Creative Class

As originally published in BusinessWeek, this is the second installment in a four-part series that talks about embracing design-shop approaches to problem-solving and how that means having to shed some key characteristics of how traditional companies work. Part One.

Style of Work

Traditional firms have a style of work that involves ongoing, permanent tasks. Roles tend to be carefully, if not rigidly, defined with clear responsibilities for the individual laid out and economic incentives linked tightly to those individual responsibilities. People are typically much more adept at describing “my responsibilities” than they are at describing “our responsibilities.”

They feel inclined to work away at these responsibilities, refining and honing outputs before sharing a complete, final product with others. For example, the SVP of marketing will work away on the annual marketing plan, refining and adjusting it until it is “the perfect plan” and only then take it to the CEO in the hopes of the boss saying: “Perfect.”

GEHRY’S BLUEPRINT. In a design shop, the style of work is much more collaborative. Even though some hierarchy within teams likely exists, projects are typically assigned to teams rather than to individuals. A design team is mandated to come up with a design solution together — not individually. And the team is expected to interact throughout the process with the clients by bringing them into the design collaboration.

Because of this collaboration with clients, the work style also tends to be iterative — the opposite of waiting until something is “right.” This involves prototyping, honing, and refining through multiple iterations with the client.

Architect Frank Gehry is famous for this iterative style. The first design that goes public typically elicits a firestorm of protests for its inadequacies on a number of dimensions, making clients, users, and observers extremely nervous because they generally work in traditional organizations in which nothing sees the light of day until it is “right.”

JUDGED UNFAIRLY. They can’t imagine that Gehry has only just begun, that even though he is the brilliant expert, he wants to get valuable feedback for the next iteration, which won’t be final either, by the way. Indeed, “final” only emerges many iterations into the future.

When traditional firms hire designers, their managers often find them disappointing because, like Gehry, they produce prototypes for feedback instead of final products. Unfortunately for the designers, these firm managers think they are seeing a final product and — judged by that standard — the product is deemed patently substandard and the designer incompetent.

Mode of Thinking
Traditional firms utilize and reward the use of two kinds of logic. The first, inductive, entails proving through observation that something actually works. The second, deductive, involves proving — through reasoning from principles — that something must be.

A retailer may study the cost structure of all of its outlets, for example, to determine which has the best cost position in order to set, inductively, a cost target for the whole chain. Or a consumer packaged-goods firm can use its engrained theory — “build market share and profits will follow” — to deduce the appropriate action in a given situation.

Any other form of reasoning or arguing outside these two is discouraged and, at the extreme, exterminated. The challenge is always, “Can you prove that?” And to prove something in a reliable fashion means using rigorous inductive or deductive logic.

Designers also use and value inductive and deductive reasoning. Designers induce patterns through the close study of users and deduce answers through the application of design theories. However, designers value highly a third type of logic: abductive reasoning. Abductive reasoning, as described by Darden professor Jeanne Liedtka, embraces the logic of what might be. Designers may not be able to prove that something “is” or “must be,” but they nevertheless reason that it “may be.” This style of thinking is critical to the creative process.

Stay tuned for the third installment of this topic which talks about reasoning and sensibility in design…

Until then, what are your design theories?

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 7:55 am and is filed under Technology & Innovation, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.