NOTES ON STRATEGY by RYAN JOSEPH FIORENTINO A THESIS Presented to the Interdisciplinary Studies Program: Individualized Program and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science June 2012 ii THESIS APPROVAL PAGE Student: Ryan Joseph Fiorentino Title: Notes on Strategy This thesis has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Science degree in the Interdisciplinary Studies Program: Individualized Program by: Howard Davis Department of Architecture Robert Mauro Department of Psychology Lynn Kahle Department of Marketing and Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President for Research & Innovation/Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2012 iii © 2012 Ryan Joseph Fiorentino iv THESIS ABSTRACT Ryan Fiorentino Master of Science Interdisciplinary Studies Program: Individualized Program June 2012 Title: Notes on Strategy The purpose of this report is to generate the capacity for dialogue around the tenants of design thinking and strategy, the perceived systemic underpinnings of productivity and economic fortitude. This report contends that in order for the US economy to generate productivity growth, by way of a virtuous cycle of job growth and value added, organizations and individuals as well as the public sector must begin thinking through design. This report questions what it takes for organizations to make breakthrough productivity transformations that spark novel developments in customer value. Fieldwork was conducted on a variety of levels in effort to further the understanding of the way design strategy can take form at the personal, organizational, and societal levels. Primary insights were generated through an organizational ethnography of COMMON, a collaborative community and brand committed to accelerating social and economic innovation. Ultimately, a systemic framework is established that suggests strategic cultural alignment at an organizational level links individual wholeness to economic growth. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Ryan Joseph Fiorentino GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Denison University, Granville, Ohio DEGREES AWARDED: Master of Science, Interdisciplinary Studies (Architecture, Psychology, and Business), 2012, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, (Economics with Minor in Psychology) 2004, Denison University AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Design and Innovation Strategy Business Model Design Human-Centered Design User Experience Research Ethnography PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Trader, Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2009-2010 Portfolio Manager, Northwind Resources, Chicago, Illinois, 2005-2009 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, thanks to my team. That includes my family and loved ones who have had an eye on me through this process, and of course Howard Davis, Robert Mauro, and Lynn Kahle. Thank you for taking a chance on this and seeing it through with me. All the best. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 Research Questions ................................................................................................ 13 Hypothesis.............................................................................................................. 14 Expected Outcomes ............................................................................................... 15 Method ................................................................................................................... 17 II. EXPLORATION ..................................................................................................... 19 Integrity .................................................................................................................. 19 Shared Mental Models ........................................................................................... 22 Personal Growth and Passion ................................................................................. 25 Flow ....................................................................................................................... 27 Commitment to Shared Vision ............................................................................... 30 Adaptive Teams ..................................................................................................... 31 Problem Solving Aptitude...................................................................................... 38 System Level Creativity ......................................................................................... 41 Organizational Learning ........................................................................................ 45 Strategic Cultural Alignment ................................................................................. 51 III. METHOD .............................................................................................................. 57 Introduction and Approach to Question Generation .............................................. 57 COMMON ............................................................................................................. 60 COMMON MBA ................................................................................................... 61 COMMON Pitch .................................................................................................... 72 viii Chapter Page IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ............................................................................ 78 General Findings .................................................................................................... 78 Returning to Research Questions ........................................................................... 84 Topics for Future Research .................................................................................... 87 V. CONCLUSIOIN .................................................................................................... 88 REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................................ 89 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Contribution of Productivity .................................................................................. 4 2. Labor Force. ........................................................................................................... 5 3. Required Productivity Gains .................................................................................. 7 4. Opportunity equals 50% of 1.6 Trillion ................................................................. 8 5. Current Productivity Growth Sources .................................................................... 10 6. Previous Productivity Growth Sources .................................................................. 11 7. The Value of Value Innovation .............................................................................. 14 8. Scope and Effect .................................................................................................... 15 9. Organizational Value Creation Through Integrity ................................................. 16 10. First Look at System Model ................................................................................... 17 11. Integrity .................................................................................................................. 21 12. The Development of Team Mental Models. .......................................................... 23 13. Shared Mental Models ........................................................................................... 24 14. Personal Growth and Passion ................................................................................. 26 15. Flow ....................................................................................................................... 28 16. Commitment to Shared Vision ............................................................................... 31 17. Adaptive Teams ..................................................................................................... 33 18. Consequences of Different Types of Conflict ....................................................... 34 19. Conflict Management and Conflict Behavior Style ............................................... 35 20. Conflict Behavior Chart ......................................................................................... 36 21. Search and Exploration .......................................................................................... 38 x Figure Page 22. Problem Space and Solution Space. ....................................................................... 39 23. Problem Solving Aptitude...................................................................................... 41 24. Creativity Systems Model ...................................................................................... 42 25. Technology Component ......................................................................................... 44 26. System Level Creativity ......................................................................................... 45 27. A Model of Organizations as Learning Systems ................................................... 47 28. Elements of an Organizational Learning System ................................................... 49 29. Organizational Learning ........................................................................................ 50 30. Innovation and Cultural Alignment Matrix ........................................................... 52 31. Perceived Importance of Common Innovation Goals ............................................ 53 32. Perceived Importance of Cultural Attributes ......................................................... 54 33. Strategic Cultural Alignment ................................................................................. 56 34. Wolfsonian MBA (a). ............................................................................................ 62 35. Wolfsonian MBA (b) ............................................................................................. 63 36. Pitch Boulder (a) .................................................................................................... 74 37. Pitch Boulder (b) .................................................................................................... 75 38. System Model Revisited ........................................................................................ 78 39. Repercussions of “Stuck” ...................................................................................... 79 40. Stage-Matched Process .......................................................................................... 80 41. MBA ...................................................................................................................... 82 42. Pitch ....................................................................................................................... 84 43. Offering for Dialogue ............................................................................................ 86 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION On April 27, 2012 the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis published its most recent estimates of the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), in other words GDP and its components. The NIPA tables reveal that, on a seasonally adjusted annual basis, the United States is on track to produce 15,461.8 billion dollars in gross domestic product in 2012 (Bureau of Economic Analysis: 2012). Personal consumption and expenditures, a sub-category of the aggregate GDP measurement encompasses all goods both durable, and non-durable, as well as services. Durable goods includes receipts for products such as, motor vehicles and parts, furnishings and durable household equipment, and recreation goods and vehicles. Non- durable goods includes receipts for products such as food and beverages, clothing and footwear, and gasoline and other energy goods. Services includes receipts for household consumption expenditures such as healthcare, financial services and insurance, housing and utilities, along with all gross output from non-profit institutions. Often times, when accounting for GDP by major type of product, services, includes government consumption expenditures, such as those on education and national defense. When the calculation includes only personal consumption, however, NIPA indicates that 11,014.5 billion dollars, 71.2 percent of our nations GDP comes from the products and services that we are spending money on, generally as consumers, on a daily basis. Interestingly, gross private investment, a category specific to business investment, accounts for 2,044.9 billion dollars, or 13.2 percent of GDP. Considering the health of business is acutely sensitive to consumers’ ability to spend dollars on goods and services the business sector retails, it is fair to say that consumer spending behavior influences 84.4 percent of our economy’s output. There are many positions on the appropriate point of entry for effective stimulus in our economic system. Clearly the data described above suggests that empowering consumers 2 with spending capacity is a high impact means of generating GDP growth. Jim Clifton, Chairman of Gallup, claims that from all of the world polling Gallup has done over the past 75 years, what would fix the world, what would create world peace, global wellbeing, and the next extraordinary advancements in human development, would be the immediate appearance of 1.8 billion jobs, formal jobs (Clifton: 2011). Clifton authored, The Coming Jobs War, with the belief that the next 30 years won’t be led by U.S. political or military force, but rather with economic force driven by job creation and GDP growth. Over recent years Gallup has begun conducting, what they classify as, the World Poll. The World Poll is a global study, started in 2005, committed to creating a comprehensive body of the world’s behavioral data over a 100 year period. Only six years into the effort Clifton believes they may have already found the single most searing, clarifying, and helpful, world-altering fact, and one of the most important discoveries Gallup has ever made. “What the whole world wants is a good job” (Clifton: 2011). Clifton asserts that from Gallup’s data collected from asking the whole world questions on virtually everything, the most profound finding is that the primary will of the world is first and foremost to have a good job. He concludes with a call to arms. If America is to lead the world, he suggests, it will have to master ten demands, ten findings that are the most important of the literally trillions of combinations of opinions Gallup has studied: (1) The biggest problem facing the world is an inadequate supply of good jobs. If you are the best in the world at something other than creating strategies and policies aimed at the great global dream, your leadership now has less value. (2) Job creation can only be accomplished in cities. The federal government cannot create sustainable jobs, just short- term ones. Cities are job power plants of human energy, which create jobs through innovation and entrepreneurship. (3) There are three key sources of job creation in America: The country’s top 100 cities, its top 100 universities, and its top 100 tribal leaders. (4) Entrepreneurship is more important than innovation. (5) America cannot outrun its healthcare costs. It is a dead weight for the U.S. that virtually no other country carries. Every leader has to put physical fitness at the core of every decision he or she makes or surrender America’s leadership of the free world. (6) The American public 3 school dropout rate is approximately one-third – 50% minorities. Because all public education results are local, local leaders need to lead their whole cities and all youth programs to war on the dropout rate with a strategy of one city, one school, one student at a time. If they don’t they will lose jobs. The fate of the nation rides on the financial literacy and entrepreneurial literacy of its kids. (7) The United States must differentiate itself by doubling its number of engaged employees. Only 28% of the American workforce is ready to compete and win each day. Doubling that number would change U.S. vs. China outcomes. (8) Jobs occur where customers appear. For this reason the science of customers, often referred to as customer insights or customer centricity, is more important today than ever before, customer centricity and deep customer insight are essential in this war. Americans have to understand global customers better than anybody else in the world does, or lose the competition for the next 140 trillion dollars of global GDP growth. (9) Every economy rides on the backs of small to medium sized businesses. Most jobs occur when entrepreneurs start companies. The next biggest job source is the approximately 5% of existing small companies that shoot up to big success. (10) So go exports, so goes the coming jobs war. The United States needs to more than triple exports in the next five years and increase them by 20 times in the next 30 years. The U.S. cannot win the coming jobs war by just selling more products to its own consumers. Exporting is its next man-on-the-moon moment. (Clifton: 2011) The context for this position is very interesting. Labor inputs and productivity have constituted the fuel for a US annual economic growth rate of 3.3 percent since the 1960s, increasing the economy by nearly fivefold, and tripling real per capita GDP (McKinsey: 2011). The following graph (Figure 1) is from a report entitled Growth and renewal in the United States: Retooling America’s economic engine published in February 2011 by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). 