To be clear, there was not a specific or clearly articulated goal of the Ideas Camp. Instead it was focused on creating a space where ideas could cross-pollinate. That said, key folks on the Nokia leadership team (such as Marco Argenti VP, Media, MS Services and Tero Ojanpera EVP, Services,Group Executive Board) were on hand to share their perspective about what opportunities are open to Nokia, how they’ve been approaching innovation, what challenges they’re facing, and to solicit feedback.

Keep in mind that Nokia is the largest manufacturer of mobile devices in the world and that they’ve taken a very sensible and diversified approach to innovation. They run camps like this one, participate in many industry events, and spend more than four times what Apple does on research and development. But as is often the case, being the biggest can actually be an impediment to being the most innovative. I heard the following question many times at the event, “why is the experience of using a Nokia so far behind that of using an iPhone?”

I’d like to try and address this question based on what I learned at the event and share some of my thinking since then. Here are some of my assumptions going into the exploration:

About Innovation

• Structure Enables Innovation – Innovation works best as a practice that produces lots of ideas through dialogue. There are lots of innovation techniques to choose from, but the best innovation environments balance a portfolio of techniques against the culture of an organization.
• Diversify Innovation – A solid set of innovation techniques includes a diverse set of approaches. Diversity can also be applied to your specific techniques but also on a higher level with in an organization such that teams of people approach design challenges from different perspectives. Investing broadly is one way of stabilizing the flow of innovation while increasing the likelihood of long-term results.
• Enculturate Innovation – Innovation practice must be baked into a culture or an organization because it is a “way of thinking”. In short, innovation cannot just be “turned on” because it is a cultural practice that reliably spins off new idea-combinations.

About Nokia

• Nokia’s Focus – Nokia is still ramping up it’s focus on mobile computing devices. (i.e. what many refer to as smartphones … though Nokia rightly dislikes this term). The fact is that while they’ve produced the most reliable and affordable phones in the world, these phones do not offer the most advanced technology or user experience.
• Nokia’s Legacy – A significant portion of Nokia’s research and development goes to maintaining existing products and services rather than on developing new offerings.
• Nokia’s Fragmentation – Nokia is a large organization with research and development taking place at three or more separate facilities around the world.

So Nokia is a unique organization with some significant challenges. To be successful, they  must shift some of their focus towards innovation, away from legacy products and services, and look for opportunities to drive alignment across the organization. In terms of the opportunity, I think it was Tero that said “Nokia is like a friend you’d have over for dinner.” In other words, Nokia hasn’t done anything bad. Maybe they haven’t blown people away, but most people would be very open to giving Nokia a chance if they came to the table with something they were really proud of.

Which brings us to the topic of how to structure innovation at an organization like Nokia. At the event I heard that the research and development efforts at Nokia were extensive but fragmented, that there may be good ideas inside Nokia that are not being surfaced, that Nokia doesn’t have the internal culture to create a rival to the iPhone, and finally that setting up a skunk works would threaten the internal research and development organization. It’s this last point that struck me as a problem if it is in fact true.

In the diagram above, I’ve tried to demonstrate that internal teams should NOT be afraid of skunk works or of crowd sourcing as these are two approaches that may be essential to getting unstuck (if Nokia is in fact stuck). Clearly, they are different but they do have some things in common besides their ultimate goal. They both tend to sit behind a firewall of sorts that provides the cultural autonomy to think outside the box. They both have the ability to move fast and tend to employ smaller agile teams.

I suppose on defining factor in choosing one of these approaches is whether or not the project in question benefits from being public. If it doesn’t (even with legal protections) skunk works may be the only option. I won’t get into the pros/cons of each approach further, but I didn’t hear from Nokia that they’re whole heatedly trying either. One thing I did hear from a former Apple designer, however, was that Apple’s iOS development team was quite small and that this played a significant part in it’s ability to deliver a delightful experience. So, why hasn’t Nokia delivered anything close to the iPhone, I’d say it has something to do with the way they’ve optimized/structured their innovation practices.

In conclusion, I should emphasize that internal teams should manage these approaches because they understand the constraints best. Managing also means there are clear measures of success in place and a structured means of reviewing performance. And these approaches are not JUST for getting unstuck, like any discipline they take practice before you’ll get the most value from them. Finally, Nokia should not try to reinvent the iPhone, they should try and come up with something uniquely Nokia. I think that something will have a less stylized experience that feel more transparent as compared to the iPhone. One benefit of this is that could appeal to the much broader market that Nokia has been serving for years.

