Archive for March, 2009

The crack in the wall

Monday, March 30th, 2009

crack1Reading Roland Barthes ‘Mythologies’ is fun to do. It brings you to look at the world through the eyes of the ‘mythologist’. Barthes is interested in finding the myths that are hidden in messages. As a structuralist he is looking for the patterns of meaning hidden in stories and in day-to-day pictures. He defines the myth as the meaning that is on a higher level. The original code is replaced by a code of higher order: the code of the story that is told indirectly and therefore so much more powerful than the official stories that scream out loud their meaning.

I found an interesting one in my daily of last Saturday (NRC). It was hidden in a diagram above an article on the economic developments. The scheme depicts the level of the Dow Jones index from the late seventies up to today. I have copied it above. This blog is not at all about the way the Dow Jones developped during the last 30 years. That is the literal meaning of the diagram. With Barthes I am interested in the meaning behind that. We see that the illustrator chose to depict the graph as a crack in the wall. A crack is a strong signal of decline. A sign on the wall so to say, signifiing that the house has not been taken care of well.

Very meaningful is the starting point of this crack in the early 80-ies, at the beginning of the recovery of the economy. As long as the Dow Jones Index is stable (but low), there is no crack. There are no devolopments. Things are therefor safe. Like a blissful poverty. You have got little, but you know what you have.

As soon as the curve starts to bend upward, the crack develops. The unspoken message here seems to be that at the root of economic prosperity there are already the seeds of decline. At the time it may have looked quite well to see the Dow Jones rise. But at hindsight we detect the beginning of the problems. This also signifies the feeling that this crisis is of a different level then the crisis between ‘ 79 and 2002. This is a fundamental one, that started in the early 80-ies, a sort of a ‘system problem’.

This represents quite a powerful theme we often see in stories about economics. I remember very well the early 2000, when the most cited economics stated that now the times had shifted towards a stable growth for ever and ever. Although the more cunning economists of course never believed this story, the feeling was very optimistic overall. Interviewing consumers however showed a strong hidden fear. Consumers were getting a little anxious because they had in mind the very strong the story of decline after prosperity.  Since decline had to come, they wondered: when? Also they felt that prosperity brought us too much problems, like an egoïsm and materialistic, individualistic view on the world. Another strong theme: as prosperity growth, so do the vices associated with it (read Simon Schama’s wonderful study about the outrageous increase of wealth in 17th century Amsterdam,  ‘The Embarrassment of Riches’)

The crack is growing to gigantic proportions a few years ago (2005), signifying the final fall of the economy started before we were actually aware of it . This is very much in resonance with our idea of a big fall: as in the cartoon when the character is still proceeding as he thinks he is still on the ground. But the spectator knows better. The character is already in the big void. As soon as he looks down and becomes aware of this, he falls down. And hard (being a comic, surviving the fall). The big fall of our economy is therefore placed in a time before the clash in september last year, allowing the theme of idle sense of stability to emerge.

Of course we see the opposite theme as a very strong theme now: after the healthy decline a new era will follow.

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Move on!

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

800px-new_road_brighton_-_shared_spaceA few weeks ago Dave Snowden wrote a post on his blog about the Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman, Monderman was a visionary. He was the first to recognize that the way we try to control traffic is counter productive. The signs – like he put it – are not there to prevent accidents, they are there to prevent legal ambiguity after an accident. In Monderman’s view a road should be made in such a way that signs are not necessary. The basic paradox is that the more you lines, traffic lights, traffic signs you add the less safety you get. One of the reasons is a false sense of safity: the drivers trust the signs and take less attention to the real traffic. He introduced the concept of shared space. In stead of heavy control, separating differcnt sorts of traffic (pedestrians, cyclists, cars) the road should be shared. This creates a safe behaviour. The picture shows an example of this in Brighton (picture from Wikipedia). Monderman recieved the innovation prize for this concept in 2006.
Tom Vanderbilt with his ‘Traffic – why we drive the way we drive’ shows strong evidence that a two-way road without a line in the middle is safer than a road with a clear line: the drivers adept their behaviour, are afraid to get to the wrong side of the road and take more attention to traffic. This is in my opinion a basic metaphor: the harder you try to control whatever you want to control, the less you succeed. The superior solution is a loose sort of control. Not a ‘laissez faire’ but a careful steering of emergent actions to a desired pattern.