4 Figure 1: Contribution of Productivity Source: McKinsey & Company, Growth and renewal in the United States: Retooling America’s economic engine The analysis made by MGI suggests that labor has contributed 1.6 percent to annual GDP growth since 1960, while productivity has increased at an average 1.7 percent annual rate as business processes have evolved and new technologies have emerged. The contribution from labor is beginning to slow as baby boomers retire and the female participation rate has plateaued. Given the current demographics of our workforce, over the next ten years the proportion of Americans that constitute the working-age population will decline from 67 percent to 64 percent. Strikingly, by the 2020s the contribution of labor to US GDP growth rates is expected to decline to 0.5 percent from a peak of 2.0 percent in the 1970s (McKinsey: 2011). According to the graph below (Figure 2), there may be room in the US economy to add workers by way of activating demographic 5 populations such as older Americans, youth, women, and immigrants. This could potentially contribute to 1 percentage point in GDP growth (McKinsey: 2011). Figure 2: Labor Force Source: McKinsey & Company, Growth and renewal in the United States: Retooling America’s economic engine In order for this to take shape significant changes to the labor market would be required such as modifying Social Security benefits or other large scale public sector moves. Without changes of this sort, the remaining source of GDP growth is in the improvement of productivity. The significance of this data is realized when one considers, if labor force participation follows the projected trajectory and productivity continues at its past growth rate, U.S. GDP growth will decline to from 2.8 percent to 2.2 percent per year, 6 and the per capita GDP growth would decelerate from 1.7 percent to 1.3 percent, all over the course of the next eight years (McKinsey: 2011). Turning the focus toward productivity, described as the expanding of output through innovations that improve the performance, quality, or value of goods and services, MGI has estimated that in order to maintain historical GDP growth, U.S. productivity growth would need to accelerate by 34 percent from rates seen over the past 20 years. If the US cannot improve upon its productivity position, foreign corporations are less likely to find domestically produced goods commercially viable and attractive and exports will decline. Simply put, “productivity gains improve welfare over time without the need to reduce employment” (McKinsey: 2011). The graph below (Figure 3) details the productivity gains needed to sustain historic GDP growth rates, it is noted that what is required is ambitious. The required rates were last achieved more than 50 years ago. 7 Figure 3: Required Productivity Gains Source: McKinsey & Company, Growth and renewal in the United States: Retooling America’s economic engine Considering the global context for productivity, Japan and Western Europe face similar positions, Japan standing worse of. It comes as no surprise that China has seen productivity driven growth over recent decades. They have outpaced the US productivity rates by 4x to 5x. An undercurrent of this dialogue is that some forecasts suggest over the coming decade productivity could actually be weaker than we have seen in the past. This considered “the United Stated will experience the slowest growth in living standards since George Washington was president” (McKinsey: 2011). MGI suggests that it is possible to use the next wave of innovation to further boost productivity growth. It should be noted that very often the terms innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship have embedded, nuanced characteristics used by one author or another. When discussing 8 material from a variety of sources it becomes difficult to generate a coherent narrative when terms such as “innovation” can have multiple meanings. In this case the term is used with similar, “real-market”, “commercializable” properties as Jim Clifton uses the term entrepreneurship. The Growth and renewal in the United States report identified three areas as potential sources for high-impact growth; enhanced business operations, greater customer responsiveness and engagement, and service and product innovation. All said, new business processes, technology uses, and new offerings can capture half of the productivity gap to historical GDP (McKinsey: 2011). A calculation reveals that this figure is close to 800 billion nominal dollars over the course of the next eight years (Figure 4). Figure 4: Opportunity equals 50% of 1.6 Trillion That 800 billion dollars is what this report is about. That contribution is the value offered by design thinking and design approaches to organizational cultures of innovation, and 9 strategic business model generation. This report contends that while the potential contribution and market capture over the next decade is great. The US economy is at a pivotal point in the global economic landscape. The next decade may set the course for many to come. The purpose of this report is to generate the capacity for dialogue around the tenants of design thinking and strategy, the perceived systemic underpinnings of productivity and economic fortitude. The sectors that are initially of most interest are those that have a capacity to sustain large scale GDP growth through productivity driven by a virtuous cycle of job growth and rising value-added, rather than merely efficiency gains. These are the true competitive sectors. The below tables indicate drivers of productivity growth over two periods 1990- 2000 and 2000-2008. An opportunity is revealed to create a shift toward realignment of the largest positive contributors to productivity growth with job-growth and value added (Figure 5, Figure 6). 10 Figure 5: Current Productivity Growth Sources Source: McKinsey & Company, Why US productivity can grow without killing jobs 11 Figure 6: Previous Productivity Growth Sources Source: McKinsey & Company, Why US productivity can grow without killing jobs It seems that, given the above discussion, the private sector is most apt to contribute to productivity and value-added, whereas the public sector is most apt to contribute to expanding the labor force, in terms of policy and programs. It is clear that at this time in history they both must work together. Equally of interest, is looking at productivity through the lens of tradability. Tradability can be measured by adding sector imports to exports, and dividing that sum by the sectors gross output, in other words how much business that sector is able to capture or participate in that occurs internationally. Sectors with high tradability measurements, as well as high contributions to productivity growth, such as manufacturing, are extremely valuable in this case. The greatest opportunity may 12 lie in specialized R&D intensive manufacturing such as aircraft and spacecraft, medical instruments, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and radio, TV, and communication equipment are particularly interesting as they have both high tradability as well as high offering differentiation (McKinsey: 2011). I recently spoke with Herman D’Hooge, an innovation strategist, who has spent the past 30 years focused on user-centered design at Intel. As a designer who is constantly charged with understanding what a day in the life looks like ten years from now, his understanding is that process innovations are beginning to take shape in the way industries interact with technology to the extent that all industries are on a rapid acceleration toward becoming information technology industries. To this end, opportunities for US productivity growth may also lie in the transformational potential of digital technology. New-wave innovations in Big Data, or data-driven business decisions and actions, and cloud computing can produce fresh productivity gains in sectors such as education and health care (McKinsey: 2011). Managerial innovation includes the development of novel products and services, new business models, identifying fresh uses and markets for existing products, and better ways to organize business activities (McKinsey: 2011) This area of focus is considered to garner extremely rich findings in the way of productivity enhancements in the economy. Organizational design is a premise that re-situates past theories geared at specific structure with strategic approaches to firm-wide collaboration and connectedness (McKinsey: 2007). A 2010 report from McKinsey & Company entitled McKinsey Global Survey results: Innovation and Commercialization 2010, reported that fundamentally, the biggest challenge is “organization”. 42 percent of respondents to this annual survey reported that improvements in organization alone would make the most profound difference in innovation performance. “Organization” was closely followed in importance by “developing a climate that fosters innovation”, “commercializing new businesses, products, or services”, and “selecting the right ideas and managing a portfolio” (McKinsey: 2010). 13 Research Questions The general contention is that in order for the US economy generate productivity growth, by way of a virtuous cycle of job growth and value added, organizations and individuals, as well as the public sector must begin thinking through design. Design thinking is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity (Brown: 2008). The Design Management Institute recently published Design Thinking - Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value. Design thinking is currently used in a way that tends to describe it as a key activity, yet the book challenges that it is not always clear whether we are thinking about design, thinking of design, or thinking through design (Lockwood: 2010; Cooper et al: 2009). When design thinking is described as the activity of thinking about design, we may ask the questions “Who can design?” and “What can be designed?”. It is a reflective mode that offers ways to study perceptions, expectations, and capabilities assigned to and associated with the theories and practices of designing, design methods (participatory or collaborative) or foci (human-centered, technology- driven, product-centered, system-centered). To think of design is to visualize new meanings, definitions and roles for design, questions arise such as “What if the organization were a product?”. Unlike thinking about or of design, thinking through design enables business transformation through strategy. In this case, the role of design is resituated from traditional product development to a fundamental core-capability and the cornerstone of decision making and execution (Lockwood: 2010; Cooper et al: 2009). This report questions what it takes for organizations to make breakthrough productivity transformations that spark novel developments in customer value such as those described on the below graph (Figure 7). To this end, what are the undercurrents of a transformative “thinking through design” approach? What are relevant design management strategies that lead to individual purpose, sustainable value creation, and productivity? What is possible if organizations begin thinking through design, and freeing-up the ability to explore multiple ways to solve problems? 14 Figure 7: The Value of Value Innovation Source: McKinsey & Company, Reinventing innovation at consumer goods companies Hypothesis The hypothesis contends that bolstering this strategic, thinking through design cornerstone requires deep understandings of the relationship between the workforce and the organization and the system-level psychological interactivity that stimulates wellness, growth, discovery, learning, memory, awareness, empathy and intelligence. There are two general categories that are believed to have the greatest influence. First, design management styles that predicate culture, and collaboration, they are the non- financial, intra- and inter-personal, essentials of business success. This area incorporates shared mental models, shared value, and integrity. All aimed at fostering intrinsic motivation, passion, and developing purpose. And second, design management strategies that enable customer creation through innovative and relevant business model generation. This area incorporates organizational cultures that have memory, the ability 15 to learn, and leverage the power of user insights, ethnography, cultural anthropology, and are rooted in empathy to create, and deliver value for customers. Expected Outcomes In this section a general framework will be presented that will be used throughout the report. Generally, we are considering three spheres of influence; personal, organizational, and societal. Design management styles have been studied empirically and seem to enhance growth and generate improved productivity at the individual, group, and organizational level. However, it is not clear under what circumstances different approaches are optimal. When considering insights or experiences from the field it is critical to understand what is case-specific and what is applicable to other contexts such as; other team or organization sizes, or organizations with differing capacities for collaboration and innovation. The diagram below (Figure 8) illustrates conceptually the scope and potential effect, of these three spheres. Figure 8: Scope and Effect 16 It is expected that through the exploration conducted in this report links will be established that strengthen the understanding of how integrity and purpose at the personal level interact with strategy and value creation at the organizational level, and how this value creation leads to economic fortitude. A high resolution view of the composition of these spherical systems will aid in the discovery of these linkages (Figure 9, 10). Ideally the reader takes away a solid case demonstrating how productivity can be increased by strategic design, and ultimately feels inspired and challenged to continue this exploration in their own unique environment. Figure 9: Organizational Value Creation Through Integrity 17 Figure 10: First Look at System Model Method The intrapersonal, interpersonal and cultural dynamics that stimulate intrinsic motivation, and shared value, creativity and capacity for innovation, the actionable frameworks that enable design to compliment technology, and the strategies that enable product and service providers to create lasting value-based relationships with their users will be explored in a variety of ways. The research included in this study consists of exploration of relative literature. The selected literature was chosen from an analysis of over 150 texts and 350 empirical studies from various fields spanning; innovation, organizational design, participatory design, user-centered design, creativity systems, branding, mental models, organizational psychology, motivation, personal growth and emotional intelligence, ethnography and anthropology, entrepreneurship and the commercialization of innovation, the experience economy, and micro, macro and behavioral economics. 18 Fieldwork was conducted on a variety of levels. Primary insights were generated through an organizational ethnography of COMMON, a collaborative community and brand committed to accelerating social and economic innovation. COMMON was founded in early 2011 by Alex and Ana Bogusky, John Beilenburg and Rob Schuham, all world renowned creatives in their respective fields of advertising, marketing, branding, and design, with a deep understanding of how to influence culture through storytelling and communication. Organizational ethnography is a longitudinal study method that aims to uncover and explicate the ways in which people in particular work settings come to understand, account for, take action, and otherwise manage their day-to-day situation. The goal of ethnography in general is to decode, translate, and interpret behaviors and attached meaning systems. When properly reported ethnographic data does not provide a snapshot-like view of behavior and action, but instead focuses on their flow and interrelationships (Rosen: 1991, 91). Ethnographic interviewing is a qualitative research technique employed that is rooted in cultural anthropology. The researcher’s job in the ethnographic interview is to communicate genuinely, in both subtle and direct ways, “I want to know what you know in the way that you know it…Will you become my teacher and help me understand?” (Atkinson; 1991, 369). There are four general rules that are employed through the ethnographic interview process: (1) listen well and respectfully, developing an ethical engagement with the participants at all stages of the project; (2) acquire a self-awareness of our role in the co-construction of meaning during the interview process; (3) be cognizant of the ways in which both the ongoing relationship and the broader social context affect the participants, the interview process, and the project outcomes; and (4) recognize that dialogue is discovery and only partial knowledge will ever be attained (Atkinson; 1991, 368). Comprehensive analysis of the similarities and differences of what is uncovered from the field and what the literature suggests as best practices will help determine what will be generalizable beyond the scope of this report. 19 CHAPTER II EXPLORATION Integrity Integrity is a factor of production as important as knowledge and technology, yet its major role in productivity and performance has been largely hidden or unnoticed, or even ignored by economists and others (Jensen: 2009). As a part of the Harvard Negotiation, Organization and Markets (NOM) research papers, Harvard Business School professors Michael C. Jensen and Jessie Strauss presented, A New Model of Integrity: An Actionable Pathway to Trust, Productivity, and Value to the INSEAD Social Innovation Research Seminar Series in Fountainbleau, France, March 16, 2009. The “new model” reveals a causal link between integrity and increased performance, quality of life, and value- creation for all entities. It is important to be specific in how integrity is used in discourse. There is often an overlap that leads to confusion and diminished efficacy and potential power among four phenomena of integrity, morality, ethics, and legality. Integrity is distinguished by existing in a realm that is devoid of normative content, that is, integrity is neither good nor bad, right nor wrong, what should nor should not be. Morality, ethics and legality exist in this normative realm however (Jensen: 2009). An object, for example, has integrity when it is whole or complete, any diminution in whole and complete results in diminution in workability. Jensen and Strauss point to a wheel missing spokes to illustrate this point. A wheel missing spokes is not whole, or complete. It will become out-of-round, work less well and eventually stop working entirely. Workability is the bridge to performance, as an entity becomes less workable its opportunity set (the available opportunity for performance) declines, thus according to the model integrity becomes a necessary but not sufficient condition for maximum performance (Jensen: 2009). 