Often these are great stories.  Inspiring.  Fabulous work.  But as the theme of this conference suggests, there also seems to be something missing—the need for innovation is real.   I’m going to talk today about some of the changes in first, perspective on what brands do, and second, in the way we approach research, that I think will help bring real innovation  in the space a lot closer.   It’s got three big parts instead of four, some nice pictures, probably too much theory, and no spectacular case at the end, but I’m hoping it is provocative and provides you all with some things to think with.  So first, ‘the work brands do’ .

Brand strategy is a very good thing to have, but when brands get out into the world things don’t always happen as planned.

Old & New 'Dynamic Ribbon'

As I’m sure you all know, Coca – Cola recently made a change to one of its key identity elements – swapping the old plain white dynamic ribbon for a new, ‘effervescent’ one .  It takes an incredible amount of time, effort, and money to manage a change like this, everything from delivery trucks to billboards to cans, to vending machines and the cartons for 12 packs had to be carefully thought through

Coke logo in the real world

Just so the Coke logo can eventually end up in a setting like this one, in a London Neighborhood.

Similarly,

Virgin is one of the most recognized logos in the west, and Mr. Branson and his companies have worked hard to make sure that it stands for a level of quality, service and value across markets.

Which this retailer certainly recognized and respects – along with his respect for t-mobile, O2, orange, and Vodafone.

Mobile Brands in the real world

Which is the point I’d like to make here.  At some point, brand strategy has to leave the strategy binders, and go out into the world.  Because the world, with all of its mixing of contexts and concepts, with all of its unexpected juxtapositions, is where consumers interact with the products, the messages, the images, and the services which are constitutive of their idea of the brand.

Those contexts matter.  From our perspective – as researchers, as social scientists, it is just as important to understand the experiential aspects of context, as it is the functional ones.  We’re not thinking of experience as if were a ride in a theme park either.  We are instead, focusing on meaning, and how it is actively constructed in everyday life.

For instance, part of a strategy in the media or technology of home entertainment might involve positioning the brand and the products as central to a family’s time together.

But how well do we know what that entails?  How often is the idea simplified into a few assumptions about ‘family rooms’, media, technologies, and time spent watching media on a technology?  We need to get away from pre-forming the investigations like this.  In a worldwide in-home study we are currently conducting, one of the things we’ve done is to step back from specific questions and ask people to show us what the ‘center’ of their home is, and to leave it open so that they can elaborate on what that means to them – a kind of ethnographic projective test.

Slide 9 – China 01 ‘center’

What’s clear even early in our study is that the idea of the center has an incredible range of realizations.  This first image is from China, while this second one

Slide 10  – Spain 03 ‘center’

From Spain, is markedly different along any number of dimensions.  And if you look, it isn’t really national differences that are being reflected here, not ‘markets’ made up out of geographical boundaries, but differences in value, in expression, in the kind of story that is being told about what matters to the folks who live here.

People use brands, they don’t simply receive them or perceive them.  More specifically, people use all kinds of products, embedded in contexts to tell important stories about themselves, and brand is only one – though an important one – of those dimensions.

In the work we’ve been doing to study the domestic context around the world – marrying an ethnographic, visual survey with a large scale worldwide consumer survey – we’ve been seeing this range in some detail.

Slide 11 – Lovely London main room

Yes, sometimes a living room can look like a shot from a lifestyle magazine, where the direct influence of culturally proffered aesthetic values is pretty clear– this flat in central London, for example, clearly  exudes a “good taste” that we all recognize because we’ve seen the elements so often –

Slide 12 – teddy bear couch

But far more often, in ways that are interesting and varied, they look something like this living room in Moscow.   Interesting enough.  I’m sure as you look at this you begin to get some ideas about who lives here and what they might value.  But what is even more fascinating to us is that a room, like this one

Slide 13  Ornate Russian Bedroom

Is from the same household.  The level of variation, the range of contexts, the mix of styles, uses, and patterns of consumption vary even within homes.  And yet, to the folks who live here, it is all of a piece, it fits, it works, and it matters.

When we say that people “use” brands, we’re not just talking about so called “aspirational” or “lifestyle” brands:  the conspicuousness of a Burberry Plaid or the ubiquity of a Nike swoosh, – in fact, explicit “brand consciousness” is only a small part of the way in which people use brands and products.

Slide 14:  Kitchen with refrigerator

Consider this nicely appointed kitchen – cooktop, stainless hood, side-by-side refrigerator complete with Mona Lisa magnets.  It could be a suburban kitchen almost anywhere in North America.

Nothing really stands out about it unless you know that it is actually in a suburban area of Beijing.  Then you realize that it is in fact saying something – saying ‘western’, saying progressive –to the friends and colleagues who visit this home.

But let me stress again that what we’re talking about is not a one sided interaction, it is not consumption but construction, it is in fact, a dialogue with the companies who provide and produce the brands and products that people can use to say things that are important about themselves.

Just as it is important to understand that people are not passive recipients of brand messages, it is equally important to understand that brands, companies, and products actively shape the ways that people interact with and understand their worlds.

This is where the other side of the dialogue comes into play.    As individuals, we look for two things:  a suggestion of what’s possible to say, and someone in whom we trust and have confidence to make that suggestion.

And here’s the nice part:  brands have increasingly become one of the most important places where people look for those suggestions about what they might be.  Great brands are the ones where people trust that the brand knows the complexities and possibilities of the situation better than they do.  They help people do both expressive work, and instrumental work.

Let me give you a pair of examples to make this point in a bit more detail:  if I ask you, “what time is it?”

Slide 15  Clock face

You won’t run outside and see how high the sun is in the sky, or where your shadow is cast on the ground.  One of the “Consequences of Modernity”, as the noted social theorist Anthony Giddens puts it, has necessitated that we all – around the world, across cultures, — have a shared understanding of this experientially fundamental thing, time, BUT what we all use to make sense of that experience are essentially a collection of abstractions – time zones, the international date line, “am” and “pm” ,12 or 24 regular units named ‘hours’ — to be able to work together, to keep trains and planes and markets moving.  The watch on your wrist, the clock on the wall are simply the technologies through which you participate in this complex, global abstraction of what, long ago, was concrete and local.

More and more parts of life are, or are becoming like that.  And in many ways brands are the tools people trust to help them through the complexities of anything from their health to getting to work and back each day.

Do you know, really, how an airplane works?  But you get on it, you look at the flight attendant’s smile, the shiny surfaces of the wings, the purposeful activity of the ground crew, and – despite how far any of these things might be from what really makes it work, you say, “this will fly”

Brands matter in this.

Slide 16  BMW kidney grilles and nose badge

Most of us would be unlikely to buy a new car from someone named bob who was going door to door selling cars that he designed and built in his garage.

But a company like BMW can successfully deploy something like “adaptive cruise control,” a technology which adjusts the car’s speed to the density of traffic around the vehicle — that folks like me have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER about how it actually works.   and we will buy it.

Brands are things we trust not in a blind faith kind of way, but in the same way that we might use a map to find our way through new territory. Brands, products and services are  an intimate part of the stories that we are all constantly in the process of telling about ourselves – to ourselves, our closest friends and family, our peers, and to neighbors and passers by and to the larger world.

Knowing what people are saying with your brands, knowing the way in which products are used in the real world is an essential part of realizing a brand strategy.  And the only way to do that, is to pay attention.  Deeply, globally, and in context.

Slide 17 A research problem

I’d like to step back and come at some of these same issues from a slightly different direction now.   I think that there are two necessary keys to enabling the kind of fruitful collaboration between research and design in the Brand Strategy space that has marked so much of industrial and product design and development over the last decade.  As I’m sure many of you know, prior to the early ‘nineties, research was often understood as antithetical to design, and especially to innovation.

Amsterdam DMI anecdote

It took a shift in perspective (from product centered to user centered)  as well as a change in tools (the widespread acceptance of ethnographic techniques) and in research framework (direct collaboration/integration of research & design teams)  to change this kind of thinking.

So what might those two types of change (perspective and research approach) look like in the brand space?   The shift in perspective – is what I’ve started to outline in the first part of this talk.   It needs to be a bit more pragmatically drawn though, for it to become clear both what to study – the all-important question of the research object – and how to study it in a way that makes it actionable for strategists and designers.

Slide 18 Shannon-Weaver

The Basic Shannon-Weaver model of communication

I was hoping for at least a few miserable groans from the audience on this one.  Yes, it is the venerable Shannon-weaver model.  But I’m not going theoretically medieval on you, I’m just using this as a jumping off place for a short, historical story.