Monderman designed roads and crossroads with a minimum of signs, all of them showed significant less accidents. Allthough his legecy is now growing, in Holland it is officially declared that his ideas are applicable ONLY within slow traffic zones. The allmighty Dutch ANWB just started a big campaign to bring the government to add MORE striping on the so called ‘ 80 Kilometer an hour’-road.  This is an effort to claim back control. It resonates very well with the classical control mechanisms, always in favour of more signs. They use research to back up this policy and claim to be able to save hundreds of lives with addes striping.  This is based on a case where new striping was added. The research made a classical mistake however, because not only the striping was changed, but on top of that the police started rigorous speed control with a dedicated team. It is more than likely that so called ’striping effect’ was nil in comparison to the other measures.

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Evolution or (co-)creation

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

dscn1627We are working again on a few co-creation projects. In those projects we host a workshop with consumer and clients. We offer a process that enables the participants to work productive and creatively together. We do that in an inspiring environment (we have developed a co-creation room for exactly that purpose). We mingle consumer and clients in subgroups that work independently. We set up assignments that are non analytical and designed to loosen up the mind and encourage lateral thinking. The clients (those responsible for creating the product or service) directly work with consumer on whatever needs to be done. It is wonderful to see how productive it is in innovation projects to take away the wall between client and consumer. It is also great to see the level of engagement by both consumer and client. In a session we had last friday several respondents took pictures of the session because they liked participating so much. Of course these where motivated consumer and the subject was high involvement to them. But the interesting fact is that they would not have been so enthusiastic if it had been ‘just’ a research. The differentiating factor was that they new now that they where asked by the client to work together with them on new ideas.

The same effect we saw with the client. Often we see that it is hard to keep ‘discipline’ in the viewing room. Rather sooner than later discussions take away the attention from what is happening in ‘the other room’. And for viewers it often is tempting to reject the answers – especially for staff responsible for product, website, or service development. The consumer – in their eyes – doesn’t always understand the difficulties of there job. If you take away the wall, it becomes impossible to start a conversation on either the research (or on the rate of mortgage interest): you have no time for that. And directly confronted with consumer, the frustration is taken away a bit: you can’t just deny what is been said and you are able to ask questions. Now those responsible for making – in this case – a website were able to test their ideas and thoughts directly by sharing them with consumer.

As a consequence you see a level of engagement that you don’t normally see.

Inspired by the beautiful results of the co-creation workshops, I would like to talk about the methodology background of co-creation workshops. I have this urge because of the resistance I still feel with clients to the approach of workshops with consumer and clients working together on new concepts. There are a few major fears:

  1. will the consumer not be afraid and be intimidated by the client?
  2. what about objectivity? Do we get objective results?
  3. the consumer has no phantasy and is not able to ‘think outside the box’. We only get diluted ideas in this way

The first one is very easy. As if any client could be intimidating! As if consumers would be intimidated nowadays by any authority! I mean: doctors have to follow the exact instructions of partly illiterate consumers who have been doing web-research on their complaints. Teachers have problems with parents insisting on a special treatment for their kids. And the consumer would shy away from a marketing manager or new product developer? They won’t and they don’t. I have been doing co-creation workshops with very senior clients and it never has been a problem at all.

Now about the second one. In the old research paradigm the ‘scientific’ value is in objectivity. In order to have objective results, a wall is needed between consumer and client. The researcher is the ‘middle man’, not biased, not interested in the outcome and therefore a guarantee to an objective outcome. The client is allowed to watch trough the one way mirror. A basic assumption is that there is an objective truth that can be found if looked for in the right (that is: unbiased) way. In qualitative research this objective truth often is finding out about consumers emotions and needs. If this objective truth is delivered by the research project, you can use the results to implement. You can sort of ‘deliver’ the results (preferably in a report) to the client. Enlightened by the truth the right actions, as prescribed in the recommendations, can be taken with improved advertising, product development or websites as a consequence and Everyone Will Live Happy Thereafter.

