DESIGN THINKING - THOUGHTS BY TIM BROWN

I have noticed a growing conversation recently concerning the relationship between design and science.

Adam Bly, founder and editor of Seed magazine, did much to get this conversation started, aided and abetted by Paola Antonelli, Curator of Design and the New York Museum of Modern Art. Some of her columns on the topic of design as it relates to science are excellent, as was the Design and the Elastic Mind show she hosted at MOMA a couple of years ago. Unfortunately the magazine ceased its print version in 2009 but there is still great material on the website.

My own view is that the latter half of the twentieth century saw a steady decline in designs interest toward science and technology as engineering inserted itself between the two. This is not a criticism of engineers who in places like silicon valley, performed wonders with the new technologies of micro-processors, storage, networking and software to create the products and services we rely on today. The same is true in other fields such as aeronautics and bio-medicine. No, my criticism is of the designers and scientists who have relied on engineers to provide the translation between their two fields. 

My concern is that in this translation much is lost that could benefit scientists, designers and the end user.

I wonder how much might be gained if designers had a deeper understanding of the science behind synthetic biology and genomics? Or nanotechnology? Or robotics? Could designers help scientists better see the implications and opportunities of the technologies they are creating? Might better educated and aware designers be in a position to challenge the assumptions of the science or reinterpret them in innovative ways? Might they do a better job of fitting the new science into our lives so that we can gain more benefit?

If scientists were more comfortable with intuitive nature of design might they ask more interesting questions? The best scientists often show great leaps of intuition as they develop new hypotheses and yet so much modern science seems to be a dreary methodical process that answers ever more incremental questions. If scientists had some of the skills of designers might they be better able to communicate their new discoveries to the public?

The twenty-first century will be the scene of significant scientific developments that may fundamentally change our human experience. I am intrigued by how different that change might be if scientists and designers could figure out how to work better together.

I am off to TED next week for my annual dose of new ideas about science, and many other topics. I will be on the look out for scientists who might be interested in hanging out with some designers.

Tags: Adam Bly, Paola Antonelli, science, Seed Magazine, TED

How BMW Turns Art into Profit.

By: Bangle, 


IT WAS A TENSE MOMENT FOR ME in the color-and-materials studio of BMW. A senior manager in the finance department was grilling me: why, he wanted to know, did my team insist on using costly materials that the customer would never see? Didn't I know that people buy our cars for their looks and their fine engines? Just at that moment, a visibly distressed senior designer walked up to us, carrying a pre-production middle console from one of our new sedans. Disregarding the finance manager, she opened the console lid, reached her fingers into a dark pocket deep inside, and asked me to do likewise. "Feel this ***;' she said. "The supplier is having a terrible time getting the texture right in here. The surface is not good, Herr Bangle" As she waited for my response, the finance manager watched me intently. 


That moment crystallizes the persistent, inevitable conflict between corporate pragmatism and artistic passion that I manage at BMW. The designer was right - the texture inside the pocket didn't meet BMW's exacting design standards. And yet the finance manager was also right: would customers know the difference? His job was to put the brakes on costly, seemingly insignificant design details. We are a business after all. 


My job as director of design, overseeing 220 artists at BMW, is to mediate between the corporate and artistic mind-sets within the company. What I do is not unique to BMW. Plenty of companies face the challenge of balancing art with commerce: movie studios, fashion design firms, and luxury goods manufacturers struggle with the same thing. But BMW is an example of the intersection of commerce and art writ large. Our fanaticism about design excellence is matched only by the company's driving desire to remain profitable. And those objectives have required me to develop a unique set of operating principles. 


Three principles in particular have stood me in good stead. First, protect the creative team -- that is, shield them from the unproductive commentary of other people as much as they confound them. Everyone at BMW wants to know what the designers in a constructive way. 


Second, safeguard the artistic process. By this, I mean that my managers and I have to construct a barrier around model development so that time-to-market pressures don't disrupt or harm the actual work. Over the years I have found that safeguarding the process takes a lot of effort, but it is necessary because it guarantees that BMW's design is never compromised. And that design is what makes both our artists -- and our customers -- intensely loyal. 


Third, be an inventive communicator. In any organization dependent on art and commerce finding common ground, managers must have unusual powers of persuasion. Unless they do, they can never be good mediators -- and mediation is what managing at the intersection of art and commerce is all about. 


The Soul of the Machine 
Before I explore these principles further, some background is in order. I'm an American-born car designer who learned my craft from great European masters. I joined BMW as design director in October 1992 after spending several years in the design studios of Opel and Fiat. The studio where I work is part of BMW's sprawling, 140,000-square-foot research and development campus in Munich. During my tenure, this design group, along with BMW's daughter company, Designworks USA, has produced exterior and interior designs for BMW's current 3 Series Touring, Z3 M-Coupe, X5, and Z8, as well as the M cars, concept car Z9 models, and BMW's motorcycles. BMW's Mini car was born here, not to mention designs for dozens of other products, such as watches, sunglasses, luggage, and clothing. 


From the moment I arrived in Munich, I understood the company's core value: to be an engineering-driven company whose cars and motorcycles are born from passion. We don't make "automobiles," which are utilitarian machines you use to get from point A to point B. We make "cars," moving works of art that express the driver's love of quality. This may sound like New Age hokum, but it is a powerful core belief at BMW. Because we believe it, we insist on design honesty. We're convinced that if we mislead our customers by using walnut-colored plastic on the dashboard instead of real wood, those customers will wonder how else we're snookering them. So we use expensive, difficult-to-mold, real wood veneers. BMW has one of the most successful business models in the manufacturing world precisely because many people are eager to pay a small fortune to experience a car as we define it. 


But in 1992, the company was undergoing a fundamental change. On one hand, it was streaking toward recordbreaking revenues. The new 3 Series sport limousine and coupe were just about to be enhanced by the launch of the new Cabrio. The new 7, the E38, was in its final wrap-up. The fabulously successful Z3 and 5 Series were in the oven. It was a time of incredible optimism. On the other hand, the design department was on the verge of stagnation. Having operated for some time without a design director, the designers, modelers, and technicians that make up the team lacked focus and vision. They had worked hard on scores of design iterations, most of which died in the difficult process of elimination. That's a normal part of the design cycle, but for two years, no one was around to shepherd the designers through the excruciating experience of creative birth, life, and death. 


To make matters worse, communications with the engineering group were strained. The designers saw perfection as an ephemeral, almost spiritual, quest -- a goal to be achieved in stages; for the engineers, perfection was physical and measurable -- something to be done right the first time. Constant altercations over the best approach slowed down the development cycle and sometimes derailed design. My task was clear: to ensure a future of successful design at BMW, I had to speak up for design. I had to raise awareness and build acceptance of design's importance within the company-and elevate the team's spirits. I had to find a management approach that would allow the group to do its job. 