We can’t really escape the fact that this space – understanding the effectiveness of brands, increasing their value and the efficacy of brand strategies – has at its base a pretty simple, triangular relationship.  And in the middle of last century, the Shannon-Weaver model was adopted from communications/signal theory as a way to represent this relationship.

Slide 19 SW w Noise

Adding 'noise' to the arc

The original intent of the model wasn’t simply to describe sending and receiving, but to provide people working in the communications field with a way to focus their attention away from too few points where things could go wrong, and to start to see the entire communication loop as needing attention.  This was a good thing.

Slide 20  Interpretation

Intention and Interpretation

Over time, branding theory got a bit more sophisticated, and a little less message-centric.  The notion of mediation, the impact of different media and channels on reception, all came to play a critical part in thinking about communication.  Moreover, breaking out the ideas of intention and reception (under many different names) enabled companies to pay close attention to effectiveness by looking at how well the reception matched the intent.  An entire industry was spawned around doing this, at least in relationship to  advertising and communications.

Slide 21 more brand things

At the same time, more and more brands were getting to be bigger, or at least more complicated, than single products.

Slide 22 competitors

Combining that proliferation with the core issues of positioning a brand (and the various things that carry it) vis a vis competitive products and companies, and the field starts to look a little more complex.   But the direction of those arrows is still pretty much all one way.

Slide 23 Agent Change

Which brings us to the shift in thinking about the consumer.  I know that for years, people have studied the consumer, have tried to understand motives, attitudes and ‘needs’, and have dissected endlessly the impact of various demo- and psycho- graphic factors on all of the above.

However, paying attention to who people are or what they value isn’t the same as assigning them a different, more critical role than recipients or decoders, nearly as passive as wind vanes, or the needle on your car’s speedometer.

By  shifting the role of the consumer in this model, you necessarily add a whole new set of relationships.  Important ones.

Slide 24 The social field

As important as this relationship (the central arc) is, from a consumer’s point of view it is still nearly incidental to everyday life, though it is there.

More central is the social field in which people live, work, and play.  And that gets us back to a couple of points I was trying to make in the first half of the talk.

First, the notion that a big part of the brand dynamic is the communication not between the brand and the consumer, but between the consumer and  his or her social field, the ground against which the “presentation of self” as Berger and Luckmann so aptly characterized it, takes place.  A BMW or a Previa?  Zegna trousers or blue jeans?  It is not always a matter of what you can afford, but of what you want to say about who you are, to the people you interact with in ways that matter to you.

Slide 25  Activity

Second, and just as important is the role that brands play in providing access and confidence to the tools and systems that are a necessary part of doing what one does, in enabling people to engage in meaningful activity – this is the instrumental counterpart to its expressive role, the trust we have in technologies that let’s us drive at 75 miles an hour – remembering that when the first locomotives were being tested scientists warned that human beings could not survive moving at speeds above 30 miles an hour.

Slide 26 The sliding of categories

Something else interesting happens to this central arc when you re-conceptualize the role & the context of the consumer in this way.  The range of choices that will help a consumer accomplish either an expressive or an instrumental task might no longer defined by a product category.  A bike might not be arrayed against other bicycle options, but against running shoes or a week on a backcountry hike.   Take, for instance, the emergence of energy drinks, which realigned not just the soft-drink category, but coffee as well, especially in the critically important Gen-Y group.

Slide 27  bottom of the loop.

Finally, is the phenomena that may make you sound like a freshly minted graduate student for saying it, but it’s the right word:  disintermediation, or the removal of ‘middlemen’ whether those be channels, institutions, or — most salient to this discussion – vehicles for messages such as ads, brands, and products.  Consumers now have tons of opportunities to see the behavior and values of whole corporations directly, to address them directly;  and companies can and do spend more time communicating directly with consumers on more levels.  This means that there is yet another influence on the way in which anything you (as producers) do is understood and interpreted.

It’s pretty messy, isn’t it?  It looks much more like a diagram of a social or political system than it does a transmission model.   Which is good.

Slide 28  red lines model

Its much easier to study something circumscribed, something of which you can ask, “do they get it?”  than it is to study this – the process of constructing not just ‘getting’ message and meaning.   A shift in the central research question from the  objects – which are always shifting anyway – to the processes.  To focus on the how instead of the who or the what.

Still, in some ways, though complex, this picture isn’t actually all that much of a methodological stretch.  We can figure out how to figure this out.    But now multiply this by 10, or by 20 or by 50 countries, and all their subcultures and subgroups.  Far more product lines, more brands, more companies are trying to come up with products in not just their home markets, but in large numbers of  very different markets around the world.  You do that, and this complexity is multiplied, not just enlarged.

Slide 30 Break –global scale

Any of you familiar with me or the work done at E-Lab and Xmod over the past decade or so probably assume that this is all just a longwinded buildup to announcing that Ethnography is the answer.

Were that it were so.

Slide 31 Margaret

Not that ethnography isn’t a good thing.    By looking closely at the places where people interact with brands everyday — which is what a good ethnography would do –  it can  provide a description of these contexts and systems, and an interpretation or understanding of how those systems work.  Good ethnography isn’t just about the data gathering techniques that provide direct access to these contexts, though those are critical, it is also centrally concerned with making a useful interpretation of that data, a story about how experience is organized from the users point of view.  When we are doing research on brands, we’re building a model that describes the ‘conversation,’ the dialogue, between the brand and the consumer, as it is played out in everyday life.

Ethnography is a great approach for this.  And as I’ve argued ad nauseum elsewhere, an approach that has a natural affinity with the way that designers work.

But the scale of the problem has changed, and to work at that scale –

globally, multi-nationally, etcetera-ly, the way ethnography has been done in the past no longer offers a big enough hammer.

I’ve used this old stock photo of Margaret Mead in Samoa for years to talk about some of the critical components of ethnography.  But looked at again in the context of the problem we’re talking about today,  it cuts both ways – an ethnographer talking to one or two people at a time, in a single country, and taking a very long time to turn those interviews and observations into something that the rest of her colleagues can engage with.

Slide 32 Lotsa margarets

Even a couple dozen margarets wouldn’t meet either the scale or the time tables most of you are faced with.  And thinking of three or four ethnographers – the average size of an ethnographic research group these days — doing the project is no long practical or effective or even that smart.

Just as there was a shift in how the research was done when social scientists started to work with product design or ad planning groups, there is a clear need for a rethinking of research in relation to the demands of global brand strategy.

And (I swear that this will be the last one of these)–once again, I think there are two parts to such a re-imagination:

First is for ethnography – really ethnographers –  to shift its position from insisting on the  personal experience of the ethnographer, on ‘directly observed (by me)’ as a necessary condition of the work, and thus go from focusing on the first hand collection of data to a focus on the work of interpretation.  Which still means that  someone, somehow, has to  provide data at scale.  Who knows how to do that well?  Survey researchers.

Slide 33  qual v. quant

So the second point is to get rid of this divide

Slide 34 qual v. quant with the red circle thing

I think we need to reinvent the model for ethnographic research, again.   To lose the qual quant distinction.

Slide 35 interp quant?

This is work that needs to bridge both of those ‘us and them’ divides:  research and design, as well as qualitative and quantitative. I’m not exactly sure where this will end up, or what it might be called — Interpretive quant research?  Statistical ethnography? But I know it’s the right direction.  Here’s what  we’ve been trying.

Slide 36 emerging approach

We’ve started to tie very specific ethnographic data – at the household level — to globally-scaled databases on behavior, values, demographics and more.  We’re developing scalable processes for keeping ethnographic data in addressable databases rather than having every study be a one-off, an island that never gets revisited.

We think it is important to plan methodologies and fieldwork at a global scale, but also to integrate local expertise  — so we’re developing a global network of senior researchers the tools and project processes to co-ordinate across continents, languages, and time zones.

Divide and conquer – ethnography has almost always meant “custom” research, with little leverage available because of the specificity of the questions.  By working closely with our quantitative research colleagues and paying attention to the models of syndicated research, we’ve begun to figure out how to split the problems up in ways that allow for some work to be done as analyses of existing data (even while we are building those datasets), while others are tightly focused new investigations.

Finally, we think of the whole enterprise as a longitudinal investigation.  We know that there is immense, untapped value in being able to compare and contrast over years, not just across groups or countries.

We’ve been working on this for almost two years now, and it isn’t easy.   The data is fabulous.  We need some more problems to throw at it, some more experience in working with different kinds of issues and questions.  But that will come.  Several of the companies represented here at the conference are some of the brave early adopters helping us work our way into this new model.

So.     It isn’t the pretty new version yet.  It’s got all the warts and wrinkles of  a work in progress actually.  But we think it is the right direction.  We’d love feedback, comment, and engagement on it.

thank you



How can interactions with embedded systems engage users in Broaden and Build responses?

