Creating a human-centered future through design: a practical approach to the corporate challenges
Innovation is neither a simple nor an easy task. To break patterns we need to step out of our comfort zone. What happens in real life?
written by Helena Wataya and Thiago Yamabuchi
The future is coming really fast and for companies who want to remain relevant in this increasingly volatile and shifting context, change is no longer an option. The only possible choice is about the role to be played: companies could be protagonists, creators of the desired future; or mere spectators, who just observe and adapt to the transformation. A survey conducted by IBM with more than 1500 CEOs around the world identified that creativity is the main characteristic of the leadership of the future. But where do good ideas come from?
Innovation is neither a simple nor an easy task. To break patterns we need to step out of our comfort zone and be constantly open to new possibilities. Innovation happens when curious, questioning and nonconformist minds, that refuse to accept things as they are, get together in favor of a common objective. Steve Jobs said that innovators have the ability to make better connections between people and ideas.
There are several methodologies widely disseminated that aim to structure the innovation process, that helps to transform ideas into profitable business. It is true that there isn’t a magic formula or one method better than another, before choosing which approaches to use, it is essential to understand the context.
Reframing Corporate Innovation
Many people associate innovation with emerging technologies, however, innovation is much more than that. Technologies aren’t the end in themselves. New techs are the means, facilitators and enablers of something greater. This is why the most innovative companies in the world have three main characteristics: innovative people open to change, processes that enable transformation and an organizational philosophy that follows in the same direction. Innovation generates value, provides advances and makes a difference in people’s lives.
According to Clay Christensen, professor at Harvard University for years and a reference in innovation, we can classify innovation in three different types, from incremental to the most disruptive kind.
Sustaining Innovation is incremental innovation, focused on improving relevant attributes of the product or service for the best and most demanding customers in the industry, who are willing to pay more for that. This scenario is better for those companies that are already consolidated in the market.
Low-end Disruptions are innovations that focus on creating products and services that are “good enough”, users consume them totality — all possibilities are explored and used by their users. This context is usually more favorable to startups. Products and services focused on users who always have many options in the market.
New-market Disruptions are radical innovations that create a new market — startups tend to do better than established companies. Their products and services have convenience and simplicity; focus on users typically unseen by the market.
A study by McKinsey shows that, for large corporations, there is a direct correlation between business performance and the use of design mindset, as a result, products and services offered tend to be better. However, the adoption of this approach by companies is recent. In 1909, Henry Ford revolutionized the way people move when he created the Ford Model-T automobile. Transport by carts and animals was no longer necessary — from that moment on, people could travel distances of up to 40 km at 72 km/h consuming 3.5 liters, an innovation without any historical precedent. But despite all the benefits, Ford did not take into account the diverse scenarios of everyday car use by customers. At that time there was a wide variety of roads on which the car could not travel and one of the biggest reasons why families acquired the vehicle was to use it in rural work. The lack of adaptation by Ford made the owners do by themselves modifications in their cars. The Ford Model-T example is not an isolated case, the industrial revolution mantra was, “one size fits all” solution for all customers. Only in 1919, in Germany, with the emergence of the Bauhaus school of design, a movement contrary to Henry’s had begun.
By definition, usability is the user’s ability to successfully perform a given task. Although today the concept is used to build products, in the beginning it was used only to measure navigability in virtual environments. The Japanese company Toyota uses an expression for this kind of approach, they call it Genchi Genbutsu, or “the real situation in the very place where it happens”. When in 2004 the automaker’s chief engineer Yuji Yokoya received the responsibility of launching a minivan in the United States, he decided to drive minivans across all the 50 American states. His intention was to, through real exploration, understand how a driver felt when driving this type of vehicle through North American streets and highways. Designers need this contact with people to generate empathy, these professionals need to put themselves in other people’s shoes, independent of their own reality.
However, even today, to utilize such user-centric approaches in the corporate world requires an internal process, time, maturity, and aptitude. Nielsen|Norman group developed a maturity scale for UX, which facilitates the assessment and understanding of the company’s level and gives guidance regarding the action plan that must be applied and developed for this cultural evolution.
Such a vision empowers professionals to make more aligned decisions and prioritize what will bring more added value to the user.