The Fortress 
I quickly put my first principle into practice-that is, protecting creative resources by managing around the psychological vulnerability of the artists. Emotional, sensitive, often egocentric artists don't respond to cold, rational arguments. They must be shielded from the comments of people who don't understand them or the artistic process. They need support and empathy -- they don't respond well to dictatorial management. For designers to do their best work, they must be guided by their own strong sense of artistic quality, and they must be convinced that their superiors' critiques make good design sense. 


Protecting artists means shielding them from the unintended, but sometimes hurtful, criticism of those who don't understand their art. Expose an artist to too much premature resistance, and he'll simply quit-essentially eviscerating the project he's been working on. Designers are as emotionally attached to their creations as mothers are to their children, and a careless comment can be extremely damaging. A while back, an engineer told a designer that one of his designs would require too much retooling. The engineer was just doing his job, but his bluntness hurt. The designer was so devastated that he took several sick days-time he may well have spent working on his resume. 


To avoid such problems, we strictly monitor entry to the design department, walling off sensitive models and using "Stop: No Entry" signs on the doors of the studio. Engineering and cost analysis groups aren't allowed inside unaccompanied; when they are invited in, it's usually when the modelers are at lunch. Before a project starts, my managers and I hold briefings with the uninitiated to sensitize them to the negative effects of uncensored criticism. And when the designers need intensive feedback from the engineers, design team managers act as go-betweens. 


Occasionally, I've had to protect the designers even from myself. In 1996, as our X5 sport utility vehicle was being readied for production in America, we were already wondering what the progeny of the X5 might be. I wanted our team to come up with something completely new. To do that, they needed to be cut free. Working closely with our platform chief in charge of specialty vehicles, I carved out a seven-figure budget to send a select group off for a six-month workshop away from BMW. Offsite, they could work out the plans for the next big post-X5 thing. The idea was for them to work out their designs away from prying eyes and questioning voices, including mine. To make certain that no one could possibly trample on the seeds they were planting, I instructed the group to keep their whereabouts a secret -- even from me. 


If you were to accuse me of coddling my designers, you'd be absolutely right. But I'm not just trying to make their lives easier; I'm also trying to draw the best designs out of each artist. Being a design chief is like managing several competing baseball teams. While engineers and finance people aren't rivals in the same game, designers are. When was the last time you saw a finance manager assign three or four of his accountants to write the same position paper? Each artist on my team competes with the others to create the winning design. This makes the job of coaching designers that much more complex, particularly when one artist's design is chosen over another's. "The frustration is all part of the process," I've been known to say. "One of your designs will triumph one day, and millions of people will be driving it." 


But like any coaching job, positive reinforcement is only part of the formula. You also need to steadily nurture creativity. You can't simply eliminate the players who don't score home runs because it's impossible to predict whose design will be hot the day after tomorrow. It takes a lot of personal coaching to keep a designer fresh and ready for his turn at bat. You have to pay a designer a handsome salary at the outset and put him in a lofty, well-lit work space with state-of-the-art equipment. You offer him a play area -- a special studio where he can goof around with expensive tools and toys alongside expensive expert modelers. Then you back off and let him practice. When he drops the ball, you think, "He'll never make it on the team." And then one day, usually when your back is turned, he hits the ball out of the park. 


I don't just coddle the designers, I also stand up for their designs when I believe in them. I have to prove that I will fight like hell for a great design in order to earn their faith. Take the case of that devastated designer: I knew his design would require some costly retooling, but I also knew the overall product was something customers would pay for. I had a choice: I could tell the designer to simply accept the engineer's opinion, or I could argue the designer's case. I chose the latter because I believed in the design. I called a meeting with the tooling and construction staff and got them to admit that with a tweak here and there we could create the comer as the designer intended. Then I went to the manager responsible for the global costs and development of the car, and he agreed to the change. Despite all that effort, which I made in good faith, I ultimately eliminated the designer's car from the final running. I had to deliver the brutal news that I'd chosen not to recommend his car for approval. But my fight for his design in the early stages had won me his respect and earned me the right, in his eyes, to make that final, painful decision. 


Despite all this coaching, artists really only learn to create winning designs by trying over and over again; their professional growth occurs almost invisibly as they carve away at their models. Of course, I have to evaluate my employees' performance just like any other manager. And while I assess my people on the basis of their performance, I also have to rely on subjective criteria. I appraise their work, their potential, their leadership qualities, and their value to the organization. But when their work isn't going well, I can't prod them the way a manager in another department might. Artists don't respond to traditional dictums or push tactics. I can't say, "Your last design lost, so do it my way." I have to let the art manage the artist. This means making the artist come to terms with his design. I tell the designer to listen to his creation and to talk back to it; the brilliant car hiding inside his head will somehow speak loudly enough to get itself built and sold. And if the design has what Tom Wolfe calls "the right stuff," then its DNA will enrich the corporate bloodline and provide the basis for future derivations. If not, then we all know that the failure lay in the design, not in the politics of the moment. 


A Priceless Process 
I also have to protect the process itself, which is subtly different from protecting the designers. While the designers are still asking themselves, "Should this dashboard be made of walnut or cherry?" the engineers and planners are clamoring for decimal points and detailed specs. A big part of my job is to make sure that we don't shift the focus from design to engineering too soon. In my quest to convince nondesigners that a BMW, like a fine wine, cannot be hurried, I often appeal to a deeply held, almost nonverbal sense about BMW-ness-a certain pride of product shared by everyone in the company that expresses itself in the classic quality of our cars, from the purring engines to the buttery seats. Every employee here knows that if a car doesn't have these things, it's simply not a BMW- and customers won't buy it. 


I use this cultural value to keep others from trying to overindustrialize our design methods. I spend a lot of time educating nondesigners about the design process, which consists of three fundamental steps: understanding (arriving at the final choice by involving upper management in the process); believing (perfecting the design); and seeing (focusing on details from the customer's point of view and correcting impurities in the final design phases). 


Each step can take anywhere from months to more than a year. In the understanding phase, we use whatever models we can-mock-ups, computer simulations, scale models, seating and driving rigs-to help non-designers understand the concept and build consensus so that decisions won't have to be reversed later at great expense. When executives were having difficulty understanding how our 3 Series differed from its predecessors, it just wasn't enough to say we'd changed the hood line by x number of centimeters. So we built a special working model that transformed itself from the classic BMW 2002 to the proportions of the new 3 Series. When the executive pushed a certain button, the doors dropped from the 2002 level to the new 3 Series level. When he pushed a different button, the level of the instrument panel changed, as did the car's other major surfaces. When he pushed still another button, the rear deck rose and lowered. This complex device gave the design team a platform to experiment with what the 3 Series meant to different people. It also helped the executives feel comfortable with the design and give it the stamp of approval it needed. 


Once we all understand the design we are working toward, we enter the year long believing phase. During this phase, car designers still use the oldest medium of all to develop their ideas. Here's what happens: after sketching out the design, the artist literally hand-sculpts the model in clay-a method that hasn't changed since the Renaissance. Working with carsized blocks of clay, the artists try to "release the form within," as Michelangelo once noted. In stroking and pulling the clay, a sensual relationship develops between the creator and the object, and gradually a design emerges. 


