Refocusing: How Design Can Help Industry Address New Challenges

Abstract

The tools of design can help industry escape outdated frameworks and address a new, more complex set of questions and challenges. It is common for leaders of large companies and other organizations to feel frustrated by the way innovation happens--or doesn't--in their organizations. They wonder why development of a new offering takes longer than planned, why ideas that start with a bold vision become normalized, why they always seem to be a step behind the market-leading offerings. They are faced with the ironic situation of having an unprecedented ability to make almost anything but being uncertain about what to make. These frustrations are not isolated problems that can be solved in an ad hoc manner. They are symptoms of organizational friction, caused by using a previous era's management norms to solve problems that belong to a new era. The current manifestation of this friction is the use of industrial-age frameworks and methods--developed to support competitive advantage based on economies of scale--to solve today's very different problems. The central challenge for management in the era of economies of scale was increasing the certainty of their bets when investing in ever-larger factories, distribution channels, advertising campaigns, and related elements of mass production for mass markets. But industrial-age practices that supported this need are strained by current needs and solutions, which require variety and responsiveness. It is the equivalent of racing forward while looking backwards. One example of the effect of looking at a new technology or a new market through yesterday's lenses is the evolution of the telephone. An early vision of the telephone saw it as a tool to allow people to listen to concerts from neighboring villages; this vision was a direct, even logical extension of the live orchestral performances most small towns offered. It seemed natural people would want to expand access to these popular events. The telephone was envisioned as an individual communication tool only after this idea failed, but even then its advocates envisioned a phone installed on every block in large cities. It did not occur to anyone that the device should be tied to particular places, that people would want to talk to friends and family from their homes, while working in the kitchen or lounging in the parlor. There was no evidence to support such a vision--because people had no idea such a thing could be possible. And to prove just how strong old frameworks run, we still call that device a telephone, even though most people no longer use their phones primarily for talking to each other. Executives envisage the future through the lenses of the present, imagining that the current markets and industry will continue indefinitely. And that may work for a while, but winning the future--sticking around for the long term--requires continuously adapting to the emerging future, identifying and adopting the frameworks and approaches needed to address challenges and opportunities that are seldom stable. We saw this during the Second Industrial Revolution. As a string of technology breakthroughs enabled new markets of unprecedented scale, new frameworks were needed to help organizations evolve from small companies serving local markets to large organizations serving international markets. That need drove a transformation in the patterns of daily life and the processes by which organizations were governed. New professions like advertising and marketing emerged. New business methods were invented to help executives deal with the new challenges inherent in large companies. University of Chicago professor John McKinsey wrote a book proposing that budgets could go beyond describing the results of the past year to serving as a framework for planning operations for the upcoming year; his idea was so revolutionary and attracted so much attention that he founded a consulting company to help companies make plans with more rigor and certainty--and McKinsey & Company remains influential today. …