Prof. Ulrich Weinberg on Design Thinking

Thanks to Prof. Rajeev and Supriya Dey of IIMB, yesterday I got an opportunity to meet Prof. Weinberg over lunch and subsequently attended his presentation “Design thinking: Looking beyond obvious” at IIMB. Prof. Ulrich Weinberg is the director of the School of Design Thinking at Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany. The school is modeled after D-school of Stanford. According to Prof. Weinberg at HPI D-school you get no credit points, no grades and no certificate worth any official value and yet within four years of its founding it has students from 70 disciplines and 20 nations. Natural question is: What is going on there? And what exactly do these students do that they value learning experience over credits and certificates?

The students participate in 1 hr, 3 hr, 1 day, 3 day, 1 week, 3 week and 6 week workshops / projects which progressively prepares them for the 12 week final project. Every project starts with a cross-functional team of 4 to 6 students and students rotate after every project. With students coming from disciplines as varied as art, history, medicine, engineering, psychology, law, forming a cross-functional team is not a challenge at HPI. The faculty works with industry-Government partners to generate a set of challenges. One such challenge came from DHL: How might we transfer packets from point A to B in the inner cities of future where no cars are allowed? London, Beijing, Mumbai are good candidates. If you feel that the challenge statement is simple looking, mind you it would have taken several days of work for the faculty members to work with DHL to arrive at the crisp looking statement which reflects user needs and pain points.

Out of the 12 weeks, half the time i.e. 6 weeks would be spent in understanding, observing and synthesizing the experience. This means going to the inner cities and observe how things work. Students observe how people walk to bus stops or train stations or cycle. In the DHL project the team was inspired by the workings of Dabbawalas of Mumbai. The most difficult part of this first phase is to switch your solution engine off. This is especially harder for engineers who are so used to solving problems. One of the deliverables is the creation of a detailed persona of the customers whose pain you are addressing. In the DHL case it could be thirty-five year old Chris or a twenty-two years old Sangeeta, a resident of the future city who either works for DHL or partners with DHL in moving the packet forward.

The next phase consists of ideation, prototyping and testing. Since the team has spent enough time in the field, ideation generates hundreds of ideas relevant to the problem. The school has created spaces with movable trolleys and white boards that help these teams in brainstorming. Every day there is a three minute presentation to the rest of the class on your prototype and you get immediate feedback. Weinberg says, “No other feedback can be as powerful as this inputs from your colleagues and faculty”.

The team working on DHL problem came up with an idea of citizen participation in packet delivery. They named it Bring.buddy. It taps all the consumers moving through a city each day, whether via bike, public transport or on foot. Interested participants indicate their travel route for the day using a downloadable smartphone app; a text message then lets them know of any packages needing delivery along the way. When there is such a package, the participant picks it up from the local kiosk where it's waiting and delivers it as they go about their daily business. In exchange for their help, the program rewards them with points that can be redeemed for free train tickets, merchandise coupons or CO2 credits. Check out the YouTube video BringBuddy.

Bring.Buddy created so much buzz in Shanghai trade show and even in Berlin that people started asking DHL when they are implementing it. Finally DHL has decided to pilot it in China along with the student team at HPI. Whether the service reaches market is anybody’s guess. However, can you doubt the learning the students are getting in the process?

If you want to get a glimpse of what design thinking experience might look like, I suggest watching 3-part video of Ideo’s Deep Dive.

Evolution of 3M's Nonwoven technology platform over seven decades

A typical technology platform far outlives the first product which uses it. One of the classic examples is 3M’s Nonwoven technology platform. Originally used in making ribbons for decorating gifts, the platform over seven decades has been used in cleaning pads, surgical tapes, drapes & masks, fasteners, floppy disk liners, absorbent material to combat oil slicks, “metered” paint rollers for home improvement and sound deadners in cars. What does it mean to develop and manage a technology platform like nonwoven? Let’s look at the story in brief.

Al Boese didn’t have a high school diploma and started his career in 3M as a mail boy. In 1938 his boss in 3M’s tape lab, Dick Drew, suggested that he might not be cut out for technical work. Perhaps, Drew counseled, Boese should take time off to find a different job. Boese hung around the lab anyway. One day Drew off handedly mentioned that 3M specifications called for an inexpensive, noncorrosive backing that was fibrous, but not woven, for its popular electrical tape. Rather than hunt for a new job Boese found the best library on fibers at the University of Minnesota’s Home Economics Department and he spent the summer there.