However, in thinking about solutions in improving products, designs or services, there is not such a thing as a ‘guaranteed, objective’ to success. Objective and rational thinking is not the right attitude for innovation. Objectivity and analytical thinking is very important but it is not useful in a creation phase. Creation is more like ‘evolution’. In evolution there are no right solutions, there are many solutions. The evolutionists describe a ‘field of possibilities‘  with barriers and attractors (a fitness landscape) that is in a constant flux. It is not possible to find the right solution by reason, because you can’t control the environment (as you can in a scientific experiment where you have carefully taken away all context and test in an idealized situation that will never occur in reality. That’s why evolution is in favor of many solutions and of variations. There is not an objective and reproducible road to any solution. It is more a model of ‘trial and error’. You see it when you get there.

So as opposed to the ‘analytical mode’ – that is archetypical for a research situation – you would be interested in a ‘integration mode’. Far more important words that help you in the creation process would be ‘imagination’ and ‘involvement’. It is exactly those values that tend to get lost in an analytic approach. And it is exactly those values that are there in a well moderated co-creation workshop.
Now the last fear. Will a consumer be able to fruitfully participate in an innovation project?. Could it be unwise to ask the consumer to think together with the client over any innovation? Doesn’t the consumer stick with ‘the old rules’? Here we see the old fear as described in my ‘Alfa or beta’ blog. The consumer as destroyer of ideas. And the researcher as the facilitator of this mass idea construction. Extended experience with co-creation has learned us otherwise. The idea of the ‘stupid consumer that doesn’t understand real innovation’ is rooted in wrong questions. If you asked a consumer 30 years ago ‘are you interested in machines that dispose money after entering a 4-digit code’ you were bound the get negative answers (as the research did). But that is basically: bringing the consumer to an analytical mode. So the answer is: if you set up the workshop in the right way, the consumer is not acting as ‘innovation-destroyer’.

A bit of a long story. Sorry about that. And I haven’t been able to write half of what I wanted to touch. I would like to dive deeper into this in a paper that I intend to write.

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Alfa

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

fearResearch is often despised for its ‘beta-faults’: in its worst stereotyped research is supposed to ‘kill ideas’. This is a strong theme. In a narrative research I conducted a few years ago with Marieke Smets, the theme came out loud and was cartooned as a research lab that is designed to kill ideas, the idea maker can only watch their superior ideas to be destroyed. The fear of this is so strong that every qualitative researcher has to deal with suspicious creatives or idea-owners. The suspicion is a strong influencer of the whole research process. In order to be able to ‘control’  the creatives and ‘idea-owners’ often create a negative atmosphere, commenting on all aspects of the research (lousy respondents, bad questions, bad interview). This in itself arouses a further hostile atmosphere that creates a bad environment for research on innovative ideas.

However, as bad as a beta fault can be, there is also the chance of an alpha fault. There are a few famous examples. A fairly recent one was the ‘new Coca Cola taste’. It was tested and found a major improvement. The innovation died a quick death, after consumer started a massive protest against the disappeared ‘trusted taste’. Another example is older: a few decades ago a cigarette without smoke was designed, and thoroughly tested. It had to be withdrawn in a few days. Nobody bought it.

Here the mechanism is completely different. A collective wrong focus. Together with the client, the researchers share a tunnel vision. Context is ignored, common sense replaced by a shared vision of Reality As It Could Be If Only It Was The Way We Wanted It.

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Alfa or beta

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

In my early days as a researcher I studied statistics quite deep. Although I am trained as a qualitative researcher I wanted to understand the quantitative view as well. Since I had the exact variant’ in highschool, I had enough maths background to appreciate this stuff and even to like it. I recall the distinction between ‘alpha’  and ‘beta’  mistakes. As I recall it, alpha mistake meant that you had  rejected the hypothesis where shouldn’t have rejected it. The beta mistake was the other way round: you rejected it but you shouldn’t have. It depends on the type of hypothesis which mistake is worse. You could use the alpha and beta faults in qual as well. A beta mistake would occur for in stance if you reject an idea on basis of your qualitative findings, that would actually have worked well in reality. This is the sort of crime that research accused of by idea makers: research kills ideas.

I have been given a hilarious video about a qualitative example of a ‘beta mistake’: a focus group to find out the attitude towards a new invention (the wheel). The research method seemed to have been designed in order to ‘falsify’ the new invention. The video is a must see. It is also a very strong stereotypical story of How Research Kills New Ideas. It sort of demonetises the focus group method, showing how a researcher COULD go completely astray by encouraging the wrong kind of rationalisations. Click on the link to see it if you want to have laugh.