Can you describe a future in which you would voluntarily share your personal data online in exchange for truly relevant advertising?

Please go here to register and write a response on the ideas project or Tweet a response with #ideasproject.

Some Background

I’ve spent much of the last year thinking about online advertising and how it’s changing. There is a clear tension between giving consumers information when/where they want it and the need to reach large numbers of consumers. The first approach is in line with what I refer to as Marketing 2.0 and is focused on finding consumers where they self-organize to provide them with useful information that they pass along if they choose to. The latter approach is much more traditional and is focused on reaching as many consumers as possible.

Behavioral targeting sits somewhere between these two approaches and works by planting browser cookies that allow advertisers to follow consumers across the web in the interest of presenting them with more relevant information. Thus, if you have a cookie in your browser that has tracked you from a car website to a baby products site, you’d be likely to be shown an advertisement for a baby car-seat.

Behavioral targeting does improve ad performance but it’s not super effective because cookies capture everything we look at whether it’s related to work or play. And, if you’re not the only user of a computer they are even less effective. There’s also something sneaky about cookies that consumers don’t like. They are squirreled away in our browsers and the process is not fully transparent. On some level we know that there are companies buying and selling this data and we’re not getting any part of it.

By way of digging into this topic more deeply, I’ve included this short video from the Ideas Project by Andreas Weigend, former Chief Scientist for Amazon. He explains that advertisers have the potential to present consumers with highly relevant information based on access to consumers’ personal data. The challenge is that advertisers will have  to prove to consumers that they can return real value while respecting privacy. This is a huge obstacle because advertising as an industry has overwhelmed consumers with irrelevant and interruptive messages.

While behavioral targeting does offer  advertisers -and consumers- value, because it can help them present consumers with more relevant content, it is very limited as a methodology. Therefore, it’s unlikely that this approach will be effective at convincing consumers to voluntarily share their personal data in exchange for truly relevant content. Somehow advertisers need to convince consumer to share more/better personal data and then advertisers have to use this information respectfully/appropriately to return real value. Can you imagine how that might work?

Would it require a third party service where you tell advertisers the kinds of things you’re interested in? An improved “advertiser” setting area inside you Facebook account? Something that you set in your browser? Or, something else? I’d be thrilled to hear your ideas so please visit the Ideas Project and post them to the community or Tweet your response using hash tag #ideasproject.

Oxygen Mask Situations

In the past, I’ve written about how strategy is more about saying “no” than saying “yes”, but it’s rarely easy to explain the complex of reasons that underlie strategic decisions without reviewing the entire process. Richard Jalichandra, who was a participant in the NPR Digital Think In, manages to do so elegantly in his Venture Beat post entitled, Big changes coming at Technorati — the CEO’s perspective. In this article, he writes:

As a start-up with limited resources, we continually have to make difficult decisions about where to focus our efforts for the best return.  It’s like the oxygen mask the flight attendant tells you to put on before helping the person next to you: you can’t help anyone if you pass out first.

I think this metaphor is one of the  simplest I’ve heard for reducing a potentially complex strategic decision into a tangible and emotional experience that almost anyone can relate to.

Scale Boundaries

This topic has been written about at length, but I don’t see organizations thinking enough about where scaling boundaries will impact their business. In general, people in business are thinking about how to scale operations but they’re not necessarily focused on exploring the points are which things break due to scale. This is unfortunate because I think some of the most valuable insights come from understanding where these points are and why they’re there. For example, a certain kind of design firm might find that productivity goes up when they go from 5 to 15 people teams and then it drops off as you exceed 25. If this was the case, they might find ways of breaking projects up into parts that can be run by 10-15 person teams. Of course, you’d also want to ask how many of such teams can work together in a single location? And, what’s happening behaviorally that causing the performance barriers. Etc, etc. The point is that it’s often quickest to focus on where you know scale will break the system when trying to pull apart such problems.

Shark Teams

Different kinds of teams need different stimuli to be productive, this year I ran into Shark Teams. These teams die if they stop moving. Obviously, I’m being literal here, but as a management principle these teams get in trouble if they’re not engaged. This is not to say that they don’t take vacations, or that they always work at the same pace, but they do best with a steady stream of workflow. One could also call these “heart teams” because once they stop they’re pretty hard to get going again. And, the harder they work the more fuel they give themselves.