After the management chooses the winning design, we enter the seeing phase, during which we zero in on a design's defects. That phase, too, is difficult and costly. In January 1998, for example, I convinced management that we needed to see the clay models of all the 3 Series design variants in the sunlight-a difficult-to-find commodity around midwinter Munich. Rather than view the models in the artificial light of our design space, I argued, we needed to ship them in special containers to our test track in southern France and fly the entire modeling team out on the corporate jet to look at them. The reason? To see the models in actual sunlight at the same distances a customer would see them. Had we not seen the models this way, we might not have noticed defects in the lines and forms that might have been perpetuated right up into the car's tooling-at which point, changes would have been very costly. 


By educating managers in our methods, we keep them from overstepping creative boundaries. Interestingly, I also have to safeguard the design process from the designers themselves. Design doesn't have a natural end and, left on their own, the designers will tweak and tinker forever. That can't happen, of course: despite our wish to let our"wine" mature at its own pace, we have to recognize marketplace exigencies. Designers hate it when the decision to freeze the design is made before the car has come as close to perfection as possible. To keep that from happening, I impose strict deadlines at each step of the process. Many artists actually thrive under pressure: once they understand that a particular phase of the model must be finished in three weeks, they work like dogs to get it done. 


Sticking to deadlines also means being honest with engineers and others about our progress. They usually understand that it is in their own interest to let us deal with mistakes or to ripen the design. If groups outside design receive information about the car too early, they may be forced to deal with costly fixes later on. 


The Art of Communication 
Managing at the intersection of art and commerce means translating the language of art into the language of the corporation. Even as I make sure our design group understands and complies with corporate requirements, budgets, and deadlines, I have to make sure that nondesigners understand why we make certain artistic choices. 


For this, I call on all my powers of communication. That does not mean tricking people into liking this or that model, but rather helping them understand both the larger context and the subtleties of a design. Persuasion is always important in business situations, but because of the restricted time I have, I try to keep people focused on the most important things. I use several techniques to get an idea across. 


First, I keep things concrete. In a board meeting or at a technical discussion, for instance, words like "tension," "stance," "proportions" and "attitude" all expressive characteristics of a Car usually leave people confused. So I rely on a repertoire of descriptive, often amusing postures, gestures, and noises to get ideas across. The front end may "loom." The rear bumper may sag "like a waddling baby with a full diaper." The squint of the headlights and the grimace of the front air intake may give the viewer the impression of "a chipmunk with gas." 


Second, I show rather than tell. In my case, pictures really do say a thousand words, especially given the fact that I'm working in a company whose business language is not my native tongue. It's useless to try to articulate creative concepts with prepared PowerPoint slides; a quick, sweeping sketch or a cartoon works much better. The key is to be inventive in finding ways to bridge the communication gap. If technicians want to talk with me about making a minor, but disagreeable, change to a design, I might start our chat by showing them a picture of a Vogue cover model. Then I'd pull up a picture of the car we're designing. "If we make that minor change to the front end, "I'll say, "the car will end up looking like this." Then I'd show them an identical picture of the Vogue model, with a tooth blackened out. 


Third, I focus on the big picture. If a nondesigner asks me why we've included a particular feature in the new Mini and not in the 7 Series, I can't convince him of my point of view by arguing about the particular characteristics of the feature itself. I have to start with the brand. "What is a Mini?" I'll ask. We agree that it is a completely different brand than a BMW; its driver wants a different set of features than the driver of a 7 Series. All the decisions related to the accessory have to fall from the branding concept. We simply don't build cars the other way around. 


And finally, I rely on my own departmental experts -- people who speak the language of the engineers and the accountants better than I do. For example, my department hired an associate design strategist who is working on his doctorate in economics. When the financial managers came to us with efficiency models showing us how we'd extended ourselves beyond our budget, I had our resident economist look them over. Then we had a talk with the purse holders. The finance people appreciated being able to communicate in their own language. And because our economist could massage a spreadsheet as well as any of them, he used their own methodologies to show that our efficiency had actually increased by more than 400%. 


Working groups within large companies often misunderstand one another, but they also have every reason to collaborate. I'm a big fan of metaphors, even blunt ones. I like to tell my design team that they, the engineers, and the business managers are like three meshed gears. If the gears are separated and spinning solo, nothing happens. If the gears turn the same way, they freeze up. They have to be interconnected and turning in opposite directions. But as we rotate, we transfer power to one another. If I've learned anything from standing at the precarious intersection of art and commerce, it's that communication is the grease that keeps the gears engaged and running smoothly. All my protection and persuasion tactics are in the service of the car that will be created and built, bought and loved. If I do my job well, the gears will engage for the good of that car, and things will begin to move. 


Art and commerce will never be on the same side of the street, but they can be on the same journey-with some help from folks like me. The story at the beginning of this article explains why. As the finance manager in the color-and-materials studio scowled at me and at the designer holding the console, I talked to him. I used a simple metaphor to bring him back to the BMW-ness that we all hold dear. I pointed to one of the color boards that pictured a beautiful, ancient Gothic cathedral in Munich. "Those cherubs cost a lot to put on the church,' I said. "But can you imagine the cathedral without its cherubs?" When he shook his head, I continued, "Funny thing about Gothic churches. You get cherubs regardless of whether you look at them or not. Making cherubs is how the craftsmen of the time honored their religion. So is your problem with the cherubs or with the church?" Then I handed him the console, and told him to poke his fingers inside the dark pocket. As he did so, his eyes glimmered with sudden comprehension. 


Many companies position themselves at the intersection of art and commerce, but few as successfully as the famous German car-maker BMW. It's no accident. The executive who manages the relationships among designers, engineers, and corporate managers says three operating principles guide their way. 