The concept of interaction aesthetics (Lim et al. 2007) (Djajadiningrat et al. 2000) (Gaver & Dunne 1999)  has played a pivotal role in redefining the paradigmatic concerns in HCI. Historically, HCI began with the goal of human-machine coupling in high performance environments such as fighter jet cockpits (Sengers et al. 2007). With the invention of the computer, HCI shifted towards optimizing efficiency in task completion (Sengers et al. 2007) (Stivers 2004). Over the past 15 years, this paradigm has shifted towards understanding how to produce computationally supported experiences that engage users through embodied interactions, defined as interactions that situate users and computation to construct meaning that leads to new understanding of one’s self and the world (Sengers et al. 2007).

The role of interaction aesthetics within this paradigm is to critically evaluate the various forms/shapes interactions can take and how those forms/shapes effect user experience (Lim et al. 2007). In 2007, Lim et al. introduced the notion of an interaction as a gestalt. The notion of a gestalt implies a collective of elements used to construct the whole. Previous interaction aesthetic studies have explored multimodal engagement (Nguyen & Masthoff 2009) (Brotman et al. 2008) (Sinha & Landay 2002) and clarity of interaction as such elements (Brotman et al. 2008) (Gaver et al. 2003) for designing user engagement. Design of multimodal engagement determines what senses (visual, audio, haptic, etc.) a system generates feedback loops with. Clarity of the interaction refers to the degree by which the system explicitly reveals the method and the purpose of the interaction. This study will continue to use these two areas of interest, treating them as interaction variables capable of changing the interaction gestalt.

The purpose of deconstructing these interaction elements into testable variables is to understand their potential for generating Broaden and Build (Fredrickson & Losada 2005) (Fredrickson 2001) cognitive responses. Fredrickson proposed and developed evidence of the Broaden and Build theory as an explanation of the evolutionary relevance of positive affect (2001). The theory argues that while experiencing positive affect, a person’s ability to generate novel possibilities for future actions increases (the broadening) and over time, as a person makes choices based on these possibilities, a person increases the diversity of their skill sets (the building). Since the theory’s introduction, researchers have conducted qualitative (Fitzpatrick & Stalikas 2008) and quantitative (Fredrickson & Losada 2005) studies that suggest it enables human flourishing (Fitzpatrick & Stalikas 2008) (Little et al. 2007) (Fredrickson & Losada 2005). Positive psychologists argue that human flourishing determines psychological well-being through measurement of a peron’s abilitity to seek out and solve problems (Fitzpatrick & Stalikas 2008) (Little et al. 2007) (Fredrickson & Losada 2005). Hence, the significance of understanding how to design interaction aesthetics is two fold:

• Designers can make embedded system interaction more compelling by eliciting positive affective responses and;
• Designers can use interaction as a tool to improve the well-being of end users through the design of interaction aesthetics that engage users in Broaden and Build experiences.

This study will contribute to the domains of:

• HCI design by adding to the body of literature on interaction aesthetics through introduction of guidelines for engaging users in interactions that foster human flourishing;
• Positive psychology by revealing if interaction can be treated as an independent variable capable of eliciting Broaden and Build responses and;
• Embedded systems through the use of the Game as Life – Life as Game (GaLLaG) (Burleson et al. 2009) embedded system as both a technology platform capable of delivering compelling user experiences and a research tool for furthering ubicomp knowledge. Figure 1 presents a conceptual framework of this study.

This study tests several hypotheses implicit within the conceptual framework. These are:

• Interaction, much like other artistic mediums, can be deconstructed into base forms or primitives to form guidelines for designing embedded system interactions.
• Interaction, not only facilitates delivery of information, but is information in itself with the capability to sway the affective responses of users.
• Designers can sculpt embedded systems interactions that promote Broaden and Build experiences, increasing human flourishing and improving the well-being of users.

Bibliography
Brotman, Ryan, Kelliher, Aisling, and Spicer, Ryan. 2008. Well how would you do it? – Facilitating the transfer of knowledge in collaborative design environments. Paper presented at the annual national conference for the Industrial Design Society of American, September 10-13 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Burleson, Winslow, Ruffenach, Collin, Jensen, Camilla, Bandaru, Uday, and Muldner, Kasia. 2009. Game as life – life as game. Paper presented at the 8th annual international conference of Interaction Design and Children for the Association of Computer Machinists, June 3-5 in Como, Italy
Djajadiningrat, J. P., Gaver, William., and Fres, J. W. 2000. Interaction relabelling and extreme characters: methods for exploring aesthetic interactions. Paper Presented at the 3rd annual international conference of Designing Interactive Systems for the Association of Computing Machinists, August 17-19 in Brooklyn New York.
Fitzpatrick, Marilyn, and Stalikas, Anastassios. 2008. Positive emotions as generators of therapeutic change. Psychological Integration. 18: 137-54.
Fredrickson, Barbara, and Losada, Marcial. 2005. Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing. American Psychology. 60: 678-86.
Fredrickson, Barbara. 2001. The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden and-build theory of positive emotion. American Psychology. 56: 218-26.
Gaver, William, Beaver, Jacob, and Benford, Steve. 2003. Ambiguity as a resource for design. Paper presented at the annual international conference of the SIGCHI Human Factors and Computing Systems for the Association of Computer Machinists, April 5-10 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Gaver, William, Dunne, Anthony., AND Pacenti, Elena. 1999. Design: Cultural probes. Interactions. 6: 21-29
Lim, Youn-kyung, Stolterman, Erik, Jung, Heekyoung, and Donaldson, Justin. 2007. Interaction gestalt and the design of aesthetic interactions. Paper presented at the annual international conference of Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces for the Association of Computer Machinists, August 22-25 in Helsinki, Finland
Little, Brian. 2007. Personal Project Pursuit: Goals, Actions, and Human Flourishing. Philadelphia: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Nguyen, Hien, and Masthoff, Judith. 2009. Designing empathic computers: The effect of multimodal empathic feedback using animated agents. Paper presented at the 4th annual international conference of Persuasive Computing for the Association of Computer Machinists, April 26-29 in Claremont, California.
Sengers, Phoebe, Harrison, Steve, and Tatar, Deborah. 2007. The three paradigms of HCI. Paper presented at the 25th annual international conference of Computer Human Interactions for the Association of Computer Machinists, April 28-3 in San Jose, California.
Sinha, Anoop, and Landay, James. 2002. Embarking on multimodal interface design. Paper presented at the 4th annual international conference of Multimodal Interfaces for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, October 14-16 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Stivers, Richard. 2004. Shades of loneliness: Pathologies of a Technological Society. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Working title: Complex Adaptive Systems, Heroism & Disruptive Innovation in Multinational Corporations
Tony Salvador

Abstract
This paper reframes innovation practice within large multinational corporations through a merged lens of systems theory with mythology. There are several reasons for this reframing: First: the structure of innovation in a large corporation is theoretically and practically the same as the structure of heroism across mythology – the monomyth — as outlined in Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces. In both cases, the Hero must escape his/her current system, enter into, create and/or operate within another, and eventually establish a resolution with the old system. Second, both journeys happen within the greater context of extant social structures that infuse the respective systems. Third, societies and corporations are usefully and revealingly well described as complex adaptive systems, whereby the innovation applies tension to the stability & balance (homeostasis) of the extant, often profitable, reigning (corporate) system. The monomyth illuminates the stages of the hero’s journey and the resources needed at each stage, respectively; from our work and experiences we can re-interpret these resources in the context of systems theory for today’s corporate environment. Based on three years of experience with a business unit tasked with disruptive innovation (though implicitly), we examine the nature of Christensen’s notion of innovation in the joined context of complex adaptive systems and mythology. We offer an early explanation for why disruptive innovation is so hard — it threatens the existing system, it does not account for the distribution of power in the social structure and innovators fail to secure the appropriate resources that are only apparent by considering the context of systems and social structures. We propose that for disruptive innovation to be more probable, it must become an explicitly designed part of the system.

Corporations as Systems
People still do the work in corporations. Even when machines are doing some of the actual labor, at least for now, it is the people who tell the machines what to do. It is the people who are accountable. It is people who identify problems, think of solutions and make decisions under uncertainty. It’s the people who do the work.

Perhaps as obvious, but less often highlighted, people comprise corporations. People fill out the organizational structures of various hierarchies. In setting policies, making decisions, answering calls, arguing with their colleagues, people are engaging is various ritual practices that reflect the social structure of the corporation. That is, corporations of people are usefully viewed as social structures comprised of people who happen be organized in a particular way, following particular policies, adhering to particular internal and external strictures, etc.