Management Hypocrisy

“Do unto others as you would have done onto you” doesn’t seem to apply when it comes to management, though not as one you might expect. In my experience, People expect to be managed differently than they expect to manage people below them. Namely, the expectation seems to be less. In other words, people seem to feel more responsibility for managing those below them than they feel expectation for guidance from those above them. As this is based on entirely anecdotal evidence. I’d be interested to know if other people see this.

Don’t Unmotivate People

I believe I originally came across this idea in Jim Collin’s book Good To Great, The basic idea here is that it’s not management’s job to motivate workers, rather it’s management’s job is to remove things that unmotivate them. People are inherently motivated but get unmotivated by a variety of obstacles that they find in their paths. Remove those barriers and you’ve got a big part of management done.

A Sense Of Urgency

When most people think of “stress” it conjures up some painful memories or feelings, but stress isn’t always a bad thing. Most people are not familiar with the concept of eustress but it’s the opposite of distress. That is, eustress is a positive form of stress that actually increases our performance rather than decreasing it. Deadlines can actually be eustress for some people, for example, runners tend to convert the competitive stress of a race into increased performance. It’s possible to do this at work as well. Differentiating these kinds of stress, and monitoring which is being felt, can help teams align their relative stress levels and balance each other effectively.

Here is the presentation we built to provide background on NPR, define the five focus areas of the workshop, and structure the day:

The a video player below will allow you to play the presentations from the beginning of the day as well as the final presentation. In order to access this content, click on the “On Demand” button and then select either the “morning live broadcast” or the “afternoon live broadcast”

Press Coverage

NPR Builds a Brain Trust - Columbia Journalism Review

NPR Goes to San Francisco - BayNewser

NPR’s Honchos Talk Digital at “Think In” in San Francisco (Also, Scoble!) – Kara Swisher

NPR to Meet With Thinkers - Radio World

NPR hosts unique Digital Think-In with Silicon Valley thought leaders – CNET

Digital Think In harnesses high-tech brainpower - Computerworld

To be completely candid, I found the vision for digital media that I’d been presented with a year earlier to be somewhat lackluster. So, when I spoke with Kinsey I was excited to hear a fresh approach, which I’ll outline below. My issue with the previous vision was that it didn’t seem to start with NPR listeners. The broad stokes suggested that NPR had to compete directly with CNN and required the production multi-media content on that scale. The vision was so big that it was hard to connect with an actual strategy. Plus, the innovation I was seeing on the small scale didn’t connect either. For example, NPR’s early mobile distribution foray included setting up phone numbers with dialing menus that mobile users could use to access content. It offered a poor user experience, inconsistent with the use case (try to use it while driving!), and costly (my minutes!). At the end of the day though, my real concern was that such a vision would take NPR away from it’s core competence, producing great audio content, rather than building on it and extending it.

The new team’s approach is completely different and starts from the understanding that NPR needs to not only listen to it’s community for cues about how and where to innovate, but also to the thought leaders at the intersection of media and technology. It just so happens that the latter are concentrated in the Bay Area, so I suggested creating an event at which we could explore NPR’s digital future with this community. This was the beginning of the NPR Digital Think In, which is now scheduled to take place at frog design in San Francisco on October 9th.

NPR is a unique news organization that really doesn’t have many direct comps in the marketplace. And, even if there were comps, they wouldn’t have the kind of listenership that NPR offers. Just to put things in perspective, consider that Morning Edition has more listeners than most of the leading commercial options in that slot. So, NPR has LOTS of listeners and is a mass market service provide. Part of what makes NPR unique, however, is their organizational structure, which includes the NPR Foundation and member stations. The way it works is that stations raise money with on air fundraisers and use some of that revenue to pay for NPR membership station status. The NPR Foundation uses that income to coordinate the stations and syndicate content across the network. The board of the foundation includes people from the member stations, which means that any innovation that the foundation supports cannot come into conflict with the memnber stations’ revenue source. Herein lies one of the key barriers to innovation. And, here’ an overview of the event:

Historic changes in technology and the rapid growth in digital media have had a profoundly disruptive effect on journalism, calling into question the news media’s ability to fulfill its time-honored function as civic watchdog. Hardly a week goes by that we don’t hear of yet another major news organization cutting staff, curtailing coverage or closing its doors. As traditional news organizations struggle to adapt, new, non-traditional outlets are beginning to take their place.