The Power Of Design

IDEO redefined good design by creating experiences, not just products. It hired IDEO, the Palo Alto (Calif.) design firm, for help. For starters, Kaiser nurss, doctors, and facilities managers teamed up with IDEO's social scientists, designers, architects, and engineers and observed patients as they made their way through their medical facilities. IDEO and Kaiser concluded that the patient experience can be awful even when people leave treated and cured.What to do? Kaiser learned from IDEO that seeking medical care is much like shopping -- it is a social experience shared with others. "IDEO showed us that we are designing human experiences, not buildings," says Adam D. Nemer, medical operations services manager at Kaiser. By design industry standards, IDEO is huge, though its $62 million in revenues in 2003 are puny by most corporate measures. Both founders still manage IDEO, along with CEO Tim Brown.From its inception, IDEO has been a force in the world of design. Now, IDEO is transferring its ability to create consumer products into designing consumer experiences in services, from shopping and banking to health care and wireless communication.Yet by showing global corporations how to change their organizations to focus on the consumer, IDEO is becoming much more than a design company. By contrast, IDEO advises clients by teaching them about the consumer world through the eyes of anthropologists, graphic designers, engineers, and psychologists. Unlike traditional consultants, IDEO shares its innovative process with its customers through projects, workshops, and IDEO U, its customized teaching program. In IDEO-speak, this is "open-source innovation." "With IDEO, we partner up and work side-by-side. Witnessing IDEO's success, management consulting firms are expanding their offerings to corporate clients to include a greater focus on consumers. And other design firms are piling into IDEO's space. Design Continuum in West Newton, Mass., Ziba Design in Portland, Ore., and Insight Product Development in Chicago are all experienced in understanding the consumer experience. "IDEO has captured the imagination of the business world," says Craig M. Vogel, director of graduate studies at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design, "but there are other firms doing similar work, translating user research into products and services."Even so, IDEO is far ahead of the competition. IDEO's clients don't just like the firm, they love it. Adds Sam Hall, vice-president for mMode at AT&T Wireless Services Inc. (AWE ), who turned to IDEO to redesign its mMode service: "Those guys really get it. Fun? How does IDEO do it? IDEO puts together an eclectic team composed of members from the client company and its own experts who go out to observe and document the consumer experience. Often, IDEO will have top executives play the roles of their own customers. IDEO uses inexpensive prototyping tools -- Apple-based iMovies to portray consumer experiences and cheap cardboard to mock up examination rooms or fitting rooms. "IDEO's passion is about making stuff work, not being artists," says design guru Tucker Viemeister, CEO of Dutch-based designer Springtime USA. Some corporations send their top people to IDEO just to open their minds. IDEO promptly sent them all out shopping. IDEO team members shopped alongside them to analyze each experience as it unfolded. Other P&G executives went shopping with poor people so they might better understand what it means for Third World consumers to buy the company's products.IDEO's strategic relationship with P&G runs deep. IDEO has even built an innovation center for P&G called "the Gym," where P&G staffers are inculcated in the IDEO innovation process. Like a law firm, IDEO specializes in different practices. IDEO's success with the Palm V led AT&T Wireless to call for help on its mMode consumer wireless platform. IDEO and AT&T Wireless teams also went to AT&T Wireless stores and videotaped people using mMode. IDEO knew it was about making the cell phone experience better."IDEO's largest practice is health care, accounting for 20% of its revenues. Patients, on the other hand, are concerned with service and information.Fred Dust, head of IDEO's Smart Spaces practice, spent hours in DePaul's emergency rooms. Warnaco's Wyatt went to IDEO when faced with severe competition from Victoria's Secret. Warnaco and IDEO teams did "shop-a-longs" with eight women. The experience was eerily like that of the dissatisfied patient in Kaiser's hospitals: bad.In 18 weeks, IDEO and Warnaco came up with a solution. Now, Warnaco is working with department stores to implement the design.During the '90s boom, some 35% of IDEO's revenues came from designing products and Web services for Internet and other startups. At its peak in 2002, IDEO generated some $72 million in revenues. Brown, then the head of IDEO Europe and its London office, was made CEO in 2000 by Kelley. In 2004, Brown reorganized IDEO into a professional consultancy around practices, or fields of expertise. IDEO may yet stumble. Sounds a lot like IDEO. If the D-school students are lucky, they might even have as much fun as IDEO's corporate clients.

By Bruce Nussbaum

Aligning Management and Business towards Sustainable Development (1999)

Stefano Marzano

CEO & Chief Creative Director, Philips Design

How did we get here?

Almost every speech you hear or article you read today starts with the magic words "As we enter the new millennium" or "Moving into the twenty-first century"...But is the new millennium or the new century really anything so special? After all, the change from 1999 to 2000 is just an arbitrary moment in the vast continuum of time...

Well, certainly, its an important psychological moment: people are in a mood for looking back, looking forward, and generally taking stock. And, beyond that, I think there is also good reason to see this period as a whole as one in which significant changes are taking place a shift of paradigm rather like the Renaissance in Western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when new worlds, both physical and psychological, were discovered or re-discovered. Today, I believe we are also at a crucial point, not because of anything the calendar tells us, but because we are leaving the Industrial Age and entering into something new.

The fact that we are where we are today in terms of the environment is largely because of our industrial past. The industrial age was characterized by a philosophy of unlimited growth. In itself, a great vision of an increasingly better quality of life for everyone. (Well, at least for everyone in western and western-oriented countries.) But we can now see, in retrospect, that despite all the benefits and comforts that that vision of progress produced, it was fatally flawed. It took no account of the environment and it took no account of fundamental human values. Though it looked ahead to future benefits, it did so without casting a glance to left or right and certainly not behind to see what a mess it was creating as it pushed ever onwards. We can see now that this can't go on. If we continue along the same path in the same way, it will all end in tears.

Instead, we are beginning to appreciate that we need to take a more holistic, more global view of progress. We need somehow to achieve a sustainable society, one in which we can develop new, renewable sources of energy, minimizing the use of non-renewable resources, and respecting both the natural environment and our social environment.

Green advances

The first push to counter the old ways came from environmental pressure groups in the seventies and eighties. The world oil crisis in 1973 was the perhaps the first time that most people were confronted with their dependence on energy resources. And later, oil spills and catastrophes like Chernobyl brought home the full consequences of what we, as a global community, were up to. The appearance of holes in the ozone layer only served to confirm on an even larger scale that something had gone radically wrong.

In our own context, this all led to greater efforts to produce products that were more environmentally friendly: using less energy, fewer hazardous materials and capable of recycling. And we have been highly successful in doing this: witness the award of the World Environmental Center Gold Medal last year. We have lots of products now to justify our growing record as a green company. But we cannot afford to rest on our laurels, fresh though they are.

Mature quality

As I pointed out, people have started to take a more holistic view of progress, and indeed, a more holistic view of the quality of life. The increasing complexity and sheer speed of life in the industrialized world is giving rise to the same sort of stress and tension that weve seen in the environment. People are beginning to react against it. Although they often find it exhilarating and exciting, they are also feeling a need to escape from it from time to time. They are bringing things back to basics, as it were. You see this reflected in all sorts of things. A minimalist trend in interior decorating, for instance. The attempt by working parents to find quality time to spend with their children. An interest in a whole range of esoteric philosophies and religions, alternative medicines and therapies. A rise in the number of holidays people take. All ways in which people are trying to redress the balance in their lives: the balance they feel they have lost.

I believe everyday developments like that are a direct reflection of the general shift from the industrial to the post-industrial era. They indicate a move away from the idea that more is always better, which was the underlying philosophy behind the industrial age. It is a shift from quantity to quality. And not just the quantifiable sort of quality were used to thinking about in industry these days, but a more mature, a more grown-up type of quality.

Relevant functionalities

Let us consider what this new type of quality might mean for consumer products. If we look at what people seem to be looking for, we see it is the more abstract, more psychological qualities, not physical ones. It would seem as though people are seeking those qualities which lie relatively high on the Maslow scale: those that move us closer to the highest state, what Maslow called “self-actualization”.

