INFORMATIVO CÁMARA NEGOCIOS4

Design ThinkingEl poder del pensamiento de diseño aplicadoa realidades colombianas

Simón Cepeda Jaramillo,Consultor líder Insitum Colombia

Álvaro Enrique Díaz Salazar,Director socio Insitum Colombia

Ejemplo:Entender cómo las personas almacenan los produc-tos, facilita el ejercicio de pensar en la manera de ofrecer mejores productos o servicios. Si bien las personas no necesariamente saben lo que necesi-tan, si expresan sus frustraciones y es ese factor el que permite desarrollar prototipos y conceptos que pueden llegar a satisfacer estas necesidades. Al realizar una investigación de mercados en diferentes canales de venta se identificó que la forma en que los tenderos exhibían los cereales (apilados como libros) solo le permite al consumidor ver la información nutricional del producto. Un pequeño cambio en el empaque hizo que el producto fuera más visible y las ventas aumentaran:

De paso. Zona en la que se encuentran con más frecuencia los clubes.

Contexto:

Punto de venta:Lugares estructurados que vendan en grandes cantidades y que ofrecen un ahorro al comprar presentaciones grandes.

La aleta desprendiblepermite que salgan las bolsas de

de cereal, de manejo fácily seguro, convirtiendo a la caja en dispensador.130g

por su sistema de aletas reforzadas se puede adaptar y fijar a superficies verticales y horizontales.

la caja es el propio pop La caja protege las bolsas

Idea:Presentación en caja gigante que en el interior contenga

La caja puede funcionar como POP y dispensador. También se convierte en centro de adaptación de otros.

(porciones para3 o 4 días).6 bolsas ziplock

En la imagen se vecomo los tarros se acoplan naturalmente gracias a sus pequeñas aletas reforzadasa la caja grande de cereal.

Los otros productos se puedenir apilando alrededor

de la caja, pues tienencaracterísticas de agarre

y unión quese complementan.

Comercial (reventa). Consumidor que busca satisfacer finalmente al consu- midor familiar. Primero busca mayor ahorro para tener mayor ganancia y el segundo presentaciones más pequeñas.La bolsa provee más la sensación de perfil y, al estar en la caja, se ve como protegida.

Consumidor/compra:

n la actualidad, muchas empresas han comprendido el mensaje transmitido por algunos académicos y ex- pertos (R. Rust, C. Moorman

and G. Bhalla. 2010) y por compa-ñías de investigación como Forrester (J. Bernoff. 2011) de que nos encon-tramos en “la era del consumidor” y, por lo tanto, debemos enfocar los esfuerzos en entender a los usuarios e involucrarlos en los procesos de diseño e innovación.

A raíz de esto, escuchar al consumi-dor se ha puesto de moda al punto de que muchas empresas toman decisiones con base en lo que la gente dice sin ir más allá de las respuestas para identificar el origen subconsciente de sus acciones, aun sabiendo que existen grandes dife- rencias y contradicciones entre lo que las personas manifiestan que hacen y lo que en realidad hacen.

La investigación de mercado tradi-cional, cualitativa y cuantitativa, se enfoca en comprender al consumi-dor, pero deja por fuera algunos elementos fundamentales. Confía en lo que el usuario dice pero no inda- ga en lo que hace. Así como un

médico no toma la decisión de operar basado solo en lo que el paciente le dice, una empresa no debe de tomar decisiones sin antes tener un sustento cualitativo sobre lo que le sucede al cliente. Debemos observar en detalle el contexto, entender las claves culturales y de comportamiento, así como las emo- ciones inconscientes que nos pue- den dar luces para saber si algo puede o no funcionar.

Si las emociones son reacciones psicológicas causadas por nues- tras interpretaciones, entonces no elegimos conscientemente lo que sentimos, sino que son nuestros sentimientos los que suelen elegir por nosotros. Las emociones afec- tan nuestras decisiones más de lo que imaginamos.

Además de tener un conocimiento profundo del consumidor, necesita-mos ir un paso delante de él porque de nada sirve entenderlo si no sabe-mos qué oferta innovadora entre- garle para tocar sus fibras sensi- bles.

Entonces, ¿qué herramientas podemos utilizar no solo para conocer mejor a nuestros clientes, sino además para ofrecerle solu-ciones innovadoras?Los nuevos desafíos económicos y la manera acelerada en que evolu-cionan los negocios han hecho que las compañías desarrollen nuevas

metodologías y estrategias para poder entender al consumidor final, y llegarle con los mejores productos y/o servicios.

Entendemos que innovación, en sentido general, significa desarro- llar nuevas ideas para un uso productivo, o, como algunos la definen, “una producción de ideas comercialmente exitosa”. Pero para llegar a esto se necesitan meto- dologías acordes con los nuevos desafíos y es aquí que el Design Thinking aparece como una meto- dología en las escuelas de negocios y es implementada en las grandes organizaciones para el desarrollo de nuevos productos o servicios como una nueva alternativa para apro- vechar el mercadeo o reinventar los modelos de negocios.