A social structure is an analytical frame that describes the culture of the corporation and any one corporation may be usefully described by different social structures as warranted. Social structures, therefore, provide the framing context of the peoples’ interactions. Different social structures can be used to highlight or reveal different elements of the complexity of a corporate culture. I will return to this later. At this juncture, however, what’s relevant is that corporations operate in an inherently social context. I will argue that the context of the organization, and especially the social structure itself, strongly affects the peoples’ individual and collective responses to events, especially innovative events.

Corporations are also complex (sometimes adaptive) systems. A complex system can be described as a set of entities and rules such that given some input, there’s some output. That output may have a highly probable output. Corporations strive for highly probably outputs. However, more often, outputs are less probably predictable. A complex adaptive system responds to the output and adjusts the input in a continuous attempt to increase the predictability of the output given the input.

Complex (adaptive) systems also seek stability, what’s technically referred to as homeostasis, which is a measure of balance between inputs and outputs. the system, that is the corporation, strives to maintain homeostasis in all its endeavors.

A final relevant point here is that corporations are complex (adaptive) systems each with a level of “fitness” relative to other corporations in its landscape, or, in its value network. For example, the corporation with the highest profit margins may be the most fit corporation and you can bet your boots that the corporation is going to a. want to remain at the highest level of fitness with highly predictable inputs and outputs c. at a high degree of homeostasis.

Thus, a corporation is a complex (adaptive) system at some level of fitness at some level of homeostasis, comprised of people characterized by one or more prevailing social structures. Furthermore, no one corporation is the same as another. Although there are clearly shared characteristics, just as clearly is the fact that corporations differ in their “corporate culture”, which, in this paper is reflected in their systemic constructs. The point of differentiation will be very important at a later point.

Whipped by market forces, corporations must continuous expel the damned spot of inefficiency at every turn and strive with all their might to maintain or improve their position on the fitness landscape through ruthless optimization of their production and delivery of goods and services. Indeed, a good corporation will continuously innovate to keep the corporation on track, maintain fitness and homeostasis.

However, there are not one, but two types of innovation. A first is what we just discussed: innovations that further optimize the efficiency of the corporation along its current trajectory. This type of innovation, let’s call it continuous innovation, can be of immense value to the corporation, increasing productivity, reducing costs, etc., overall increasing its general fitness.

A second type of innovation offers alternative trajectories or challenges or threatens the current trajectory either directly or indirectly. This second type, let’s call it discontinuous innovation, offers possibilities less clear in how they propel the corporation up the fitness landscape, or how they otherwise maintain or improve stability and predictability of the corporation. Rather, these second types of innovations may suggest new entrants to the fitness landscape or new fitness landscapes all together. These types of innovations also suggest changes in the technical or social (or both) structures of the system defining the corporation; moreover, these types of innovations may be very difficult to comprehend in the context of the extant system and social structure – a system & structure that’s been highly evolved for a particular purpose, within a particular landscape – a system and structure relentlessly seeking homeostasis.

Both types of innovation can be of immense valuable to the corporation. Continuous innovations lift or at least maintain the corporation’s position on the current fitness landscape. They do not disrupt, or minimally disrupt corporate homeostasis. The suggestions are comprehensible; they fit within the frameworks and “black boxes” of the people making the decisions. They are recognizable for what they will achieve – and importantly, also for negative effects, if any, they would have. Therefore, continuous innovations are a part of the system, dependent on clever people and an amenable social structure, to be sure, but overall, happen within the context of the extant system. There is no conflict here, nothing particularly challenging and we shall spend no more time on continuous innovation.

On the other hand, discontinuous innovations do challenge the corporation’s fitness, and this is where our interest lies. We suggest the general notion that whilst we value discontinuous innovation as individuals and as expressed in corporate rhetoric systems and social structures abhor innovation by default. That is, complex adaptive systems continuously seek homeostasis at higher and higher levels of fitness, challenges to either (homeostasis or fitness) are increasingly less tolerated. We propose, therefore, that the hidden strength of the system and social structure of the corporation exceeds the strength of explicit individual and corporate statements. As a result, discontinuous innovation from within is so nearly impossible that successful innovations are nothing short of heroic.

But not impossible. It would however seem nearly insurmountable for all the books, advice, rules and research on innovation in general and discontinuous innovation in particular. In all of this work, the emphasis has been on the nature of the business environment in which innovation takes place, the skills sets requires, the location within the organizational structure, the sorts of actions required, e.g., lots of planning, and how all this differs from the standard business. We suggest the problem is not with the business environment at all, but with the system environment and the social structure embedded within and constitutive of that system.

We’ve been participant observers for three years in the Emerging Markets Platforms Group, a business unit of Intel Corporation. The stated charter of this group is to increase the total available market for Intel Architecture in emerging markets with new platforms. In English: Grow new markets with new products in developing countries. More translation: Grow new businesses for Intel microprocessors by creating new, sustainable markets in developing countries and emerging market countries across the globe with new products and new kinds of products that Intel’s not made before. On the face of it, it also doesn’t seem like anything other than reasonable, if not challenging.

But in reality, it doesn’t get much more disruptive than this. What’s not stated in the charter are the hidden caveats discovered over the past 3 years.

• Thou must not conflict with any of our current business endeavors anywhere in the world or undercut any of our current products.
• Thou must not conflict with any of our current customer’s business endeavors or undercut any of their current products.
• Thou must embark on something Intel can do uniquely and that Intel should do uniquely.
• Thou must be more profitable than anything anyone else at Intel is doing for the same investment in the same amount of time – regardless of future possible growth.
• Thou must be relevant on a global scale, not just regional or national.

Taken together the innovator working under this charter can not now be seen as nothing less than heroic. The innovator is “fighting the system”, even as the system is articulating friendship and cooperation. There is no enemy; the enemy is us – but not “us” as individuals or even us as a group of individuals, it’s “us” transformed as “the system”. We comprise the social structure. We give life to the system. In turn, the system animates us.

First, “We the system” assume a non-trivial and increasingly strong measure of control correlating to our position on the fitness landscape and the energy required to maintain homeostasis. Innovation endeavors threaten those positions. Discontinuous innovations endeavors apply pressure and inject tension within the otherwise stable social structure(s) that defines the extant (corporate) systems, often suggesting if not resulting out right in the creation of new systems – meaningfully apart from the extant system, the submission of the innovation to the extant system or cessation of the innovative attempt. We apply Bateson’s general notion of schisomogenesis in this regard. The foundational point is that successfully accommodating innovations in the context of a strong, homeostatic system is very unlikely if one fails to recognize the power of the system. Indeed, heroically unlikely. It is then left to answer the question of how one innovates within a systems-based conceptual framework of innovation.

In Joseph Campbell’s influential work, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, he outlines the general structure of the hero’s journey. More interesting (to me) than the remarkable analysis of global historical mythology, is that Campbell talks about the hero’s journey as transitioning between two systems – the common-day and the unfamiliar. As the hero journeys, he/she draw on different internal and external resources, acts under different rules, relies on different “colleagues”. The resources, rules and colleagues are, handily structured not only in terms of two distinct systems, but also in terms of time – as related to the journey. The structure over time is useful to innovation as it outline what’s needed when.

The Hero

The mythological hero, setting forth from his common-day hut or castle, is lured, carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive into the kingdom of the dark (brother-battle, dragon battle; offering, charm), or be slain by the opponent and descend into death (dismemberment, crucifixion). Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him (tests), some of which give magical aid (helpers). When he arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero’s sexual union with the goddess-mother of the world (sacred marriage), his recognition of the father-creator (father atonement), his own divination (apotheosis), or again – if the powers have remained unfriendly to him – his theft of the boon he came to gain (bride theft, fire theft); intrinsically, it is an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination, transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation flight, obstacle flight). At the return threshold, the transcendental powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of the dead (return, resurrection). The boon that he brings restores the world (elixir), p 211.

The prolific inventor Thomas Edison suggested that “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” I’d rather like to adapt his phrase to propose that innovation is one percent ideation and ninety-nine percent preparation.” If innovation is about the nature of systems and system power and social structure and power within these systems, then it’s clearly in the beginning and end where the system pointed. Campbell talks about three main parts of the hero’s journey: Departure, Initiation & Return. It’s in the preparation that innovation in won or lost and it’s these brackets where context is set and it’s getting the context right that sets the Hero on the right path. In this paper, I want to focus on the beginning (Departure) and the end (Return) of the Hero’s journey as it’s where I think we have the most to offer in the framework of this paper, although I will have a few words about the middle bit (Initiation).

