Getting disruptive with design thinking
Companies all over the world are looking for ways to be disruptive, especially in these times of economic uncertainty (read ‘opportunity’). The disruptive term was coined in 1997 by Clayton Christenson in his seminal book ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’, if you haven’t read it you’re in luck – go straight to his second book from 2003 ‘The Innovator’s Solution’ and read it instead because it explains how to get disruptive. There is a real nugget of gold on page 75 where Clayton introduces what I have always found to be a sure fired path to innovation – looking at the customer and the job they’re going to do with your product.
Here’s the key – get out and understand what people are actually doing with your product. Look at the problems they have and probe behind these to figure out what really matters to them. They’ll tell you lots of things, and they’ll tell you what they want (free, lots of features, delivered yesterday). However, this is not what’s really useful, as it is your job to figure out what they really need. If you do a good job on this, you’ll identify their ‘unmet needs’.
There are other paths to disruption, but this one is a low risk approach. Identifying the unmet need is the challenge and I recommend Anthony Ulwick’s outcome-driven approach. Another major advantage is this is a great method to get an interdisciplinary team started on working together by focusing on a clear understanding of the customer.
I’ve used this approach on a lot of projects, I learned it at Apple, then applied it at Palm, Sun, Microsoft, SPIE, Navman, HumanWare, and a host of lesser known companies.
Of course, this is just one approach to innovation, equally important is making sure you foster innovation in technology, but that’s a future post.
