Tag: innovation | Page 2 | Mariposa Leadership

June 26, 2014 / Book Reviews

Book Review | Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation

Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation: What They Can’t Teach You at Business or Design School
By Idris Mootee

Head: (5 out of 5)
Heart: (3 out of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (5 out of 5)

Executives today will agree that the complexities of doing business have grown exponentially. Our global world is smaller due to technology that connects us all at the speed of light, driving customer expectations high. The world’s population consumes natural resources faster than we can replace them, if at all. Competition in the market is fierce. Despite all this, most executives have been operating with an outdated management model, one designed for an outdated world. That’s why this book is a timely and important read for leaders.

Design thinking can be used to make sense of all of this complexity. It connects the dots and drives innovation by allowing us to experiment in the midst of chaos and complexity. Creative solutions can emerge for complex problems.

This book, written by management guru Idris Mootee, defines design thinking and introduces readers to the applications of it. As a framework, the author links the application of design thinking tools to eight key challenges most businesses encounter: growth, predictability, change, relevance, extreme competition, standardization, creative culture and strategy and organization. Each chapter offers tips and thinking points.

Executives interested in a guide for applying design thinking will want to read this book. Buy it now.

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June 26th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: book review, customer experience, design thinking, IDEO, idris mootee, innovation, Mariposa Leadership|

May 29, 2014 / Articles We Like

On: "Use 'Design Thinking' to Reach Customers"

Would you rather: chase market share to grab revenue – at any cost – or offer value to your customers which returns respectable margins? If profit margins are important, this article by Andrew King and Jeanne Liedtka will resonate with you. Many businesses today get stuck in a rut because they can’t think outside the box about reaching their customers and adding value to their lives. This article shares an example of how design thinking can infuse fresh thinking into ongoing business challenges.

The Washington Post article “Use ‘Design Thinking’ to Reach Customers” highlights how Intuit used design thinking to turn ideas into innovation.

Read it now.

What business successes have you had with design thinking?

Comment below! Or pose a question via Ask Mariposa.

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May 29th, 2014|Categories: Articles We Like|Tags: customer experience, design thinking, innovation, Jeanne Liedtka|

/ Book Reviews

Book Review | The Necessity of Strangers

The Necessity of Strangers: The Intriguing Truth of Insight, Innovation and Success

By: Dr. Alan Gregerman

Head: (3 out of 5)
Heart: (4 out of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (5 out of 5)

Growing up, many of us were told not to talk to strangers. We were taught to fear or avoid people we didn’t know. Early on, we were conditioned to believe people who were different than we were could pose a threat to our beliefs, knowledge and habits by taking us out of our comfort zone. The author of this book, Dr. Alan Gregerman, proposes a counterintuitive challenge to this conditioning.

Strangers, Dr. Gregerman contends, should be seen as an opportunity, not a threat. They – not the people we know and are familiar with – are the key to our success. Strangers are a necessity because of their differences, what they know that we don’t know, and their objectivity and ability to be honest about what matters. This challenges us to think differently about ourselves, our problems and to see more possibilities. Learning from strangers, and engaging and collaborating with people different from us enable us to find breakthroughs, delight customers, grow businesses and lead the life we were meant to.

Some of the concepts explored in this book include:

How to develop a stranger-centric mindset
How strangers can offer fresh insights that lead to innovation
How to leverage the differences of strangers, while bringing out the best of ourselves to collaborate and become more effective leaders
How connecting with and learning from the right strangers can help a business grow
Practical tools to use right away to unlock the potential of strangers

Leaders interested in pursuing consumer-led innovation strategies to deliver more value to their customers will want to read this book. Buy it now.

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May 29th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: alan gregerman, customer experience, innovation|

How Can Design Thinking Spark Innovation?

Graphic by mapthemind.org

Sue Bethanis, CEO of Mariposa Leadership, Inc., led an online webinar, Breakthrough! Apply Design Thinking to Spark Innovation, as part of the Syntax for Change online series, Cultivating Change 2014 Master Class for Change Agents.

Design Thinking is a problem solving technique that has been used extensively and successfully to develop products and services. However, the principles of design thinking can also be applied by leaders to enable organizational transformation. For example, how do I redesign the value chain to shift from products to services or solutions? How do I motivate employees to stay engaged and energized in their work amidst organizational change? How can I involve employees in the change effort? These are not easy problems. This webinar gave audience members an opportunity to apply the Breakthrough! model (Empathy, Brainstorm, Prototype, Implement) to a real-work challenge.

