Yesterday afternoon I attended a conference
at Northeastern University for undergraduate students interested in innovation.
One of the conference’s hosts had reached out to me several weeks prior to ask
whether I would speak on a panel about my most recent innovation, EZ Drink.
I was told I’d be joined by two other
undergraduate entrepreneurs – one majoring in marketing, the other in
engineering – and that the student audience would be most interested in the
process leading up to EZ Drink rather
than EZ Drink itself. By this I was
pleasantly surprised; most student entrepreneurs tend to take as many shortcuts
as possible through process to arrive at product.
I’ve come to consider design-driven
innovation (DDI) as the ideal way - if not the only way - to create lasting,
impactful innovations. I therefore prepared to focus the conversation on DDI. The other panelists, naturally, wanted to go in different
directions; the marketing student toward demand-pull innovation (DPI) and the
engineering student toward technology-push innovation (TPI).
In order to refute the effectiveness of DPI and TPI as compared to
DDI, I started with simple definitions of each.
- Demand-pull innovators rely on market trends, or the directions in which society is headed, to shape their innovations. DPI is rooted in the belief that where there’s demand, there’s potential for innovation. Example: Because the concept of “work-life balance” is trending in American society today, design consultants specializing in human resources are becoming increasingly numerous.
- Technology-push innovators are driven by supply as opposed to demand. These innovators harness knowledge to invent something first and seek out the need for it later. Example: The Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and its virtually limitless research and development budget has resulted in the global positioning system (GPS) and the Internet. It was not until after they were developed that these technologies were adapted to address civilian needs.
- Design-driven innovators neither rely on market demand nor new technology to satisfy consumers. They instead assign new meaning to things and, in doing so, introduce to consumers solutions to problems they never knew they had. Example: Instead of redesigning their controllers to be more ergonomic, Nintendo improved gamer satisfaction by redefining their experience as a whole with the introduction of Wii.[2]
Figure A
Figure B
Rather than focusing from one specific angle
on one specific need from one specific person, design-driven innovators
investigate all aspects surrounding a common problem, thus gaining a broad
perspective as to how to solve it. This polyangular approach allows
design-driven innovators to identify new meanings rather than reinforce existing,
unsatisfactory meanings for their consumers.
Henry Ford, the inventor of the first
affordable automobile, was once quoted as saying, “Had I asked people what they
wanted, they would have said faster horses.” People do not inherently think
creatively, and it is therefore foolish to base a potential innovation on what
people demand, as do market-pull innovators. In the case of technology-push
innovators, it is equally foolish to waste resources on technological
innovations in which consumers could potentially find no meaning. Therefore, DDI is recommended (see Figure C).
Figure C
The Swiffer is a product of DDI. In 1994,
Proctor & Gamble approached Continuum, a design firm, asking them
to find a better alternative to the mop. Continuum sent researchers to watch
people clean their floors and came to the following point of view: people need
a tool that combines sweeping and mopping that doesn’t need to be clean while
being used. This eventually led to the development of the Swiffer, which has
annual sales of $500 million.[3]
EZ Drink is also a product of DDI. We first identified a problem: difficulty getting a drink at the bar
in a timely manner. Setting our biases aside, we dove into interviews with more
than 20 respondents and shadowed individuals at random as they waited for
drinks. We used analytical tools to identify opportunity areas within our ethnographic
data and eventually came to a point of view: people need a way to receive their
drinks quickly and pay for them securely while enjoying the crowded bar
atmosphere. With this point of view came EZ Drink, a touch screen machine on
which customers can order and pay for drinks while circumventing crowds at the
bar. The idea survived concept testing and therefore can be implemented.
I’m currently consulting with a business
called Njabini Apparel and am, again, in the throes of the demanding yet
rewarding DDI.
- Problem: Low revenues due to poor online sales
- Research: Interviews with potential customers
- Point of view: People need to feel as though they’re buying directly from the source when they’re buying online
DDI differs greatly from its market-pull and
technology-push alternatives. Had Continuum utilized TPI, they would’ve likely wasted a great deal of resources creating a
product unrealistic for use by homemakers. Had we used MPI to solve the demand for quick drinks, we would have developed a technology that
eliminated crowds, therefore dissatisfying customers. DDI is applicable and
ideal for product, service, business model, and all other types of innovation.
As explained earlier, DDI is centered around
the concept of meaning. While MP3 players were introduced in 1997,
it wasn’t until Apple gave meaning to the MP3 player in 1991 that this technology
came to its full potential. Such epiphanies are hard to come by while innovating; often it’s not until you focus your attention elsewhere
that they occur. I’ve yet to experience an EZ Drink-related epiphany most
likely because I’ve yet to revert my attention from it. Given the close relationship
between DDI and TPI (see Figure B), I’ve continued to seek new meaning by brainstorming new radical technologies, and vice versa, for EZ Drink. While I'm disappointed I've yet to experience an epiphany, I've enjoyed prolonging the innovation process - talking about innovation doesn't hold a candle to actually doing it. On that note, I'll leave you with a joke.
What's the difference between using the bathroom and being innovative?
Using the bathroom is something everybody's doing but nobody's talking about.
[2] http://www.designdriveninnovation.com/processDDI.html
[3] http://continuuminnovation.com/work/swiffer/
