Design Thinking Parallels in Arts Organizations

The idea of 'design thinking' and it's use to improve the lives of people all around the planet is inspiring and  thought-provoking.  There are many facets of design thinking, or at least the ones spelled out in the article by Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt, and while many of them are being applied to non-profits focusing on social innovation in emerging economies, they contain huge potential for arts-based non-profits.

Arts organizations, especially those providing a 'classical' art to the public, can benefit from designing not only their product but also their infrastructure on their audience's needs.  In a time of headlines filled with bankruptcy and struggling economies, arts organizations can no longer afford to present their product and then try and figure out how to attract people to it.  Their internal structure but adapt to meet the needs of the external wishes of their audience.  One instance is the hiring of consultants by a symphony to adapt marketing strategies to try and determine what the audience is looking for in their product.  This process is often used after the season is already finalized and the marketing team are trying to find ways to attractively package it to their usual audience base but also to attract new audience members.  As the article mentions, looking at this process in hindsight often shows the obvious issues with this process.

Another example of how arts organizations can benefit from design thinking and positive deviance is by studying other arts initiatives, or any initiatives, that are doing well.  One common mistake is to label many aspects of successful ventures as 'not art' or 'selling out'.  The issue with this line of thinking is that it prohibits many valuable lessons that can be learned from organizations and businesses, like the record industry, the movie industry, and the sports industry.  All of these realms have valuable research, ideas, infrastructure and products that could be used to help the arts gain new audience members.

The design thinking spaces of inspiration, ideation, and implementation lend themselves well to arts non-profits.  Inspiration is easy to find in the arts; it is what all arts are created from.  However, organizations would do well to focus time and energy on ideation and implementation.  Ideation also requires multidisciplinary people, which are fairly hard to come by in a non-profit outside of the board (and effective board use is a whole other issue).  While all groups of people can benefit from multidisciplinary members, arts organizations traditionally tend to attract only people who have experience in one field.  Places like CMU with the MAM degree are helping to change that.  The third space, implementation, is crucial.  An important aspect is the acceptance that the process will need to be tested, iterated, and defined.  Feedback is important, and the attitude of 'always improving' is critical.

While arts organizations traditionally don't fit in the social innovation definition, they also have an important role to play in communities.  In order to also be successful, sustainable, and meaningful to society, they can also benefit from these lessons and ideologies gleaned from other non- and for-profit innovators.

Design Thinking is Needed in the Education Reform Movement

I believe the design thinking approach could make a great impact on the education reform movement. Education reforms have a terrible track record of success. Some of the brightest people create the most advanced, well thought-out plans for improvement that ultimately fall short in implementation. Why? According to educator and author Charles Payne in his book So Much Reform So Little Change; The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools, most reform programs fail to take social barriers into consideration, i.e. the people. Reformers get entirely too caught-up using the traditional problem-solving model; analyzing test scores alone to identify problems. Design teams would gain great insight from going into the schools to observe and study how they function.

Implementation of this model won't be easy though. The reading spoke about how the prototyping phase exposes unforeseen challenges, but what if those problems require greater reform? Would it be cost effective to continue with the product implementation? In the education system, gangs, teachers unions, ineffective administrations, and low expectations (amongst other things) hinder the success of education reforms. In order to effect lasting change, these issues must be addressed. A private company intending to sell a product and make a profit may abandon the product idea because it is not cost-effective to tackle these problems. The government can’t do that.

Is the education department capable of implementing this model? Considering the government's tendency to lag in adopting new approaches and the increasing pressure to see results of reforms instantly, it will be a formidable task. However, the design-thinking approach is fundamentally optimistic and, at least, deserves attention by education reformers. It is an innovative approach to change and has the potential to lead to a more comprehensive reform plan that addresses the multi-faceted problems of the public education system.

Aging issue

As the reading document points out, Japan is now facing with a serious aging issue. According to "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World" (http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_2025/2025_Global_Trends_Final_Report.pdf) , by NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL, there will be one senior for every two working-age in Japan by 2025. GDP growth is projected to drop to near zero, and the cost of trying to maintain pensions and health coverage will squeeze out expenditures on other priorities, such as defense. The major approaches to solve this issue are 1.technology, 2. the role of immigration, 3. public health improvements, and 4. laws encouraging greater female participation in the economy. Since aging issue is also a big problem in EU, and it will definitely be a big problem in China and other nations, the measures to solve this issue in Japan will be good guideline to help all other countries as well. One of the good approach which came up in my mind is that increasing the usage of Robot technology for other than manufacturing industry to improve productivity.

Frugal Engineering: The Wave of the Future

Many years ago when President Kennedy went to deliver his famous Berlin speech he said:

Two thousand years ago -- Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum."¹ Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner." Fifty years down the line if President Kennedy were to be contributing to the carbon dioxide built up in the world I think he would have said that: Today, in the world, the proudest boast is Frugal engineering'.

The world is changing hands and history is re-balancing. For those who lived in darkness have seen the light. People whom conventional market isolated them are now finding themselves doing well in the emerging markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America. These areas now constitutes the chunk of the people in the world whose purchasing power is increasing and are enjoying or tasting gadgets for the first time.

If any firm wants to see going concern for its businesses then it find an economical ways and means to engineer goods which the teeming people in the emerging market can afford without they having to forgo basic or secondary necessity. That is when frugal engineering is come into play.

British Telecom company called Millicom Ghana was the first mobile phone operator in Ghana. Millicom targeted the elite in the society to the extent the use of mobile phone became the exclusive preserve of the rich. After some years of monopoly then came a new entrant called: Scancom. Scancom decided to target the middle and low class. This became part of their frugal engineering to the extent the latter came to control about 60% of the market just after five years of operation.