El Design Thinking, que consiste en generar ideas rápidas, eficientes y mucho más exitosas, y parte del diseño centrado en el usuario (UCD por sus siglas en inglés), ofrece herramientas que facilitan la inno- vación pero que exigen entender en detalle al usuario para luego identifi-car estrategias que enriquezcan sus vidas.

Las empresas necesitan entender, desde el diseño, cómo administrar la creatividad partiendo de las hipóte-sis iniciales, los procesos repetitivos y el uso de prototipos rápidos, hasta la implementación de los productos

y servicios o de estrategias que sean coherentes con lo que los usuarios requieren. A su vez, el diseño debe apropiar de los negocios el análisis riguroso de cada una de las etapas.

Estadísticas de países desarrollados muestran que alrededor de 80 % de los nuevos productos y servicios fracasan dentro de los primeros seis meses de su salida al mercado y esta cifra aumenta a cerca de 90 % si se considera todo el primer año. Aunque no hay claridad sobre el origen de esas cifras, esta afir- mación es acertada. Si estas ideas estuvieran basadas en necesidades reales del usuario (por medio de la investigación cualitativa) y se desa- rrollaran prototipos antes de salir al mercado, ese número, en definitiva, sería menor.

Este proceso reiterativo se ha apli- cado en distintos sectores, desde innovar en el servicio de una asegu-radora, el desarrollo de una bebida acorde con el segmento del “nuevo consumidor colombiano”, la crea- ción de un modelo de negocios para la gran empresa en “búsqueda de información comercial” en América Latina, hasta innovar en la comuni-cación de una marca bogotana en la costa caribe.

Innovación es pensar de una forma diferente y el Design Thinking nos da las herramientas para lograr este objetivo.

E

de canal y el cierre ziplock, garantizando frescura al consumidor.

I am delighted by the response this debate has produced. Many thoughtful readers have pointed out that the initial premise of the debate is unnecessarily dualistic: it suggests an either/or dichotomy that seems unrealistic. Most people seem to believe that we need some combination of incremental and disruptive innovation, and both Douglas Merrill and I agree. Where we differ is in the relative importance of the two.

Although I firmly believe there is an important distinction to be made between invention and innovation, several readers have brought up examples of famous disruptive inventions to bolster the case against incrementalism. What strikes me in looking at the history of great inventions is how often the same innovative steps happened in parallel. The major advances that gave us the radio, telephone, car and airplane took place in different countries at roughly the same time. In fact, the people we call inventors were often just the first to file an acceptable patent application. This goes to show that in every period there were sufficient incremental innovations creating an environment that allowed various people to achieve similar results. It was this huge, fertile field of experience and knowledge that allowed multiple individuals to connect the dots in the same way and move to the next step. In retrospect, that next step was truly disruptive, but the process of getting to it was unquestionably one of assimilating and building upon earlier developments.

For instance, many readers pointed to the car as an example of disruptive innovation and Mr Merrill brought up Henry Ford, who of course did not invent the car, did not invent mass production and was not the first to apply mass production to the car. In fact, Henry Ford's greatest contribution to the disruptive power of the car was in marketing, pricing his cars as low as possible and raising his employees' wages to bring these products within their grasp.

The car is often used as an example of disruptive innovation, but in reality it is just the opposite: a perfect example of a disruptive force born from thousands of incremental changes. The history of the car spans not years but centuries (the first US patent for a car was granted back in 1789). While it is much simpler to teach children about Karl Benz or Henry Ford, the truth is that no one individual invented the car; it had a hundred fathers over a span of 250 years.

If the car's history is complex and paternity uncertain, consider the much disputed history of radio or the telephone. The airplane's inventors are less in doubt, but its history is no less a product of thousands of incremental improvements by hundreds of contributors.

No one would deny the disruptive nature of the car, the telephone, the airplane, radio, television or the computer. They were all disruptive to markets, lifestyles, business models and more. However, if we examine them closely, none of these can be attributed to a single disruptive invention. All of them involved a long process of innovation by dozens or hundreds of contributors. These disruptive inventions were all the result of an incremental (and remember that incremental does not necessarily mean slow) process of improvement on prior art.

Even the transistor, a remarkably disruptive technology, as one reader pointed out, was developed by Bell Labs engineers working to improve upon ideas that had been patented 20 years before. The microwave oven, also held up as an example of disruptive technology, was not technically innovative at all: the innovation lay in re-purposing magnetron technology, which had been around for decades.

