Innovation X

The book I have been working on for the last year is due to hit the shelves in February, 2010. Called Innovation X: Why a Company’s Toughest Problems are its Greatest Advantage, it gathers together thinking on the types of problems I’ve been seeing clients of all kinds dealing with over the last five years. It breaks the problems down into clearly understood elements, and then provides concrete approaches for dealing with them.

It has received some wonderful endorsements:

“Adam brilliantly hits upon a global, macro trend that is impacting all corporations, large and small … and that is the blurring of lines between historically siloed industries, companies, products and solutions. Technology has helped accelerate a fundamental shift in consumers’ and customers’ behavior of not only desiring, but expecting, integrated solutions for their lives. Coupled with the convergence of our personal and professional boundaries, Adam explains how an integrated design strategy is shaping the future of global business, one idea at a time.”

Michael Mendenhall
SVP and CMO, Hewlett-Packard 

“Want your product or service to succeed? Read this book. Through case studies and analyses, Adam Richardson demonstrates that in today’s complex world it is necessary to treat products or services as integrated systems of customer experiences, not as isolated offerings. This book is essential reading for anyone involved with products or services, which in the world of business, means everyone.”

Don Norman
Nielsen Norman group and Northwestern University
Author of Emotional Design

“Innovation X offers a smart, powerful framework for companies large and small to create and advance not just an innovation culture but an innovation strategy.  It’s a high-level book for high-level people — or for anyone bright, creative and ambitious enough to want to make a huge impact in their organization.”

Daniel H. Pink
Author of A Whole New Mind

“Ever wonder why design firms can predictably deliver the big innovations that corporations often can’t?  In your hands is the answer, and guess what…there is no magical process!  It’s a strategic approach to thinking and collaboration which Adam has kindly laid out for you based on years in the trenches at frog design.  Read it and you just might do something you’ll really be proud of.”

Eric Ryan
Co-founder of Method Home

“Adam Richardson’s Innovation X is a brilliant design and business book. What makes its brilliance particularly intense is Richardson’s recognition that grand “innovation strategies” matter less than simple “innovation behaviors.” Because he is a tactical practitioner as well as a strategic thinker, Richardson gives the serious reader graspable tools for transforming innovation processes and innovation cultures.”

Michael Schrage
Sloane School of Business, MIT
Author of Serious Play

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, or have seen any of my conference presentations, then you’ll have some idea of the themes it’s going to cover. I’ve been using this blog, writing in other areas, client presentations, and conferences as opportunities to build out pieces of the thinking, which has been great for beating it into shape and getting feedback. I think you will be in for some surprises, though, as I take things in some new directions.

Why X? The letter is evocative of many things:

• X is extreme: High risk and problem complexity
• X is mysterious: The types of challenges the book is about almost all involve moves into uncharted territories
• X is a cross-roads: Choices must be made about paths that each entail risk and opportunity
• X means opportunity: X marks the spot for treasure - the winnings that come from finding the opportunity and capitalizing on it before others can

This book started from a basic question: With so many companies focusing more intensely than ever on innovation, why are so few seeing the benefits they wanted?

At a certain level the answer is obvious: innovation is inherently risky, and new product introductions can succeed or fail because of multiple factors and forces, including — if we are honest about it — plain luck. We should expect a lot of failures. Anyone who has spent time in product development knows that most products fail, or at least fail to meet expectations.

This has led some to question the value of innovation itself. But I think this is throwing the baby out with the bath water. The issue is innovation effectiveness, not innovation itself.

Furthermore, I believe that focusing on internal barriers to innovation in an organization can only go so far. Part of the difficulty lies outside.

My argument is that the problem is the problem; that is, the problems companies are dealing with have become more complex than our analytical tools have kept pace with. This stands in the way of effectively making innovation relevant to customer needs and business goals.

The problems are more complex because of:

• Disruptive competition and blurring of industry boundaries as companies leap into each others’ spaces
• More demanding customers (increasing expectations about customer experience - joy of use becoming as important as features and price)
• The need to create integrated systems of physical products, software, online experiences, and services that work as coherent wholes

One of the topics I touch on is wicked problems, which will not be a surprise to long-time readers of this blog. However, the argument I make in the book is that the general definition of wicked problems is insufficient for explaining what companies need to know and do — it is too vague. I have developed a more specific notion, what I call X-problems, to address the issues listed above.

Building on that, there is a framework that takes up most of the book that collects together a variety of methodologies for diagnosing and tackling X-problems. Some of them will be familiar to people who work in design research or product strategy, others I think are quite new, or advance existing frameworks in interesting ways.

In an X-problem world, in order to focus and implement innovation more effectively, companies must:

• Immerse themselves in all aspects of their customers lives, their competition, their organizational toolboxes, brands, ecosystems, and technology/IP enablers
• Converge together multiple ecosystem elements and customer touchpoints seamlessly
• Diverge outwards into new areas in order to find new opportunities for growth, and to find new ways to create convergence
• Adapt to rapidly changing contexts, and start making solutions in order to even understand what the problems are they are trying to solve

Some of the other major concepts include:

• Core insights (as complements to core competencies)
• Multi-vector research
• Ecosystems vs. touchpoints (two different but often conflated ideas)
• Touchpoints matrix
• Mapping your business domain (don’t just think about categories, markets and industries)
• Why it’s good to practice “wasteful” innovation (efficiency is not the goal)
• Rapid systeming (not just rapid prototyping)
• Experience performance (not just functional performance)
• Experience gap
• Creating an astute organization

This book is not a “design thinking” book however. I have not seen a good definition of what design thinking means that is either not overly generalized or just banal. Which is not to say that some of the practices often covered in design thinking are not worthwhile, just that the name itself is not crisp enough (today at least). (Other critiques here and here.)

The book is also not about trying to get business to understand design, or make better use of design. I bypass that entirely — I think it’s a red herring discussion. Unless and until design shows what it’s good for (rather than tells), then it will continue to be ignored. My focus is on end-results and how to get there. Some of that is design, some of it is business, some technology. My goal, my hope, is that the book perfectly straddles the business/design divide in such a way that they are seamlessly stitched together and that there are rarely points where something is clearly design-specific or business-specific. We’ll see how it works!

Having said that, the intended audience is primarily business leaders, but hopefully thousands of designers will buy it too!

You can read some sneak-peek excerpts here.

And you can see some of the books I’ve been using as background research here.

Table of contents:

1. Introduction
2. Prologue
3. Living in an X-problem world
4. The Innovation X framework
5. Immersion
6. Convergence
7. Divergence
8. Adaption
9. Strategy
10. Organization
11. Truths

Length is about 240 pages. A variety of case studies will be used to illustrate the various challenges and approaches, some of which will be from frog experience, others are from industry outside. I’m using a relatively small number of case studies, but discussing them in some depth, as with the complex problems I’m discussing the nuances are important.

The book will be coming out in February 2010 and will be available at major retailers and Amazon. The publisher is Jossey-Bass, the business and leadership division of Wiley, and the same publisher that is doing the book by frog design’s founder, Hartmut Esslinger.

frog is enthusiastically supporting the book (though it’s not strictly speaking a book about frog), and will be helping with the promotion once it comes out. I am very grateful for the support, and very fortunate to have it. My heartfelt thanks go out to the leadership team at frog for giving me this opportunity.

I’m sure there will be a mailing list set up in case you want to get advance notice of availability! If you’re interested, use the contact form at right to send me a message.