“One day I was walking by the rubber colander in the tape lab,” Boese said, “I stuck a little tuft of acetate fiber in the colander. It heated the surface of the fibers and bonded them together. That was the opening to make nonwovens. Heat and pressure.” Boese started experimenting with this process and set up a small lab called Carfab Lab. Boese’s new process didn’t produce a better backing for electrical tape, but gazing at a department store one day in the mid-1940s, he had an idea. May be, if the new nonwoven material was dyed and sprinkled with color flecks, it could be used in decorative display. Or why not slit the material into strips and make ribbon for decorating gifts?

Boese’s early attempts at ribbon failed as it was structurally weak for wrapping packages and it wasn’t very attractive. “It was obvious to everybody that we had a product failure,” Boese said. In three years the ribbon brought in about $800,000 in revenues and the losses totaled $200,000. Boese was given three months to make it profitable and he did. The new product, 3M Sasheen decorative ribbon, was a hit when it was introduced in 1950s, along with a companion product, Lacelon ribbon.

From ribbon, 3M “married” nonwovens to abrasives in the 1950s to produce Scotch-Brite scrubbing and polishing pads, floor maintenance supplies and industrial polishing materials. A decade later, new dampening sleeves were made from nonwovens that made offset printing much more economical. Disposable surgical face masks and Micropore surgical tape opened the door to other nonwoven medical products.

There were some disappoints along the way, too. 3M never successfully developed nonwovens for book covers, draperies and window displays. A novel product called Skimmit was heralded as the easy way to skim oil off liquids like soups, but consumers never thought so. Early attempts at creating comfortable shoulder pads for clothing fizzled.

Nonwovens had become a part of so many 3M products that a Nonwoven Technology Center was created in 1983 to offer technical knowledge and expertise across the company. By then, about 10 percent of 3M’s business or nearly $1 billion in sales from about 20 divisions represented some form of nonwoven application in products ranging from diapers to diskettes. By the late 1990s that percentage had grown to 15 percent overall and sales of about $2 billion.

Note: I am looking for an example of a technology platform that has evolved in India over a decade or two. In case you have any information, do let me know by either writing a comment on this blog or by sending email to: vinay at catalign dot com.

Source: A century of innovation at 3M (story on pages 50-53, image on page 180).

Gandhi’s failed self-help experiment at Shantiniketan: a lesson in culture-unfriendly intervention

Every organization has a unique culture and any act to bring about a sustainable change needs to be sensitive to the existing culture. Gandhi, in 1915, either didn’t understand this yet or he hadn’t fully internalized it. Gandhi had a four day visit to Shantiniketan in February 1915 a month after his arrival in India. During this visit he conducted a self-help experiment with all the students and teachers. Like his visit, the impact of the experiment was short-lived. What was the experiment? And why did it fail? Let’s explore it here.

In 1904, Gandhi had established an Ashram in South Africa in a town called Phoenix about 14 miles from Durban. In 1915, when Gandhi returned to India many of his Phoenix Farm associates followed him as well. It so happened that the Phoenix party arrived before Gandhi arrived and found a home in Shantiniketan. After visiting Gokhale in Pune and meeting relatives in Rajkot and Porbandar, Gandhi proceeded to Shantiniketan.

The phoenix family had been assigned a separate quarters at Shantiniketan. Maganlal Gandhi, Gandhi’s close associate in Phoenix Farm, was their head, and he had made it his business to see that all the rules of the Phoenix Ashram should be scrupulously observed. Among Gandhi’s friends Andrews and Pearson were also present.

Soon after his arrival Gandhi mixed with the teachers and students and engaged them in a discussion on self-help. He suggested to the teachers that, if they and the boys dispensed with the services of paid cooks and cooked their food themselves, it would enable the teachers to control the kitchen from the point of view of the boys’ physical and moral health. Also it would give lessons on self-help to the students. Some nodded their head tentatively, some appeared more enthusiastic. Gandhi invited Rabindranath to give his opinion. He said he didn’t mind it provided the teachers were favorable. To the boys, he said, “The experiment contains the key to Swaraj”.

Thus started an experiment involving the entire community of 125 boys and their teachers. Boys were running the kitchen, handling the garbage, cleaning the latrine, sweeping the ground and as Gandhi’s biographer Louis Fischer puts it, “forsaking the muse for the monk”. Pearson was looking after the cooking part and Nagenbabu was looking after the sanitary cleaning. It was difficult for the students. Some began to show early fatigue. Cleaning of vessels was especially tedious. A group of students played sitar next to the kitchen so as to make the task feel less cumbersome.