If you missed this fun and insightful webinar, click the link below to listen to the webcast.

download

For more information, check out our Design Thinking workshops and learn how to to easily move from idea-to-innovation.

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May 15th, 2014|Categories: Design Thinking / Creativity / Innovation|Tags: breakthrough model, breakthrough workshop, change agents, design thinking, hr innovation, HR management, innovation, Mariposa Leadership, organization transformation, organizational development, syntax for change|

March 28, 2014 / Book Reviews

Book Review | Interviewing Users

Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights
By: Steve Portigal

Head: (3 out of 5)
Heart: (4 out of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (4 out of 5)

In the innovation race, companies that gather insights from their customers and end users to inform the design of products and services are sure to beat the competition. But gathering quality information that yields insights is not as simple as chatting with a customer over a cup of coffee. Conducting a user research study is a skill, and the author, Steve Portigal, explains how to successfully plan and execute one so that the data yields insights which are compelling and actionable.

In this easy-to-digest book, readers will learn best practices for studying people, including:

Why interviewing over other methods yields rich insights
A framework for interviewing
How to identify a problem, find participants and prepare questions
Methods to enhance your interviews
How to manage the stages of an interview
The art of asking questions
How to document data
Interview variations and techniques to manage them
Bringing the data back to your organization

Leaders who want to do a better job of making products or designing services for their customers will want to read this book. Buy it now.

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March 28th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: consumer research, customer experience, customer research, innovation, Mariposa Leadership, product design, service design, steve portigal|

February 28, 2014 / Book Reviews

Book Review | Customers Included: How to Transform Products, Companies, and the World – With a Single Step

Customers Included: How to Transform Products, Companies, and the World – With a Single Step
By Mark Hurst and Phil Terry

Head: (4 out of 5)
Heart: (3 out of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (5 out of 5)

The book’s title, Customers Included, states the obvious: a customer-inclusive approach to innovation is essential to improving the odds of success. While many companies aspire to become customer-centric, others fail to include customers altogether, due to beliefs about the role of customers in innovation, a lack of time, or know how, among others.

Though the process of including customers is challenging, authors Mark Hurst and Phil Terry, pioneers in the field of customer experience, aim to change that with easy-to-read content organized around the three basic steps for including them:

Observe customers directly.
Discover customers’ key unmet needs.
Build consensus across the organization to meet those needs.

Peppered with real stories of product failures to illustrate key points associated with omitting customers from innovation (and product successes due to including them), the authors provide practical tips for a strategic, customer-inclusive approach to innovation.

Leaders who want to create a better product, service or experience for their customers – whether or not the customer is a shopper, a user, a student, a patient, a citizen, an employee – will want to read this book. Buy it now.

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February 28th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: customer experience, customers included, innovation, Mariposa Leadership, product development|

December 18, 2013 / Design Thinking / Creativity / Innovation

Better Brainstorming for HR Innovation

As an HR leader, you need to come up with innovative ways to energize, develop and retain your workforce. You need fresh ideas – many useful ideas – as well as an new method for cultivating those fresh ideas.

In a design thinking process, brainstorming plays a key role in cultivating a plethora of fresh ideas. But we aren’t talking about your average run-of-the-mill brainstorming session, with everyone in the room (hopefully) contributing a single idea out loud, one by one. This is a frenetic, fast-paced process which sets the stage for creativity!

Here are our tips, based on our Breakthrough! Model:

Clarify the specific problem upfront. Set the problem for the group before you begin to guide the brainstorming process. Examples: How might we redesign the entire end-to-end employee experience of performance reviews? How might we create buzz about our company to a certain demographic, so they know us and know good things about us? How do we ensure that non-comp recognition and rewards are tied to retention? How might we redesign our current leadership development program with Millennials in mind? With multi-generational audiences in mind?
Encourage imagination. Ask your team to think broadly and creatively. The sky is the limit for ideas!
Start alone. Give each person some time to write down a bunch of ideas on individual sticky notes by themselves and post for the group.
Break into small groups. With smaller groups generating ideas at the same time, groupthink can be avoided, one person can’t dominate the conversation, and idea generation potential multiplies.
Each small group member produces an idea…and another…with limited time. In a small group format, have your team write ideas on sticky notes and share them aloud one by one without comments. Challenge your team to produce more ideas after a period of time.