20 Integrity for a person is a matter of a person’s word, nothing more and nothing less. When one’s word is whole and complete they are a person of integrity. It is noted that while keeping your word is fundamentally important in life, you will not be able to always keep your word. However, you can always honor your word. Honoring your word, according to the model, is either: (1) keeping your word, or (2) whenever you will not be keeping your word, just as soon as you become aware that you will not be keeping your word (including not keeping your word on time) saying to everyone impacted: a. that you will not be keeping your word, and b. that you will keep that word in the future, and by when, or that you won’t be keeping your word at all, and c. what you will do to deal with the impact on others of the failure to keep your word (or to keep it on time) (Jensen: 2009). In organizational settings individuals often times systematically sacrifice integrity in the name of increasing performance, and are left blind to the ultimate reduction in performance. There are many causes of this so-called, “veil of invisibility”. Considering integrity a virtue, is one potential cause. As a virtue, integrity is easily sacrificed when it appears a person must do so to succeed, and when it is valued only to the degree that it engenders the admiration of others. Another is self-deception about being out of integrity. When people begin to rationalize or make internal excuses, they justify a reason for their behavior. Conducting a cost/benefit analysis on honoring one’s word also cloaks integrity (Jensen: 2009). Integrity begins with a person giving their word to themselves that they are a person of integrity (Jensen: 2009). To this end, it is actionable and does not require the cooperation of others. In order to be whole and complete as a person, one’s word to themselves and others must be whole and complete. Each out of integrity act reduces opportunity for performance, reduces what is possible, and ultimately diminishes the ability to realize value and productivity (Jensen: 2009). Jensen and Strauss’s presentation concluded with a visualization of what it is like to be whole and complete. When you honor your work to yourself and others you are at peace with yourself, and therefore act from a place where 21 you are at peace with others and the world, even those who disagree with or might threaten you. You live without fear of your selfhood, that is who you are as a person. You have no fear of losing the admiration of others. You do not have to be right; you act with humanity. Everything or anything that someone else might say is ok for consideration, no need to defend or explain yourself, or rationalize yourself, you are able to learn. Integrity becomes the foundation from which the model will be built (Figure 11). Figure 11: Integrity 22 Shared Mental Models “Mental models” are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action (Senge: 1990, 8). Kenneth Craik, an early thought leader on cognitive behavior, proposed that the mind creates small-scale models of reality (Craik: 1943, Badke-Schaub et al: 2007). These so-called mental models are cognitive level arrangements or categorical representations of information that the mind uses to view and organize the world around us. Mental models are being considered in the personal sphere as they are components of individual’s sense of connectedness. Individuals committed to a vision beyond their self- interest find that they have energy not available when pursuing narrower goals. Mental models are so powerful in affecting what we do, because they affect what we see (Senge: 1990). These patterned understandings have an acute sensitivity to their context. As a result of this, mental models are specific for each task and team configuration. It is generally understood that five different types of mental models exist among in design teams; task, process, team, competence and context: (1) The task model relates to persons stored knowledge regarding the particular task. This can include; product knowledge, knowledge about technology or information, or knowledge about how an object is to be designed. (2) The process model refers to the knowledge required to solve the given task. This model refers more specifically to how the knowledge is used, and whether that knowledge or facts are required. (3) The team model includes knowledge about other team members, their abilities, and their roles and responsibilities. (4) The competence model is described as the general confidence members have in there inherent collective ability to complete the task at hand. This speaks to the ability of members to commit to the team. (5) The context model refers to background knowledge about the environment or culture. (Badke-Schaub et al: 2007). The process diagram (Figure 12) below shows the development of team mental models and the resulting influence on team performance. These features of perception (active perception, memory, knowledge, needs) form the basis of mental model development. Through the sharing of these organizations of information team mental models are built 23 that will reflect one or more of the five content aspects, task, process, team, competence and context. The final results of team performance are also influenced by individual skills and abilities that couple with individual expectations. Figure 12: The Development of Team Mental Models Source: Mental Models in Design Teams: a valid approach to performance in design collaboration? Among teams that require high levels of coordinated behavior, sharedness of mental models appears to be extremely important. Greater divergence of mental models at the beginning of the design task (in order to generate creativity) coupled with convergence of mental models at the end of the task (in order to facilitate implementation) may contribute a high task performance. Accuracy is another important contributor to quality. If particular embedded interpretations are incorrect, the greater the sharedness the more detrimentally they affect the team (Badke-Schaub et al: 2007). 24 The discipline of working with mental models starts with turning the mirror inward; learning to unearth our internal pictures of the world, to bring them to the surface and hold them to scrutiny. It also includes the ability to carry on “learningful” conversations that balance inquiry and advocacy, where people expose their own thinking effectively and make that thinking open to the influence of others (Senge: 1990, 9). These “learningful” conversations perpetuate curiosity. When this curiosity is activated with workability and performance (integrity) individuals can begin to cultivate a change from a perspective of “what should be” to a perspective of “what is” (Figure 13). Liberating Passion: How the World’s Best Global Leaders Produce Winning Results suggests that when we imaginatively come to appreciate “what is”, what “can be” shimmers all around us. A precondition to creating the future we want (Khan: 2008, 87). Figure 13: Shared Mental Models 25 Personal Growth and Passion Few organizations have captured the attention of the world over the past decade in the way Google has. Google’s unique approach to investing in its people allows its engineers to spend 20 percent of their time working on personally designed projects outside of their core jobs. The world renowned mindfulness-based emotional intelligence curriculum, Search Inside Yourself, is an innovation that spawned from that 20 percent. Created in collaboration with a Zen master, a CEO, a Stanford University scientist, and Daniel Goleman (the guy who literally wrote the book on emotional intelligence), Chade-Meng Tan leads this contemplative curriculum in effort to enhance the five domains of emotional intelligence: (1) self-awareness, (2) self-regulation, (3) motivation, (4) empathy, and (5) social skills (Tan: 2012). People who have taken the course have reported it to be beneficial in both their professional and personal lives. For example, one participant said, “I have completely changed the way I react to stressors. I take time to think through things and empathize with other people’s situations before jumping to conclusions. (Tan: 2012, 6). In 2012, Chade-Meng Tan authored a text based curriculum for the course which has been endorsed by Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, “This book and the course it’s based on represent one of the greatest aspects of Google’s culture-that one individual with a great idea can really change the world”, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, “As human beings we are capable of positive change. Google engineer Chade-Meng Tan’s book, Search Inside Yourself, which creatively blends the ancient meditative practice of mindfulness with the contemporary field of emotional intelligence, shows that to avoid certain kinds of results, you need to change the conditions that give rise to them. If you change the habitual patterns of the mind, you can change their resulting attitudes and emotions and find peace and inner happiness.” (Tan: 2012). Search Inside Yourself works in three steps: (1) attention training, (2) self- knowledge and self-mastery, and (3) creating useful mental habits. Attention training is the basis of all other higher cognitive and emotional abilities. Therefore, any curriculum for training emotional intelligence has to begin with attention training. 26 The idea is to train the attention to create a quality of mind that is calm and clear at the same time. That quality of mind forms the foundation for emotional intelligence. Self- knowledge and self-mastery is achieved when trained attention creates a high-resolution perception of cognitive and emotive processes. With this, one is able to observe their thought stream and emotion, objectively, and in high clarity. Mental habits can change everything at work. For example, if, whenever you meet anybody, your habitual, instinctive first thought is, I wish for this person to be happy, your sincere goodwill will be picked up unconsciously by others and you will create the type of trust that leads to highly productive collaborations (Tan: 2012). To this end personal growth enables useful mental habits and shared understandings to evolve over time and manifest into greater emotional intelligence and passion (Figure 14). Figure 14: Personal Growth and Passion 27 Flow Motivational orientation is an important mediator of many social influences on creativity (Amabile: 183, 152). The general dichotomy and basis for comparison among orientations include intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the motivation to engage in work primarily for its own sake because the work itself is interesting, engaging, or somewhere satisfying. Extrinsic motivation is the motivation to work primarily in response to something apart from the work itself, such as reward or recognition, or dictates of other people (Amabile: 183). It is widely regarded that intrinsic orientation leads to a preference for challenging enjoyable tasks whereas extrinsic orientation leads to a preference for simple predictable tasks (Deci: 1985, Amabile: 1983, 152). In 1994, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published The Work Performance Inventory: Assessing Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivational Orientations. This report describes a tool designed to assess individual differences in intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations called the Work Performance Inventory (WPI). The intent was to capture the major elements of both motivational orientations. Intrinsic motivation included; self-determination, competence task involvement, curiosity, enjoyment, and interest. Extrinsic motivation included; concerns with competition, evaluation, recognition, money or other tangible incentives, and constraints by others. The research attempted to include not only self-perceptions of competence and self-determination needs, but also the entire range of cognitions and emotions that are purposed to be a part of intrinsic or extrinsic motivation (Amibile article). The authors were able to conclude that WPI demonstrates a keen ability to assess motivational orientation and that WPI scores indicate correlations between intrinsic motivation and behavioral creativity measures were particularly strong. (Amabile et al: 1994). Chade-Meng Tan introduces three practices for motivation; alignment of our work with our values and higher purpose, envisioning a desired future for ourselves, and having the resilience to overcome obstacles in our path. Work that is perfectly aligned with pleasure, passion, and higher purpose, is said to generate a state of flow in you. (Tan: 28 2012). Flow is a condition, Search Inside Yourself co-creator, Daniel Golman, considers “the ultimate motivator” (Figure 15). Figure 15: Flow Flow is not something that has been recently discovered, per se. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent twenty five years focused on understanding this phenomon and describing it theoretically in a psychological sense. What he describes in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, is the theory that flow is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it (Csikszentmihalyi: 1990, 2). This is considered the optimal experience. Vicktor Frankl, the Austrian psychologist, summarized this concept beautifully in Man’s Search for Meaning, “great success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.” 29 (Frankl:1984; Csikszentmihalyi: 1990). It is of no surprise that many leisure activities, such as sport, are conducive to flow, as they are designed to make optimal experience easier to achieve. They have rules that require learning skills, they set up goals, they provide feedback, and they make control possible. They also facilitate concentration and involvement by making the activity as distinct as possible from the so-called “paramount reality” of everyday existence. In the case of sport, participants are dressed in eye- catching uniforms and enter arenas that temporarily set them apart from ordinary people. Generally every flow activity provides a sense of discovery, a creative feeling of transporting a person into a new reality and ultimately pushing them to higher levels of performance (Csikszentmihalyi: 1990, 72). Sarah Zobel Kolpin is a close friend and best-selling author in Denmark. Her book, What a Wonderful Life-with Positive Psychology, explores what makes us happy in life, flow, and how to find meaning in our work lives. Her description of flow includes a point at which thoughts, feelings, and actions are in harmony. Flow is an effortless fusion of activity, the self and its surroundings. Life’s bumps and obstacles melt away and become meaningless. Stress, self-doubt, and inadequacy dissolve. We feel stronger than ever before (Kolpin: 2010). As anxiety and boredom are both unstable states, we naturally move to match challenges with skill. Csikszentmihalyi’s research indicates that people who are more often in flow are especially likely to feel “strong”, “active”, “creative”, “concentrated”, and “motivated”, and more often than not these experiences are reported during work rather than leisure activities. What is unexpected is that very often individuals reported that they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure. A question raised by Kolpin is how come, if flow is really as pleasant and rewarding as we make out, so many of us have difficulty finding it (Kolpin: 2010, 128)? The next chapter begins to approach that challenge by aligning the individual with the group in a shared, mutually beneficial synergy. 30 Commitment to Shared Vision Building shared vision is about holding a shared picture of the future we seek to create. The practice of unearthing these shared pictures fosters genuine commitment and enrollment and translates individual goals into a galvanized organization. (Senge: 1990). Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline illustrates this concept in a compelling way. In the famous gladiator movie Spartacus, the Roman gladiator leads an army of slaves in an heroic uprising in 71 B.C.. Senge describes that they defeated the Roman legions twice, but were finally conquered by the general Marcus Crassus after a long siege and battle. In the movie, Crassus tells the thousand survivors in Spartacus’s army, “You have been slaves. You will be slaves again. But you will be spared your rightful punishment of crucifixion by the mercy of the Roman legions. All you need to do is turn over to me the slave Spartacus, because we do not know him by sight.” Senge goes on to describe, after a long pause, Spartacus (played by Kirk Douglas) stands up and says, “I am Spartacus.” Then, the man next to him stands up and says, “I am Spartacus.” The next man stands up and also says, “No, I am Spartacus.” Within a minute, everyone in the army is on his feet. Ultimately choosing death, but demonstrating their loyalty to a shared vision which Spartacus had inspired (Senge: 1990, 206). A shared vision in this sense is more than a mere idea. Organizations intent on building shared visions continually encourage members to develop their personal visions. In the last chapter a Csikszentmihalyi finding was discussed that indicated people seem to want to work less and be in leisure more. While “commitment” is at the forefront of many leadership approaches, Senge points out that real commitment is still very rare in today’s organizations. 