Gandhi had to leave Shantiniketan abruptly to attend Gokhale’s funeral. And the experiment was stopped after some time. As Gandhi notes in his autobiography, “I am of the opinion that the famous institution lost nothing by having conducted the experiment for a brief interval, and some of the experiences gained could not but be of help to the teachers.”

Gandhi and Tagore were united by their love for India and mankind. However, they were very different personalities. In the words of Louis Fischer, “Gandhi was the wheat field and Tagore the rose garden, Gandhi was the working arm and Tagore the singing voice, Gandhi was frugal and Tagore was prodigal”. At Shantiniketan, Tagore’s pupils sang and danced, wove garlands, painted sunrise and made life sweet and beautiful. Gandhi’s experiment essentially turned the place upside down. It is no surprise, it was shortlived. I feel it is a great lesson to understand what culture-unfriendly intervention is like.

Related articles:

Mahatma Gandhi and the heart and soul of systematic innovation

4 types of innovation leaders (Gandhi, Jamsetji Tata, Vikram Sarabhai, George Fernandes)

Sources:

An autobiography, M. K. Gandhi (part V, chapter IV, Shantiniketan)

The life of Mahatma Gandhi, Louis Fischer, HarperCollins

Photo: mkgandhi.org (Gandhi in 1915)

3 Challenges in building an innovation sandbox

It has been a year since C K Prahalad passed away and two years since my only interaction with him – over email. He sent his inputs to my paper on Dynamic Innovation Sandbox. CKP is remembered more for his work on Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) and on core competence. However, for me, his metaphor of “innovation sandbox” holds more fascination. It is almost three years since I wrote about it first in 2008 and subsequently wrote thrice in 2009 (1, 2, 3). Here is an attempt to reflect on the question – What are the challenges in building an innovation sandbox?

1. Taking a strategic bet – When Biocon started its oral insulin program in 2002, they didn’t know what the product may look like if the program succeeds. Moreover, timeline was hazy. However, two constraints got identified – affordability and oral insulin and a study began. It would be another two years before Biocon partnered with Nobex to get the right technology platform. To develop an innovation sandbox, in CKP’s words, you need “an unflagging commitment to strategic intent”. I see senior management sometimes waver while taking a position.

2. Finding a leader: Playing within the innovation sandbox also means dealing with unusually high degree uncertainty. Like Ravi Rajhans, a member of the initial Tata Nano team recalled, “We were really, really scared. It was a big project and we were not sure where to start, where to draw even the first line”. You need a leader who can manage and more importantly keep the team motivated through the ups and downs. Getting these leaders is usually hard. Good organizations develop them.

3. Making collaboration work: Tata Motors ex-MD Ravi Kant has put this very well. He said, “In today’s world, you have to realize that you cannot do everything and you cannot control everything and therefore you need to have a collaborative workplace. For project of this kind to succeed, you need to have everyone collaborating, which is easier said than done. Leading collaboration is a gigantic task in any organization”. In CKP’s words, “They must not innovate in isolation”. This is hard.

Sources: (For Nano) Nanovation by Jackie Freiberg, Kevin Freiberg, Dain Dunston, Portfolio, 2010

Image source: thinkers50.com

Innovation in Railways: story of how Jaruhar enabled wagons to become heavier

I got an opportunity to meet Prof. Ramnarayan, an authority on change management, at the Innovation Educators’ Conference in ISB last week. When I asked him about his favorite organizational change story from India, he modestly pointed to his book – “Changing tracks: Reinventing the spirit of Indian Railways” which he co-authored with V. Nilakant. I bought it in the ISB book store and started reading it in Kacheguda Express on the way back from Hyderabad. It is by far the best book I have read on an organizational transformation in the Indian context. After all we are talking about a 150 year old organization whose trains cover a total daily distance greater than the distance from earth to moon and back and support 1.1 million pensioners. Here is one of the fascinating innovations from the book on how Mr. Jaruhar, member (Engineering), broke a fifty year old myth on how much weight the trains can carry on Indian rail tracks. This was one of the key levers to bring the Railways back to profitability from close to bankruptcy.

Soon after taking charge as Railway minister in 2004 Lalu Prasad and his partner Sudhir Kumar launched the campaign – “Heavier, faster and longer” trains. The first part of running “heavier” trains was based on the observation that the Indian Railways ran trains carrying about 4,700 tonnes while the comparable figure was 15,000 in the US, 30,000 in Brazil and 20,000 in China. In railway jargon, this was based on a parameter called axle load – the maximum weight of a train per pair of wheels allowable for given section of tracks. In 2004, the permissible axle load was 20.32 tonnes and it was unchanged since 1960s. The axle load ranged between 25 and 35 in other countries with rails comparable in quality.

