Design Thinking and the Experience of Innovation
by Barry Wylant
Design Issues: Volume 24, Number 2 Spring 2008
Due to geographic proximity and a linked focus, clusters are useful in enhancing the microeconomic capability of a given region. This occurs through improvements in the productivity of cluster members which enables them to compete effectively in both regional and global markets. The geographic concentration allows for access to capabilities, information, expertise, and ideas. They allow members to quickly perceive new buyer needs, and new technological, delivery, or operating possibilities. This allows members to quickly recognize and identify new opportunities far more readily than those residing outside the cluster. Pressure also exists within clusters. Competition and peer pressure can drive an inherent need for participants to distinguish themselves, and proactively force the pursuit of innovation. Also cluster participants tend to contribute to local research institutes and universities, and may work together to develop local resources collectively and privately in a manner beyond the mandate of local governments and other organizations.
Categories of Innovation
An early writer on innovation, Joseph Schumpeter, distinguished it from invention, and saw it as a far more potent contributor to pros- perity. In Schumpeter’s estimation, inventors only generated ideas, while innovation occurs as the entrepreneur is able to implement and introduce the new idea into a form of widespread use. He referred to this as the entrepreneur’s ability to “get things done,” and saw it as a definitive aspect of the innovation process.
Innovation Triggers
At the scale of the individual, certain conditions can be seen to enhance the pursuit of innovation and creativity. The psychologist Teresa Amabile proposes a componential framework for creativity. She identifies three main psychological components: domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant skills, and task motivation.
Domain- relevance refers to areas of knowledge and skill embodied by an individual, such as factual knowledge and expertise in a given topic.
Creativity-relevant skills include the typical cognitive styles, work styles, and personality traits that influence how one approaches a particular problem-solving task. Creativity-relevant skills inform the way an individual may perceive, comprehend, navigate, manipulate, and otherwise consider issues and problems in novel and useful ways. Such skills are further influenced by personality traits such as self-discipline, the ability to entertain ambiguity and complexity, the capacity to delay gratification, an autonomous outlook on the world, and a willingness to take risks.
Task motivation addresses the motivational state in which the creative act is pursued. Intrinsic motivation, is understood as those factors which exist from within the individual’s own personal view. One can be seen as intrinsically motivated in a given task when engagement in that task is perceived as a meritorious end in itself. Extrinsic motivation or external factors such as deadlines, payment, aspects of supervision, etc. are understood as mitigating factors external to the task itself and are imposed externally to the person completing the task.1
Towards the Idea in Innovation
new things can take on a variety of forms such as a product, behavior, system, process, organization, or business model. At the heart of all these “new things” is an idea which is deemed meritorious and, when acted upon, ultimately affects the innovation. To describe an idea as “innovative” suggests that it should be acted upon.
The Idea Experience
Imagination allows us to entertain the notion of the shape of a face evident in the outline of clouds, just as one might see a pattern in the arrangement of bricks on the façade of a building. The viewer cognitively matches the shape of the cloud or the arrangement of bricks to a previously understood concept, that of a particular animal or geometric form such as a circle.
imaginative perception, as evident in the aesthetic experience of architecture, represents the genesis of an idea.
an idea’s constituent elements can be noted. These include a stimulus of some sort, that is, something that could arrest or hold the attention of a potential viewer. The examples above suggest something seen or physical, however, it could be otherwise such as a musical note or the spoken word. Such stimuli exist in settings or contexts, such as a cloud in the sky, a brick in a wall, or a musical chord in a song. And, of course, there must be a viewer, someone who can then perceive and consider the stimulus. It is in the consideration of such stimuli that one can cognitively nest perception within a body of experience and learning that then can inform the comprehension of a particular stimulus and make sense of it in an imaginative way.
The key to the interplay of these idea elements is the capacity of the stimulus to hold one’s attention and engender its consideration.
This ability to flexibly generate different imaginative responses to stimuli is open to influence from a variety of sources, anything that could then prompt one’s reconsideration of the stimulus.
Idea Elements
The idea elements described above can be seen to act within a cognitive mechanism that engenders an idea. Certain historical instances are useful in illustrating how these idea elements work in different ways.
