Speed up Innovation with Design Thinking | Guido Stompff | TEDxVenlo

[Music] good afternoon everybody I like to talk with you about innovation and innovation let's go the right way yes innovation is something that we love to talk about you can see it in the newspapers you see them on the internet you see it in blocks it's something that we love it's about new things it's about both things that may change our world but the problem is ladies and gentlemen organizations don't have a clue how to organize for innovation they're caught up in what I named catch-22 of innovation now a catch-22 is maybe a little bit difficult word it's an English word and can't translate it very well the English use it for those situations that assets individual you're stuck in between contradictory rules for example you're 20 years old you apply for a job and the first thing they ask is do you have any relevant experience now of course not I need I need a job to get relevant experience no then you can't get a job now that's catch-22 now what is the catch-22 of innovation just imagine that you have a brilliant idea any innovation starts with a brilliant idea and you go out there and you go to a banker or an investor or to the management team or a board of directors whatever and you go there and you stand there and you do your pitch now what happens afterwards they think I think this is what happens you know I think this is really a brilliant idea yes it is but I just like to know a couple of things of you before we proceed I like to know how much money will we make how much will it cost what will the competition do how will the market develop what kind of people do you need how much time do you need and on and on and off now the problem is if you have a new IP if you are truly innovative there's no way you can ever answer these questions it simply is impossible you're caught up in a catch-22 you have a great idea but you can't start now can we escape the catch-22 of innovation yes we can ladies and gentlemen that's the good news it's something actually that I learned when I was doing my PhD at the Technical University in Delft I was doing a study on multidisciplinary teams teams like we have for this company here in Venlo oh say that research and development department they're large teams work together and they're composed of people like who are chemists or physicists or mechanical engineers electrical engineers software engineers and they all have to work together and I wanted to know a couple of things about these teams I wanted to know for instance how do they get their ideas actually where there's innovation arise within these teams and the other thing what I like to know is how did you actually align their work and all their activities just imagine 100 people all working together on one thing it has to be a seamlessly integrated whole it's quite difficult and the funny thing is there are no books about it so I started a research and together with two professors and six other co researchers we analyzed things like this we made a lot of movies on the floor of people working and we analyzed these movies to find out what the essences of innovation the funny thing is I think many organizations can learn a lot from these teams now I can of course talk about what I found and all the statistics and stuff like that but that's a bit boring I think you can all experience yourself what innovation is about together with my wife check if on before she's here in the audience we developed a special very dedicated challenge so that every one of you can experience innovation and it's named the coffee filter challenge now what I do and you have actually a coffee filter in your back so you can do it at home around Christmas it's great fun to do together with your family and things like that what I ask people is this is not a coffee filter back I give you 15 minutes to come up with a brilliant idea what is it but however be sure that you team up for five up to eight people team up and come up with a brilliant idea and I did it a lot of times I think already with three 350 people people they love to do it it's really great fun to do and they do all kinds of thickness things they mess it up they clean it they make toys out of it and they come up with ideas ranging from at one hand it's a very nice isolation material for houses all the way up to the other side like this one it's a Chinese puppet theater played for at the camping you can make yourself so one of the the personal things I was really amazed off by earth until today not one team invented the same thing so we all can be innovators and you can do it yourself the keys I'm not talking here about the results I'm talking about the process and I asked these teams three simple questions and the first question is is this one did anyone in the team knew in advance that they would make a Chinese puppet making theatre no oh so you started off without any plan with it about any ID and you got this brilliant idea yeah okay second question I asked who invented it there's always someone in the team who says well I named it oh so you named it why did you name well actually I was responding to her oh and why was she well actually she says I was responding to someone else so if you take a look if you put the camera on the team who's doing the coffee filter challenge you see something like this someone says something someone responds someone ask you questions someone responds someone come up with a brilliant idea now what has this ID been in the world without all these people and all these conversations before no so IDs fundamentally arise in between us it's not one mind they arise in between us third question I asked did you play with it oh yeah yeah yeah we did all kinds of thing we tore it apart we cut it and asked we put it together we assembled it we put it on from on top of a bottle why is that