That means we should be producing products that take people in that direction. Not overwhelming them with lots of features, for instance, but simplifying things for them, making life easier, more straightforward, only providing features that they need. For instance, many phones incorporate all sorts of functions that most people never use. The same goes for washing machines. People have paid for them, valuable resources have been spent on them, and they make operating the device more complicated. So for those who really don't want these functions, they are counter-productive.Wouldn't it be better to allow people to basically customize their own products by selecting the functionalities they require when they buy the product? Ideally, of course, they'd be able to add them later when the need arose. For some people, a monofunctional product would be enough; others might want to incorporate all available functions. The more this functionality is contained in the software rather than the hardware, the easier this customization will be.

Of course, what people want, and why, may vary greatly from person to person and community to community. For some people, lots of features may have a secondary benefit conveying status, for instance which outweighs the disadvantage of the added complexity. It's a question of what I call relevant functionalities: we should examine what functionalities people find relevant to their lives and only provide them with those, rather than simply assume that because a function is possible people will automatically want it. This not only simplifies people's lives but also saves resources - a good example of the new type of quality I’m talking about.

Focus on the benefit

Lets take this principle of focusing on the essentials a few steps further. When people buy one of our products, what is it they really want? The product? No. Not usually. What they're really after is the benefit or service the product provides them with. And they want the latest, the state-of-the-art version of that benefit. The solid object is usually just a tool, not normally an end in itself.That suggests we need to think about ways we can give them that state-of-the-art benefit or service in an affordable and environmentally friendly way. What we are generally doing at the moment is clearly neither. If people want the latest benefit, they have to buy the latest piece of hardware, which involves the use of materials and resources, not all of which will be able to be recovered or renewed. So how can we move away from this situation and focus more on the benefit?

Services?

Another radical solution would be to do without a material product altogether and only offer the service. Several divisions have certainly successfully expanded their offering by providing services related to our products. But these services are provided in addition to rather than instead of products. So for the foreseeable future, at least, this is only a partial solution.

Renting?

Another radical solution is renting or leasing providing the hardware on a temporary basis. That way, people buy the benefit for as long as they want it, and the hardware, rather than being thrown away afterwards, goes on to provide its benefit to a new user, in the same market or in a less mature one elsewhere in the world. Renting products gives people access to all the latest services at minimum cost, and it side-steps customer resistance to making a substantial investment in products that turn out to have only short-term usefulness. However, although renting is environmentally friendly (in that it extends the useful life of the product), operating such a scheme is not easy: it requires a complex infrastructure, and if all products are not leased out, there is the problem (and expense) of storage and of having financial resources lying around unused.

Durability

There are, of course, other ways of extending the lives of products. Using more durable materials is a start, but it is clearly not enough. People often throw a product away long before it is worn out or broken. This is because they no longer feel any emotional bond with it. It is no longer relevant to their lives.

New Heritage

This suggests that we need to understand what it is that makes people develop an emotional bond with a product. I talked earlier about the problem of products that fail to provide relevant functionalities, or that confuse people with their complexity. People don't relate to such products; they never develop any affection for them. Our ancestors, by contrast, often developed special relationships with their objects their trusted tools, their family heirlooms, their totems or magic charms. These not only served a practical function. They were also carriers of memories, of personal or family history; they were magical or ritual objects that protected you or gave you a sense of belonging. So they were kept, and passed from generation to generation, providing a sense of permanence, stability and continuity.

Today, we may still cherish in this way a book that belonged to our grandmother, for example, because it is somehow part of her. But what will our grandchildren cherish of ours? We need to discover what sorts of products will form the heirlooms of future generations - and then make them, and sell them to this one. I like to call these New Heritage products. They benefit customers by meeting their need for carriers of personal history and associations; they benefit the company, because they will be highly valued; and they benefit the environment because they won't end up on the scrap-heap.

Dematerialization

An alternative to improving the value and meaningfulness of the hardware is to do away with the hardware completely or almost completely. To dematerialize it. One way of doing that is to implement more and more functions in the form of software, which can be easily upgraded. That would certainly economize on matter and would focus on the benefit.Dematerialization through increased use of software is certainly something that is affecting our products. But at the same time, of course, we remain deeply committed to producing the hardware. So we also need to go down that other path towards dematerialization, which allows us reduce the size of the hardware as much as possible. Miniaturization. Right to the extent of incorporating our products into other objects.

Let's consider what our homes look like today, for instance, and what they may look like in the near future. Basically, they are full of technology in boxes, most of them black or grey: the television, the VCR, the radio, the CD player, the telephone, and so on. But there are signs that this is changing. Now that these technologies are present in many homes, they are either merging into the background and basically disappearing from view; or, quite the opposite, are taking on striking, non-technical forms. This is a reflection of the mental attitude I mentioned earlier: people are ready to have less clutter around them. Our houses may be full of technology, but we dont want to see it. We want to surround ourselves with objects that are either attractive in their own right or else have personal meaning for us.

Ambient intelligence

Miniaturization has now reached a stage at which it is possible to incorporate intelligent technology into ordinary everyday objects things like chairs, tables and beds, not to mention parts of the buildings we live in, like floors, walls, windows and ceilings. These objects that have been part of our homes for centuries, if not millennia. They have proved their value in enhancing our physical comfort and have more or less crystallized out into their essential form. That means they'll also form part of the home of the future. But the technological boxes that fill our homes at the moment the television, the audio system, the telephone or the computer they haven’t yet found a timeless form. And in fact they don't need to, because they don't relate to physical needs, but to psychological needs. That means they can largely disappear, and provide their benefits through the physical form of those objects that we cant do without. So televisions could be incorporated into walls or pictures, and audio equipment may disappear into chairs, tables or plates. As a result, the home of tomorrow will probably look much more like the home of yesterday than like the home of today.

This ambient intelligence that will then surround us will be clever enough to help us use energy efficiently, of course. But well need to make sure that it doesnt become too clever for us... in other words, we want to make sure we don't end up with a new version of the old problem of having too many features. Invisible or not, the functionalities will still need to be relevant. And not only that, we will need to make sure that the new intelligent objects that try to serve us know how to behave properly. The last thing we want after a hard day at work is to walk into our smart home to be confronted with a whole lot of proactive devices competing for our attention. So we have to make sure integrated ambient systems interact in human-friendly ways.

These are just a few examples of how we might tackle the challenge of developing products that take the necessity for sustainable development seriously. Starting from where we are. And thanks to the many people throughout the company who have done terrific work on developing environmentally friendly technologies and designs, were starting from a very strong position.

Eco-Charisma

Some people seem to think that to achieve sustainable development, we have to retrace our steps, to surrender many of the comforts and benefits technology has given us. As I hope you'll have gathered, I don't share that rather puritanical view. In fact, I'm convinced that going down that path would quickly turn out to be counter-productive. Because it flies in the face of human nature.People may sometimes adjust their desires to fit in with what they know is right and sensible, but not always. Many of us will only consciously buy an environmentally-friendly product if it doesn't prevent the satisfaction of our short-term desires and needs. Rationally, we all know that sustainable development is of overriding importance for the long-term survival of the human race and, indeed, perhaps of ourselves or our children. But emotionally, when buying a product, most people tend to give priority to the immediate, tangible benefits they stand to gain. Consumers may think long-term, but they often feel short-term. That means our products must, of course, support sustainable development, but they must also be the most attractive and charismatic products on the market. If what people want is also what is good for them, then and only then are we on the right track.