90 percent of the time, what passes for commitment, is compliance (Senge: 1990). It is common to hear managers talk of getting people to “buy into” the vision, an approach predicated on “I sell”, “you buy”. There is a world of difference between “selling” and “enrolling”. Enrollment implies free choice, where “being sold” often does not. Enrollment is the process of becoming part of something by choice. Committed describes a state of being not only enrolled but feeling fully responsible for 31 making the vision happen. (Senge: 1990, 218). Commitment to shared vision becomes the nexus of the personal and organizational spheres (Figure 16). Figure 16: Commitment to Shared Vision Adaptive Teams In 1957, Leon Festinger, then professor of psychology at Stanford University wrote, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Festinger outlines circumstances in which the presence of inconsistency leads to psychological discomfort. The text explains that people are not always successful in explaining the way or rationalizing inconsistencies to themselves so that for one reason or another attempts to achieve consistency fail. He moves to replace the word “inconsistency” with the term “dissonance” and the term “consistency” with a more neutral term “consonance”. His basic hypothesis are: (1) The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to 32 reduce the dissonance and achieve consonance. (2) When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance. Cognitive dissonance can be seen as an antecedent condition which leads to activity oriented toward dissonance reduction just as hunger leads to activity oriented towards hunger reduction (Festinger: 1957). One manifestation of this phenomenon in design teams is that group members may be oriented to choose similar team members to work with in effort to avoid exposure to extremely different beliefs and attitudes (Badke-Schaub et al: 2010). In order to harness the positive potential of cognitive conflict, teams must demonstrate flexibility. It becomes necessary to prepare design teams to be both adaptable and coordinated in their behavioral conflict management style in the creative problem-solving process (Entin: 1999). A 1999 report entitled Adaptive Team Coordination hypothesized that highly effective teams adapt to stressful situations by using effective coordination strategies (Entin: 1999). The report suggests that teams facing complex problem-solving tasks must draw on shared mental models of the situation in the task environment as well as mutual mental models of interacting team member’s tasks and abilities to shift to modes of implicit coordination and thereby reducing coordination overhead (Entin: 1999). The stress inherent in complex problem-solving has the ability to induce a state of cognitive constriction. A negative byproduct of this symptom is a decreased level of coordinated thought and team flexibility. A unique aspect of stress is that it does not always affect teams negatively. Stress can have a positive impact on performance by prompting teams to alter their information seeking strategy, a well-known adaptation technique. While teams may display varied performance results when facing high stress problem-solving tasks, teams that generally maintain and improve their performance under high stress situations seem to be able to adapt or coordinate mental model demands implicitly (Entin: 1999) (Figure 17). 33 Figure 17: Adaptive Teams One potential method for increasing teams’ aptitude in this regard is team adaptation and coordination training (TACT), a methodology that prepares teams to recognize changes in situational stress levels and empowers them with a set of adaptive coordination strategies. When further considering conflict, logic suggests that the incidence of conflict in groups may only be detrimental in terms of group climate and performance. To this end, conflicts should be avoided or reduced to a minimum. However, research suggests that conflicts may contribute in a productive and contributory way, even as an asset. (Badke- Schaub et al: 2010). The 2010 study, How Does Cognitive Conflict in Design Teams Support the Development of Creative Ideas?, examines whether cognitive conflict is detrimental to the development of innovative ideas in design teams or if it is a precondition for innovative performance. Cognitive conflicts are task related divergences 34 resulting from a comparison between one’s own current mental model and perceived information, usually provided by another source such as a team member (Badke-Schaub et al: 2010). The report asks: (1) What kind of strategies do teams use in situations of cognitive conflict?, and (2) What are the consequences for creativity?. The authors hypothesize that conflict behavior style influences innovativeness in the group and the creativity of the outcome. The basis of the research considers three general types of conflicts, cognitive, affective, and process. Cognitive conflicts can be defined as differences concerning task related issues which in the team context are expressed as disagreements. Affective conflicts relate to differences regarding personal issues, negative emotions and unsatisfactory relationships among team members. Process conflicts are conflicts that, similar to cognitive conflicts, are linked to the task and involve issues related to the mode of accomplishing the disagreement about timing, planning and scheduling tasks and related activities. Figure 18 below outlines the consequences of different types of conflict (Badke-Schaub et al: 2010). Figure 18: Consequences of Different Types of Conflict Source: How Does Cognitive Conflict in Design Teams Support the Development of Creative Ideas? Taking a closer look at the potential positive impact of cognitive conflicts, we can consider their inherent place in the dynamics of multidisciplinary design teams. These types of conflicts have been shown to enhance test performance in team settings (Badke- Schaub et al: 2010). The cognitive diversity in this case can lead to broader access to 35 information and knowledge, thus creating more and different insights into the current problem field (Jehn: 1997). Conflict management style is measured here against two main dimensions (Figure 19); Assertiveness (extent to which a person attempts to satisfy his own concern) and Cooperativeness (the extent to which she or he aims to satisfy another’s concerns). Figure 19: Conflict Management and Conflict Behavior Style Source: How Does Cognitive Conflict in Design Teams Support the Development of Creative Ideas? The five styles of conflict behavior used have been adapted from the Thomas and Kilmann conflict mode instrument and include: (1) Competing, which is assertive and non-cooperative, a more power oriented style where one’s own concerns are set above the concerns of other parties in order to attain and keep a higher position. This style is regarded as less effective as it provokes a win lose situation. (2) Collaborating, which is 36 assertive and cooperative, when collaborating a person tries to work together with other people to find a solution that satisfies the needs of everyone concerned. This style is associated with problem solving situations such as design and is effective in exploring and finding different design solutions. (3) Compromising, which is located between assertiveness and cooperativeness. The objective of this conflict status is to find a suitable mutually acceptable solution that partially satisfies all parties. This style seems to be appropriate in situations where different goals are equally important to all concerned parties but a solution still needs to be reached. (4) Avoiding, which is a nonassertive and non-cooperative style, with low concern for self and low concern for other parties, thus not addressing the conflict. This style is effective in conflict situations where issues other than the best solution or more urgent or when confronting the conflict is more damaging than non-action. (5) Accommodating, which is nonassertive and cooperative with low concern for self and high concern for other parties (Figure 20). This conflict style supports a positive climate and is useful when keeping harmony is a high priority (Badke-Schaub: 2010). Figure 20: Conflict Behavior Chart Source: How Does Cognitive Conflict in Design Teams Support the Development of Creative Ideas? 37 Many researchers have suggested that the collaborative style is the key to team effectiveness, while some researchers stress that cognitive conflicts should be managed differently at different phases of the design process (Badke-Schaub: 2004). In terms of the ideation stage where divergent thinking allows for a widening of the problem space, assertive behavior may prove to be most beneficial. Badke-Schaub suggests that the narrowing of the problem space through convergence may require a competitive style provoking more and deeper discussions, and once both the problem and solution space have been somewhat solidified, working out functionality may be predominantly a collaborative task. The report intended to analyze what kind of conflict behavior style in response to cognitive conflicts influences creativity during solution generation in design. A testing protocol was established whereby six groups of three design students were tasked to design a proposal for a new product. The participants were advanced industrial design engineering students. Their task was to design a “flexible size” tent for hiking. Each team was scored by a panel of experts on innovativeness and functionality and their behavior styles were video recorded and audiotaped. The attempt was to answer the following questions: (1) What conflict behavior style in the group is best suited to enhance design innovation? (2) How are design ideas generated in high and low innovation design groups? (3) What conflict behavior style in the group is best suited to enhance design functionality? (4) How are design ideas generated in high and low functionality design groups? The results indicated considerable difference in the conflict behavior styles between teams that scored high verses low in innovation as well as between teams that scored high versus low in functionality. Groups that scored high in innovation tended to use a more competing and compromising style, whereas the low scoring innovation groups tended to use a more collaborating style (Badke-Schaub: 2010). The authors pointed out that the teams scoring low in innovation demonstrated an inclination to repeat already existing ideas, whereas the teams scoring high in innovation produced more new ideas, associated more, and also rejected more ideas. The collaborative style amongst the teams scoring low in innovation seemed to lead to 38 wasting time discussing and working out the same ideas over and over. In terms of functionality, very similar patterns emerged (Badke-Schaub: 2010). Problem Solving Aptitude “..the formulation of the problem at any stage is not final…As the design progresses, the designer learns more about possible problem and solution structures as new aspects of the situation become apparent and the inconsistencies inherent in the formulation of the problem are revealed. As a result,..the problem and the solution are redefined…” (Logan: 1993, in Maher). Well known design thinking scholar, Mary Lou Maher, authored, Formalizing Design Exploration as Co-Evolution: A Combined Gene Approach. This report provides an outstanding discussion regarding the application of thinking in design teams with complex problem-solving tasks. “Design is an iterative interplay to "fix" a problem from the problem space and to "search" plausible solutions from the corresponding solution space (Maher). As potential problem and solution understandings and definitions modulate, “exploration” incorporates current solutions as new criteria for redefining the problem space. Figure 21 below suggests that “search” is used in the case of a well- defined problem, were as “exploration” is used in cased where the problem needs further definition. Figure 21: Search and Exploration Source: Formalizing Design Exploration as Co-Evolution: A Combined Gene Approach 39 The reality of complex problem solving is that the problem space is not realized in a static state, at any point. In theory the problem itself only has the inherent capacity to reveal itself through the continued development of the definition of the solution. The model below (Figure 22) describes exploration as the interactivity between problem space and solution space. Figure 22: Problem Space and Solution Space Source: Formalizing Design Exploration as Co-Evolution: A Combined Gene Approach Maher notes 1. There are two distinct search spaces: Problem Space and Design Space. 2. These spaces interact over a time spectrum. 3. Horizontal movement is an evolutionary process such that a. Problem space P(t) evolves to P(t+1), P(t+2), and so on; b. Solution space S(t) evolves to S(t+1), S(t+2) and so on; 4. Diagonal Movement is a search process where goals lead to solution. This can be “Problem leads to Solution” (downward arrow), or “Solution Refocuses Problem” (upward arrow). The problem space P(t) is the design goal at time t and S(t) is the solution space which defines the current search space for design solutions. Demonstrating its iterative and 40 evolutionary nature, S(t) prompts new requirements for P(t+1) which were not in the original problem space (Maher). In Thinking in Design Teams an Analysis of Team Communication, Joachim Stempfle and Petra Badke Schaub also explore the critical thinking process of designers. Thinking and design is reduced to four basic cognitive operations: (1) generation; (2) exploration; (3) comparison; and (4) selection. These cognitive operations are applied to the goal space (best case) and solution space (ways of getting there) of a given problem. According to Stempfle and Badke Schaub, designing, as a specific area of problem solving requires that the goal space and the solution space become overlaped in such a way that an optimum fit between the goal space and the solution space is being established. They further note that in contrast to domains such as the arts, in design the goal space is much less flexible than the solution space. Similar though between art and design, the solution space may tend to be quite large as there is often multiple solutions to anyone given problem (Stempfle: 2011). Complex problem-solving requires a duality of cognitive functioning. Generative and explorative processes serve to widen the problem space, while comparison and selection serve to narrow it (Figure 23). 41 Figure 23: Problem Solving Aptitude INTEGRITY PRODUCTIVITY SHARED MENTAL MODELS PERSONAL GROWTH AND PASSION FLOW COMMITMENT TO SHARED VISION ADAPTIVE TEAMS PROBLEM SOLVING APTITUDE SYSTEM LEVEL CREATIVITY STRATEGIC CULTURAL ALIGNMENT ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING CUSTOMER CREATION INCREASED DEMAND FOR GOODS AND SERVICES CONSUMER SPENDING QUALITY GDP GOOD JOBS System Level Creativity The argument for a systems perspective on creativity suggests creativity is as much a cultural and social phenomenon as it is a psychological event. Creativity in this case is a process that can be observed only at the intersection of individuals, domains, and fields (Csikszentmihalyi: 1999). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests that if creativity is to retain a useful meaning, it must refer to a process that results in an idea or product that is recognized and adopted by others. The general outline of the systems model (Figure 24) demonstrates interaction among two main aspects, the cultural system and the social system. The loop in the creative system depends upon; 1. A set of rules and practices that must be transmitted from a domain to an individual 2. An individual must then produce a novel variation in the contents of that domain 42 3. The variation of that domain must be selected by the field for inclusion in that domain Figure 24: Creativity Systems Model Source: Implications of a Systems Perspective for the Study of Creativity The cultural system includes a given set of domains. These domains can take a variety of shapes depending on how the culture itself stores its memes (technical procedures, kinds of knowledge, styles of art, belief systems, available toolsets, common practices and accepted values). In this cultural system the accessibility, the availability or the access to any given meme set can have implications on the rate of creativity. Without access or availability to the meme individuals who may have potentially valuable input will face difficulty or barriers in understanding the extent to which they can add to it. Further considering the role of the domain in the creative process, A Systems Perspective on Creativity argues that creativity is the engine that drives cultural evolution (Csikszentmihalyi: 1999). In the case of a multidisciplinary design firm, domains can 43 contain the practices and output of industrial design, interaction design, ethnography, business design, art direction, or copyrighting. Innovation itself takes place in any one of these individual domains. To this end, it is important to consider how tightly or how loosely these domains are defined. If for example a given domain is defined to loosely it can be difficult or impossible to judge whether any novel addition is an improvement to the status quo. Conversely, if a given domain is defined to tightly creativity may be quenched with the inability to see potential (Csikszentmihalyi: 1999). This conversation relates to the management of solution space and goal space as described in the design thinking literature. The social system includes the field, this field referees the social organization of the domain. The field includes gatekeepers who decide what belongs and what does not. The field serves to provide the necessary social validation of new memes. Without some form of social validation it would be impossible to distinguish ideas that are simply bizarre and those that are creative (Csikszentmihalyi: 1999). When considering societal conditions relevant to creativity it is important to understand that a society is the sum of its fields and these fields are made up of individuals who practice in a given domain and have the power to change it. Csikszentmihalyi argues that the ideal formula is a highly differentiated field that is held together by bonds of organic solidarity, and that a society that is located at the confluence of diverse cultural streams can benefit more easily from the synergy of different ideas. An example is brought up in justification of why great art came out of cities of great trade, such as Florence and Venice. These cities during certain culturally marked periods of time had a constant thoroughfare of nobleman, merchants, craftsmen in a place where different political parties took place every few years. The field as a set of gatekeepers will be responsible in deciding whether a new meme is actually an improvement to the domain