My honourable opponent claims: "The issue becomes whether incremental change makes it more likely that your company will win. Alternatively, does disruptive change … improve your chances?" Unfortunately, this phrasing of the argument presumes that disruptive change is ready at hand and a CEO has only to look at the menu and choose between the relative merits of two types of innovation. Needless to say, that is not the case. In the real world, CEOs must decide whether to bet their company's future on a series of low-risk, uncertain-return constant improvements, which may or may not lead to some radical development down the road, or to focus resources on costly, highly speculative attempts to produce high-return disruptive results. After disruptive innovation has appeared, history (and shareholders) will amply reward the executive who bet on the latter and won. But what of those who made the bet and lost? For every successful breakthrough technology, thousands of others blew up, evaporating large amounts of capital and putting armies of talented people out of work.

If we limit the discussion to the potential success or failure of individual companies, the idea that one guy wins, a thousand others lose—that's business is palatable. But when we are also talking about public policy (as the moderator suggested), that equation becomes unsustainable. We cannot bet a majority of our resources on a crapshoot. Note that this does not mean that governments cannot champion kaizen (improvements) as a basic foundation for industrial policy while at the same time promoting R&D that might some day lead to breakthrough technologies. That, in sum, is exactly what Japan and other Asian economies have been doing for decades.

I am not sure if it is the mark of a great debate, or a poor one, that we agree on so many points. We both agree that there must be a mix of incremental and disruptive innovation, and that there are both costs and benefits to each. Yet despite our shared ground, we disagree on some essential points.

First, I believe that the notion that disruptive innovation is a product of pure serendipity is false. If disruptive innovation is just a fluke, a stroke of lightning, the product of a million monkeys typing, then companies would do well to avoid focusing on it. There are, after all, only so many monkeys to employ.

But disruptive innovation is not serendipity. And it is not just a by-product of incrementalism. It is something different.

My father is a physicist. In addition to fairy tales, I grew up listening to him talk about his love of science while telling stories of the greatest minds of the era. These stories shaped me and my view of innovation. Specifically, the stories highlighted to me that disruptive innovation is often the product of someone putting two facts together that had previously been held far apart. The juxtaposition yielded a game-changing insight.

Looking backward, it seems that the insight was nothing more than an incremental improvement on other things of the day. But that is wrong. The disruption, the way of seeing things differently, changed the world.

Take, for example, quantum physics. First, the black body radiation problem: If you shoot more energy at an object, classical mechanics would expect the object would gain energy at the same rate. But it does not;

there is a point at which the object stops adding energy. Classical mechanics appears to be wrong; Planck hypothesised that this is because light is both a wave and a particle.

A few years later, Einstein was thinking about the photoelectric effect: if you shoot electrons at the surface of a metal, you get light back. As you reduce the intensity of the energy, you should get less reflection. But you do not; you get the same energy of light coming off the metal, just less of it. Einstein noticed that this was very similar to Planck's explanation of black body radiation; from the juxtaposition of these two problems, quantum physics was born.

Einstein's brilliance was setting two facts next to each other, and looking at them in a completely different way. This is not serendipity at all. Instead, it is a product of being willing to ask questions that others have not asked.

One might argue that this is science—research is all about turning the world on its head—and is not related to commerce at all. But that would be wrong as well.

In our opening statements, we each identified great companies that are a mix of incremental and disruptive innovation: Google, from my side, Toyota from his. Toyota, a product of millions upon millions of incremental changes. Google, a product of many incremental changes and several disruptive ones. Each company's strategy has yielded great returns.

Toyota has been available on the NYSE for more than 30 years. In those decades, the stock price has increased by more than 400%, or more than $70 per share. In fact, at its height, Toyota shares traded at more than $100 per share above their initial price. This is a great return, a testament to the power of incremental innovation.

Google went public in 2004, and trading opened at $85. Currently, a person who bought stock at the opening price would have made about a 450% return, or about $500. At its height, a shrewd buyer would have made more than $600. Also a princely return, and due to Google's focus both on brilliant execution and game-changing innovation. During its life, Google has generated both headlines and economic returns.

Microsoft, another company made great both by engineering triumphs and incremental improvements, has increased its value by literally tens of thousands of times in its almost 25 years. Apple's story includes periods when disruptive innovations were few and far between, and stock returns even fewer, times of remarkable market disruption and similarly remarkable market returns.

I think it is hard to argue that the economic returns to incremental innovation are clearly better than those of disruptive innovations. Perhaps Google's results will fade, will not sustain; only time will tell. However, with a tip of the hat to Keynes, it does not really matter, because in the long run, we are all dead anyway.

Part of what makes Google great, or Microsoft, or a host of others, is that, as in the physics story, they are willing to connect two seemingly disconnected facts and see what happens. They are run responsibly, but still find room to experiment. There is risk in experimentation: Most experiments fail.

Responsible companies should not—cannot—invest everything in experiments. However, taking no risks is also irresponsible, because disruption yields more than just a high Google stock price. Disruptive innovations create an ecosystem of companies and products around them. These ecosystems then learn through loads of incremental innovations. But without the ecosystem formed by the disruption, the well of incremental innovation dries up.

You need the seed in order to grow the plant, and you need the disruptive innovation in order to grow the market.