2_focusgroup-desktop

It could be used as an instruction video, asking students to pinpoint the Four Major Mistakes.The biggest mistake is setting up a focus group about this as an idea. Innovation can only be discussed in a focus group if it is incremental innovation as opposed to rule breaking innovation. The second mistake is the test material. If you would have rule breaking innnovation, you would need to show context and future use situations. Third is the recruitment. If you have a rule breaking innovation and you would like to discuss it in you shouldn’t invite the average consumer. You recruit either consumers who are into innovation or even ’semi-experts’. The fourth mistake is the moderation. The moderator gives plenty of room for post rationalisations. The human brain works counter intuitive. We think that our thoughts and opinions precede our choices. In reality it is reverse: we choose and than create opinions according to the choice. The reversed timing can be monitored: they occor as recurrent patterns in the brain after the choice has been made. It is therefor a big mistake to dive to deep into opinions and beliefs, especially in innovation, because there is a tendency in the human brain to dislike the new. A logo is liked more as it has been seen more often. This is referred to as the ‘mere-exposure’ effect. Since innovative stuff can never have been ’seen often’ it is disadvantaged in a test situation (and in the real situation as a matter of fact).

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Steady as we go

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

spaceball

424945091_c39322733fJust got back from a ski-holiday in France. As you are skiing in those steady rocks, you don’t really feel that you are actually within an area of – geological spoken – young mountains: round and about 60 million years young. In our timescale there is nothing as solid as a rock. However, for archeologists rock is all but steady. It is hard for us to really understand the timescale of geologists. I remember a ‘geographers talk’ in the Grand Canyon. He disclosed that the Grand Canyon emerged in an extremely short time period: only 17 milioen years. It is quite certain that it wil erode away in a short timescale as well: it is eroding at a pace of 16 centimetres every 1000 years, so it will have been half the depth it has now within 5 million years. In the earth timetable this is peanuts. A geologic whim.

You could argue that within the time frameof human civilisation it is as close as you can get to stability. One million years ago there might have been manlike creatures, but not the home sapiens (or homo ludens as Huizinga calls us or home narrens as Snowden does).

Yet it is a good example of how we underestimate change. It appears as if our mind is inclined to see stability in a world that is all but stable. We have the inclination to forecast the future as a straightforward function of the present. Not so long ago all science fiction literature was all about ‘the cold war in 3000 and something’. The future was – as it always is – an exaggeration of the current state. In the beginning of the 2oth century the big fear in London was that in the further future horses manure would become a major problem. Again, a forecast based upon (at that time) current reality taken to the extreme in the future (think about the mess in a city of 16 million people, half of them riding a horse!).

The funny thing is that we appear to have an extremely short memory. Once we have passed through a phase change, we forget all about the previous states we were in. Take for instance the internet and the on line possibilities. I remember quite vivid the year of 2000 when the internet bubble collapsed. There was a clear concensus in society that internet would not deliver the bright future that it had seemed to do only a short time before. The new business models were not solid enough, there was not enough added value in the internet. Funny how only a few years later Google apparently is thé example of new business models. And presented by the same media that not so long ago were absolutely certain about the internet economy as a failed concept. Funny how, hardly without noticing, our lives changed dramatically in a practical sense. I am writing this with my laptop where it should be according to its name, sitting on the bank (after watching Ajax winning from Utrecht). Checking some English words on my i-phone with the famous Van Dale (a Dutch dictionnary) installed as an applet. Before choosing to watch a movie on the TV I check the rating at www.imdb.com (above 7 you will never be disappointend). If I choose to work, I log in to my office network, finding all reports, agenda, emails that I need to look at.

The interesting thing is not that I can do all this. The interesting thing is that I hardly notice how different this is from only 4 years ago, let alone from the practice when I started to work (in 1989, at Ferro there was one stand alone computer. The idea of a network existed already, but not for small companies like Ferreo). We wrote reports by hand, these were typed out on the single computer we had). I am not living in a constant ‘wow’. It is just that I forgot about how things were a few years ago. Only if I deliberately imagine the before-internet habits I do feel: ‘wow. That is different’. You could blame our memory for this. That would be false. It is not exaclty that our memory is fault, for we do remember the past. It is just that we have accepted the new order as ‘normal’. This blog is not about bad memory, it is about superiour adaptation.

It is exactly this adaptation that creates the second important illusion: the illusion of stability.

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