and what the qualification standards are that enable new means to be accepted (Csikszentmihalyi: 1999). General criteria for the field composition include a certain type of internal organization that stimulates members of the field to serve the purpose of evaluating new ideas on their merits and adding them to the domain. The openness to innovation depends upon this internal organization. The main point being made by Csikszentmihalyi is that how much creativity there is at anyone 44 point time is not determined just by how many original individuals are trying to change the domain, but by how perceptive the fields are to innovation. From an organizational standpoint it makes sense, that in order to increase the innovativeness, it is logical to work more with the level of the fields as opposed to the level of individuals. In 2010, the Creativity Research Journal published, Technology Component: A Modified Systems Approach to Creative Thought. The author, University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication professor Harshavardhan Gangadharbalta, considers the dynamics of information storage and transmission in Csikszentmihalyi’s original systems model and furthers his seminal work by extracting and re-situating the role of technology. The argument is made that while technology can be a part of any individual domain, a more likely case is that it is an essential component of all domains. Technology is less of a cultural phenomenon and is more of a defining aspect of the human condition (Gangadharbatla: 2010). In Gangadharbalta’s model (Figure 25), technology is positioned centrally as a conduit for which information is exchanged at the systems level. Figure 25: Technology Component Source: Technology Component: A Modified Systems Approach to Creative Thought 45 The systems perspective on creativity positions it in a way that enables effective architecture and management of adaptive teams within organizations (Figure 26). Figure 26: System Level Creativity Organizational Learning “Ford is much like other large corporations in its fondness for large programs designed to cascade a methodology or culture change initiative through the organization. It is our observation that the failure of systems thinking to take hold and grow roots in large organizations has in part been because we practitioners of systems thinking have forgotten the insights we ourselves developed over the years: The result of a great systems thinking project is not a set of elegant causal loop diagrams, but a new capacity for reflective dialogue, deep insight, and shifting entrenched mental models.” -Jeremy Seligman, Director of Organizational Development, Ford Motor Company (Seligman: 2005) 46 In order to stay competitive in the ever changing economic landscape organizations must create internal disciplines that enable them to adapt (Nevis et al: 2005) Edwin Nevis, Anthony DiBella and Janet M Gould of the Organizational Learning Center at MIT’s Sloan School of Management stress the need to understand organizations as learning systems. Organizational learning is the capacity or processes within an organization to maintain or improve performance based on experience. Learning is a systems level phenomenon because it stays within the organization even if the individual changes (Nevis: 2005). In Understanding Organizations as Learning Systems generative or adaptive strategies as opposed to corrective strategies are outlined with the focus on closing gaps in organizational learning capacity. One of the assumptions the authors note is that learning takes place in stages. The “three-stage” model consists of: (1) knowledge acquisition, the development or creation of skills insights and relationships; (2) knowledge sharing, the dissemination of what has been learned; and (3) knowledge utilization, the integration of learning so it is broadly available and can be generalized to new situations. With focus on both the utilization and sharing of knowledge, the attention in learning becomes a competency that resides in the points of interaction between systems level components such as the field, the domain, and individual. The authors suggest a model of organizations as learning systems in “two-parts”, learning orientations and facilitating factors. Learning orientations are the values and practices that reflect where learning takes place in the nature of what is learned, the learning style. Facilitating factors are structures and processes that affect how easy or hard it is for learning to occur and the amount of effective learning that takes place (Figure 27) (Nevis: 2005). 47 Figure 27: A Model of Organizations as Learning Systems Source: Understanding Organizations as Learning Systems Seven learning orientations include: (1) Knowledge source: internal vs. external. The preference for developing knowledge internally versus the preference for acquiring knowledge developed externally; (2) Product process focus: what vs. how? Emphasis on accumulation of knowledge about what products/services are versus how organization develops makes and delivers its products/services; (3) Documentation mode: personal vs. public. Knowledge is something individuals possess versus publicly available know- how; (4) Dissemination mode: formal vs. informal. Formal prescribed organization wide methods of sharing learning versus informal methods such as role modeling and casual daily interaction; (5) Learning focus: incremental vs. transformative. Incremental or corrective learning versus transformative or radical learning; (6) Value chain focus: design vs. deliver. Emphasis on learning investments in engineering /production activities (design and make functions) versus sales /service activities (market and deliver functions); (7) Skill development focus: individual vs. group. Development of individual skills versus team or group skills . 48 Ten facilitating factors include: (1) Scanning imperative. Information gathering about conditions and practices outside the unit; awareness of the environment; curiosity about external environment in contrast to the internal environment; (2) Performance Gap. Shared perception of a gap between actual and desired state of performance; performance shortfall seen as opportunities for learning; (3) Concern for measurement. Considerable effort spent on defining and measuring key factors when venturing into new areas; striving for specific, quantifiable measures; discussion of metrics as a learning activity; (4) Experimental mindset. Support for trying new things; curiosity about how things work; ability to “play” with things, “failures” are accepted, not punished, changes in work processes, policies, and structures are continuous series of learning opportunities; (5) Climate of openness. Accessibility of information; open communications within the organization; problems/errors/lessons are shared, not hidden; debate and conflict are acceptable ways to solve problems; (6) Continuous education. Ongoing commitment to education at all levels of the organization; clear support for all members’ growth and development; (7) Operational variety. Variety of methods procedures, and systems; appreciation of diversity; pluralistic rather than singular definition of valued competencies; (8) Multiple advocates. Ideas and methods advanced by employees at all levels; more than one champion; (9) Involved leadership. Leaders articulate vision, are engaged in its implementation, frequently interact with members; become actively involved in educational programs; (10) Systems perspective. Interdependence of organizational units; problems and solutions seen in terms of systemic relationships among processes; connection between units needs and goals and the companies (Nevis: 2005). The figure below overlays the three stages of learning with the two-part model. In terms of general directions for enhancing learning, organizations can consider their current state of openness to innovation, learning, or change, and begin to incorporate a variety of facilitating factors into their stage specific learning regiment. It is important to recognize organizations aptitude for learning in a descriptive sense. In this case, the proposed framework (Figure 28) enables an organization full knowledge and appreciation of the internal assumptions and organization behaviors and competencies that describe its 49 current state and those which will ultimately lead to the ability to adapt to a changing economic environment. Figure 28: Elements of an Organizational Learning System Source: Understanding Organizations as Learning Systems Another key facet of organizational learning is the relationship between the exploration of new possibilities and exploitation of old certainties. Exploration in this context includes behaviors captured by terms such as search variation, risk-taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery and innovation. Exploitation includes behaviors captured by terms such as refinement, choice, production, efficiency, selection, implementation and execution. (March: 1991). When considering how organizations manage dynamic competitive landscapes with adaptive strategy March notes the 50 importance of considering the balance struck between exploitative and exploratory decisions. This trade-off has both implicit and explicit effects on organizational form, social norms, measurements of success, and the evolutionary models of routine. According to March, learning, analysis, imitation, regeneration, and technological change are major components of any effort to improve organizational performance and strengthen competitive advantage. Each involves adaptation and a delicate trade-off between exploration and exploitation. This balance being an effective ecological cost- benefit analysis of the refinement of existing competencies and the experimentation with new alternatives (March: 1991) (Figure 29). Figure 29: Organizational Learning 51 Strategic Cultural Alignment The innovation process has become a front line priority for organizational leaders. Much of the literature points to the need for alignment of one sort or another. In the Innovators Dilemma, Christensen calls for alignment of the pace of market demand and technology supply, alignment of R&D and the necessary funding and resources, and the alignment of the required information to make game changing decisions (Christensen: 1997). Roberto Verganti is professor of management of innovation at Politecnico di Milano and executive educator to firms such as Ferrari, Ducati, Whirlpool, Xerox, Kodak, Hewlett- Packard, and Vodaphone. His book Design-Driven Innovation points out that all too often managers tend to be attracted by codified approaches to innovation. They love tools, step-by-step processes, applications, instruments. They implicitly assume that innovation systems can be bought and replicated. He argues however, that highly codified approaches have a downside: competitors can easily replicate them (Verganti: 2009, 204). His book goes on to describe the need for “relational assets” that are embedded, not in tools, but in relationships among people. To this end cultural alignment becomes paramount (Verganti: 2009). In 2011, the global consulting firm Booz & Company surveyed over 600 innovation leaders in companies around the world. The approach was to analyze the ways that critical organizational systems and cultural attributes support those capability sets that are most likely to promote innovation success. Their results indicate that the ways R&D managers and corporate decision makers think about their new products and services-and how they feel about the intangibles such as risk, creativity, openness, and collaboration- are critical for success (Jaruzelski et al: 2011). Their report, Why Culture is Key, indicates that spending more on R&D won’t drive results. The most crucial factors are strategic alignment and a culture (the self-sustaining patterns of behaving, feeling, thinking, and believing) that supports innovation. An initial look into their findings indicates a strong commercial incentive for “high alignment” of business strategy and innovation strategy, as well as “high” cultural support for innovation. The figure below 52 (Figure 30) illustrates comparatively the population of companies surveyed that fall into each of these “alignment” categories (Jaruzelski et al: 2011). Figure 30: Innovation and Cultural Alignment Matrix Source: Booze & Company What is most striking is that companies with both highly aligned cultures and highly aligned innovation strategies have 30 percent higher enterprise value growth rates and 17 percent higher profit growth rates when compared to companies with low degrees of alignment (calculated on 5-year CAGR, compound annual growth rate). The Booz study captured some of the top strategic innovation goals that companies feel matter most. More than 40 percent of respondents selected “superior product performance” or “superior product quality” among the two most important attributes (Figure 31). 53 Figure 31: Perceived Importance of Common Innovation Goals Source: Booze & Company When considering the most important cultural attributes “strong identification with the customer and an overall orientation toward the customer experience” and “passion for and pride in the products and services offered” were ranked among the top two by more than half of the respondents (Figure 32). 54 Figure 32: Perceived Importance of Cultural Attributes Source: Booze & Company The Booz study goes on to profile organizations by innovation strategy based on their approach to incremental versus breakthrough innovation and the role end-customers play in defining future product needs. Three general categories are outlined; Need Seekers, Market Readers, and Technology Drivers. Need Seekers actively and directly engage both current and potential customers to help shape new products and services based on superior end-user understanding. These companies often address unarticulated needs and then work to be first to market with the resulting new products and services. Market Readers closely monitor both their customers and competitors, but they maintain a more cautious approach. They focus largely on creating value through incremental innovations to their products and being “fast followers” in the marketplace. Technology drivers follow the direction suggested by their technological capabilities, leveraging their sustained investments in R&D to drive both breakthrough innovation and incremental 55 change. They often seek to solve unarticulated needs of their customers through leading- edge new technology (Jaruzelski et al: 2011). Interestingly when examining the data collected, Booz found that one group, the Need Seekers, have a higher propensity to achieve cultural, strategic, and financial goals. In fact, Need Seekers were reported three times as to report that their innovation strategy is strongly aligned with their business strategy. On average this category has the greatest alignment of culture and innovative strategy, the win for this innovation approach is an unparalleled ability to execute. The key takeaways from the report are that go-to-market success is enabled by: (1) an innovation strategy that is tightly aligned with the organizations overall strategy; and (2) a prioritized set of capabilities that match the strategy, and a supportive culture. According to Fred Palensky, executive vice-president of research and development and chief technology officer (CTO) at innovation leader 3M, “That’s the thing about cultures- they’re built up a brick at a time, a point at a time, over decades. You need consistency; you need persistence; and you need gentle, behind-the-scenes encouragement in addition to top-down support. And you can lose it very quickly.” (Jaruzelski et al: 2011) (Figure 33). 56 Figure 33: Strategic Cultural Alignment 57 CHAPTER III METHOD Introduction and Approach to Question Generation As this report begins to open the method and investigation, I would like to take a moment and set the context for why and how attention is paid to “questioning” and re-establish the intention of conducting this ethnography. In a recent edition of Science Friday on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation, veteran NPR science correspondent Ira Flatow hosted neuroscientist Stuart Firestein. The program entitled, Why Ignorance Trumps Knowledge in Scientific Pursuit, explored why the process of “not knowing” is the true engine of science. The following is a selected excerpt from the interview that drives home the ethic of this section. Interview transcript (Firestein: 2012). Flatow: Neuroscientist Stuart Firestein says science is a fishing expedition propelled by what scientists don’t know and produces more questions than answers, as it should. He has tackled this complex subject in his new easy-to-read book Ignorance: How it Drives Science. He also teaches a class on ignorance at Columbia University where he is professor and chair of biological sciences… This is a fascinating little book; I am going to start off with one quote. You write about George Bernard Shaw who is toasting Albert Einstein saying “Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating 10 more. Isn’t that glorious!” Firestein: That’s, I think, the kernel of the whole thing. I mean, the answers that count, not that answers and facts aren’t important in science of course, but the ones that we want, the ones that we care about the most, are the ones that create more and better questions. Because it’s really the questions that it’s about. This is the way science is 58 pursued, really, among scientists. When we go to meetings together and talk, or go out to the bar and have a beer or whatever, we never talk about what we know. We talk about what we don’t know, what we need to know, what we’d like to know, what we think we could know, what we may not even know we don’t know just yet, and things of that nature. And that’s what propels the whole operation along. Flatow: And do your science students understand this at Columbia? Firestein: So the undergraduate science students I think don’t get it so much and that’s what really propelled me to think about this and to write about it. As I mentioned in the book, I also teach a course, in addition to working in the laboratory with graduate students thinking up experiments and all of that. I also teach a course called, the forbidding title of, Cell and Molecular Neuroscience I. Flatow: Snore Firestein: Yeah exactly, even me. So you know it’s 25 lectures we use this big book called Principles of Neuroscience, by the imminent neuroscientist Eric Kandel (Nobel Prize recipient), also a member of the Columbia faculty. I am fond of pointing out that the book weighs 7 ½ pounds, that’s twice the weight of the normal adult human brain, and it’s about the brain, I mean. And of course, I try to give these lectures that are full of information and so forth because that’s what you want to do as a diligent teacher you know. And I came to realize at some point, standing up there in front of the students, that I must have been giving them the idea by the end of the semester that we pretty much knew everything there was to know about the brain and that the whole idea of neuroscience or any science was just a collection of facts that we put in these big encyclopedic looking books. And neither of those things are anywhere close to the truth, of course. And so I began to think, well, maybe we should teach them about the stuff we don’t know, the ignorance. 