Of course, this does not mean that we should hide the fact that our charismatic products support sustainable development. Quite the opposite. We should make their green character as clear as possible. It’s not a question of Either-Or but of Both. In fact, making their green character clear will often be a challenge, since that’s not always obvious on the outside.

Green brand?

And what goes for individual products also goes for the company and the brand as a whole. We need to make sure people realize where we stand on sustainable development. The public is increasingly looking to companies to behave responsibly, to live up to high moral standard. This is not surprising: after all, powerful companies have global impact, both economically and culturally. In fact, they’re often seen as more powerful than governments. And with this power comes a new responsibility, a new role. They are expected to assume a moral stature that matches their economic stature, to take a stand on social and environmental issues and to have a good track record in that area.

Brands themselves not just the products now need to be seen to be actively involved in improving the quality of peoples lives. Providing customer satisfaction through products is no longer enough. Nike was rapped on the knuckles about the child labour issues. Shell learned a tough lesson on social and environmental issues in Nigeria and in the case of the dumping of the Brent Spar oil rig: and even though it eventually turned out that they were right in the case of the Brent Spar, they suffered because they hadn't been fully open with the public about it. The days when people trusted companies to do the right thing are over. They're demanding openness and accountability. I see that Shell now issues a substantial annual report devoted entirely to environmental and social stewardship issues.

We shouldn't imagine that we at Philips are unaffected by social issues. When setting up new factories around the world, we're increasingly finding that we need to explain that the activities we'll be pursuing at the site are not only safe but also socially and environmentally responsible. It's important to be open not only with the general public but also with employees and the local communities we work in.

And we need to remember that a brand is basically a promise. And as with promises, if you make one, you have to keep it. Breaking a promise is often worse than never making one in the first place. Bodyshop shot itself in the foot recently when, having based its whole brand on being environmentally friendly, animal friendly and socially responsible, it turned out that they found that they weren't being quite as ecological as they thought. They'll certainly recover, but negative publicity about such issues dents their image more seriously than it would affect anyone else’s. So we should be careful not to promise more than we can deliver.

For those who have an eye to shareholder value and the bottom line and that's all of us here, I'm sure it's worth bearing in mind that, in the last ten years, investment in explicitly "green" funds and projects has increased tenfold making it one of today's strongest financial growth areas.

Companies, it seems, are now being expected to move beyond the satisfaction of individual needs, towards the satisfaction of social needs. As they take up that role, their brand identity will develop into a social identity.

Back to basics

It sounds as though all this is new: but is it really so new? Or is it a rediscovery of old values and a reinterpretation of them in modern terms?

One of the prime driving forces behind business has always been the desire of people – the business person and the customer – to improve their quality of life. People buy products because they believe they will improve their quality of life. Business people sell their products to be able to buy other products that will improve the quality of their lives. This basic equation is unlikely to change. Rather, what has changed is our perception of what constitutes quality of life.

The concept of sustainability aimed at creating a better, more sustainable way of life is in this sense, therefore, perfectly coherent with the underlying motivations of business.And the concept of a company with a social conscience is also nothing new. Before the days of the welfare state, many family companies including Philips cared for their employees and their families as if they were members of a large corporate family. And very often, as in the case of Philips in Eindhoven, the employees and their families were the surrounding community as well. In other words, the underlying ideas and motivations haven't really changed. As small companies outgrew their original situation, they were perhaps lost sight of. But now, it might be said that, as multinationals rediscover their role as the new “family firms” in the global village, those old values are being reinterpreted in the light of today's knowledge and in the light of today's needs and concerns.

To align management and business within Philips towards sustainable development, we need to be as consistent as we can, right across the board. We need to continue to increase the environmentally friendly character of our products and services, but we also need to make sure they that they focus directly on basic human values and qualities, advancing self-actualization for the individual and harmonious relationships in society, on both the local and the global level. And we have to achieve that with a high sense of ethical responsibility. All in all, that is no mean task. But if we take this challenge seriously, I believe it will enable us to give a deeper and ultimately more significant meaning to the phrase we have dared to adopt as our own: Let's make things better.

Motorola's Bet on the Razr's Edge

9/12/2005

Motorola had grown a reputation for stodgy cell phone designs. So how did Moto change from mundane to marvelous with the hit Razr phone? Start with low expectations. From Strategy & Innovation.

by Scott D. Anthony
In the early 2000s, Motorola—the company that two decades earlier had pioneered the mobile-phone industry—seemed to have lost its way. The communications industry titan still had a respectable share of the worldwide mobile-phone market, to be sure, but Finland-based Nokia held the lead, and emerging Korean competitors Samsung and LG had the lock on cool.
While most players focused on adding more and more features to their mobile phones to avoid the specter of commoditization, in 2004, Motorola bucked the industry trend by introducing the ultrathin Razr V3 cell phone. Just 3.35 ounces and a half-inch thick, the Razr was simpler, smaller, and sleeker than any existing phone.
The $450 phone has been a surprising breakout hit for the company, selling more than a million units in its first six months and leaving rivals scrambling to come up with something equally appealing and competitive. Just as significant, the Razr helped give Motorola a much-needed image boost, making the company appear more forward thinking and trendy than it had been perceived to be.
The Razr represents "a departure [for]…the stodgy, engineering-driven, Midwestern company that was Motorola," Yankee Group analyst John Jackson said in an Associated Press story.
To successfully introduce what it now refers to as an "iconic" product, Motorola maintained a single-minded focus on simplicity, avoiding the temptation to layer in additional features that would have made the phone bigger, heavier, and less distinctive. The company also had to dodge some of the classic traps—such as consensus-based decision-making processes that can result in compromised products—that make it so difficult for big businesses to follow new strategies.
The story of how a small team and some visionary high-level intervention steered the project around these challenges and came up with a winning product provides important lessons for innovators hoping to transform other industries.
Getting the idea
In many ways, the idea for the Razr was nothing new. At its heart, it's really not much more than a very small mobile phone. But no one had ever been able to develop a phone anywhere near as small or as slick as the Razr.
Most industry insiders assumed it was technologically impossible to make a mobile phone that small, especially if it included advanced features such as a camera. Plus, at the time, the phones that were capturing all the buzz were the so-called smartphones, such as palmOne's popular Treo 600 and 650 models, that offer a multitude of additional functions such as the ability to send and receive e-mail messages and manage a calendar.
Manufacturers (including Motorola) were also racing to create devices with high-end features that would allow users to listen to music (à la Apple's iPod) and watch streaming video clips.
What could Motorola do to distinguish itself in this ever more crowded field? A team within the IT department put together a prototype of a phone that was less than one-half-inch thick. By focusing squarely on size and simplicity, the prototype caught the attention of Chief Marketing Officer Geoffrey Frost.
Roger Jellicoe, a director of operations who managed the Razr development project, remembers that Frost "was frustrated with how stodgy our products had become. He wanted a couple of initiatives up and running that would break that image." Frost's attitude toward the Razr was aggressive: "I don't care what you have to do, let's get this done," Jellicoe remembers Frost telling the team.
Jellicoe also believed the concept had tremendous promise. "I badly wanted to do this phone," he says. "I saw the potential and realized it could change the industry."
The team that developed the product concurred. The further into the project the team got, the more convinced they became that they were on to something great. "From the beginning," Jellicoe recalls, "once you picked up the Razr and used it, you never wanted another phone."
Keeping it simple
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the Razr team was Motorola's internal innovation process. Usually, when Motorola planned to develop a new phone, representatives from each of the company's major geographic regions were asked to weigh in on the concept. The regions would request the sorts of features and functions they wanted included in the design. Each region would then forecast how many units of the model they thought they could sell. The aggregated regional plans would help Motorola then decide whether to invest in a phone's introduction.
It was a complicated dance. If a development team ignored features that a specific region deemed critical, that region would project low sales for the phone. The lowered forecast would make it tougher to get approval to move the project forward. Design teams knew they had to appease each region or their projects would die on the vine.
Obviously, this system has pluses and minuses. On the one hand, it ensures that products reflect some critical in-market feedback provided by the regions. But, it can force designers to develop compromised products that end up being acceptable to everyone yet delightful to no one. More distressing still, the process can systematically stamp out highly differentiated, counterintuitive innovations such as the Razr.
Luckily, Motorola management correctly recognized that it had to act differently if it wanted to innovate differently. Senior management, in essence, liberated the Razr from the company's development process, giving the team the freedom to create a product that they thought would be successful.
"We kept on playing the icon card," Jellicoe says. "This product was represented as this iconic, image-leading, low-sales-volume program. I think the Razr got by all the internal processes because it was characterized from the outset as an exception."
"Right at the beginning, we made a determination that we didn't care how many we sell," he adds. "It was decided we were going to do it for the learning and the brand building. That enabled it to bypass a lot of the internal hurdles."
Jellicoe is quick to note that he doesn't believe that Motorola's traditional process is faulty. "I had to be very careful to make it very clear that I believed in the process, that I thought it was a great thing and an important thing that is good for the business," he says. "But this was the kind of project that the process was never intended to apply to."
Jellicoe recalls the importance of having senior management's buy-in during the program's early days. He describes how Rob Shaddock, the group's general manager, provided "air cover" for the program, making sure the company didn't count on getting a huge boost from an uncertain venture.
"He would say, 'I don't want anybody to count on something that is this technologically advanced hitting next year. We have to make our companywide plan without it, and if this team delivers on this product, then it is all upside,'" Jellicoe says.