so relevant because most of the ideas that I solved until today always are result people doing things creating things making a mess out of it then oh you know what we can make something out of it so it's not here it's out there doing things making things creating now if you take a view a bit from those teams away this is the process that you actually see team is at position aid they have to say something like we have to invent something for a coffee filter back let's go that direction we go to the direction of B and something happens a surprise someone asks something hey didn't don't you mind then someone says maybe we should do something else and they go that direction and then they say hey there's another surprise I'm not already maybe we should go somewhere else and again and again and again so before and no one knows what the outcome will be in the end they have something that's quite proud of but they learn on the go they learn well they create what they are inventing no one knows it beforehand that they learn on the go that brought something to mind it struck me that it resembles very much the way how architects work how designers work how creatives work how artists work they don't know exactly when you ask an architect to design a house for you he doesn't know exactly what he's gonna make he starts making sketches shows it to you shows it another one makes another sketch shows it to you he learns as he creates as well so innovation in teams resembles very much the way how architects and designers work I started to think if it's so much like design thinking what else can we learn if we take this lens design thinking onto innovation there are two things I like to share with you the first one designers that's typical for designs they always think in options they don't think in problems they don't think who is to blame here that we have this problem no they think how can we solve it that's the way how they're trained and why is this irrelevant this is the process I just showed you if you have a surprise a problem or whatever then it's very nice if you have someone in the team who comes up with all these options what we can do this we can do that and can do that and especially designers are trained for that if you ask them to design a user interface they don't come up with one idea 20 or 50 IDs why is this irrelevant because if you have these options you can make a choice which way to go on the go you can find the way not beforehand on the go any people who can do that but designers not only show options they visualize them very well why is this irrelevant well when everybody's talking about technology and what it can do and what the problems are designers make something very tangible like this they show what the product could be what the service could be and the thing is they make use of a language we all understand it's a language of images something we can refer to it's not a difficult language you don't have to study rocket science to understand these things and that enables teams and companies and organizations to reflect on what is being made and sometimes they can make very iconic kind of pictures but be visual that's the thing now last time I take this wayfinding process this is how it looks like you started with something you don't know where you're gonna end up you have a couple of surprises and all those moments you need people who think in options and can visualize them because how can we know what we want until we see what the options are how can we know that we actually want to go that direction unless someone shows the options now I'm gonna give one example to make you feel yourself how important it is that you see an option this is the bent implying a rota Dom it's named the water square it's a very nice place there are always people in there this College next to it the playing pan out soccer over there they're listening to music the smoking cigarettes there are always people hanging out there does anyone seem see something particular about this place because it's not just a place to hang out it's designed thinkers solution for a problem we have here in Van LOH as well rain floods actually when it's raining a lot all the water from the area is kept in there but these designers it's the urban estate they considered that if we have to build a tank for capturing the water maybe we can make something out of it that we all love to use now ask yourself the following question now you know this now you've seen this what do you think is this something that you had in mind beforehand guess not is this something that you would say maybe we should do something like that in Venlo as well I hope some of you will say like that how can we know what we want until we see what the options are I started this talk with the catch-22 and I promise you you can break it I'm just going to drive home a couple of things what you can do tomorrow in your own company your own personal life it's not that difficult the first thing is don't try to think it all over don't make the plans in the visions and the budgets and stuff like that start start moving because you cannot know where you're gonna end up with second thing is team up don't do it on your own talk speak make fun make jokes go out because that's where the ideas arise third thinking options not in problems there are so many problems we can think about how do we solve that I don't think in options and learn on the go play make things and make it as tangible as possible and the last thing and this is the thing I hope you will take home from me visualize make it as visual as you can thank you very much you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 143,136

Rating: 4.8593564 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Netherlands, Design, Innovation, Product design

Id: ZBxZC9I6xyk

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2016