59 Flatow: Stuart, in the book I’m going to quote again one of my favorite characters from the old days Steve Allen, you talk about. He had the “question man” and the question man would be given the answer and was just tasked to come up with a question. You say “We need the question man again! We still have too many answers”. Firestein: I think that’s right. At least we think too much about answers, we worry too much about answers. We have all these answers now. We have Google and we have Wikipedia and whatever’s going to follow this, I assume something will. The answers now, they’re a click away, or one day I guess you’ll ask the wall or who knows where or what. But somewhere along the lines, the answers have become so easy and so readily available that we now have too much emphasis on answers and not enough on questions. We need the questions, we need to think about questions, we need to think about how we pose questions, because not all questions are good ones. I mean not all ignorance, as I like to point out, is the same. There is low-quality ignorance and there’s high-quality ignorance. The main question here is, “Is this useful ignorance, or not?”. Firestein: Regarding the traditional scientific process Firestein describes-- it’s not how science works, it would be nice if it were so well ordered and so thought out and so carefully chronicled, but it’s not. It is complete chaos most of the time. I mean all of us working scientists have told our graduate students at one time or another, “well let’s get the data and then we’ll come up with a hypothesis”, because that’s sometimes just the way it is you know. In fact, you know, I think a hypothesis is in some way a bad idea for science. Because a hypothesis is, after all, your best, cutest idea about how something works and it’s bound to bias everything you do after that if you have too strong a hypothesis. You become naturally invested in it if you’re a person like anyone else, and so pretty soon you begin doing experiments that are likely to prove the hypothesis. You spend more time looking at the data that supports it than the data that doesn’t. There’s a wonderful story about Enrico Fermi, the famous physicist who used to say (to his students), “If you do an experiment and it proves the hypothesis, you’ve made a measurement. If you do an experiment and it doesn’t prove a hypothesis you’ve made a discovery”. 60 Flatow: So you could spend your whole life going down the wrong track and still be successful? Firestein: I know people who have, of course it’s never the wrong track… entirely. End transcript (Firestein: 2012). COMMON The method explores the parameters of the problem and solution space of healthy economic growth going forward. Over the past 7 months I have studied with the organization COMMON. COMMON is a creative community, consultancy, and brand which exists to catalyze socially conscious businesses that will shape 21st century capitalism. Composing an ethnography is about telling a credible, rigorous, and authentic story. To this end, the following section intends to give voice to COMMON in their own local context, based on verbatim quotations and a “thick” description of events. The intention is to further our understanding of what we don’t know and enhance our ability to ask more intelligent, in-depth and penetrating questions (Fetterman: 1989, 1). In this case, the interview is the ethnographer’s most important data-gathering technique. Interviews explain and put into a larger context what the ethnographer sees and experiences (Fetternam: 1989, 40). The goal of this section is to apply a cultural interpretation through an emic, or “insider’s” perspective, and make sense of the approaches and influences that enable COMMON to catalyze productivity. There are many formats ethnographic writing can assume: (1) articles, (2) books, and (3) interim reports (Fetterman: 1989, 121). COMMON co-founder, and “insurgent” Alex Bogusky commented in a video interview that “COMMON in general was inspired just by the hope that entrepreneurs could, over time, begin to change capitalism and some of the things that maybe are not working about capitalism and business. And the theory being, the more attempts that are made to pilot and prototype different kinds of businesses, the more opportunity there is for success and innovation. You can make a 61 great living and you can have a real positive impact with what you do with your business career, and if you do that, it is cooler than anything else. That’s success.” (Bogusky: 2011). The following writing takes an in-depth look at the understandings of several key- actors within COMMON and elevates the nuances of their methodologies specific to the Maniacal Business Attack MBA and COMMON Pitch. COMMON MBA An MBA, a Maniacal Business Attack, (Figure 34, 35) according MBA co-designer Richard Demato, “is an immersive, collaborative, disruptive experience, at the unique intersection of creative, business and social innovation. It is a deep dive into your organization, looking at your models and strategies, your products and services, the experiences you create for people, and the impact you have on the planet. And, in real- time, design with your community, your stake holders and a group of experts to rapidly accelerate your ability to make positive impact through your organization or business.” The MBA is an immersive four-day process that brings together an organizations key decision makers, key stakeholders, and patrons, along with a COMMON team of process facilitators and a curated team from the COMMON community (a network of designers, engineers, branding experts, architects, and the like). In attempt to understand where the COMMON MBA fits within the social innovation, business design, or creativity equation, Richard explained, “I think you have to look at the concept of social and economic progress as not mutually exclusive. How do you blend those things together? And, if you think about an organization and what its purpose is, and that the products and services and experiences, or the models and strategies, or how they treat their own employees and the planet, that is the fabric and DNA of a company. So, what we’re looking at is actually attacking those three things and blending them together through this MBA process, right, economic and social progress merged together. But you have to do that by addressing business innovation, social innovation and creativity innovation at the same time. The foundation of the company, and have that at the core, so that everything they do, and everything they are is going to make a positive impact…And that’s where COMMON is coming from and that’s what we’re looking to do, is create these 62 organizations and these businesses and help other organizations that already exist shift toward adopting that mindset in their operations mentality.” (Demato: 2012). Figure 34: Wolfsonian MBA (a) Source: Jeffery Garland Photography 63 Figure 35: Wolfsonian MBA (b) Source: Jeffery Garland Photography I am currently involved in the planning, or pre-production phase of what will be my third MBA. The first MBA I was involved with, the “Br!ght MBA” was hosted in Boulder, Colorado at COMMON’s home base, the Fearless Cottage. Br!ght is an Oslo, Norway based industrial design and product development company who created the Bell Lamp. Over four days we set vision, mission and values, developed their brand voice and prototyped new business models for the implementation of a solar powered lamp and distribution network in Sub-Saharan Africa. The most recent MBA took place on March 25-29, 2012 and was for The Wolfsonian Museum, a design museum in Miami Beach, Florida. The following is a press release that was issued to the public by The Wolfsonian prior to the MBA. 64 Press release (Wolfsonian Museum: 2012). “MBA (“Maniacal Business Attack”) Coming to The Wolfsonian–FIU March 25-29: Creative Brainstorming Session Designed to Optimize Museum’s Future” (MIAMI BEACH, FL) February 23, 2012—In today’s world, arts organizations are grappling with the issues of how to remain relevant and achieve financial sustainability in the face of our rapidly changing times and our challenging economy. Museums are no exception. As part of The Wolfsonian’s continual efforts to build on its strengths, adapt to the times, and leverage its resources to best serve its many audiences, the museum is hosting an innovative creative brainstorming session on March 25-29. The session, called an MBA (“Maniacal Business Attack”) will be led by the organization COMMON, a collaborative brand and creative community cofounded by Alex Bogusky, formerly of Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B). Approximately twenty-five invited individuals will participate in the MBA—the diverse group will include creatives, marketing experts, venture capitalists, Wolfsonian staff and board members, and other museum stakeholders. Alex Bogusky will be on site for the first two days of the four-day MBA. “We believe that continually taking stock of where we are, challenging ourselves to be better, and regularly consulting with a diverse group of experts drawn from both a local and national pool is an incredibly effective way to move forward in a positive direction,” says Wolfsonian director Cathy Leff. “The MBA is a highly focused and refined brainstorming session designed to accomplish these goals and more by bringing together a carefully selected group of individuals and facilitating a series of discussions and breakout sessions. We’re very excited about the MBA and anticipate four days of intense learning.” The core issues that the MBA will focus on are: - Communication and marketing through both traditional and social media - New as well as non-traditional business ventures - Fundraising and community engagement “Museums today need to be creative around finding innovative revenue and income generating sources as a path to self-sustainability. We are looking forward to partnering with COMMON and their network of experts to enable us to establish concrete concepts/ventures in our effort to become a self-sustainable organization,” says Julian Gomez, Wolfsonian deputy director of finance and administration. Public Talk In addition to the invitation-only brainstorming session, Alex Bogusky will deliver a free public talk on Monday, March 26 at 7:30 pm, “Cardboard Wisdom: Decoding Signs of the Disenfranchised from the Homeless to the Tea Party and the Occupation.” Seating is limited; an RSVP is required to attend the talk. To RSVP, go to: www.tinyurl.com/abogusky. 65 About COMMON COMMON, which is facilitating The Wolfsonian’s MBA, is a collaborative brand and creative community for helping emerging and existing businesses drive positive change through enterprise. Founded in January of 2011 by Alex and Ana Bogusky, John Bielenberg, and Rob Schuham, COMMON’s mission is to catalyze a global creative community with the tools, resources, and opportunities to design positive social change. About Alex Bogusky A cofounder of COMMON and the speaker for the March 26 talk at The Wolfsonian, Alex Bogusky is perhaps most widely known as co-chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B), which became the world’s most awarded advertising agency under his leadership. Among his many awards and honors are being inducted into the American Advertising Federation’s Hall of Achievement in 2002, being inducted into the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame in 2008, and being named “Creative Director of the Decade” by Adweek Magazine in 2010. After leaving CP+B in 2010, Bogusky created The Fearless Revolution, which in turn spawned COMMON. About The Wolfsonian–Florida International University The Wolfsonian is a museum, library, and research center that uses objects to illustrate the persuasive power of art and design, to explore what it means to be modern, and to tell the story of social, historical, and technological changes that have transformed our world. The collections comprise approximately 120,000 objects from the period of 1885 to 1945—the height of the Industrial Revolution to the end of the Second World War—in a variety of media including furniture; industrial-design objects; works in glass, ceramics, and metal; rare books; periodicals; ephemera; works on paper; paintings; textiles; and medals. The Wolfsonian is located at 1001 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, FL. Admission is $7 for adults; $5 for seniors, students, and children age 6 -12; and free for Wolfsonian members, State University System of Florida staff and students with ID, and children under six. The museum is open daily from noon-6 p.m.; Friday from noon-9 p.m.; and closed on Wednesday. Contact us at 305.531.1001 or visit us online at www.wolfsonian.org for further information. The Wolfsonian receives ongoing support from The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the City of Miami Beach, Cultural Affairs Program, Cultural Arts Council; the William J. and Tina Rosenberg Foundation; United Airlines, the Official Airline of The Wolfsonian–FIU; and Bacardi USA, Inc. About FIU Florida International University is one of the twenty-five largest universities in the nation, with more than forty-two thousand students. Nearly one hundred thirty thousand FIU alumni live and work in South Florida. Its colleges and schools offer more than two hundred bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs in fields such as engineering, international relations and law. As one of South Florida’s anchor institutions, FIU is worlds ahead in its local and global engagement, finding solutions to the most challenging problems of our time. FIU emphasizes research as a major component of its 66 mission. The opening of the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in August 2009 has enhanced the university’s ability to create lasting positive change in our community. For more information about FIU, visit http://www.fiu.edu/.” End Press Release (Wolfsonian Museum: 2012) Mark Eckhardt is the Chief MBA Architect; fittingly he is also a Zen Priest. He orchestrates the process from the onset of initial client meetings, through the 12-week planning process, to the onsite MBA itself. According the Mark, guiding organizations of people toward more meaningful productivity in the context of change is relatable to the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change (TTM) proposed by James Prochaska et al. The transtheoretical model was developed to be a framework that could integrate leading theories of change (Prochaska: 2001, 2). There are 6 stages to the change process: (1) precontemplation, (2) contemplation, (3) preparation, (4) action, (5) maintenance, and (6) termination. In the precontemplation stage people may be unaware of the need to change. As Mark related to this “In the precontemplation phase, a person has no idea that there is an issue or problem that needs to be addressed and if you try to point it out in anyway or if you make suggestions they will reject it and behavior will be justified in a number of different ways. In the contemplation stage, people are starting to learn the kind of person they could be if they changed their behavior. As Mark understands this phase in the context of the COMMON MBA, “In contemplation, they are aware that a problem exists and they are beginning to have a sense of what it might be like or what liberation from the problem might feel like and make possible. So, as this relates to the MBA, I believe we are meeting people at the contemplation step. The degree to which they are aware of the problem and can see it in its entirety fluctuates depending on the individual but that is the initial spark that gets them looking for something like us to do what we do.” In the third stage, the Preparation stage people are ready to start taking action. The COMMON team of MBA facilitators engage key members of the client organization 12-weeks before an MBA in a “pre-production” planning process. According to Mark “Our “planning” or “pre-production” occurs in the Preparation stage. You are going to find somebody who is 67 very open. “Client Z” is great because they are a wide open canvas and in a place where they trusts us to lead them. So “pre-production”, beyond all the things that need to get done, is really about bolstering the trust between us and the client and to begin opening the door to them. Exploring what they do and who they are as organization in an entirely different way and from an entirely different perspective. The thing about the pre- production phase of the MBA is not to get caught up in all of the details. I am listening for certain cues or certain indicators that would prompt me to ask questions to check on, “What’s the client’s mental state?”, “What kind of support are they getting or not getting?”, “Who needs to provide that support, somebody internally?”