Interactions - November/December 2008

established processes. In trying to control and optimize the experience, they make it nearly impossible to innovate. In addition, the lack of understanding from managers at all levels often kills off the products of innovation (and often the process, too), even when truly innovative solutions emerge.

Design-led innovation has an edge on other approaches because of its history of user-centered research, prototyping, critique, iteration, and embracing of constraints. Unlike other development processes, it makes room for meaning and other questions to be addressed

before requirements are solidified. In addition, developers have an opportunity to play a role not only in the product development realm but also in the boardroom, where organizational strategy is set (and needs to reflect better customer understanding). The fruit of design and user research is often more valuable at the strategic-management levels of an organization than even at the product-development level. Unfortunately, like the often inadequate market understanding available to leadership and senior management, their “deep” understanding of their custom-

ers is often shallow and off the mark.

Implementation and approach, of course, depend on an organization’s innovation culture (described previously). But since innovation hasn’t been the focus of most organizations, their processes often prevent the possibility of innovation. Also, most business functions, from accounting to operations and even marketing, are focused on optimization and standardization. Innovation is entirely different from these and most often needs to be shielded from other business processes and measurements within an organization. For example, Six Sigma can be a highly effective tool for optimizing quality within a supply chain but it is probably the surest way to kill innovation within an organization. Trying to apply the same management processes to every department and every activity within an organization is, perhaps, the biggest failure of organizations trying to innovate.

In this way, the entire con-
cept of design can be described
as the process of meaningful
innovation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nathan Shedroff is the chair of the ground-break-ing MBA in design strategy at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San

Francisco, CA. This program melds the unique principles that design offers business strategy with a vision of the future of business as sustainable, meaningful, and truly innovative—as well as profitable. He is a pioneer in information, interaction, and experience design and author of several books on design, meaning, and interaction. For more information, visit him at www. nathan.com.