As a not-for-profit with a distinct business model, National Public Radio has benefited from the disruption and seen its audience grow. Americans now spend more time with NPR than any other news source. But it’s hardly immune from the technological challenges of the era. And it’s clear that the rise of digital media will ultimately disrupt NPR’s business model as well. NPR has responded by recruiting digital leaders to serve the top of the organization, embarking on an unprecedented staff training program and overhauling its digital media strategy. It is poised to take further steps to ensure it remains a vital source of news on every platform.

With the Digital Think In, NPR is inviting thought leaders across a variety of disciplines to help public media envision the next stage of a digital media strategy. Hosted and facilitated by frog design, this one-day interactive workshop will explore alternative business models, news gathering opportunities and distribution outlets, as well as develop scenarios for NPR’s digital future.

If you’re interested in learning more about the event feel free to visit the social network for the event online. On the day of the event, this network will be abuzz with ideas and we’ll be watching closely for your input. You can also create an account right now and start the conversation!

Resistance To Social Media

Of course, this is not happening without resistance and there are some real concerns to consider. For example, many leaders fear what will happen if employees start communicating directly with customers, sending mixed messages, and misrepresenting company policy. For the manager’s part, they have concerns about implementing a social media campaign without understanding how it fits with their overall strategy. Of course, certain industries have significant legal concerns to look out for and there is a sense that companies that wait can learn from the mistakes of the early entrants.

Tenaciousness of Social Media

On the other hand many companies are discovering that social media is a flexible and tenacious vine that can grow under remarkable constraints. For example, if you’re a bank and are worried about running afoul of the complex legal code associated with providing investment advice, you can start a blog about something that’s tangentially related but outside legal review such as ways to improve your credit score or how to save money with home upgrades. Or, if you’ve got employees who are Twittering in response to customer service, you can provide them with some resources that will help them provide the right answers, such as a moderated wiki or faq directory.

In fact, these kinds of resources have often already in place, having been created by the people using social media to save themselves time and effort (i.e. no point in re-writing the same answer twice). The problem is that social media starts popping up in different parts of organizations without coordination. For example, there may be multiple people who have started twitter feeds. Or, one department is running a newsletter and another is running a blog and they’re not working together. On the positive side, you’re engaging with your community. On the negative side, you’re probably not making the best impression.

If this is the case at your organization, check out my post on Managing The Social Media Mix where I talk about how to pull together and optimize the social media vines that are popping up in your business.

Manicuring Social Media

From a strategy perspective, one of the most significant challenges associated with social media is managing the balancing act between providing your team with tools to engage your community while also making sure that they fairly represent your business in a distributed fashion. When I think about the projects I’ve worked on that dealt with this challenge the idea of “freedom within constraints” keeps coming up. This articulation is really a design principle that guides the development of social media guidelines and protocols. Too much constraint and your internal team won’t want to use social media, not enough and it may get unruly.

Just like manicuring a plant, it’s not possible to set the constraints once. Rather, it’s a process of ongoing trimming and direction that seems to produce the best results. Because social media grows and evolves so rapidly, iteration and experimentation are key to a successful program. I’m particularly interested in how social media plays out internally at companies because I believe that many of the best social media ideas come from within. I believe the best results are achieved when  internal channels are combined with regular social media audits.

As always, thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments.

Wait, is today Friday? Crazy.

• UNDERSTAND/FIX THE WORLD
  • Future Now has a good post about making the case for avoiding jargon and acronyms: http://bit.ly/m1vTe
  • Wired: some last minute excitement for the Netfilx Prize …. more crowdsourcing madness: http://bit.ly/NXDIt
  • Dan Roam draws helpful pictures that explain the healthcare crisis, or should I say insurance wars? http://bit.ly/onbqL
  • Kate Rutter’s Slime Mold post is brilliant. Let’s use other biological metaphors other than “viral” http://bit.ly/13LyEe
  • Seven lies about lying, a great NY Times piece by Errol Morris (via kotkke) http://bit.ly/W9pxe
• MARKETING
  • Choose your own adventure YouTube video: stop knife violence: http://bit.ly/2CsZqu
  • Why is Johnny Walker my standard scotch? A brilliant video advertisement http://bit.ly/VBQ7S
  • Hello crowd, take a look at the universe! Astronomers engage the crowd: http://bit.ly/lInSN
  • Google wants SEOs to help: http://bit.ly/TCpeU
  • Marketing Vox: Eye tracking used to assess display ads: http://bit.ly/104a76
• DESIGN
  • Maker Faire is coming to Africa: http://bit.ly/7GPus
• SOME FUN
  • Wired: Six reasons to hack your iPhone http://bit.ly/E2ErQ
  • Post Advertising: Mad Men yourself http://bit.ly/ayd7I

Have a great weekend.