. All of those types of things to sure-up the ground underneath them. The details and the execution is the easy part. It’s just a matter of maintaining schedule and clarity around what needs to get done. The more the client feels, and this touches on collaboration, the more they contribute to the formation and the creation of the actual process, as they understand it, the more of an advocate you have. The more advocates we have, the better. The deeper they go with their knowledge and sense of the process and what it’s going to be the better.” (Eckhardt: 2012). In the action phase, people make commitments to change and are taught techniques to sustain those commitments. Mark understands this phase as, “That’s what’s happening in the room. And that, to me, is more about manipulating the dynamics in order to produce results that have been identified prior to being in the room. So I’m going to bleed back into preparation. The job you do in terms of curating the right group, (team of insurgents brought in from the COMMON community) is particularly hugely important because if we get into the room and the dynamic isn’t right, it is going to be horrible, and that’s the inherent risk of working in a collaborative manner directly with the client. You have a margin for error with your process. If you do find that, when you have prepared a plan and it isn’t working, you have to have the skills to put it back on track.” (Eckhardt: 2012). There is a complexity worth further exploring in the action phase as this phase has a trajectory and module phasing in and of itself. Phases 5 and 6 maintenance and termination are relevant as well. Post action phase, COMMON engages clients with a series of follow-on offerings to realize many of the business models created and to go 68 into production for much of the collateral conceptualized. Additionally, clients often are interested in working with COMMON to build internal learning disciplines to continue the momentum built during the MBA. However, the remainder of this writing will focus on the action phase, the activity that takes place during the MBA. At the onset of the MBA, specifically during the first half of the first day I experienced that there was a very particular reaction the members of the Wolfsonian community had. I wouldn’t attempt to qualify it as negative or positive, perhaps it was uncertainty. Mark pays extremely close attention to the emotional acoustics in the room, I had a discussion with him to better understand what he saw going on in that specific case. He explained, “When people arrive in the room on the first day, I know from a neuro-scientific point of view that they are in a state of threat. They are in a threat response to whatever degree, and you’ll see it in the way people choose their seats, and in the quality of interaction you have with them when you greet them and welcome them. So the beginning of the process is about really pressing into that just to loosen up the grip the mind has. And that’s when foundation comes in.” (Eckhardt: 2012). The “foundation” consists of establishing or re- establishing the vision, mission and values of the organization. Many organizations, COMMON’s clients included, have spent considerable time crafting statements describing their ethos or character. According to COMMON, for example, The COMMON Visionary Thinking methodology is designed to assist entrepreneurs in the process of developing ways of thinking and being that support the creation of socio- productive, efficient and effective business practices. It begins with the creation of, or clarification of the impact one aspires to make in the world (vision), the work they will do to fulfill on the vision (mission) and the principles or behaviors to be modeled (values). Through immersion in Visionary Thinking, one can powerfully apply a values- based approach to entrepreneurship that meets the demands of 21st Century Capitalism. The COMMON vision is mankind united through creativity, collaboration and the courageous pursuit of a fair and balanced world; flourishing, awake and alive. The COMMON mission is to catalyze a global creative community with the tools, resources and opportunities to design positive social change; all done through the shared values of a collaborative brand. 69 One of the understandings I have developed from interacting with the COMMON team is the importance of the moment in time we are living in, right here, today, right now, and the consideration that this moment is unique and different from every moment in the past and the future. To this end, re-establishing vision, mission and values, in Mark’s interpretation “is an opportunity for people to transition from “I’m an individual” to “I’m part of something that’s much larger than me”, “I’m part of the whole”. I would argue that vision, mission and values pulls them out of granular thinking. It gets them in touch with probably many of the thoughts and hopes and desires for the world and themselves that they tossed away and discarded long ago. So, in the very first module or series of modules we are restoring possibility to whatever degree a person is willing to accept that. Our take on mission tends to be very familiar territory with our clients because they have been doing it and talking about it, but they may not be able to articulate it. It’s amazing for me to see how different people interpret the values for the organization and that’s usually because they’re not fully articulating it, and they are not articulating it in the form of really describing what that value looks like in action.” (Eckhardt: 2012). A large picture concern that has come up is the distribution, transparency, and democratization of vision, mission and values. I recently had a discussion with a member of the COMMON community Sarah Zobel Kolpin on this topic. Sara flew in from Los Angeles to participate in the Wolfsonian MBA. She is also a best-selling author in Denmark and writes on the topic of positive psychology. She explained, “To be able to make everybody in the organization connect to that vision, and to communicate it in a motivating inspirational way. I think that is one of the biggest challenges and one of the aspects of leadership that is very hard, and it takes specific abilities to communicate that, but I think that, that is something that is not done enough. The organizational vision is typically set at a very high level, very far away from people. Perhaps, getting people to follow that is a leadership exercise of one sort.” I asked about her understanding of getting people to connect to the high-order vision intrinsically versus to getting them to connect in their own way to organizational purpose in the sense of say autonomy or their personal relatedness to work or to their competence. Are their different levels to connect 70 to? Sara replied, “I think you can create different levels of one vision. You can definitely create different levels of it. It might be hard for everybody in the organization, and especially the bigger it gets, it might be hard for somebody maybe on the other side of the world in some kind of production plant to connect to this very abstract high-level vision. So, it’s up to different levels of leadership to try and make the different levels connect to that vision, breaking it down in one way or another. But there might also be some different departments of the organizations where people have different views on life, different levels of education, different expectations of what work is to them and so on. So, for some people it might not be the grand beautiful inspirational vision that is going make the difference. It might be the connection to the leader they have, it might be the acknowledgment that they get from that leader. It might be different things that make that special feeling that is a nice place to work. But, I definitely think that the meaningful aspect of it and getting people to connect to something bigger than themselves is something we all, at one level, aspire to. Whether you’re working at the top executive level or in a production plant, you know. I definitely think, that is the same way as saying that everybody wants to feel that they are making a difference. Some people would say yes and some people would say no, I would say yes.” (Kolpin: 2012). This foundation phase creates a context for everything that follows. There is an established place or a way to begin assessing and evaluating whether or not the ideas that will come later measure up or align with the vision, mission and values or who the organization said they are committed to being. Fundamentally, the process is not so much about a constant patterned sequence of modules. It is designed to be fluid and flexible. The curatorial roadmap for the MBA according to Mark, “is designed to leave space for creativity, which means you have to have a lot of trust in your own ability to lead and to deal with a very high level of uncertainty. You have to be nimble and you have to be dexterous. We have to be able to adapt quickly and you have to be willing to be wrong, one of the most powerful things you can say as a facilitator and a process designer is this is, “this sucks”. At that point you make a change and move forward.” (Eckhardt: 2012). 71 There are several modules that were employed in Miami that are worthy of discussion, one will be discussed in detail. The “Panel” module consisted of a dialogue with an invited group of guests from the Wolfsonian community. These guests were separate from those participating in the MBA and included former board members, doners, and patrons. They were engaged in a dialogue regarding their relationship to the Wolfsonian. Deep organizational structures were elevated through this experience, very much un-like typical “focus” group insight sessions. According to Mark, “The panel module can be moved around strategically for very specific purposes anywhere within the format. It is important to hear a third-party perspective regardless of whether or not you think you know everything about your patrons or customers and ideally we configure the panel in a way that forces our clients to choose people for the panel that they have discarded, ignored or don’t value or appreciate. Remember the gentleman who left the board and was very much in opposition of the board even though he was part of it. So, I know if we do not set the parameters for that panel and don’t give profiles for people we want, clients are likely to recruit a group of supporters. So the more you can get the client to go in the opposite direction of what feels comfortable to them the more value you will get on the panel. Because this isn’t about reminding ourselves, referring to the process as a whole, this isn’t about reminding ourselves about what we already know, this about discovering what we don’t know about what we don’t know.” (Eckhardt: 2012). The MBA in Miami concluded in a very highlighted, inspired, freed, and ambitious manner. Over the four days, the team of twenty five individuals coalesced into an around-the-clock force developing a set of 5 go-to market strategies in the form of commercializable business models, a community engagement plan and the framework for a social media campaign. Richard explained that “What you witnessed was a group of people really accepting the power they have to make an impact. What you saw was a group that transformed from being focused on preserving objects, to questioning “How do we transform our community and affect the world?”. It was people beginning to understand and truly look at all of the amazing things they have around them not just the 72 objects in the museum, or in the Wolfsonian, but actually look at themselves as a tool for progress, that’s what you saw happen. People who began owning that, people who began remembering that, people who began appreciating what they could do. It wasn’t broken, it was just stuck.” In the end there was this energy, this buzz, this magical feeling that everyone in the room was feeling. Richard commented on how you can get people from this one place and land in this other place where we ended up. “I’ll say this, it’s less about where we took them, and more where they allowed themselves to go, and I always have to look at the client and who are working with. What you saw was people getting reconnected with community and what they could do together if they were open, collaborative, connected, thinking about their community, as opposed to just the objects they have. You could use terms like abundant mentality vs. scarce mentality. They just began to realize what they have to offer and what they want to do. And they began reconnecting who they are as people and what they do at work. That energy was people separating the gap of what they do and who they are. That’s really powerful, and when you think about an MBA, so you asked earlier what is an MBA, when I say an MBA is a collaborative, immersive, disruptive experience at that that unique intersection of business, creative and social innovation, it’s not just that social innovation, as in the impact on the planet, it’s the people within the organization no longer looking at, that, as the word outside as a community away from them, and then we have our business or organization over here. Its bridging that gap, and I’ve never seen people not get lit up and amazingly energized reconnecting to that feeling, knowing that what they do has a positive impact and expressing looks to have a positive impact, that’s what you saw in that room.” (Demato: 2012). COMMON Pitch In a video interview prior to the launch of Pitch, COMMON co-founder and “insurgent” Alex Bogusky illustrated, “COMMON Pitch is an event that we are having at the Boulder Theater. We’ve been really excited about social entrepreneurs and what they are doing and we want to share that with people. We’ve rented the theater and it’s an opportunity for 10 social entrepreneurs to pitch their idea in a really fast paced environment. So, the 73 energy stays up, there’s celebrity judges, if you are at home you can judge online, and of course there’s beer and there is music. There is a concert from Tennis when it is all said and done. And we just think saving the world is super fun, but it hasn’t been presented that way. And we think what these people are doing is really entertaining, but it hasn’t really been presented that way. And that’s what we want to do at COMMON Pitch.” (Bogusky: 2011). The event series began in Boulder, Colorado on August 19, 2011 and has since snowballed into an international movement with partnerships with some of the world’s leading organizations and brands. On February 12, 2012 COMMON hosted a Pitch event in partnership with Nokia in New York City with the theme “collaborative consumption”. On February 29, 2012 a Pitch event was launched as a part of the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town South Africa. Design Indaba is a celebration of design in a country iconic of the triumph of the human spirit. With a focus on international thought leadership, the Design Indaba Conference has become one of the world’s leading design events and hosts more than 40 speakers and 2500 delegates. In 2005, the Design Indaba Conference was awarded the EIBTM award for Best Conference in the World, and won Best Live Event at the Loerie Awards 2007. (Design Indaba). And on May 17,, 2012 COMMON launched Pitch Milwaukee. Pitch has been featured in PSFK, The New York Times, Mashable, Fox News, and Washington Post. Regarding Pitch Boulder (Figure 36, 37), The New York Times notes, “The ideas are eclectic. They include a “healthy” popcorn, a replacement for the kerosene lamp, an improved version of a solar panel, a public shower system and a social network.” (Elliot, New York Times: 2011) and The Washington Post’s Ideas @ Innovation column explained “It’s easy to take a shower for granted. That’s one of the driving ideas behind award-winning advertising professional Rob Martin Murphy and Creative Realities Managing Director Valli Lakshmanan’s latest venture: the BetaShower. The public shower system is an eco-friendly venture that would provide homeless people a private place to take a three-minute shower for just a few pennies, and it is among 10 finalists for the COMMON Pitch competition in Boulder, Colorado.” (Kolawole, The Washington Post: 2011). 74 Figure 36: Pitch Boulder (a) Source: COMMON 75 Figure 37: Pitch Boulder (b) Source: COMMON Selected companies for Pitch Milwaukee were recently featured on thenextweb.com; Cold Fizzin’ provides the marketing, manufacturing and support necessary to take the myriad of designs developed by individual engineers around the world and turn them into market-ready products. Swipesense is a portable, trackable hand sanitation device for healthcare workers, designed to increase hand hygiene and reduce hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). The device clips onto the scrubs of a healthcare worker making hand sanitation “as easy as wiping your hands on your pants;” always available at the point-of-care. Embedded electronics allow us to monitor hand hygiene performance of individual staff members in real-time allowing us to use the web, transparency and incentives to drive behavior change. Did you know that 99% of the men’s underwear in America comes from China, Thailand, Indonesia, etc. and the other 1% is kind of poor quality? Flint & Tinder aims to change that, make a better product, and save a 100 year old factory in the process. It’s about more than just premium men’s underwear though, it’s about redefining what it means to be made in America. 