What happens in real life? Design-driven innovation made tangible
Embraer’s Design Sprint
Sprint is a methodology used by Google Ventures to quickly validate hypotheses of new products or services with users. The method consists in looking into the future, where it is possible to see the finished product and analyze the reactions of customers, without having to make high investments.
In 2018, the Innovation area and the Digital Transformation team, brought the method to Embraer. The original methodology proposes a 5-day period to carry out the Sprint. This is the time needed to create a sense of urgency, promote structured discussions, keep the team focused, and have time to build and test a prototype.
The methodology was well accepted by the company’s culture. This feeling of “task force” to solve a problem as a team was responsible for this cultural adherence. This finding is much more than just a feeling, it is possible to conclude with numbers. In 2019, 4 sprints were planned during the 12 months of the year, but by the end of the year, the number had tripled, reaching 12 sprints with more than 500 people attending. Within this example, three sprints are highlighted: one for the creation of Embraer’s 2025 strategy with C-Level and company directors; the second an international sprint to design Embraer flying car accessibility solutions together with PWD (Person With Disabilities) representatives; and the third, again with leadership and employees to plan together the construction of a new blueprint in São José dos Campos. In this last example, the offices, social area, services, parking, cafes, decompression areas and meeting rooms were created in this sprint. More than 90% of the ideas generated were implemented and, when necessary, built by the company. This fact reinforces that the result of the sprint is not only abstract, but that it brought real contributions and that people were actually heard in their suggestions.
Intrapreneurship Programs at EY Latin America
One of the greatest challenges of EY Innovation Center was to provide scalability and to structure the innovation process at the firm in a practical way, ensuring that ideas evolve from the concept and become a profitable business. For this task, the innovation funnel was used. Inspired by the sales funnel, it can be classified as a management tool, which supports the creation and development of innovative ideas aligned with the business strategy, which are viable and feasible.
In early 2020, we launched a structured an innovation program, which comprised 2 intrapreneurship projects that took place in parallel, one of which was focused on fostering internal entrepreneurship to create businesses that will transform EY from the inside out and the other one with the purpose of enabling innovation for clients in strategic opportunities that were already mapped. For nearly 5 months, both projects went through the entire innovation funnel.
The starting point was a business challenge mapping and prioritization with the company’s leadership, and from 6 business challenges, an Open Ideation period was started that lasted about 5 weeks and was open to more than 8,000 EY professionals from all offices in the region. During this time, employees formed groups of 3 to 5 people and shared ideas to one or more of the proposed challenges. The Open Ideation stage also included educational initiatives, such as meetups, which had the objective of making tangible, demystifying and bringing professionals closer to the mindset, principles and values that promote innovation. In the end, the 2 projects totaled more than 125 ideas and directly involved 155 people from 5 different countries, 3 languages.
The 20 selected groups went through a Pitch Day and the 14 selected went on to the refinement phase, attending business modeling workshops, Design Sprint week, prototyping sessions, Demo Day testing and validation conversations with potential clients and users. There were over 200 hours of virtual workshops and structured discussion sessions held in 3 languages and directly involving 60 people, more than 20 leaders from the region and 20 experts. This effort resulted in 20 detailed and validated business models, 12 digital products prototyped: 05 of them tested and validated with potential customers and 03 of them developed and now in a pilot phase in partnership with strategic clients.
Key Learnings
The current scenario has significantly transformed the way we promote corporate innovation, due to the pandemic. Some of which are more obvious such as changing programs to a 100% virtual model, others less so such as the fact that people have become more willing to embrace the new. This factor also generated greater engagement in adopting a new mindset throughout the process of building and developing new ideas.
The process, although 100% online, was still all about people, and people are real. The principles that allow ideation workshops, collaborative sessions and structured discussions to be so effective have been maintained: empathy, collaboration and multidisciplinary co-creation, experimentation and rapid prototyping.
Virtual management requires much more planning, organization of data, and qualitative evidence in a visual way. Communication is everything: as specific as possible, clarifying what success looks and feels like, straight to the point, and suggesting next steps.
Virtual workshops require more prework, a detailed agenda, one dedicated facilitator to each breakout session. Visual identity and consistency, objectivity, visibility, soundtrack and good humor were also essential to ensure focus and engagement of a multidisciplinary and multicultural team. Previous test sessions, great storytelling, gamification, didactics are key. Icebreakers and daily mindfulness and stretching sessions were indispensable factors for the workshops to be productive and enjoyable.
