Distinct … or Extinct: Design = Differentiator #1 Unilever/IDEO/TPC The Design Museum/28.11.2001

1. Distinct … or Extinct:Design = Differentiator #1Unilever/IDEO/TPCThe Design Museum/28.11.2001

2. All Slides Available at …tompeters.comNote: Lavender text in this file is a link.

3. I. Welcome to the Age of “GAK!”

4. <1000A.D.: paradigm shift: 1000s of years1000: 100 years for paradigm shift1800s: > prior 900 years1900s: 1st 20 years > 1800s2000: 10 years for paradigm shift21st century: 1000X tech change than 20th century (“the ‘Singularity,’ a merger between humans and computers that is so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history”)Ray Kurzweil

5. “The corporation as we know it, which is now 120 years old, is not likely to survive the next 25 years. Legally and financially, yes, but not structurally and economically.”Peter Drucker, Business 2.0 (08.00)

6. Forbes100 from 1917 to 1987: 39 members of the Class of ’17 were alive in ’87; 18 are in ’87 F100; the 18 F100 “survivors” underperformed the market by 20%; just 2 (2%), GE & Kodak, outperformed the market from 1917 to 1987.S&P 500 from 1957 to 1997: 74 members of the Class of ’57 were alive in ’97; 12 (2.4%) of 500 outperformed the market from 1957 to 1997.Source: Dick Foster & Sarah Kaplan, Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market

7. “Good management was the most powerful reason [leading firms] failed to stay atop their industries.Precisely because these firms listened to their customers, invested aggressively in technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort they wanted, and because they carefully studied market trends and systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership.”Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma

8. “A pattern emphasized in the case studies in this book is the degree to which powerful competitors not only resist innovative threats, but actually resist all efforts to understand them, preferring to further their positions in older products. This results in a surge of productivity and performance that may take the old technology to unheard of heights. But in most cases this is a sign of impending death.”Jim Utterback, Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation

9. 7 Rules for Leading/THRIVING in a Recession+1. It’s ALREADY too late.2. Show up & tell the truth—CREDIBILITY rules.3. Kill with KINDNESS.4. Sharp pencils are imperative—but don’t forget that the CUSTOMER & our TALENT & RISKY INVESTMENTS are still our long-term Bread & Butter. 5. Everything’s different, everything’s the same—it’s the NEW ECONOMY, more than ever, stupid!6. “Use” the trauma to mount the bold initiatives you should have long before mounted: Flux =OPPORTUNITY.7. We’re in a War of Organizational Models—from retail to the Pentagon. IDEAS MATTER MOST.

10. Message: Everybody’s scrambling. Nobody’s “got it right.”

11. II. The 3B Problem:BetterButBoring!

12. Quality Not Enough!“While everything may be better, it is also increasingly the same.”Paul Goldberger on retail, “The Sameness of Things,” The New York Times

13. “We make over three new product announcements a day. Can you remember them? Our customers can’t!”Carly Fiorina

14. “The ‘surplus society’ has a surplus of similar companies, employing similarpeople, with similar educational backgrounds, working in similar jobs, coming up with similarideas, producing similar things, with similarprices and similarquality.”Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale,Funky Business

15. Message: Find an edge. Or else.

16. III. We Must Lead: Different or Doomed!

17. “If you worship at the throne of the voice of the customer, you’ll get only incremental advances.”Joseph Morone, President, Bentley College

18. “These days, you can’t succeed as a company if you’re consumer led – because in a world so full of so much constant change, consumers can’t anticipate the next big thing. Companies should be idea-led and consumer-informed.”Doug Atkin, partner, Merkley Newman Harty

19. Saviors-in-WaitingDisgruntled CustomersOff-the-Scope CompetitorsRogue EmployeesFringe SuppliersWayne Burkan, Wide Angle Vision: Beat the Competition by Focusing on Fringe Competitors, Lost Customers, and Rogue Employees

20. CUSTOMERS: “Future-defining customers may account for only 2% to 3% of your total, but they represent a crucial window on the future.”Adrian Slywotzky, Mercer Consultants

21. COMPETITORS: “The best swordsman in the world doesn’t need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn’t prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot.”Mark Twain

22. Employees: “Are thereenoughweirdpeoplein the lab these days?”V. Chmn., pharmaceutical house, to a lab director (06.01)

23. Suppliers:There is an ominous downside to strategic supplier relationships. An SSR supplier is not likely to function as any more than a mirror to your organization. Fringe suppliers that offer innovative business practices need not apply.”Wayne Burkan, Wide Angle Vision: Beat the Competition by Focusing on Fringe Competitors, Lost Customers, and Rogue Employees