The Considered Idea
The examples noted above echo Krippendorf’s discussion regarding product semantics. Krippendorf postulates that in viewing a given product, one imaginatively contextualizes the perception of that object as a means of comprehending significance.24 In this, the viewer formulates ideas about the object, cognitively placing it into contexts that allow her to formulate an understanding of it. For instance, she might consider how a chair could look in her living room while seeing it in a store. Krippendorf notes that “Meaning is a cognitively constructed relationship. It selectively connects features of an object and features of its (real environment or imagined) context into a coherent unity.” 25 The ability to comprehend a totality of meaning in this is seen in the summation of all potentially imaginable contexts by an individual.
One can arrive at scores of such ideas in the course of the day. Other ideas require more work. Often, the genesis of a useful idea requires that one work through the generation of sequential or chained ideas
Nesting stimuli within contexts is informed to some degree by the conceptual space where that contextualization takes place. Psychologist Margaret Boden states: “The dimensions of a conceptual space are the organizing principles that unify and give structure to a given domain of thinking.”
The extensive knowledge base of a given profession or discipline (as evident in Amabile’s notion of domain relevance skills) provides an example of such conceptual space, where there are accepted normative concepts, standards, and language that underlie the conduct of the discipline. Indeed, even language forms a type of conceptual space where the rules of spelling and grammar allow one to make sense of individual letters and words. As Krippendorf notes, the act of naming something immediately places it within a linguistic context, subsequently making it subject to the rules of language as part of the sense- making process.
The Idea in Innovation
The expression “thinking outside the box” is commonly used in reference to new ideas and innovation. This colloquialism reflects an intuitive understanding of the idea generation process: cognitive contextualization can be seen as a space (or box) for the consideration of a stimulus. Given the intent of the expression, thinking “inside the box” refers to a more pedestrian form of sense-making. The need to make sense of things via fresh contexts and/or stimuli is necessary to break out of the “box.”
Insights into the idea mechanism and the need to think outside of the box can inform the discussion on innovation. For instance, clusters allow individuals to work closely with others in contextually matched endeavors. In this clusters play to chance and serve, through proximity and convenient connectivity, to increase the likelihood that one might consider a given stimulus within a related, yet new and useful, context. This, in turn, can engender a new idea, cultivating the likelihood of any follow-through innovation.
To move beyond imitative and continuous innovations, greater originality is required in the generation of new ideas.
in brainstorming the type of people included, the inherent structuring of the session, the suspension of judgment, and the use of various media to capture ideas, comments, and notions all can be seen as significant in the generation of new ideas. Brainstorming members who come from different backgrounds (sociologists, psychologists, designers, engineers, etc.) are able to draw upon differing creativity-relevant and domain-relevant skill sets.
Within this dynamic, the deferment of judgment is useful because it allows members to continue nesting new ideas as stimuli to subsequent ideas, a process which judgment might interrupt or divert. Further, contributions to the discussion made in a prescribed order also can muzzle the free association between stimuli and useful contexts. According to Kelley, in an effective brainstorming session, ideas are not only verbally expressed but captured via notes, sketches, the quick model, etc.29 These media are useful because they play to people’s different capacities in their individual domain or creativity-relevant skill sets. People will respond to sketches or notes, as stimuli, in differing and original ways leading again to more unique ideas.
Introducing the New Idea
Amabile proposes a creative process in which components of creativity influence activities in different phases. One can see how the execution of domain- or creativity-relevant skills might occur in this, and how motivation can influence the creative result.
Amabile’s notion of creative outcome corresponds to the resulting design itself, which takes form through specification documents and, ultimately, in the launch of a product.
he application of Amabile’s theory is scalable to the type of tasks undertaken, whether they are small interim steps or the entire process. Even within the completion of a single sketch there are aspects of preparation, validation, and outcome, and so the completion of any interim step can be seen as an execution of the larger creative process in miniature. In turn, aspects of all the noted creative activities are apparent in each of the larger phases of Amabile’s overall process. Responses will be generated and validated within the preparation phase, and there will be aspects of preparation in the subsequent phases.
In evaluating the sketch using placements, the designer can learn more about the extent of the design problem, his or her design intent, and the necessity for further exploration.
The continued drive to use one idea as a stimulus to a subsequent one is indicative of curiosity. A significant lesson that can be drawn from design thinking and the consideration of placements is that it is more a process of raising (several) good questions versus one for finding the right answers. That one does not make an a priori commitment in the initial entertainment of a given placement means that it is used to learn more about the issues under consideration. Indeed, that one entertains a placement is indicative of the playful quality inherent in the design pursuit. Given the curios- ity that drives such play, and the skill with which it is executed, an effectively broad range of issues can be raised and duly considered in the development and introduction of innovative new things.