Why we fail

My top 3 list of pitfalls that cause projects to fail.

1) We can’t empathize with ourselves
When we design experiences, we usually start by trying to empathize with the people we’re designing for. If we can understand how they feel, it’s possible to understand the design challenge on a deeper level. Usually, we can embrace empathy while maintaining a perspective on the design problem, however, when we’re designing for ourselves things tend to short circuit. In this case, we often “feel” the problem in a way that prevents us seeing the bigger picture and preserving our perspective. Without being able to do so, we tend to narrow the opportunity space and bring emotional baggage into the design process.

2) We don’t treat ourselves like our clients
We basically assume that we’re going to be good clients to ourselves and that we’re going to provide good service to ourselves, so we stop doing all the things that we’ve developed to keep ourselves in line. We take a laissez faire approach from the project proposal process all the way through project management and customer service. When we do this, things slip and projects head into a downward spiral that either leads to a crash or a slow disappearance into the fog of organizational memory.

3) Our leaders aren’t leading
The leaders within our organizations don’t think they need to lead internal initiatives actively and tend to be drawn away be external efforts. I’m not really sure why this happens, but I’ve seen it over and over again. Perhaps it’s because leaders think this is the job of managers. but the reality is that internal projects often require more supervision than external ones due to the backdrop of internal politics, deep investment in the brand, and other factors. There’s also the case where leaders take a top down approach, which they’d avoid with clients, that prevents the project team from going through their normal process.

What you can do about it

1) An independent team
One way to deal with the fact that we can’t empathize with ourselves is to create a firewall between the project team and the internal client. This team should then go through a normal engagement process as if the project were with an outside client. It will be a little frustrating because it will take longer, especially considering that internal stakeholders often believe internal projects should be quicker, but it’s really the only way to insure objectivity.

2) A complete team & a room
Creating the firewall will not be enough in and of itself, you’ll need a complete team that can manage the project on a normal schedule. Thus, you’ll need your project lead, a project manager, and all the rest on the project team. Plus, you’ll want a defined client contact and approvals team on the other side. One common challenge is that the project team usually has ongoing regular external responsibilities that don’t just stop while the internal project is going on. One good way to deal with this is to set up days, or times during the day, when the team is not to be bothered with work outside of the internal project. This can be hard to do, but setting up a project team office can be very effective at stopping interruptions.

3) A leadership advocate
Dealing with the leadership problem can be solved by getting a commitment from a project sponsor on the leadership team who will communicate about your progress as the project is in process. The leader should ideally be independent of the  project team as well as of  the client side. And, most importantly, they need to understand how challenging internal projects are, what the pitfalls are, and be motivated to serve as a project advocate.

Thanks for reading and shoot me a comment to share your experience with internal projects.

Welcome to Friday.
I have a bunch of stuff from Kottke.org, so I just wanted to mention that it’s an awesome feed.

• UNDERSTAND/FIX THE WORLD
  • Seven lies about lying, a great NY Times piece by Errol Morris (via kotkke) http://bit.ly/W9pxe
  • Hot Waitress Economic Index (via kottke) http://bit.ly/J62Y2
  • Google’s tools to make the web faster: (via kottke) http://code.google.com/spee…
• MARKETING
  • Google wants SEOs to help: http://bit.ly/TCpeU
  • Marketing Vox: Eye tracking used to assess display ads: http://bit.ly/104a76
  • Fascinating DigitalBeat article about the future of search: http://bit.ly/JnO8F
• DESIGN
  • Youth design clube are forming: http://bit.ly/sJ3ly
  • The NY Times has a great interactive graphic to see how people spend their time: http://bit.ly/zjsti
  • Once again, artists inspire use with video projections on buildings (via adaptivepath) http://bit.ly/Cn92r
• SOME FUN
  • Interesting video that captures insect flight patterns (via Kottke) http://bit.ly/goi5

Have a great weekend.

Well done Netflix and thanks for sharing!