24. WEIRD IDEAS THAT WORK: (1) Hire slow learners (of the organizational code). (1.5) Hire people who make you uncomfortable, even those you dislike. (2) Hire people you (probably) don’t need. (3) Use job interviews to get ideas, not to screen candidates. (4) Encourage people to ignore and defy superiors and peers. (5) Find some happy people and get them to fight. (6) Reward success and failure, punish inaction. (7) Decide to do something that will probably fail, then convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain. (8) Think of some ridiculous, impractical things to do, then do them. (9) Avoid, distract, and bore customers, critics, and anyone who just wants to talk about money. (10) Don’t try to learn anything from people who seem to have solved the problems you face. (11) Forget the past, particularly your company’s success. Bob Sutton, Weird Ideas that Work: 11½ Ideas for Promoting, Managing and Sustaining Innovation

25. Message: You are paid to lead. So … lead!

26. IV. Design: The No.1 Source of PassionateAttachment!(Or undying despair)

27. Design “is” … WHAT & WHY I LOVE. LOVE.

28. I LOVEmy ZYLISS Garlic Peeler!

29. Design “is” … WHY I GET MAD. MAD.

30. Wanted: THE DESIGNER OF MY RADIO SHACK PHONE. Major Reward!

31. Design is neverneutral.

32. Hypothesis:DESIGN is the principaldifference between love and hate.

33. “We don’t have a good language to talk about this kind of thing. In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. … But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation.”Steve Jobs

34. Philippe Starck

35. “Today the problem is not how to produce more to sell more. The fundamental question is that of the product’s right to exist. And it is the designer’s right and duty to question the legitimacy of the product.”Philippe Starck

36. “My main task when I was artistic director at Thompson for four years: to make the company virtuous. Not because there was a desire to do evil, but because they had simply forgotten their purpose in life—to be of service.”Philippe Starck

37. “I invented the slogan ‘Thompson: From Technology to Love.’ That completely repositioned the problem. Because now we were saying that technology wasn’t an end in itself, but just a means—and that the real goal was what had always been there, the original priority, humanity, whose ultimate criterion is love. That connects back to the idea of the friendly object, the good object.”Philippe Starck

38. “[At Thompson] I outlawed the word ‘consumer’ in all company meetings, and insisted it be replaced by the words ‘my friend,’ ‘my wife, ‘my daughter,’ ‘my mother,’ or ‘myself.’ It doesn’t sound the same at all, if you say: ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s shit, but the consumers will make do with it,’ or if you start over again and say, ‘It’s shit, but it doesn’t matter, my daughter will make do with it.’ All of a sudden, you can’t get away with it anymore. There is an enormous task to be done with this kind of symbolic repositioning.”Philippe Starck

39. Message: Engage your Client in an examination- exploration of why we care about stuff. Or don’t.

40. THE BASE CASE: I am a design fanatic. Personally, though not “artistic,” I love cool stuff. I love what I love and I hate what I hate. But it goes [much] further, far beyond the personal. Design has become a professional obsession. I – SIMPLY – BELIEVE THAT DESIGN PER SE IS THE PRINCIPAL REASON FOR EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT [or detachment] RELATIVE TO A PRODUCT OR SERVICE OR EXPERIENCE. Design, as I see it, is arguably the #1 determinant of whether a product-service-experience stands out … or doesn’t. Furthermore, it’s “one of those things” … that damn few companies put – consistently – on the front burner.

41. V. Design is a Great Story!

42. “A key – perhaps the key – to leadership isthe effective communication of a story.”Howard GardnerLeading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership

43. “Car designers need to create astory. Every car provides an opportunity to create anadventure. …“The Prowler makes yousmile. Why? Because it’s focused. It has aplot, a reason for being, apassion.”Freeman Thomas, co-designer VW Beetle; designer Audi TT

44. Hmmmm(?): “Only” Words …StoryAdventureSmile FocusPlotPassion

45. PlotWilliams Sonoma = 6 [was 10]Crate & Barrel = 8Sharper Image = 9+Smith & Hawken = 8+Garnet Hill = 9L.L. Bean = 4 [was 9+]Land’s End = 7+Colonial Williamsburg = ?

46. Message: “What’s the plot?” is a compelling exercise!

47. VI. Great Design is Respectful

48. “Sometimes I have episodes of wild fury in rental cars. It’s not road rage. It’s more like design rage.”Susan Casey, www.ecompany.com

49. User …STOP BLAMING YOURSELF!(Don Norman/Design of Everyday Things)

50. Paradox [?][!]Great Design = WOW! + GRACE[usability writ large]