On 4 March 2005, three days after he took charge as member (Engineering), Jaruhar called a meeting of his directorate. He posed them the challenge, “Railway needs to carry additional 350 million tones of freight in the short term and much more than that in the long term. How do we meet this demand?” His staff responded enthusiastically and within a week ideas started flowing. A number of technical objections were raised on the proposed solutions and the consensus was that this was difficult to do. Jaruhar realized he needed to challenge the engineers in a different way.

Jaruhar proposed that first they needed to investigate how the original value of (20.32 tonnes) was arrived at. Second, they needed to find if there was any permissible tolerance. How come the train becomes suddenly unsafe after the axle load goes beyond 20.32? Jaruhar knew that he was entering a forbidden territory. The laid down procedure for modifying axle load was complex and time-consuming. It involved detailed trials and studies and required the approval of independent bodies such as the Commission of Railway Safety, a non-railway body. It is no surprise the permissible axle load wasn’t modified for several decades.

A turning point came when Jaruhar realized that the existing codes and provisions allowed him to conduct experiments. He decided to experiment with running higher axle loads on trains. In consultation with traffic department, Jaruhar selected routes which had mainly freight traffic and very little passenger traffic. He increased the axle load on freight trains running on these routes. He engaged independent agencies such as Structural Engineering Research Centre, IIT Chennai and Railways’ own Research, Design and Standards Organization (RDSO) in Lucknow to measure the forces and stresses on rails.

The pilot began on 7 May 2005 and ran till August that year. The train load was increased from 4,700 tonnes to 5,400 tonnes. Extensive data was collected both by his own teams and the neutral independent agencies. Jaruhar organized a seminar in Delhi in August 2005. Each zonal railway that participated in the pilot project made presentations based on the data they had collected on rail tracks, bridges, locomotives and wagons. Two other members of the Railway Board also attended the seminar. There were no adverse reports.

Additional questions had to be answered before moving ahead. Would it increase the frequency of renewal of rail tracks? By how much? At what cost? Would it result in increased rail fractures? What if something goes wrong? Subsequently Jaruhar’s experiments addressed these issues systematically and demonstrated how axle load can be increased safely resulting in significant revenue growth. Lalu Prasad acknowledged the contribution this project in his 2006 budget speech.

For anyone serious about leading organizational change “Changing tracks” is a must read case study.

picture source: business.rediff.com

Lessons from ATIRA’s early efforts at innovating in textile mills in Ahmedabad

Eighty years after Ranchhodlal Chhotalal founded the first textile mill in 1861, Ahmedabad’s mill owners were still dependent on Manchester experts for technical guidance. By 1940s the industry had grown to run eleven million spindles and 195,000 looms. Finally the mill owners under the championship of Kasturbhai Lalbhai established Ahmedabad Textile Industry’s Research Association (ATIRA) in 1947, a co-operative research institute modeled on the lines of research associations in Britain. Scientific experiments at the lab lead to process and product improvement ideas that promised savings and productivity gains to the tune of several crores. However, the ideas were met with huge resistance from the technicians and the mill owners themselves. What could be the reason? Could it be possible that the early interventions were not robust? Let’s explore.

It all started with Kasturbhai asking Vikram Sarabhai to study the structures of industrial research institutes in the UK and Europe with a view of implementing them at home. Vikram was just back from his second stint at Cambridge. He was an apt choice because he was a trained scientist and one of their own – the son of one of the city’s leading mill owners. ATIRA, India’s first co-operative industrial research lab, was started with an initial contribution of Rs. 50 lakh from Ahmedabad mill owners. The initial staff of four – a statistician, a social psychologist, a high-polymer chemist and a physical chemist – was a unique cross-functional team. Vikram was the ring-master. Over the next few years he hired seventy people, most of them young like himself, with no experience of textile manufacturing.

By February 1952, a pilot mill had come up equipped with machinery and facilities for simulating the actual workings of a mill. Studies began to tackle the problems which were assumed to be endemic till then by the industry. One study confirmed that low productivity in spinning was due to inadequate maintenance of the machinery and absence of process controls. Another study proposed methods for reducing cotton wastage. Tamarind kernel powder, an agricultural waste product, was tested as a substitute for starch. Suggestions were made for improving ginning and weaving techniques, decreasing humidification costs, conserving energy, and so on. An estimated Rs. 20 crore, much of it in foreign exchange, was to be saved these innovations over the next two decades. And what was the result? Vikram’s methods were openly attacked in board rooms and technicians in the mills were convinced that ATIRA staffers were spies for the management. What went wrong? After all it was the same mill owners who had funded the initiative.

