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Community Innovation: It Doesn't Have to Be an Oxymoron.

8/7/2013

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I've been a fan of IDEO and Design Thinking for some time -- no doubt, amplified by my daughter, Jessica's, great internship there seven or so years ago while she was pursuing her Masters in Engineering at Stanford.  Much like our Working Differently focus on the outcome, design thinking is precisely focused on what it is you are trying to accomplish.  While, IDEO, and it's charismatic CEO, Tim Brown (pictured) have had profound impact in the business sector and have brought its organizational tools to the nonprofit sector, I see his message as having powerful lessons for our cross-sectoral work in community.  

IDEO, as you may know, is one of the world's leading creative consultancies: beginning with their founder David Kelley, they have been willing to show how they build their design thinking methodologies: the careful defining of problems and targeting their solutions.  And fittingly enough, Brown says innovation requires a certain passionate curiosity -- to move from problem to solution.  

In this Working Differently blog, we have described this type of design thinking methodology or process as it applies to large community systems.  The best "executive summary" would be in the blog posting: "Seven Habits of Highly Successful Communities." 

IDEO'S 3 STEPS TO A MORE OPEN, INNOVATIVE MIND.  ACCORDING TO IDEO CEO TIM BROWN, INNOVATION SPRINGS FROM CURIOSITY. SO WHERE DOES CURIOSITY COME FROM?

1.  Curiosity

"Any organization that wants to innovate, wants to be prepared to innovate, I think, has to have a few things in place," IDEO CEO Tim Brown tells the Yale School of Management. "Perhaps the most important thing is methods for having an open mind." Click here to view the video  "The quickest way for removing curiosity in my opinion is to have organizations that are too inward-facing, that don't spend enough time out in the world."  

Another way of phrasing this as it applies to communities is the insular fragmentation we have created for our community work has closed us to transformative change.  We ask organizations to collaborate, yet force them to compete for prescious resources.  In this fragmentation, we are forced to focus on the activities and not the result.  We often have removed both the accurate problem definition, as well as, the most reasonable solution from our discussions.  

Why is this case? Because, as Tina Seelig, Stanford Business Professor, has noted, the basis of creativity is keenly observing the world: you need to understand, the way Twitter does, how users and other shareholders get value from what you do. If you're always facing inward, you'll miss out.

2. Empathy

"A sense of empathy for the world, for people whose problems they might be trying to solve--that's essential," Brown says, echoing Ginny Whitelaw's advice that empathy is the most powerful leadership tool.

"WE COME WITH WHAT WE MIGHT CALL A BEGINNER'S MIND, "Brown says he has a lot of empathy for their clients, since IDEO needs to keep innovating for itself. His job--and we can assume that of other executives--is to "do some pattern recognition" across all the people storming their brains and ideating on their iterations. They key, then, is to find the places to focus more of their resources.

3.  Celebrate the Non-Experts

"We come with what we might call a beginner's mind," Brown says, borrowing a phrase from a Zen Master.  This is a central "Habit #4" we have identified early on -- one way we've framed it is: make sure you also engage those in the community who don't make their living at what you are trying to solve.

While Brown notes that over the years IDEO has built knowledge in fields like healthcare and financial services, they still mostly approach problems unencumbered by expertise. They're wizened in their methodology, but fresh-faced with each new circumstance.

Our Working Differently communities can embrace the process while at the same time being "naive" enough to see the connections which will make up the solution.

"We do rely somewhat on the value of having an open mind when we approach a new question," Brown says. "I think that's perhaps the reason that we succeed in working across a lot of different industries."  Or across a range of community issues from poverty reduction to education to health.





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Contagious: Why Things Catch On

8/1/2013

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Jonah Berger has given us a very good read that builds on "Switch" and "The Tipping Point."  In essence we are introduced to a means to put into practice what were simply observations in the Heath's and Gladwell's separate takes on how to influence others.  Those of us who work across sectors in community are always trying to find the magic formula for engaging and moving our respective audiences to action.

For Berger, there are six essential factors that contribute to contagious ideas: think of them as the STEPPS to having your ideas catch on.  A quick look at some of the most successful viral campaigns reveals each of these elements at work.  Not all elements are necessary for an idea to catch on, but a combination of some or all these elements would certainly increase the likelihood. (A key note here is that this is not all about virality in an Internet context -- according to Berger only 7% of real world contagion occurs on the web; the vast majority of ideas that catch on are still transported word of mouth.) 

Social currency. We share things that make us look good or help us compare favorably to others. Exclusive restaurants utilize social currency all the time to create demand.  In community: involvement in an effort to solve seemingly intractable problems would provide social currency, but if jargon makes it too hard to explain either the issue or the solution we preclude virality.

Triggers. Ideas that are top of mind spread. Like parasites, viral ideas attach themselves to top of mind stories, occurrences or environments. For example, Mars bar sales spiked when in 1997 when NASA's Pathfinder mission explored the red planet.  In community: think of how to frame your ideas in order that they might have triggers for the larger community.  For example: your work on poverty reduction might have more triggers if you were also able to talk about it in economic development or community betterment terms.

Emotion. When we care, we share. Jonah analyzed over six months of data from the New York Times most emailed list to discover that certain high arousal emotions can dramatically increase our need to share ideas - like the outrage triggered by Dave Carroll's "United Breaks Guitars" video.  In community: we've been fairly adept at the first part of the equation - care - but we have had more difficulty with creating the vehicle for sharing, be it a video, website or story.

Public. People tend to follow others, but only when they can see what those others are doing. There is a reason why baristas put money in their own tip jar at the beginning of a shift. Ideas need to be public to be copied.  In community: the question should be: what is the behavior we want repeated and how to we publicly model it.

Practical. Humans crave the opportunity to give advice and offer tips (one reason why advocate marketing works - your best customers love to help out), but especially if they offer practical value. It's why we `pay it forward' and help others. Sharing is caring.  In community: have you provided your advocates with a story, checklist or tool to share that brings practical value.  Many communities have developed a "kindergarten-readiness checklist" for this purpose.

Stories. - People do not just share information, they tell stories. And stories are like Trojan horses, vessels that carry ideas, brands, and information. To benefit the brand, stories must not only be shared but also relate to a sponsoring company's products. Thus the epic failure of viral sensations like Evian's roller baby video (50M views) that did little to stem Evian's 25% drop in sales. 

As you are developing your marketing campaign or community engagement strategy, you should put it through the test of the STEPPS elements.  It will move you from your frame of reference to your audiences' and that is the beginning of being contagious!


To be tweeted links to my new posts -- blog, book reviews (both nonfiction and fiction), data or other recommended tools -- either go to Twitter.com and follow me @jcrubicon, or just go to my Home page and click on the Twitter button on the right, just above the tweet stream, and follow me @jcrubicon.
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    Author

    Jay Connor.  In working with over 75 communities in North America, I came to a growing recognition of the need to develop evidence-based tools in order to achieve transformative outcomes in our community systems – most notably education.  This is a driving consideration in my work and in this blog. 

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