Departure
Call To Adventure
How does the call happen. The call comes in context. It’s not random. Campbell’s analysis is Freudian – that it represents the deepest parts of our collective unconscious. Too often innovators think that what’s happening is random. In a corporation, the “insight” can be seen to represent the collective unconscious, the deep seated fears of the corporation – the competitor, a source of angst. The competitor threatens the system directly. The system has built systemic defenses for just this purpose. Continuous innovation maintains the fitness of the corporation. The system must survive. The “insight” is a call to adventure, can be seen as a discontinuous means to beat the competitor tomorrow by going outside the system today.

Too often, for entrepreneurs and innovators, it’s a chance event… something happens. In myth it surely does. However, if we consider the systems…it needs to be intentional. At least, that’s what we’ve found. There needs to be intentionality about it. It needs to be adaptive, surely. But it needs to be intentional. Chance can catalyze. But intentionality must set in. Answering the call must be intentional. I discuss some specific elements of intentionality below.

Refusal
Not everyone responds to the call. Some actually refuse. What’s revealing is the reason for the refusal. Campbell: “The myths and folktales of the whole world make clear that the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one’s own interest…The future is regarded…as though one’s present system of ideal, virtues, goals and advantages were to be fixed and made secure,” p 49.

This is what the system is expressly designed to do – to seek its own interest, privilege the current virtues, advantages and goals, and to make them secure! The non-hero, refusing the call is hearing the call of virtue, advantage and security. In a corporation, the social structure rewards a response to the system’s siren call. The social structure rarely rewards the innovator answering the call of disruption. Campbell points out that should one hear the call to innovation, but not embark, the result is “Walled in boredom, hard work, or “culture”, the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved, p49.

In our own work, we note informally two types of cynic, the one who tried and failed and the one who never tried. We’ll see about tried and failed below. Never tried, or had the chance and refused the call, are those that refuse, and they become the inertia in the system, to be avoided by the innovator.

Supernatural Aid
At some point after answering the call, the hero is presented with some “surprise” assistance. In mythology, it’s always a bit of supernatural, magical aid – a charm, an old woman or man. The charm protects the hero as he/she enters the new system. Moreover, at this point, the “charm” is a sense of peace, “…a benign, protecting power of destiny. In innovation or entrepreneurial discussions, there is some reference to this “charm” being a “mentor”. I don’t think it’s a mentor; that’s different. Thinking systemically and heroically, what we find works is less a mentor and more someone with relatively immense power who doesn’t have to use it. Someone removed from the day to day of the current system, but whose power can be used, especially benignly, in the system. Someone like the CEO or Chairman of the Board.

In our work, we’ve seen two specific examples of this related to the creation and establishment of two new business units, The Digital Health Group and the Emerging Markets Platforms Group. Andy Grove, Chairman emeritus, was the “supernatural” with the former, and Craig Barrett was “supernatural” of the latter. In both cases, the nature of their aid was based on personal relationships with the hero of the story. Yes, they acted as to some limited extent as mentors to the hero, but it was less of what they said and more of who they are that matters. Moreover, that others knew of the special relationship also mattered significantly. Finally, the two also acted on their own to incorporate the interests of the two new groups into their daily activities and into their relationships outside of the each group that also mattered. Finally, the “charm” of their presence, relationship and extra-group actions continues and must continue throughout establishment of the group. Therefore, one might well imagine that discontinuous innovation should seek (I daresay requires) the presence of and relationship with this sort of benign, but power systemic presence.

Crossing the First Threshold
Gandhi had a series of phrases: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. For disruptive innovation, the first threshold is when they fight you, for that is the point at which the disruption threatens the current system balance and homeostasis. Prior to this, there is little threat to the system, and the system does not respond as its fitness is not threatened. As was said of one GM: “They’re [executives] are not afraid you won’t do something; they’re afraid you will.”

In mythology, there’s a keeper to the first threshold at which the hero crosses, amulet/charm in hand, from the regular world into the “…zone of magnified power,” p. 64. When embarking on a disruptive innovation, the hero and his/her group is entering a zone of magnified power – power bestowed on the group by the system itself; i.e., the hero now has the power to disrupt the system, which is not perceived as benign, nor is it perceived as weak. The goal of the innovator/hero is to mitigate the relative challenge of the threat such the system does not perceive the endeavor as significant (accurately or inaccurately). That is, the system will respond according to the threat to its fitness on the landscape. The challenge for the hero in the corporate system is to dissipate the impact of the challenge to the system, such that the threat to the system is only mildly perceived.

In general it is right that the system responds to threats to its fitness. In mythology, the hero’s adventure begins when the society is ready for the teachings/change/adaptations the hero will bring. Corporations must also adapt, or they will perish as has been shown repeatedly, most convincingly, perhaps by Christensen. Therefore, the innovator/hero is embarking not only from one system of power (the current system), to a zone of magnified power, but he/she is also embarking in time, at the cusp of system change that would otherwise be driven from the landscape, and not by the corporation, which could change its relative fitness, even if this point is not clear in the beginning. Therefore, the hero must account for both a sense of power in the form of threat as well as a sense of time. Too often, the innovator talks about the “strength” of his/her business or innovation. Rather, it might behoove the innovator to play it down, to be less bold rather than more bold, to rely on the amulet as a sign of hidden strength.

Intel is a multinational corporation optimized to make and sell high complexity, high volume microprocessors. At the formation of our group three years ago, we did actually mitigate the threat to the system, albeit not intentionally. Rather than set out with a grand global vision (commensurate with Intel’s extant system) we initially set out to establish four different design centers in Bangalore, Cairo, Sao Paulo & Shanghai, each chartered for innovation in its own region. Thus, there was no central challenge anywhere, and the system didn’t perceive any significant threat. The result is, arguably, rather different. A point to which we will return.

The Belly of the Whale
Crossing the threshold is simply a step; passing into the new system requires a passage. In mythology, the hero sojourns in bellies of whales, elephants, monsters, wolves, other entities, and “…undergoes a metamorphosis. “…The passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth…,” p 74. The hero’s former self is demolished, “annihilated”, and “ceases to exist”. In our corporation, the hero must cease to be a part of the corporate system and represent the new system. This is the point at which a new system is forming, the beginning of Bateson’s conception of schismogenesis or the start of seeking autonomy, as Govindarajan & Trimble suggest is necessary.

In our business, what’s relevant is to recognize two key points: first that the disruptive endeavor has reached the point of forming the new system and second, that one must be intentional about it. In this case, Thurston (2008, personal communication), argues for an explicit inventory of the attributes available to the new system, through an exhaustive RPP analysis in advance of the endeavor. (See Table 1). If, following Bateson, the disruptive innovation calves-off a new system, then the chances of its success can only be aided by not proceeding randomly, but by considering explicitly the boundary conditions possible around the new system to be formed.

These boundary conditions, shown in Table 1, express the possible nature of the formal systemic relationship between the extant and new systems. However useful it is, it does not address the nature of power and social structure overlaying the two systems. As such, it’s sufficient to plan the ideal case, but insufficient to assess the probability of reducing systemic resistance to the innovation. We return to this point in the Implications section.

Initiation – Ultimate Boon
Feeling all refreshed from the belly of the whale, our hero is finally ready to slay some dragons and achieve some boon. Put another way, after significant preparation, the innovator is able to navigate both the old system and the new, to begin the long, tough propulsion of his/her endeavor up the fitness landscape. The preparation is crucial, as in mythology, the earliest stages set the course of the hero’s adventure through hardships and perils of every sort. In terms of innovation practice, much has been written, and there’s little more I can add except to make some simple points about the relevance of the departure phase. The 10 Rules for Strategic Innovation (Govindarajan & Trimble) is quite a handy guide that we’ve found rather useful for navigating this phase of the hero’s journey.

In our endeavors, we’ve found this to be quite more difficult than imagined it would be. The ubiquitous phrase we used was: “We need to fight Intel at every turn”. It was all the more frustrating in that in our naiveté, we imagined it was the company that should be helping us, not fighting us. It’s only by understanding the systems nature of the two entities that company’s “resistance” is entirely sensible.

Govindarajan & Trimble (and others) argue that the new endeavor requires autonomy. However, while some autonomy is necessary, what this paper suggests is rather a notion for how the systems will coexist, and what parts of the existing system will yield to the new endeavor, and vice versa. It’s not autonomy that’s sought, it’s adaptation that’s forced upon the highly fit system. Hence, the preparation – intentionality, release of cynicism, secure supernatural aid, etc.