This brainstorming process will result in a broad, creative list of ideas, from which to cull further.

For additional tips on frenetic brainstorming and culling the list of ideas, download our Executive Guide to Design Thinking or join us in our NEW Using Design Thinking in HR & Talent Management workshop.

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December 18th, 2013|Categories: Design Thinking / Creativity / Innovation|Tags: brainstorming, breakthrough model, breakthrough workshop, design thinking, HR, hr innovation, hr leaders, human resources, innovation, Mariposa Leadership, talent management|

December 12, 2013 / Ask Mariposa

Ask Mariposa | Becoming a T-shaped Leader

Danielle asks: I was promoted about a year ago and am leading an HR team at a small but rapidly growing company. My boss recently mentioned I need to broaden my perspective and skill set to be more effective, especially as we continue to grow. I was surprised to hear this considering my role and background in HR. What do I need to do?

Tawny Lees, COO of Mariposa, responds:

Great question! Often times, depth of business expertise can lead to a promotion, but the skills required for leading at the next level change. Effective HR leaders in rapidly growing companies possess a balance of both vertical and horizontal skills, referred to as being“T-shaped.” The vertical piece refers to the depth of your specific functional business expertise (like Benefits/Comp/Recruiting, etc. for an HR Manager.) The horizontal piece refers to your skills, experience or perspectives that help you contribute and collaborate across the company, outside of your particular area of expertise. The combination of vertical and horizontal skills increases your ability to adapt and flex to change, and collaborate, which is key in environments which are constantly changing or require constant innovation.

Ask yourself:

What factors are impacting your business, thus driving change for HR? Of those, which do you need to know more about?
Do you have prior experience that could lend an empathetic view, if not skills or abilities? You might have knowledge or skills but may not have leveraged it in your role yet.
Can you participate in any committees or special projects to broaden horizontally?

T-shaped leadership is cultivated over time. You might want to consider outside conferences, courses, travel or community projects while you build skills on the job.

Good luck, great question!

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December 12th, 2013|Categories: Ask Mariposa|Tags: ask mariposa, design thinking, HR, HR leader, innovation, Mariposa Leadership, t-shaped leader, Tawny Lees|

2 Ways Empathy Can Help HR Drive Innovation

In most companies today, innovation is expected from all areas of an organization – including groups not traditionally known for driving innovation agendas, such as Human Resources. Success for HR and Talent Management leaders lies in opening up to new approaches for developing fresh ideas for difficult issues. Here are 2 ways that empathy – a key element of design thinking and one facet of our Breakthrough! model – can help HR & Talent Management leaders go from idea-to-innovation more quickly.

Empathy provides context for solutions. Too often, leaders of all types come up with an idea for a product, service or experience in isolation, then implement it. This approach fails to lead to innovation. Developing empathy through various methods of observation and interviewing puts HR leaders in their customer’s shoes, experiencing what they do and how they feel. Thus, HR leaders stand a better chance of developing solutions that work for the customer.
Empathy develops T-shaped HR leaders. HR leaders who develop an ability to empathize with their customers have both the vertical skills in human resources and are able to broaden their horizontal perspectives, leading to an ability to look at a problem from multiple dimensions.

For more information on empathy, download our Executive Guide to Design Thinking or join us at our NEW Using Design Thinking in HR & Talent Management workshop.

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December 11th, 2013|Categories: Design Thinking / Creativity / Innovation, HR / Talent Management|Tags: breakthrough model, design thinking, design thinking workshop, empathy, executive leadership, HR, HR Leadership, human resources workshop, innovation, Mariposa Leadership, t-shaped leader, talent management|

November 26, 2013 / Articles We Like

On: "A New Model for Innovation in Big Companies"

We share this article by Beth Altringer because research shows internal innovation models in global companies fail between 70%-90% of the time. Getting new ideas off the ground is challenging when those best suited for championing those ideas are strapped for time. Outsourcing innovation, while costly, can bring in fresh ideas but large companies tend to bump up against availability of internal resources to see those ideas through.

In the Harvard Business Review article, “A New Model for Innovation in Big Companies,” the author explores a new form of organizational collaboration that uses entrepreneurs to stimulate and sustain innovation in large companies.

Read it now.

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November 26th, 2013|Categories: Articles We Like|Tags: beth altringer, big companies, entrepreneurs, Harvard Business Review, HBR, innovation, organizational collaboration|