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the Razr team was Motorola's internal innovation process.

Not only did this freedom make it possible to move forward without getting buy-in from each region, but the team also didn't have to go through cumbersome rounds of customer research that might have slowed development or provided conflicting information that could have compromised the product. Motorola validated the demand for the product in simpler ways.
"Everybody here is a consumer," Jellicoe says. "All our families are consumers. Sometimes you hit on a design where people say, "Wow, I have to have it!" There is a reaction you get that, when it happens, you know it's going to be a successful program."
Finally, the team did not have to work closely with the mobile-phone operators such as Vodafone and Cingular that would ultimately sell the phones. The stealth approach allowed the team to get a leg up in the marketplace.
"One of the big successes of Razr was that it took the world by surprise," Jellicoe says. "There are very few Motorola products that do that."
Solving the problems
Of course, coming up with a good idea and having the organizational leeway to move forward is never sufficient. Developing the right technology is critical, and Motorola also had to solve some tricky equipment-related issues before it could introduce the Razr.
Jellicoe says the team started its work by looking at concepts that engineers had discarded. "I found that the engineers had already cast aside some clever and promising directions based on very informal discussions with various expert groups," Jellicoe says. He put together a sketch that incorporated elements from different ideas. "None of those ideas was the complete solution, and so the tradeoffs or risks were judged unacceptable when each was considered separately," he says. "When the novel ideas were put together, however, the risks seemed manageable. This illustrates both the hazards of group thinking and the fact that innovation can sometimes move forward only when ideas are evaluated in combination rather than in isolation."
One particularly perplexing problem related to moving from sketch to reality involved the placement of the antenna that sends and receives the radio signal. To keep the phone as small as possible, the antenna had to be designed into the phone's casing. That was a problem the industry had not yet solved. Jellicoe says he sent five engineers off for a week, each charged with coming up with two different designs that would solve the problem.
A quick analysis of the proposed solutions suggested to the team that three of the resulting designs had the highest potential. The team then used some of Motorola's internal resources over an intense two-week period to develop rough prototypes with which to test the three options. At the end of the test period, the team had settled on a single design. Not only did it fit into the product's specifications, it has performed extremely well in the field.
"That antenna is showing better performance in the field than any other antenna we have in GSM," says Jellicoe. (Editors' note: GSM stands for global systems for mobile, the technology standard used in most of Europe and Asia and by Cingular and T-Mobile in the United States.) "Obviously, all of [Motorola's] GSM programs from this point on are adopting this same style of antenna. This is clearly a big win."
As Jellicoe reflects on the antenna's design, he notes that the person who came up with the winning blueprint actually was one of the younger members of the team. "He had very little antenna experience," Jellicoe says. "So he didn't have the baggage that other people had."

One of the big successes of Razr was that it took the world by surprise.

— Roger Jellicoe, Motorola

The team faced other design challenges as well, such as finding a way to mount a camera onto the tiny product and developing a keypad that was etched directly onto the phone. Although solving these problems was difficult, the team didn't have to develop completely new technologies to do so.
"We had a thin-phone concept that, for the most part, didn't require any new breakthrough technology, just a repackaging of existing technology," Jellicoe says. "That meant we could execute in a year, which meant it wasn't a man-in-the-moon concept that could take three or four years to develop."
What's next?
When Motorola introduced the Razr in August 2004, the industry took notice. Consumers quickly snatched it up. Jellicoe says the Razr exceeded the company's total lifetime projections for the product in its first three months.
Even those most intimately familiar with the product have been surprised by the benefits Razr has brought to the company.
"Prior to Razr, if we didn't show a product [to a carrier], there was no interest," Jellicoe says. "Now we say we have this secret program we are working on, and nobody wants to be left out. . . . It has kicked down some doors for us and gets us noticed. It really is a tremendous brand builder. As for credibility in the marketplace, it has been a very big win."
Not only has the phone had a strong external impact, it has had a serious internal impact as well.
"People's eyes have been opened to what can be accomplished internally," Jellicoe says. "And the bar has been raised for other programs. Razr's success suggests that a new product can have a wider impact than just within its category."
Frost says he draws four primary lessons from the Razr's success: "First, it was a bet being made, not a base being covered. We didn't even include it in the sector's business plan. Second, no compromise was the standard operating procedure. We didn't juggle tradeoffs, we just insisted on excellence," he says.
"Third, we didn't try to predict the market for the product based on history, we bet that if it was good enough, it would make its own market. Finally, we put the best, brightest, craziest, and most passionate people we had on it."
Motorola knew that it would stand alone in this category only for a short time. Indeed, competitors quickly announced plans to introduce competing phones. But Motorola's ambitious, clandestine approach gave it almost six months of exclusivity in the marketplace, a lifetime in the fiercely competitive mobile phone environment.
To keep its brand momentum, and the valuable buzz that accompanies it, the company is continuing to invest in the creation of "iconic" products in the hope that each new introduction will have the same marketplace impact that the Razr did. Jellicoe acknowledges that following up on the Razr's success will be difficult.
"There was a suggestion that we need two icons a year. I cautioned about that," Jellicoe says. "If you do something totally revolutionary twice a year, doing something revolutionary ceases to be remarkable. And I would question the marketplace's ability to absorb a revolution twice a year. If you take that approach, you have to expect that many of these things would fail."
Motorola's managers and shareholders would be unlikely to argue with "just" one massive success a year. 
Reproduced with permission from "Making the Most of a Slim Chance," Strategy and Innovation, Vol. 3, No. 4, July/August 2005.