In some work we did in Egypt, it because clear that a high publicity introduction of Classmate PC’s directly into a couple classrooms in the school provoked more negative backlash regarding questions of utility, teacher rules, student work, the timing of student work, administrative control, parental control, etc., than it did inject excitement and enthusiasm. Indeed, whenever any “important” people came to see the classroom, the classroom “put on the show” for the visitors, such was the reception of the machines. On the other hand, in some subsequent work looking specifically at the education system and more importantly, the power distribution and meaning of each element of the overall social structure, it became clear that we went about this pilot all wrong. We should have secured the quiet support of Suzanne Mubarak, wife of the current president. And we should have rolled-out the pilot very quietly, not with fanfare. And we should have determined the system and social structure adaptations necessary to incorporate the Classmate PCs into the classroom. In other places, a highly visible pilot reveals the adaptations. In Egypt, a sensitively silent pilot would have worked to the advantage of the endeavor.

In a separate case, we worked with Sri Satyan Mishra, from Delhi, the founder of Drishtee in India. Here’s a case where the local entrepreneur was quite capable of understanding the power distribution in the social network that infused the government systems at the District level. At the time, Drishtee was an information kiosk company – one of the first – that provided government services to rural villagers through an arrangement with the District Offices in the small cities that served as the headquarters for the District which is administered by a District Collector, the chief of the district. Drishtee not only helped the villagers, but it also helped the District Collector serve his/her rural constituents. However, many constituents also are served directly through the district office, in person, through which flourishes a small but significant informal economy. Drishtee’s activities were a minor adaptation to the current system without being (too) threatening. Mr. Mishra was quite clear that the two most intensive elements of initiating his business in the villages was finding the right information kiosk entrepreneur and securing support (ultimately with a handshake) from the relevant District Office.

In both cases, the labor of the endeavor was severely impacted – negatively and positively, respectively – by the preparation, or by the hero’s “departure” phase. The hero passes through various trials, meets with and is exalted by various key roles along the way. Much of the work and the resources for achieving that work have been discussed elsewhere. One last point, however, is that the work that’s done, while it must be done in the context of highly adaptive complexity, is done with the goal of creating a new sustainable system. This new system is the “ultimate boon” of the hero’s adventure – and we know how difficult that is.

In terms of this paper’s contribution, securing the ultimate boon is an exercise in understanding the nature of complex adaptive systems and social structures as much or, perhaps more than it is about understanding the business tools and technique to enact the innovation. However, it’s the latter that remains the focus of the vast amount of work on innovation. Securing the boon of a new “system” is the goal, however, we will see now that in the Hero’s journey, the return is as important as the departure in terms of the extant system that is the corporation.

Return
“The full round…requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet or the ten thousand worlds,” p167

The innovation needs to offer hope to the extant system and to the people in the extant social structure. So even as we begin the return, we return to the beginning where preparation is required to arrange for, to plan for hope to the system. That is, how will the extant system learn, grow, develop – become stronger – as a result of the innovation endeavor regardless of outcome? The only way heroes will not refuse the call is if there is some good he/she can do – however reluctant the hero may be.

Often new endeavors have an “exit strategy” and business people talk explicitly about the exist strategy from the beginning. But this is too confined a purview. For a venture capitalist, the exit strategy might be only about the business; but in the context of a multinational corporation (a large complex adaptive system) the endeavor must also be of concern to the system and its extant social structure. To be sure, the caricature of the hardnosed businessman [sic] would demure (if hardnosed businessmen can demure) at the thought of new ventures being about anything other than the financial return. But the presence of one hard-nose is no match for the power of the system to squelch that which diminishes.

In both mythology and business, the hero’s journey is intended to bring back a boon greater than what can be gained through the regular day to day world of the extant system. The hero knows it; as innovators, we forget it. It’s crucial to plan for the return from the beginning – whether the innovation endeavor is a financial success or not: “The myths of failure touch us with the tragedy of life, but those of success, only with their own incredibility. And yet, if the monomyth is to fulfill its promise, not human failure or superhuman success but human success is what we shall have to be shown,” p. 178.

There are two several ways to return…willingly or unwillingly, with the support of the “goddess” or against her will.

Magic Flight
The hero/innovator leaves the “real world” to embark on the adventure in the “other world”. At some point, the hero/innovator has reached his/her goal. Or, perhaps the goal has been reached. The hero is faced with return. For any innovator, the adventure reveals much about themselves and the world than was previously apparent. One path for the innovator is to return to the corporate system. The question is how.

Many entrepreneurs must “run away” from their creation…the cliché is that their temperament is not suited to “running the business”, only to starting it. (They work better in the highly adaptive phase, not the stable/homeostatic phase.) But how do they come back? What, if anything, do they bring back to the organization? Do they leave a trial of destruction, carnage?

Jason absconded with the golden fleece due to his collaboration with Medea, King Aeëtes’s daughter, who had fallen in love with Jason. As they were sailing away, the king’s ship was gaining. To delay the king, Medea convinced Jason to hack her brother to bits and throw his parts into the sea so Aeëtes would need to collect them for burial, and thus escaped to return with the fleece.

A multinational corporation is if nothing else a large adaptive system. The innovator/hero needs to plan for and bring back to the corporation that which he/she has learned. The learnings need to become a part of the “society”, to prepare for the next adventure. In our work, we’ve found it constructive to consider our innovation activities as both businesses and experiments. By being “scientists”, we take a critical eye toward both the old and new systems. We’ve not been nearly as explicit as we should be, but are improving.

Rescue From Without
Sometimes the hero doesn’t want return: “Who, having cast off the world would desire to return again? He would only be there. [original italics] And yet, in so far as one is alive, life will call. Society is jealous of those who remain away from it, and will come knocking at the door,” p. 178. Here Campbell talks about the society as an entity, society as a “force”, a force

One significant recent innovation endeavor at Intel was stopped rather abruptly. The GM, by his own admission, was fairly disaffected with the “whole thing” and considered leaving Intel. He was “rescued” by his mentor. Though the innovation was not a financial success, the hero/innovator was brought back into the system, to strengthen it.

In another example of an innovation of some years ago, of which Intel divested, the key innovator/hero did return to the larger system, willingly, but he also brought with him new social structures, new perspectives and has for several years now begun collecting others with similar experience and begun infiltrating the extant system, like a virus, moving the behemoth that is Intel slowly, inexorably. It may not be enough, or fast enough, but that’s a landscape question.

The system needs to keep an eye on its heroes. The system needs to hold the hero accountable to it – not just for the financial success, but also for the impact to the extant system. The hero’s journey is an expensive endeavor, its risk can be mitigated, and thus far more palatable to the extant powerful system, by actively considering how the system can benefit independent of the financial risk and probability of success.

Crossing of the Return Threshold
At this point, the hero crosses back to the real world. Campbell so uncannily, presciently and perhaps a bit dramatically, captures the experience of the innovator returning to the system, that I quote the entire passage:

Many failures attest to the difficulties of this life-affirmative threshold. The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of the soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrow, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss? As dreams that were momentous by night may seem simply silly in the light of day, so the poet and the prophet can discover themselves playing the idiot before a jury of sober eyes. The easy thing is to commit the whole community to the devil and retire again into the heavenly rock dwelling, close the door and make it fast. But if some spiritual obstetrician has meanwhile drawn the shimenawa across the retreat, then the work of representing eternity in time, and perceiving in time eternity, cannot be avoided. p. 189.

The innovator, returning, finds that he/she comes with experience, knowledge, purview and capabilities foreign to most of corporate individuals but moreover, to the system as a whole. The innovator must find his/her way; and must find a way to “…teach again…what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand times…”, p. 188. The goal of the innovation is not to diminish the system, but to raise it higher on the fitness landscape. This vital point is often lost or missing in the innovation endeavor, and hence sets the innovation more at odds with the system than perhaps is warranted, increasing the system’s negative response while demanding ever more of the innovator and the innovator’s supernatural help.

“There must remain however…a certain baffling inconsistency between the wisdom brought forth from the deep, and the prudence usually found to be effective in the light world.”, p. 188. In the end, the system must do everything it can to survive the onslaught of innovation from within as well as from without. In the end, the system must act prudently to maintain its fitness, stability and social structure. It must. It can act no other way; it would defy its own nature as a complex adaptive system. The hero/innovator must bring the boon – the capabilities and outlook – from the innovation to the system. In the end, the innovator becomes a master of the two worlds , possesses the ability and “…freedom to pass back and forth across the world division [from the day to day to the extraordinary] not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other.”, p. 196.

The cycle is now complete and the foundation laid to establish a culture of (disruptive) innovation, of actively embarking on a path of schismogenesis, of learning, establishing and returning.

In Closure, Two Implications
First, we can define innovation as creating new systems and/or new landscapes within a shared social structure. Furthermore, we can refine Christensens’ notion of disruptive innovation more specifically as creating new systems at lower fitness on existing landscapes or new landscapes challenging existing landscapes within a shared social structure.

