'Let ideas float up and down the hierarchy'
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Tom Kelley, partner at design consulting firm IDEO, makes a keynote speech at Startup:CON held Oct. 11 at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Jongno-gu, Seoul. / Courtesy of Startup:CON
Design thinking guru shares ways to achieve creative successes
By Yun Suh-young
Stunted growth in large corporations is often a consequence of its hierarchical system. Even when great ideas come up from the lowest of the hierarchical ladder, it is rarely delivered to the very top. The leadership shouts for innovation, but it often does not realize that innovation is within arm's reach.
Letting ideas flow freely within an organization ― the open innovation platform ― is a critical factor in driving creative success for a company.
"It's not okay from the CEO's perspective to say to that bright young person you just hired, 'if you have an idea, you have to sell the idea to your boss, your boss' boss and your boss' boss' boss before it has a chance of being implemented,'" said Tom Kelley, partner at IDEO, the world's first and largest design thinking consultancy which started off in Palo Alto, California.
"Some people you hire for their deep technical excellence, but they don't always have the communication skills to sell the idea to the hierarchy. As an outsider, I don't want to shake up the hierarchy, I want to go to the CEO and say 'Look, you've earned the right to be the boss, to make the hiring decisions, but don't let the hierarchy get in the way of the free flow of ideas,’" he said during an interview with The Korea Times. Kelley was in Seoul to give a speech at Startup:CON (Oct. 11-12), a conference for startups and innovators, organized by the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA).
"In all such cultures, you've got to find a way to have that idea float, go up and down the hierarchy, through an open innovation platform inside the company -- whether it be poster-days or internal trade fairs ― or some way that systematically floats ideas up and down. You have to have a way," he said.
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Tom Kelley speaks during an interview with The Korea Times. / Courtesy of Startup:CON
Barriers to innovation
The hierarchical structure isn't just confined to Asia. The problem is not much different in the United States, he said. There are always barriers within any organization in the world and so there's a need to get through it, Kelley added.
"Especially in hierarchical cultures you need to find some way to cut through the hierarchy with respect to ideas. My experience is, you have the support at the very top. I've never met a CEO who is not pro-innovation. So the support is there. It's just in some organizations, there's the energy at the top among visionaries and there's the energy among young new members of the team who want to change the world ― it only gets stuck in the middle."
Cultural barriers to innovation are also not confined to a hierarchical system. In large established companies, there's "always the need to get today's work out perfectly," says Kelley.
"Sometimes they don't have the time or attention to think of tomorrow. If you're too focused on getting today's work done ― the only job in front of you ― that's a barrier."
Design thinking
This is where design thinking comes in. Design thinking is a cognitive methodology and activity that helps people to develop creative ways to solve issues. Kelley puts it as "using the tool set or mindset of a designer ― such as designing objects or architecture ― and taking that same process and applying it to bigger issues such as designing a school system, designing new ways to interact with health services or rural villages to get better access to clean water." Simply put, it is "using the tool set or mindset of a designer for broader topics."
Kelly says the three key tools for design thinking are empathy, experimentation and storytelling.
"If you're a tech company, you need to blend technology with humanity. You need to bring your strengths to the table. Then the heart of the experiment must be that we're the kind of team that tries stuff. We will fail but we will still try stuff. You need to prototype. Finally, even with the best idea in the world, if you can't get other people to adopt it, it's not going to change anything. You need to take that concept and wrap it in a good story."
IDEO, which his brother David Kelley founded and Tom Kelley is a partner at, is a company that has pioneered in design thinking for the past 30 years, creating human-centered products, services and spaces, and helping organizations innovate by empowering the people who drive them.
Changing the culture
What they have seen from the example of P&G, their most memorable client which saw success from applying design thinking to their company, was that the role of a middle manager or those with significant authority who were able to "pick up the ball" was crucial in initiating creative projects.
"We collectively changed the culture of P&G during that era. It included support from the top, but that's not enough. Claudia (Kotchka), a leader with a big personality, a lot of stamina, and with permission from the CEO, systematically drove design thinking within P&G. She was vice president for design innovation and strategy and had the respect which went with her high position but she didn't have direct authority with anyone she worked with. She had to convince them using the power of her arguments over the power of authority," Kelley said.
"The same thing happened with Kaaren (Hanson), vice president of design innovation at Intuit. Top support was not enough. The executives said they'll do it but didn’t come back and went on with their daily jobs. Nothing happened. So she picked up the ball. She created a program called Catalyst with nine people. They needed a series of successes. You need to point to a success or two for the skeptics. If you get to the successes, then you have entry proof to say 'Here's a situation where design thinking won the day,' as soon as people see that, they'll say 'yes I want some.'"
Kelley says the P&G model is replicable.
"Anybody with the right support and right energy can do that," he said.
"It really changed P&G ― we saw it in their stock price, product introduction, and passion of individuals. They designed hands on experiences with design thinking, and realized this stuff actually worked. It wasn't persuading them but demonstrating for them. It was a different lens to look at their business. Even among the skeptics, when the early successes come out, they’d say, 'I want some of that. Get that for my division.'"
However, success is not always measured as a number, he says.
"A clear understanding of what success looks or feels like can be useful. There's not an obvious metric."
Creative confidence
Kelley, author of "Creative Confidence" and "The Art of Innovation," was nowhere near the artistic world. He was working in the finance, IT and consulting fields, before joining IDEO to work with his brother. He says working with creative people has transformed him.
"You have to be vulnerable enough to be willing to try something you won't necessarily be good at right away and then you’ve got to be humble to realize how much you can learn," said Kelley.
"To be honest, at some point in the early history of IDEO, we had some (employees with) MBAs from very prestigious schools who came in and thought they already knew what they needed to know and had trouble being team players with designers, engineers and anthropologists. We need to take the opposite approach. If you want to achieve creative confidence, you have to first acknowledge that you have something to learn."
Being open to possibilities is the step to gaining creative confidence, he said.
Newspaper innovation
How can design thinking be applied to newspapers?
"It's quite a challenge. It's an extremely challenging environment. It's not that a worthy competitor has stolen a bit of market share from us that we could steal back. It's not one core aspect of our business that is demonetized. It's hard to compete against free," he said.
"I want to pay for news because I want journalism. Not somebody's opinion. I want somebody who's verified their facts. That is not free and somebody has to pay for it. I'm willing to pay my fair share of that."
The newspaper industry has to figure out a way to innovate itself, said Kelley. "How might we sustain really good journalism through the next few decades? Very possibly the answer is not in print form."