In conlcusion, those who will hold the large share of the market will be those who engineer frugally.

Design Thinking has a Place in the Education System

When I was in high school I never had the same class at the same time on two days. I would have Algebra during first period on Mondays, fourth period on Tuesdays, sixth period on Wednesdays, second period on Thursday and fifth period on Friday. It was the same for all of courses. I had a completely different experience than my friends in other schools. It was one form of innovation in the education system. Design Thinking gives schools the opportunity to explore solutions above and beyond the current expected system.

It isn’t only about scheduling and tailoring education to a person’s natural abilities. Professor Laura Lee discusses the introduction of design thinking into the classroom by integrating several courses and outside work to engage students in a new and exciting way.

Universities have the opportunity to integrate Professor Lee’s ideas with surrounding organizations and businesses whether that is through volunteering or consulting. This benefits the students as well as the organization. If the education system can begin to integrate design thinking into classrooms at a younger age, there is no predicting what the generations may discover.

Food for thought

One idea from this week’s readings that deserves reflection is “the productivity imperative”, one of the five crucibles that were discussed in the article “What happens next?”. The authors made a number of suggestions for boosting our productivity, but there is one suggestion that I feel should be added to the conversation – improving the overall health of our population by ensuring that everyone has access to affordable, healthy food and understands how their diet impacts their health.

Hunger and diet-related disease decrease people’s physical and cognitive abilities. Hunger remains a key problem in the US, and one that disproportionately affects poor and minority populations. Just today, the USDA released the results of a 2010 study on household food security. The study found that in 2010, 14.5% of US households were food insecure (http://www.ers.usda.gov/Features/HouseholdFoodSecurity2010). In children, poor nutrition can have long-term impacts on their growth and brain development, affecting their productivity as adults. Poor nutrition also negatively affects the productivity of adults in workforces all around the world, as talked about in a 2005 ILO report (http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/press-and-media-centre/news/WCMS_005175/lang--en/index.htm). Diet-related disease has an enormous impact on the productivity of our workforce (no pun intended). According to the CDC, about 34% of adults and 17% of children in the US are obese. Diet-related diseases are among the leading causes of death in our country. There are countless ways that diet and nutrition affect the health of our citizens and their ability to be productive members of society. This issue should be an important part of the “productivity imperative” conversation.

What does value mean for you?

Human- centered design thinking makes sense, as the human (your target population) should be at the center of the social innovation that is being designed for them. "The Importance of Frugal Engineering" and IDEO's "Human Centered Design Toolkit" both point out the need for a deep understanding of how people live and will ultimately use a product for the design- process to be successful. Obviously people living in different parts of the world from different economic and social backgrounds have different routines, preferences, and needs. But as a consumer, don't we all benefit from "frugal engineering"? I certainly want products that were designed to maximize customer value while they minimize nonessential costs. This isn't just the desire of the "bottom of the pyramid", but of all consumers. Why isn't frugal engineering more popular among the middle and top of the pyramid as well? Perhaps the tenets and products of frugal engineering will capture the hearts of consumers in developed economies as well. Or is value perceived in a fundamentally different way between the "developing" and the "developed" consumer? Is a radio (or an IPOD dock rather) worth more to the relatively- affluent consumer than extra storage space, thereby affecting each party's value calculations? Finally, is a company like Tata really engaged in social innovation when it designs the Nano? I think the product is certainly socially innovative and fits our class definition of social innovation, but Tata's main motivation is to create a product that's profitable. Is frugal engineering about social innovation, or is it just a necessary step in doing business in the developing world?

Frugal Engineering: Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down

In my effort to synthesize concepts from all the different readings for this week, one concept that I find especially striking is the idea of "frugal engineering" from the Seghal et. al article. This idea, not limited to literal cost management, but which extends to making things specifically for the purpose of meeting the needs of emerging, presents the challenge of balancing"top-down commitment" with "bottom-up innovation." By design, frugal engineering attempts to tap into "bottom of the pyramid" with needs unique to the developing world, but where does the main responsibility lie? The article does a great job highlighting how often the first solution (especially by private-sector entrepreneurs) in product design for emerging markets is to merely re-introduce mature-market products with limited functionality. It is fairly nonsensical, but it prevails because many from the "top" view this as the most cost-effective solution. However, as Seghal (el al.) points out, those in emerging markets do not always part with their money that easily, and many if not most know when they are not being given the best product at the best price. So does this mean that most top-down commitment to developing emerging markets is off base? Perhaps, since in many cases the heads of organizations or corporations would rather dictate what the market wants rather than let the market do it itself. Does that put more pressure on bottom-up innovation from those within the market to utilize the basic frugal engineering concept of avoid needless costs? I think so, as often an insider's perspective is the solution to greater market penetration. But ideally, there is a balance between a quasi-hegemonic force from above and an almost revolutionary response from below. (Or in less dramatic terms, "outsider" producers work with both "internal producers" and the greater populace of the emerging markets to make the best possible products.) I think that bottom-up innovation is universal: it's definitely not unique to the emerging world. What I think is crucial in emerging BoP markets that the authors of this frugal engineering article drive home is the idea that top-down commitment, with the "right" direction, is absolutely necessary in order to continue to develop the emerging markets. As the Tata Motors example shows, there has to be a willingness to match one's own frugal engineering endeavors specifically to the cost constraints of one's consumers beyond simply removing features from existing mature-market products. In others news, it is incredibly ironic to be finishing this post just minutes after the press conference concerning the Dietrich fund. I suppose I am now an alumnus of the Marianna Brown Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

What Role Will Government Intervention Play in the Development of Social Enterprise?