Well, it is not hard to see that these early interventions weren’t culture-friendly and hence non-robust. First, Vikram and ATIRA challenged the conventional gut-feel based decision making of mill owners and advocated scientific methods which were totally alien to them. Second, it emphasized independent research to home grown ideas from within the mills. It is hard to believe that there would be no bright spots in the form of ideas and practices in the century old industry. ATIRA could have identified and amplified these as a starting point. This would have built mutual trust and prepared the mills folks for accepting more radical ideas. Third, all the ATIRA staffers came from outside the textile industry and hence it became hard for them to find champions inside. ATIRA could have encouraged participation from technicians.

Over the next few years Vikram & ATIRA learnt about ‘the human problems involved in introducing change’ with significant contribution from Dr. Kamla Chowdhry, who was the head of industrial psychology division at ATIRA.

Source: Vikram Sarabhai, a life by Amrita Shah, Penguin, 2007

4 types of innovation leaders

Innovation leaders influence innovations and inspire innovators – sometimes for many generations to come. What are the different types of innovation leaders? Let’s look at one such classification: Solvers, surfers, capacity builders and champions.

1. Solver: When Gandhi returned from Africa to India there were many problems he felt drawn to – Lack of vocational education, poverty, discrimination against women, caste system, political struggle. Eventually he focused on only one of them – political freedom. And he attacked the problem in a way that is still inspiring many generations more than half a century after he is gone. Solvers like Gandhi immerse themselves in a difficult problem and are always several steps ahead of their contemporaries in their approach. Other solvers that come to mind are: Muhammad Yunus (Grameen Bank), Baba Amte (Anandwan), James Watt (Steam engine), Thomas Edison (Light bulb), Andrew Wiles (Fermat’s Last Theorem), Steve Wozniak (Apple).

2. Surfer: When ring spindle, a new technology, was brought to the notice of Jamsetji Tata he immediately bought two frames and started experimenting at Empress Mill. Neither any mill in India nor the main supplier from England (Pratt) had thought of adopting the new technology. When Jamsetji encountered a report suggesting possible iron ore deposits in Chamba district, he immediately took a sample to Germany for testing. Surfers are always looking for waves, especially BIG waves. Many times they don’t know where the wave is going to lead them to. Some of my famous surfers include: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, David Grossman (IBM), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Masaru Ibuka (Sony).

3. Capacity builder: When Padmanabh Joshi wrote his PhD thesis – “Vikram Sarabhai: A study on innovative leadership and institution building” from Gujarat University in 1986, the term “innovation” itself wasn’t fashionable let alone “innovation leadership”. And yet he couldn’t have chosen a more apt title for the thesis. Vikram Sarabhai was instrumental in building innovation capacity in India through institutions such as – ATIRA: India’s first textile research cooperative, Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), ORG: India’s first market research organization, IIM Ahmedabad. As if this wasn’t enough, Sarabhai architected India’s space program. The secret, according to him, was in establishing a firm foundation: “The early beginnings of any institution are crucial, and the “culture” (or lack of it) brought the first entrants plays a significant role in establishing norms, procedures and practices” he said. Capacity builders work on various elements of the innovation ecosystem. Another of my favorite innovation capacity builders is: A G Lafley (P&G).

4. Champion: George Fernandes took over as railway minister in December 1989. Next month in January, he called for a board meeting at Raj Bhavan, Lucknow. In his talk he mentioned that there were two projects which were uppermost in his mind and they were his dreams for a long time. One was a railway link between Chithoni and Bogha in Bihar crossing the mighty Gankat river and the other was the west coast railway connecting Bombay and Mangalore (later called Konkan railway). Dr. E. Sreedharan attended the meeting as an engineering member from railways. Fernandez told Sreedharan in the meeting, “I will depend on you for realizing these two projects”. Fernandes neither had the technical know-how nor had the resources. But he used his influence with Chief Ministers like Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad Yadav and senior ministers like Ramakrishna Hegde and Madhu Dandavate and removed the hurdles for each of the projects. Champions support others’ ideas and help them move forward faster. Other champions I can remember are: the role Einstein played for Satyendra Nath Bose or the role Patrick played for Grossman at IBM.

Sources:

Vikram Sarabhai: A life by Amrita Shah

Story of Konkan Railway of India by E. Sreedharan