GE Goes Back To School For Innovation

At midterm we took you to the Congo and gave you malaria," Roel Punzalan, a 26 year-old product design student from the Philippines said as the lights went down in a funky concrete studio on the edge of the Art Center College of Design's Pasadena [Calif.] campus. "Now, hopefully, we'll cure it."



Punzalan was joking, of course. His presentation was one of several that students of the well-known design school nestled in the hills near Los Angeles gave to corporate customers including BMW, Honda, and Nestle on Dec. 7. Art Center calls it Super Thursday, the day when, after a semester of working on a corporate assignment, students deliver their ideas. Art Center has been working with corporate clients almost since its founding in 1930, and design schools around the world engage in similar projects.



It's a first, however, for General Electric's health-care unit, which sells $15 billion a year worth of clunky X-ray machines, CAT-scan machines, and ultrasound testing equipment. The health-care division has long been a technology innovator. But it has historically tried to differentiate its products by getting better and faster readings from its instruments -- "feeds and speeds" as Lou Lenzi, the general manager of global design at GE Healthcare, puts it. So turning to art school students for ideas is a significant departure.



Good for Patients and Profits

But to compete now, the company believes that it has to offer more than just better technology. GE wants to make medical tests easier on both the patients and the operators of the equipment, which means focusing on the human side of the equation, from ergonomics to emotions. How, for instance, could a traditionally monstrous CAT scan machine be designed to seem less ominous to patients already distressed by their medical condition? How could a machine be easier for the technician to use?



In addition to the primary human-centered goals, such design improvements should translate into more accurate readings and a leg up on rival manufacturers. "All of our competitors have similar technology," admits Lawrence Murphy, the health-care unit's chief designer. "We're looking beyond the hardware. We're looking at the patient's journey."



GE Healthcare's participation in the student project came out of a meeting of its two-year-old design council, a group of design bigwigs from various GE business units who convene quarterly to share ideas. When the health-care unit's representative on the design council, Douglas Dietz, heard that corporate dollars were being made available to fund a student project, he jumped at the opportunity.



Improved Experience

There were other forces at work, too. One of GE Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt's initiatives has been to call on employees to "Go Big" by targeting large markets and ideas that might pay off in outsized ways. With that in mind, the health-care designers asked the Art Center students to look at how the company's services might be delivered in developing nations 20 years from now.



Art Center fielded three teams of roughly eight students each that spent the semester studying both existing and emerging health needs in Africa. The students came up with some winners, such as an ultrasound machine that wrapped like a blanket around a woman's stomach. The design alleviated the need for the messy gel that, in current tests, is smeared over the mother's stomach -- an improvement to the patient experience.



More important, it reduced the training required for technicians. Current machines depend on a skilled technician to guide a probe over the stomach. In contrast, the multiple imaging sensors woven into the blanket meant that the device simply had to be correctly placed, a big advantage in countries in which technicians are in short supply.



Considering the Culture

Another student concept was a non-invasive malaria test, a scanner that could detect disease by looking through the skin of a patient's hand. Malaria is currently diagnosed with a needle prick and a blood test, something that scares some patients away and can delay treatment until results come back. Like many of the student products, the scanner was painted in earthy African colors so as to seem less foreign, and had wicker handles similar to those of countless tools used in rural villages. That also appealed to the GE folk. "If a patient relaxes you get a better scan," Murphy said. "There's a huge domino effect in terms of productivity."



Some of the student ideas were surprisingly simple, such as allowing African villagers to personalize their mosquito netting by dyeing it with colored insect repellent from a flower-like dispenser. "Rates of malaria dropped 80% in villages that used bed nets," explained Eric Burns, a 26-year-old product design student from Natchez, Miss. "Why are we giving them a white net, a product we designed? If it's designed by the user, they're learning about this and they're having fun."



The young designers also took great care to integrate African languages and customs into their products. A radio bracelet that could alert a midwife if a pregnant woman in her care was having trouble, was modeled on African jewelry and was decorated with indentations that resembled the ritual scarification some African mothers participate in. The product was called Akuaba -- which means fertility in a Nigerian dialect.



The Art of Problem-Solving

Other ideas seemed more out of Jules Verne -- a dirigible that could transport mothers-to-be who developed complications from remote regions to an acute care hospital. That idea won praise for addressing a major problem in developing countries, the lack of infrastructure. It also resonated with the GE folk because it involved several of the company's other business lines. "Would GE make it? Probably not," Murphy said, though he added, "but we do make aircraft propulsion systems and plastics and power generators."



The dirigible also illustrates how design school students are being taught to take a systems approach to problem-solving. The idea is that you don't tackle high maternal mortality rates solely by designing better diagnostic equipment -- you also find a faster and environmentally-friendly way to get the patient to a place she can get care. To foster that holistic approach, each Art Center team included students from product, transportation, and environmental design. "Design is changing from surface modeling and pretty images to products that have a physical and emotional outcome," explained David Mocarski, the chairman of the environmental design department at Art Center.



Beyond Vanilla

Companies typically pay around $100,000 to sponsor a semester-long course. Art Center staff members admit that the businesses aren't likely to walk away with products they can immediately put to market. The GE representatives said they had multiple goals. For one, it gets design students excited about an industry in which they might not otherwise think of working -- and that seemed to happen. "I would say this is the best class I've had," said Katherine Dill, a 25 year-old product student from Chappaqua, N.Y.



These projects also open the eyes and minds of the corporate team. They reminded the GE designers of the value of human-centered design. And even the wildly impractical design concepts served a purpose, by living up to Immelt's missive to "Go Big," and encouraging the GE team to reconsider what their work could be -- waste-disposal vehicles shaped like elephants, water-borne clinics powered by tidal waves, probes that test for parasites in water and shoot out red warning flags that double as larva traps.



"We like to think we're young and hip, but most of our products look like this," said GE design exec Dietz as he tapped a plain white coffee mug at a luncheon following the student presentations. "White enamel, with maybe a little silver on top."

Copyright 2006 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.