A tech company could create a ‘hackathon’ event where engineers are challenged to build prototypes using unconventional materials and limited resources. This would encourage creative problem-solving and resourceful thinking outside of typical constraints.
2. Prototype early and often to accelerate learning and mitigate risk.
Prototyping and experimentation are crucial for accelerating the innovation process and mitigating risk. By creating tangible representations of ideas, teams can gather feedback, identify potential flaws, and iterate on their designs before investing significant time and resources into a final product or service. This iterative approach allows for continuous learning and improvement, leading to more robust and user-centered solutions.
Practical Application:
A software development team could pilot a new feature with a small group of beta users, gathering feedback and iterating on the design before a wider release. This would allow for incorporating user insights and making improvements early in the development process.
3. Seek out diverse and unexpected perspectives to unlock fresh insights.
Stepping outside of traditional market research methods and seeking out diverse, even extreme, perspectives can yield fresh and unexpected insights. By engaging with individuals who have unique experiences, passions, or even criticisms, organizations can challenge their assumptions and discover unmet needs that can lead to breakthrough innovations.
Practical Application:
A design team working on a new mobile app could conduct ‘Unfocus Groups’ by inviting individuals with extreme passions for mobile technology, such as early adopters, tech enthusiasts, or even those who are critical of current mobile experiences. This would provide diverse and unexpected insights into user needs and desires.
4. Design for the entire customer journey, not just individual touchpoints.
Understanding the customer journey and designing for the entire experience, not just individual touchpoints, is crucial for creating meaningful and memorable interactions. By mapping out the entire customer experience, organizations can identify opportunities to enhance touchpoints, smooth out transitions, and anticipate customer needs, ultimately building loyalty and advocacy.
Practical Application:
A company looking to improve its customer service could create a ‘customer journey map’ that visualizes all the touchpoints a customer experiences, from initial awareness to purchase and beyond. This map could highlight potential pain points and opportunities for improvement, enabling the company to design more seamless and empathetic customer experiences.
5. Break down complex challenges into smaller, manageable experiments.
Breaking down complex challenges into smaller, manageable experiments can reduce fear, build momentum, and foster a sense of progress. This approach, known as ‘chunking risk’, can be particularly valuable for tackling ambitious projects or navigating uncertain environments. By celebrating small wins and iterating quickly, teams can maintain motivation and make steady progress toward larger goals.
Practical Application:
A team working on a complex AI project could embrace the concept of ‘chunking risk’ by breaking down the project into smaller, manageable experiments. By tackling these smaller challenges and celebrating small wins, the team can build momentum, confidence, and a sense of progress, even when facing uncertainty or setbacks.
Suggested Deep Dive
Chapter: The Anthropologist
AI product engineers can benefit greatly from the Anthropologist’s emphasis on deep observation and user research. By understanding the human needs, desires, and behaviors surrounding AI technology, engineers can design more human-centered and responsible AI products.
Memorable Quotes
Introduction. 10
“Innovation is now recognized as the single most important ingredient in any modern economy.”
Introduction. 14
“People creating value through the implementation of new ideas.”
The Anthropologist. 31
“The way to do fieldwork,” Mead said, “is never to come up for air until it is all over.”
The Experimenter. 54
Experimenters delight in how fast they take a concept from words to sketch, to model, and, yes, to a successful new offering.
The Hurdler. 99
Hurdlers do more with less.
Comparative Analysis
While ‘The Ten Faces of Innovation’ shares common ground with other innovation-focused books like Clayton Christensen’s ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ and Peter Drucker’s ‘Innovation and Entrepreneurship’, it distinguishes itself through its emphasis on human-centered personas and practical application. Unlike Christensen’s focus on disruptive technologies and market forces, Kelley emphasizes the role of individuals and teams in driving innovation. Similarly, while Drucker provides a broader framework for innovation and entrepreneurship, Kelley offers a more tangible and actionable approach through the ten personas. Kelley’s book provides a unique lens for understanding and nurturing the human element of innovation, complementing and expanding upon the insights of other seminal works in the field.
Reflection
Kelley’s ‘Ten Faces of Innovation’ offers a compelling and optimistic view of innovation, grounded in human-centered design and practical application. While the book’s strength lies in its concrete examples and actionable advice, it may oversimplify the complexities of organizational change and the challenges of implementing innovation initiatives. Kelley’s faith in the power of positive thinking and creative collaboration, while inspiring, may not always align with the realities of corporate culture and market dynamics. Additionally, some readers may question the applicability of the persona-based approach across all industries and contexts. However, the book’s enduring value lies in its ability to encourage readers to embrace a more creative and collaborative approach to their work, recognizing that innovation is not just about technology or processes but about people and the unique contributions they bring to the table. Ultimately, ‘The Ten Faces of Innovation’ serves as a valuable reminder that anyone can be an innovator, regardless of their title or background, and that nurturing a diverse range of skills and perspectives is essential for achieving extraordinary results.
Flashcards
What is ‘beginner’s mind’?
The willingness to set aside preconceived notions and observe with an open mind.
What is ‘Vuja De’?
Seeing something for the first time, even if you have actually witnessed it many times before.
What is ‘chunking risk’?
Breaking down seemingly large problems into miniature experiments.
What is ‘implementation through experimentation’?
Implementing new services or initiatives by treating each location as an R&D arm and encouraging experimentation and adaptation.
What does an Experience Architect do?
Designing compelling experiences that connect with customers’ latent or expressed needs.
What does a Set Designer do?
Creating a stage on which innovation team members can do their best work, transforming physical environments into powerful tools to influence behavior and attitude.
What does a Storyteller do?
Building both internal morale and external awareness through compelling narratives.
What are ‘T-shaped individuals’?
Individuals with breadth of knowledge across multiple fields and depth of expertise in at least one area.