76 Storyhunter crowdsources high quality, video journalism production for the web. “We are curating the world’s premier global network of video journalists, providing them custom- made web tools to pitch, produce, publish, and distribute their stories more efficiently. We want to empower a new generation of video journalists to tell the world’s most important, untold stories.” Hands-on Garage (HG) is an exciting new approach to automotive repair. Conceived at a time when Americans are concentrating on self-reliance in difficult economic times, HG fulfills the unmet needs of the do-it-yourself automotive repair customer while enhancing the repair experience of the full-service customer. HG gives back to the communities it is based in with charitable events, automotive workshops and proper recycling. HG is a timely company people believe in. BOULD is a for-profit, for-impact seeking to eliminate substandard housing through green building education. BOULD partners with affordable housing builders, like Habitat for Humanity, to transform housing projects into hands-on, interactive green building “classrooms” for career developing professionals and students. Couple Wise is a robust consumer web app to help couples have stronger happier relationships: “We help those in trouble to save and revitalize their relationships— to be happy again, and help good relationships become great ones. We will be the only low cost effective solution for the 90-95% of semi happy and unhappy couples in the USA who are unable or unwilling to see a therapist.” brighter12 is the first ever online companion for working a 12 Step Program. We are taking the tried and true 12 step process and reinventing it by developing a powerful web application for our users, replacing their outdated pen and paper methods. As a membership based system, brighter12 will provide robust tools and interactive features to create a safe and private environment for people interested in getting the most out of the 12 step experience. The online tools brighter12 offers will not only be revolutionizing the industry but will be transforming lives along the way, making brighter12.com a journey from broken to brighter! (Webber, The Next Web: 2012). Additional information and profile videos can be seen at http://thenextweb.com/events/2012/05/17/meet-the-8-promising-startups-presenting-at- common-pitch-milwaukee-american-innovation/ 77 COMMON makes changing the world fun by re-framing the challenges we face as a society. “A party to fix the world”. This opens the opportunity for change to a wide audience and in turn has activated the energy of a robust community. Richard Demato commented on the source of this energy, “The energy for the COMMON community comes from just what is to be human. I think we all have this feeling that the world can work better than this and there are things that have to change. This is a rising global tide of people who regardless of their profession, agenda, their age, where they’re from, there looking to take their creativity and their skills and make a positive impact on the world, and I think this community, I actually know this community would exist without us. COMMON simply gives it an avenue, an outlet of expression and tools to be heard or really make an impact.” (Demato: 2012). The openness comes off in more than spoken word, written narrative and copy. COMMON’s welcoming approach builds on the authenticity of the brand and community. I selected this quote from a description of a video on COMMON’s Vimeo feed, http://vimeo.com/commonworks. (see for over 20 COMMON related videos). “On Friday, August 19th, COMMON will welcome the cleverly curious to Boulder Theater for a night of ideas, creativity and collaboration. One part social change, one part creative problem solving and lots of moving parts (there will be music), COMMON Pitch brings mighty minds to the stage for the opportunity to rouse, rally and inspire. But world-changing businesses won’t pitch themselves – that’s where you (and your impeccable brains) come in. COMMON is currently accepting applications to present your big idea to an audience of peers, industry thought leaders and venture capitalists. We’re looking for seasoned entrepreneurs, young guns, MBA’s, college dropouts – we don’t really care about your credentials, only that your idea is bold enough to make our planet a better place. If your application is selected, we’ll lavish you with spotlights, support and a chance to win prizes (yes, that means funding).” 78 CHAPTER IV RESULTS AND DISCUSSION General findings When considering insights or experiences from the field it is critical to understand what is case-specific and what is applicable to other contexts. Through interpreting and representing the story of COMMON several key generalizations can be made. Let us begin by returning to the spheres of influence framework discussed earlier (Figure 38). Figure 38: System Model Revisited 79 The interwoven personal, organizational and societal model suggests that links exist connecting personal integrity on one end to GDP growth on another. The Wolfsonian MBA presented rich context to explore the nuances of social-network patterns of collaboration and the relationship between the personal, and organizational sphere of influence. In a conversation with Richard Demato regarding the behavioral patterns he observed at the onset of the MBA, he stated, “they were stuck, they were stuck in the way things were supposed to be done, they were stuck in the way people perceived them and the way board members thought they should act and what they should be doing what you saw was a lot of creative and very powerful people who were not expressing themselves.” (Demato: 2012). Social-network mapping can be used to study the pattern of relations in collaborative work groups (Sandow: 2005). Dennis Sandow of Reflexus and Anne Murray Allen of Hewlett-Packard suggest collaboration is a social coordination of action that is enhanced with trust, understanding, and listening. Their model demonstrates the detriment of this sort of “stuck” situation by linking decreased listening, misunderstanding, and lack of trust, to resource depletion (Figure 39). Figure 39: Repercussions of “Stuck” Source: Reflections 80 The MBA established an environment where the Wolfsonian team could begin to unwind this sense of organizational stickiness. The nature of the change process evolved through stage-matched covert and overt activities that leaders encouraged and elicited in key stakeholders to help them change work behaviors, affects, cognitions, and interpersonal relationships as suggested in A Transtheoretical Approach to Changing Organizations: (1) Consciousness Raising: Becoming more aware of a problem and potential solutions; (2) Dramatic Relief: Emotional arousal, such as fear about failures to change and inspiration for successful change; (3) Self-Reevaluation: Appreciating that the change is important to one’s identity, happiness, and success; (4) Self-Liberation: Believing that a change can succeed and making a firm commitment to the change; (5) Environmental Reevaluation: Appreciating that the change will have a positive impact on the social and work environment; (6) Reinforcement Management: Finding intrinsic and extrinsic rewards for new ways of working; (7) Counter-Conditioning: Substituting new behaviors and cognitions for the old ways of working; (8) Helping Relationships: Seeking and using social support to facilitate change; (9) Stimulus Control: Restructuring the environment to elicit new behaviors and inhibit old habits; and (10) Social Liberation: Empowering individuals by providing more choices and resources (Figure 40) (Prochaska 2001, 4). Figure 40: Stage-Matched Process Source: A Transtheoretical Approach to Changing Organizations 81 Richard noted, “The thing about an MBA and the thing about what we do is we’re not actually giving them the answer, and I want to stress that. COMMON does not come in wave a magic wand; look at your scenario and say, “Here is the answer”. We create the conditions where people can actually discover that answer for themselves and that’s because we know that every single person has that answer and that purpose with in them, every organization has that purpose within its walls.” (Demato: 2012). A large part of this process was developing intelligence in the process of change. Kevin Clark, Program Director and Ron Smith, a designer and brand experience strategist, both of IBM, wrote an very compelling article entitled Unleashing the Power of Design Thinking. In the article they talk about design thinking in terms of, this form of, “innovation intelligence”. (Clark: 2008; Lockwood: 2010,48). Through this intelligence collaboration became possible and took hold of the team. There became a strongly identifiable sharedness among the vision of team. Mark Eckhardt understood this transformation as, “These folks were hiding behind this collection, they were hiding behind inanimate objects, and what happened over the four days is they actually got out in front of that collection.” And when this happens, “People feel open, they feel more expressed, they feel inspired, they feel courageous.” (Eckhardt: 2012). Generalization 1: Individual meaning and purpose is established through some form of direct experience with the potential value that one has on another person. This in-turn links the individual and the organization (Figure 41). 82 Figure 41: MBA Pitch has revealed itself as a very unique and purposed launch-pad intending to provide early-stage organizations resources and traction and ultimately shine a light on the companies designing the next generation of socially minded capitalism. One company that had success through Pitch was BR!GHT. BR!GHT was the winner of Pitch Boulder and as a piece of their prize package was awarded an MBA. BR!GHT aims to democratize light and establish a marketplace to service the 1.4 billion people that live off of the grid with no electricity, “prosperity will be improved as the weak, polluting and expensive kerosene lamp is replaced and new ideas for local business development is shared” . Off-the-grid mobility has massive impact in emerging economies. BR!GHT leverages research from London Business School, the World Bank, and Deloitte that suggests for every 10 additional mobile phones per 100 Africans, GDP rises 0.6% to 1.2%. The local implications of mobile and democratized light are clearly 83 enormous. The impact the supporting new market has in terms of economy creation and education is potentially much larger. It has been almost 6 months since I joined BR!GHT in Boulder, Colorado for their MBA and recently received an email update from the management team. E-mail from Kristian Bye to COMMON, “Update from BR!GHT” June 3, 2012. Dear Friends It´s been a while since we last met in Boulder. Marius and I have just been on a great trip to Kenya and Tanzania where we have met rural communities, women groups, doctors, midwives, NGOs, potential business partners and investors. Please watch this vid for a 5 minute report. https://vimeo.com/43338843 and see more on http://www.facebook.com/BrightProducts None of this would have happened without you guys. We are forever grateful, and hope we will meet and work together again soon. On June 16 we leave for Dhaka, Bangladesh for the same kind of tour. Have a bright day! (Bye: 2012). This example describes an international company who’s targeted impact area geographically resides in the emerging markets. The Br!ght story is told here to illustrate the way in which Pitch is able to create a bridge between impact orientated organizations and economic fortitude. Generalization 2: Organizational strategy and design thinking have a direct impact on economic fortitude when given the platform (Figure 42). 84 Figure 42: Pitch Returning to Research Questions To get re-familiarized, this report sets out to generate the capacity for dialogue around the tenants of design thinking and strategy, the perceived systemic underpinnings of productivity and economic fortitude. Further the understanding of what it takes for organizations to make breakthrough productivity transformations may spark novel developments in customer value. To this end, the report questions, what are the undercurrents of a thinking through design approach? What are relevant design management strategies that lead to individual purpose, sustainable value creation, and productivity? What is possible if organizations begin thinking through design, and freeing up the ability to explore multiple ways to solve problems? 85 The non-financial, intra- and inter-personal dynamics among individuals clearly underpin business success. The initial establishment of integrity and wholeness appears to preserve the workability of the organization. Enabling individuals with the opportunity to discover new ways to advocate for the organization’s customers, as observed through the Wolfsonian MBA, will ultimately lead to a greater sense of individual level and group level enrollment in and commitment to a shared vision. Wellness, growth, discovery, learning, memory, awareness, empathy and intelligence were all found in the literature as well as in the field to be drivers of purpose. It is possible to generalize that these traits ultimately underpin an organization’s ability to identify and continually execute on its mission. The literature suggests that management styles and competencies that are able to align business strategy and innovation strategy as well as establish a high cultural support for innovation will have an aptitude for creating customers through innovative and relevant business model generation. BR!GHT is a good validating example of this position. BR!GHT spent considerable time developing their go to market strategy, and their product and marketing ethic, but only through countless hours of witnessing the impact of their offering through the eyes of their user group could they comprehend how to generate a market that could fuel the distribution of their lamps. This, according to 3M’s Polansky is called “customer-inspired innovation”, connect with the customer, find out their articulated and unarticulated needs, and then determine where you fit in (Jaruzelski et al: 2011, 4). A finding worth noting is that platforms such as COMMON Pitch amplify the effect that high-productivity organizations have by providing them with the tools necessary to commercialize innovation. COMMON Pitch, then becomes an extremely valuable component to virtuous economic growth. Only when a high-resolution picture of the personal, organizational, and societal spheres is presented can we begin to understand the intricacies of this complex system and how embedding thinking through design manifests. Integrity through to shared vision, shared vision to culture of innovation, culture of innovation through to quality GDP, ultimately integrity through to economic fortitude, by way of wholeness, purpose, problem solving 86 and strategy (Figure 43). The diagram is not so much the case in point. It is an offering for dialogue. Figure 43: Offering for Dialogue 87 Topics for Future Research Alignment came up as a topic when considering cultures of innovation. Future research can look to “unlock” the multitude of commercialization strategies that exist on the seam of innovativeness or novelty, and market. Business model design as a practice maintains a very context specific relationship to the problem and solution space. In other words, a go-to market strategy to commercialize a particular innovation is likely to work in one set of business cases and not others. Given the intricacies of markets it makes sense that these approaches are unlikely to have success if codified. But even if business model design were to be codified would it matter? For a period of time I was a graduate student at-large at the University of Chicago, meaning I had credit-bearing student status but was not a part of any cohort. Of the many courses I took in the Booth School of Business, a very memorable one was Building the New Venture. The course was designed by Waverly Deutsch, a highly awarded clinical innovation and entrepreneurship professor and instructed by Craig Wortmann, to this day one of my favorite professors of all time. As we developed business models over the quarter long-course we amassed a toolkit of strategies to employ in the simulation of the “Your-co” competition. The genius of the course design ignited a sense of gamesmanship that pushed the scope of my questioning toward, “I understand what the literature suggests as best practices and I understand our methodology and modeling, now, how do I get good?” To this end, a direction for future research would examine what it takes to “get good” at designing business models. How could you train individuals or organizations to better wrap their heads around the critical thinking and chess of business model design? 88 CHAPTER V CONCLUSION Today more and more design problems are reaching insoluble levels of complexity. This is true not only of moon bases, factories, and radio receivers, whose complexity is internal, but even of villages and teakettles. In spite of their superficial simplicity, even these problems have a background of needs and activities which is becoming too complex to grasp intuitively. To match the growing complexity of problems, there is a growing body of information and specialist experience. This information is hard to handle; it is widespread, diffuse, un-organized. Moreover, not only is the quantity of information itself by now beyond the reach of single designers, but the various specialists who retail it are narrow and unfamiliar with the form-makers’ peculiar problems, so that it is never clear quite how the designer should best consult them. (Alexander: 1964, 4). This excerpt reflects a complex environment in which contextual constraints hinder the transfer of information and shared understanding and vision amongst problem solving teams. It is suggestive of a world where inherent complexity requires a reshaping, or reconceptualization of the space between people. This, allowing for individual specialization to manifest into group and organizational productivity. What is interesting in this note, is that while it speaks to the modern reader, it was crafted in a PhD dissertation in 1964. As a component of the first doctoral degree awarded from Harvard in Architecture, Christopher Alexander wrote Notes on the Synthesis of Form to show that there is a deep and important underlying structural correspondence between the pattern of a problem and the process of designing a physical form which answers that problem. The question begs to be explored, if the dynamics of interpersonal problem solving reached such complexity toward the tail end of the industrial revolution, what then, is the context and environment that is faced in an era of such rapid technological growth, varying modes of human interaction, and access to information? 89 We simply can’t go this alone. Collaboration is the only way to handle the present day. If we don’t believe in the inherent goodness of humanity, we fail immediately as we are no longer whole. If we are to begin, or continue considering design as an approach to personal, organizational, and societal balance then we ought to approach it as something to be the best at. If we don’t someone else will and we will no longer have the chance to make that move. It is a pivotal time in our society, in our local townships, municipalities, regions, states, nation, it is a pivitol time for the health of humanity and the health of our ecosystem. 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