[MUSIC]

Hi, I'm Liz Gerber.

In the previous modules, you learned the process that drives design innovation.

Now when you want to bring innovation to your organization and

sustain it over time, where do you begin?

In this module, I will share theory, case studies, and

practical techniques to help you lead an organization that routinely produces

innovative product, service, and systems.

Let's start by discussing the essential attitudes that a design

focused organization needs to foster to achieve quality results.

Working together.

Important problems that actually worth solving are often located in complex

systems which involve many stakeholders.

To design sustainable, useful and meaningful solutions,

it's not enough to depend on a single expert with a single perspective.

Innovation occurs when people with diverse backgrounds work together.

Only then can you quickly get to novel insights and solutions.

The next attitude to consider is building to learn, not to impress.

Learning and innovation are tightly linked.

We learn more when we focus on what is possible,

rather than be preoccupied with appearing to have all of the answers.

The drive to be right and striving to impress others causes people to

only consider what they already know, rather than explore what they don't know.

By contrast,

people who have a growth mindset are constantly seeking learning opportunities.

They've driven by the belief that you can always learn more and

improve through practice.

Failed attempts are not a sign of inadequacy and risks are happily taken.

The next attitude considered is taking many paths.

This is based on research that when we commit to a single idea early,

we are less likely to learn.

And the further along you go down a single path, the costlier the mistakes become.

Exploring good and bad ideas early in the process exposes important gaps in

knowledge and enables organizations to learn whether ideas have promise.

Lastly, let's discuss embracing change.

Research finds that innovators actively desire to change the status quo and

regularly take risks to make the change happen.

Skype cofounder, Niklas Zennstrom, says that he wants to be disruptive, but

in the cause of making the world a better place.

Innovators avoid the human tendency to prefer the existing state of affairs.

My own research found that it's easier to take risk and

learn from mistakes when embracing design innovation's mission of embracing change.

To look at how these attitudes translate into practice, let's talk a look at

Iliana Moore's decision to create a new patient portal to improve the access to

medical records online for her patients at the Erie Family Health Center.

First, she put together a team that included a medical doctor,

a social worker, a patient, a caregiver, an interaction designer,

and a technician who maintained the portal and records.

Together, they built many rough, inexpensive mockups out of paper and

cardboard to understand the necessary size of the online medical record interface,

the placement of the monitor in the waiting room, and the sequence for

data entry, and so on.

The team created, at least, three different prototype at each

stage of the design process, so that they would not fixate on a single solution, but

rather keep in a state of exploration.

By having this attitude, they quickly learned about the language barriers and

the difficulty of navigating the portal on a small handheld device.

By focusing on direct, actionable feedback, elicited from the prototypes,

to enable learning rather than the avoidance of prototypes that didn't work,

they made quicker progress.

She knew that their unflinching willingness to take risks and

learning from mistakes was the only way to get there.

While these attitudes are easy to describe, they can be hard to foster in

a work environment where people are busy with their current work and

resistant to change.

Plus, people often perceive learning from experimentation as expensive and

threatening to their job security.

Great leaders overcome these challenges by creating an environment which makes it

easier for people to take risks by providing inspiration and

opportunities to learn from innovation.

But how do they do this?

As you've learned in previous modules, leaders lead by example.

You could be a role model to your employees, and

use the design innovation approach you've just learned in your own organization.

Your challenge as a leader of design innovation is as follows.

How might you design your organization to be more innovative?

In the following videos, I will talk about three areas of your organization which you

may focus your efforts, communication, building your team, and physical space.

In the final video, I will talk about return on investment.

[MUSIC]

Designing your own Organization

Leadership Through Design Innovation

Rencontrer les enseignants