Clearly, innovation is hard. But this analysis suggests that it’s hard not because ideation is hard, or necessarily because we lack business skills. Rather, our work suggests that collectively, we’ve failed to recognize the innovation necessarily increases tension in an extant, often powerful system – as system designed explicitly to reduce and eliminate tensions due to uncertainties. Thus, innovation is antithetical to the survival of the system, even if individuals recognize the value of the innovation. All things being equal, the probability of success of any disruptive innovation within a large multinational corporation is at least as much about the system as it is about the idea – if not more so.

Disruptive innovations must recognize the tension they are injecting into the extant system. They must also recognize that the system will resist, even if individuals are “on your side”. There disruptive innovation must spend as much or more effort on the “context” as on “the idea”. A systems focus shifts the context from the “idea” and the “strategy” to the landscape and to the competing systems on that (or the new) landscape. In this paper, we explored the various elements of context – the system attributes expected to be available to the new innovation – for example, the need for supernatural aid, the strong need to provide tangible value back to the system as a result of engaging in the innovation journey, etc.

Second, the innovator is on a hero’s journey. The hero’s “job” is to embark on journey for the express purpose of bringing value back to the society from whence he/she came, whether the society was aware of the need or not. As such, the innovator requires the tools and resources of the mythological hero of Campbell’s monomyth. This is especially the case in the context of a large multinational corporation where the innovator is defacto challenging the supremacy of the extant system by creating a new system on an existing landscape, or by creating new landscapes. The system will resist. The hero, by careful preparation, by securing all the tools and resources and actively managing them, will address the system through its social structure.

Addressing the social structure means understanding the nature of power distributed through the system and using it. It means understanding the personal proclivities and interests of specific individuals, but also their role in the system, and the nature of their power – both positive power as well as resistive power. Put another way, the innovator needs to understand how the innovation is good for the system, much the way the hero needs to understand how the prize of his/her journey would aid society.

We return now to Table 1. These conditions are the “business tools” available to the innovator that attempt to identify the relationship systemic between the old and new system. However, unless there is collective – that is, systemic – agreement to the character of this relationship, individuals or groups in the extant system can easily energize the standard system response to any threat. Supernatural aid may not be enough. In this way, disruptive innovation requires a significant manipulation of – not expression of – power to limit the systemic response.

My hypothesis is that if we were to review successful disruptive innovations that occurred within corporations, we’d see that the innovator successfully manipulated the power distribution in the organization. This may be a significant reason innovation is so heroic (and therefore so hard). It’s exceptionally difficult to manage a social structure to support purposes for which it was not defined. It’s requires a spectacular individual to achieve such ends.

Closure
Just as the hero/innovator must be intentional about the innovation journey, the system also can and should be intentional about how it will react to disruptive innovations. That is, the social structure of the corporation/system can choose the extent to which disruptive innovation is tolerated by the system. That is, disruptive innovation must be designed into the system. Low tolerance requires both the good idea as well as the truly exceptional person to drive the idea through the corporation; it will be a continuous, heroic fight, as it has been for nearly all disruptive innovations at Intel. A system with high tolerance can institutionalize (i.e., systematize) the system response by gaining collective acceptance to specific formal relationships tolerable to the organization, pre-managing the power through the social structure and making the whole engagement just a little less heroic. Disruptive innovation, often sought, much lamented for its difficulty, valued for its rarity and preciousness, must become a part of the system to have any greater chance of success than currently reported in the literature.

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It doesn’t take a lot of research to understand that design is a powerful tool in contemporary business thinking. Nor is it difficult to notice that design is increasingly central to an escalating number of parts of everyday life: more kinds of companies in more and more varied sorts of endeavors are using design, design processes, design partners, and design thinking in their work. And because design work has, in most of those applications, taken deep and considered understanding of the people who are going to use, inhabit, or experience what design makes, we tend to think that a broadening portfolio for design is a good thing. To most, it is nearly self-evident that something designed is better than something that is not. Saying that something is ‘well-designed’ is a compliment for anything from a kitchen tool to a strategic plan. We use the term “good design” almost reflexively as evaluation and often, as explanation. When something is tabbed as “good design” (by a magazine or an award from a professional association) we agree or not in the instance; but we accept, usually tacitly, that good design is different from indifferent design or bad design.

Despite all that, we don’t usually think of ‘good’ in its moral or ethical sense, as in “good vs. evil,” as the sum of choices made against choices not made. Positive, thoughtful, or responsible design has included in it not just a final form, but a large number of distinctions understood and choices about those distinctions made in a particular light, with particular reasons for them. A child’s toy, perhaps, can be safe or unsafe, educational or mindless, responsibly made or using the worst but cheapest materials available. It isn’t a toy made to be bad, but in each of the moments where choice matters, the choice made has been, in the current context at least, toward something less than as good as it could have been.

In this paper we’ll argue that this particular sense of ‘good’ in good design matters not only in the end product, but in the way design works in general, in design processes, in design thinking. We’re not arguing for any one moral or ethical position, but simply that we, collectively as a discipline, as a field, have a responsibility to acknowledge the role that values play in the work that we do. By knowing that that articulation needs to be done, and by using it to anchor the forward end of the design process, we do better work; we do good work. And with that, we can speak more clearly to other interests (customers, users, management, investors) about what ‘good design’ means.

Good Design and Design Research
When we take hold of a powerful tool and use it to shape the daily lives of real people, we are laid under an obligation, a responsibility, to understand not only how that shaping could affect those daily lives, but how it should do so. The “good” in “good design” has, in the last twenty years or so, migrated from the relatively simple appreciation of an end-product’s formal properties to include the ways in which a product becomes what it is: the process of designing. In the course of that migration, “users” and “experience” have become central to the way design works, to how the things which it produces are evaluated. Under any number of labels (“user-centered design research”, “ethnographics,” “anthrojournalism” and so on) the (largely) social sciences-derived research which informs the work of design has grown into a small industry of its own. Taken as a whole, design research has resulted in a collective paying of more attention to people rather than less. That’s a ‘good’ in pretty much anyone’s book. But it is also, in practice, a bit like supposing that because an M.D. is doing rounds, looking into patients’ rooms and signing the charts, good medical care is being practiced. If designers have been less than explicit about the values that inform the choices they make, it seems that design research as a whole has been even less so. The most widely accepted ‘point’ of design research is to inform the work of design. To provide a basis from which the work of design, development, and strategy can proceed. It is a bit circular: we do research to inform the process of design, which requires that we understand the users. Circular or not, it would be just fine if what was required to “inform” design were no more than a scan of current conditions. A pH strip dipped in the pool. A thumb licked and held up in the breeze. But the best design work doesn’t need the thumb in the air; good designers or teams or practices are usually plugged in and working at the ragged front end anyway. What we need from research is more than description, and especially, more than a list of “needs,” explicit or implicit, met or unmet. Although description is an essential moment in the work of ethnography, relying solely on description, and the simplified-empirical position that we are only reporting “needs” is a kind of responsibility dodge which lets research work go forward without taking up the side of the implicit bargain that requires us to say why we are interested in knowing what we want to know. The work of design research too easily takes as justification that we are describing only how people behave, or the perennially-popular-ethno-marketing refrain “what they actually do instead of what they say.” We cling to the position that it is not our job to say what anyone ‘should’ do.

But research and design, especially when woven together, are loaded with hundreds of value-laden choices, and with motives (from our embeddings in business) that are impossible to avoid. When we look at the entire arc of design process, including the research work which informs it, we believe that we need to be clear about what we hope the should will be even while we are depicting the could of design possibility. Understanding the role that our own values play, how they intertwine with the understanding and aims of our subjects, is not a hobble on design work, it enriches it.

I’ve argued in earlier papers that in the developmental side of design research, one has to be comfortable with the idea that research does not provide definite answers to particular questions. And that thinking that the work of ethnographic research should ‘answer’ a question has led to the intellectual shortcut of using ‘unmet needs’ as a catch-all substitute for the much harder interpretive work that great design takes off from. (ref. for “Uncertain Answers” paper). In that work, I argued that instead of identifying needs, research should take as its object (following Clifford Geertz) the ‘thick description’ of how experience is organized for the user. And that the work of design can use that description (aka a “framework”) to understand what could be changed through a new product or interaction or experience – whatever kind of design work was on the other end of the research. I still think that’s true, but incomplete. The idea that the rich, descriptive summary of a “framework” is what design practice needs from research is a good one, but in effect, it has only shoved the issue of choice and direction a bit further off, onto the design itself.

