The Innovator's Dilemma

Nice to be included in Fast Company's (FC) Top Ten list of the “Most Innovative Design Firms.” Some great company there. Not just IDEO, but Pentagram, Rockwell, and Smart, to name a few. That said, the list seemed to emphasize companies that make cool shiny things. Where were Doblin, Stone Yamashita or Jump Associates? Perhaps they don’t fit FC's definition of 'design' any longer. In fact, given that rationale, I was surprised to see Smart at the bottom of the list. The FlipHD has to be the best new shiny object of the year. Just ask my kids.

But you have to ask yourself: what is so 'innovative' about design firms creating great new products (or interfaces or environments)? Isn't that what we have always done? Many of us have made a significant effort to extend our impact beyond the tangible and visible to transforming services and systems. Makes it much harder to get on the next FC hotlist, I guess. The fact is, to most businesses 'innovation' just means 'new': new products, new services, new revenue streams, new markets...which is really nothing NEW at all! Helps to explain why 'innovation' is facing a severe identity crisis right now.

I had a nice discussion with Jessie Scanlon from BusinessWeek about this issue. I was filling her in on the goings-on at IxDA, specifically John Thackara's keynote. His delivery was a bit gloomy, a drum roll of the major challenges we are facing as a society. But he closed with a discussion of 'Technologies of Cooperation’ (for some background on this topic check out this paper from the Institute for the Future from a few years ago). For most businesses, 'cooperation' is a pretty radical idea – a lot more disruptive than 'innovation'. At the end of the day, 'innovation' is still about ownership. Most businesses see it as a way to compete more effectively by developing something new and different that they can own...which is REALLY nothing new.

Cooperation is different, and a whole lot harder. If you work your way down the list of significant challenges that our economy is facing (energy, healthcare...), clearly, cooperation is going to be a lot more important than innovation. In fact, you could argue that innovation had a whole lot to do with the mess we are in.

So what can we do? Clearly many of the same skills are needed - creative facilitation, design thinking, pattern making, and reframing - to build a culture of cooperation. But those skills are not going to be enough to shift the mindset within the business community. That is why initiatives like Project Masiluleke are so important to us at frog. We believe that we can use these collaborations to demonstrate the impact that cooperation can have on a large scale. Soon you will read about 'Mobile Mandate' here - our long term commitment to influencing the mobile industry to support great cooperation and collaboration. Stay tuned...

As frog's Vice President of Creative, Robert Fabricant leads efforts to expand the impact of design into new markets and industries. An expert in design for social innovation, Robert is lead partner in Project Masiluleke, an initiative that harnesses the power of mobile technology to combat HIV and AIDS in South Africa. He is an adjunct professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in New York.