For more years than I would like to admit, I used some version of this argument in almost every introductory talk or workshop presentation I gave. And in the not insubstantial portion of those where my friend and colleague Hugh Dubberly was present, he would patiently raise his hand and ask me some form of the question, “I think you mean what it ‘should’ be, not ‘could’ be, don’t you?” After all this time, I’ve finally realized just how right he is: “Could” vs. “should” is a simpler way of framing potential vs. commitment, chance vs. responsibility. And going back to our opening, when you recognize the power of a tool, values, commitment, and responsibility all become what we should do in the work we do. In this paper, we’re going to look at how we need to rethink the descriptive part of design research in light of values, in order to, put simply, do good.

Design & Research, simplified

Let’s start with a simple proposition: the work of design is getting from a set of conditions which exist at the beginning of the process (now), to a future set of conditions which include ‘now’ to ‘next.’ we are researching then, are the conditions under which those choices will lead to a consumer, user, making a choice themselves.

Here’s a better way to think about the point of design research: understanding frameworks, at a dynamic level, not just a snapshot

Slide Show Notes, story flow:
1. Let’s start with a simple proposition: In other words, taking the present set of ‘what is’ conditions and developing what ‘could be.’
2. There is an idealized, pure innovation view of design that more or less ignores the now in order to shout real loud about ‘next’!
3. Set against that, is an (also idealized) research-driven view embedded in market research which pretty simply extrapolates the now to the next.
4. The truth of good design work is somewhere in between,
5. The rise of human-centered design, design research, and ethnography gave us a more nuanced, more complex, understanding of the ‘now’
6. The main point of those approaches the idea that by understanding the individual, social and cultural influences on why people think the way that they do, why they use what they use, why they need what they need (or think that they do), we’ll be better able to design well.
7. Prior to this, the language of ‘good design’ had been largely confined to aspects of the ‘product’ (even if that product was a logo or typeface). Occasionally, we looked at the process. But with the advent of “user-centeredness” emerged the notion of a “framework” as something that could not only be described, but – especially through the work of interaction design – as something that could be designed.
8. “Experience” as an object of design further established the role of something that was personal to the users, but could also be described and altered through the work of design.
9. Design as imagining the ‘what if’ of a users framework.
10. Design research has lacked an object – a thing to be about. Theory is nice, but that’s not what we’re talking about. And “needs” is neither a useful design construct nor reliably ascertainable.
11. There is a parallel between the work of design and the notion of successive approximation in theory building.
12. Summarized in the abstract-concrete by now to next model
13. A nested set of ideas:
Frames (are how people think)
Models are descriptions of the way that the elements interact
Scenarios are articulations of possible changes to the conditions of the model.
14. Definition of ethnography in the design world: description and interpretation, toward an end, within constraints.
15. The implication that if you can make anything, you need to choose what to make, where to intervene, what to target.
16. Choice, and the ability to affect other folks’ choices, means values play an important role.
17. Two lines from here: the dynamic change story and the values story.
18. The dynamic change story: the difference between designing the object, and designing an object, its behavior, its environments, and where it will end up (the ball and the hole slides). Why it is a model, not a snapshot.
19. Borrow from physics the idea of components to understand dynamics, like force, direction, resistance, spin… control (add or remove)
20. How designing those control the ‘metaphorical’ trajectory
21. The values story — what sustainable, environmental issues, and design for social impact have done to change the landscape – what Knorr-Cetina calls the ‘fictional symbolic’ the set of things we all come to use, to agree to.
22. Lakoff on republicans. IHI ‘preventable deaths’
23. Redraw the original picture of frameworks with values as the ‘forward anchor’ of the design process – not form.
24. The bigger goal of design work is to clearly understand the values (as both initial condition and as endpoint), the ‘signposts’ (from the World Wildlife Fund paper) and the ‘choice architecture’ involved in getting from the current set of forces to a new frame, experience, and stuff.
25. We do this using a profound and empathic understanding of experience, design is like judo, working with forces to redirect them towards something.
26. Solving for both ends: A context in the future. Has four parts
the initial conditions
the endpoint
the signposts
and the frame architecture. Expand and example for each of these terms. What they provide is a new laundry list of what you can understand and what you can change
27. Good Work comes out of trying to do good within various frames of reference: cultural, social, domain, field…. Not an absolute. But you need to understand the levels.
28. The positive notion of subversion from Marcuse
29. What’s the right word for this values-based, systemically-scaled, experience-frame design? Not sure.
30. Examples (pos + neg): Segway, Hybrid Escalade, IHI

In graduate school I was part of a ‘workshop’ that had been started by one of my advisors (Wendy Griswold, now at Northwestern University) on the ‘Sociology of Culture.’  There wasn’t a curriculum.  Wendy didn’t lecture.  There were no grades. It went across academic quarters, year over year (I was part of it for four of them), with an evolving composition of graduate students and faculty members from across the university.

We presented work in progress. We shared drafts of papers and chapters. We critiqued what we read and we argued (productively) about what we were working on. In the workshop, the papers and the arguments grew and developed (and sometimes died) as their authors brought new versions back for another round. It was perhaps the single most valuable part of my graduate education.

I think that having something like that workshop would be a very good thing to have now, in the professional context, with a different, even more diverse group of colleagues.  So we’ve started to develop one, and this is it.  We want it to have the feel of the workshop that Wendy developed: open, collegial, intense, and rewarding.

We’re developing pulp for the community of folks who think about and practice in the intersection of design, the interpretive social sciences, technology, and business.  The kinds of work that go by the names of ‘interaction design’ or ‘user centered research’ or ‘design strategy’ just to pick a few.  The idea of a salon (think Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table) gets at what we are after pretty well.  pulp is not any one person’s blog.  It is not a running commentary in short form on topics of the day.

What pulp is ‘about’
pulp is being developed by and for folks who are trying to figure out some aspect of how we all work, of what is important about it, and where the field (fields?) we’re engaged with might be headed.  We don’t know where, exactly, that is. We have different backgrounds and specific interests, but pulp isn’t a blog “about” service design, or “about” design thinking or ethnographic research or any of a dozen other topics that somehow, add up to the emerging whole of a field. But any of those might be what one of us is working on in one of the pieces at any given point in time.

It has seemed for some time that this space has been in need of a place for both new folks to find their feet, get introduced to some of the central tenets and core dialogues, and at the same time, allowing the edges of the field to get explored, developed, and extended.   Collectively, as they evolve toward ‘done’ we think that both the articles and the discourse around them will feed the larger dynamic of the work.  Will help to shape the future of this emerging field.  That’s why the ‘working on’ aspect is most important to us.

How it will work (we think).
pulp is organized around the give and take of criticism around a “work-in-progress” (aka a “WIP”)   At the top level of the site are current  works-in-progress by the authors who are part of the pulp community.  Alongside those are the archives of completed (or at least temporarily put aside) work and ‘strands’ of emerging topics.  The site will be available for reading and searching by anyone who registers, but only the community of authors and critical readers will be able to post articles or add comments and criticism.  We are explicitly trying to structure pulp so that we don’t get “LOL! Thx for posting!!” types of posts from users like “anxiousweasel82.”

pulp is here primarily to support the dialogue between writer (or writers) and their critical community.  We have “@pulp.com” email addresses if you need them (sometimes, you just need to write something outside of work).  Part of what we want to do for each author, each article, is to build a following in advance of publication.  To engage the ‘wisdom of crowds’ when it makes sense, and to make a much wider audience more aware of your work.

The four main categories are:

Works in Progress (“WIPs” )  Book outlines, article drafts, conference presentations.  Theory, review, speculation, argument.  All good.  Promotional pieces, simple case studies, self-aggrandizing stunts and ad hominem arguments not good.  Pitched overboard immediately.

Strands, which are more like a conventional discussion thread, though built around an author’s specific questions;

Archives for completed articles,or unpublished papers put up by the authors; and

Authors are a community of contributors  from more than a few disciplines, with many types of affiliation and  levels of seniority, involved in the work of this field.  That’s kind of the point.   We do distinguish between folks who are working on stuff, and engaged with other author’s works, from folks who just want to read or scan (though we want them to do that).  So, ‘authors’ will be by application or invitation, and require contributing at least one work in progress.

We have some pretty strongly held views on the importance of citation & acknowledgement, and how critical those are to building a community of practice.  So check out the “House Rules” on the About page. pulp will not be for cases (that’s The ACME Review’s job), but for theory, method, review, integration, synthesis, and exploration.

become a pulp author

Where pulp WIPs go
We are committed to increasing the circulation and citation of the work we are all doing to further the discourse and thinking in the field. We hope that the work here will provide practitioners, students, colleagues more things to read, more things to think with.  In other words, what’s up here, we expect and hope that people will use, but give credit where it is due.  We promise to do the same.