Pre-Consumer Pie & Provocation

In a recent blog post, Grant McCracken suggests it is the job of designers to conduct provocation and innovation through pie.

He points to Project M as the source of this uniquely American metaphor with its Pie + Conversation = Ideas/Ideas + Design = Positive Change equation. As a first step towards ideas that better the world, Project M believes that “pie can bring people together.”

Notwithstanding Grant’s anthropological magicking of the subject matter with references to gift economies and turn takings, much of the gist of his post is on the value of bringing people together to mine their ideas and interactions through indulgent and interuptive moments that occur while eating pie. Of course, he advocates the need for social scientists familiar with Marcel Mauss and Charles Goodwin to manage the “social and cultural mechanics” of what is said and done during those moments.

In referring to gathering input with pie slices as part of the design process, he writes:

Some people who wish to make a social difference don’t really care to hear from the Pie recipient. They have a vision of the new world, and they mean to keep banging away at this vision until the pie recipient embraces it. But if we have learned anything about engaging the world it is that it can’t be about us. Our best efforts must begin with a study of them.

I wonder about that, especially when it comes to innovation and design that occurs in the business world rather than the philanthropic world. Here, the issue isn’t about facilitating insightful conversations with consumers over tasty pie. For me, that’s never been an issue. The issue is implementation, adoption and the secret filling of innovation: innovation is only innovation if it offers a new or improved way for humans to do things that they already or will do. Otherwise, the big ideas is just another idea. And we all know what ideas are like. Grant addresses this issue when he writes:

Designers are very good at thinking about provocations. After all, they are in the imagination business. They are trained to look at existing systems, spot where stasis lives, and think of ways to make things new. What designers are not so good at, in my humble opinion, is figuring out what happens next, what comes after the provocation. Handing out pie…does have the potential for provocation. But something substantial happens if and only if new arrangements are made visible, thinkable and doable. Pie qua pie will not get this job done.

At Idea Couture, we’ve baked our share of pies. Some of them, like the Aviva Community Fund and the MIT Global Challenge, have had social change as their key ingredient. Thank designers for that, and a guy in Edmonton who provided a spark of an idea. Others that were not about generating ideas to better the world but designing new and innovative product or service revenue streams, have had a few teaspoons of transformation snuck into the recipe.

In almost every project, we begin our efforts with a study of them. Before that, there is always some kind of tacit knowledge about the sponsor of the project: the grapevine, stakeholder interviews, collaboratively refining project plans, and past experience. But maybe that knowledge shouldn’t be so tacit. Maybe it should be more provocative, purposeful and pursued to ensure that the “something substantial” and “new arrangements” actually get out of the oven and on to the table.

Why? Well, when you are a design movement, you are often the only baker. Yes, there can be a conversation with them over pie. But you buy the ingredients. The recipe is yours. You set the temperature on the oven. Maybe you cut the slices and serve them. But when you conduct design work for Fortune 500 companies, the kitchen can be a more complicated place.

Like pies, kitchens are bursting with the rich and tasty flavor of metaphor. One of my favorites is that the kitchen is a stage. As a place to remember, rehearse and perform who we are and who we want to be, every fridge and cupboard is filled with meaning, purpose, intent, function, dysfunction and history – even when they are empty. When that stage is crowded with multiple bakers (with their own ideas, their own ingredients, their own baking methods and their own meanings, purposes, intents, functions, dysfunctions and histories) actually getting pie on the table can be a challenge.

I agree that asking those sitting around the table what kind of pie they want can be a critical component of getting the bakers to do what they should be able to do best to serve the needs of the hungry. Extend the conversation to include smells of pies, memories of pies, places of pies, people of pies, attempts to bake pies. Bring in Human Factors to watch pie in the making. Throw open the doors of the kitchen to let loose a co-creation of pies. But if those hungry consumers are not going to own the pie, name the pie, manufacture the pie, bring the pie to grocery stores and market the pie, then I think it’s equally critical that the entire pie design process begin with a study of us.

I think it takes very little to provoke their ideas. It takes much more provocation to ensure that the bakers deliver something to the table that truly fulfills the pie eaters’ needs and wants. Rather than faulting designers for not being able to follow through on “what happens next,” I think they – along with strategists, anthropologists and others working within and for organizations – need to more effectively provoke their corporate sponsors. For the sake of the anthropologists, it would be nice if that could be done long before we consider provoking consumers for their ideas and interactions.

To begin, two questions that are always in the backs of our minds but, perhaps, need to come more to the front of our tongues:

1. Do Americans really need another pie?

Obesity is a major health crisis in the U.S. (and Canada, too), and some Fortune 500 companies are contributing to the crisis by encouraging consumers to stuff their faces with more pie. The shelves on grocery stores are bursting with them.

When considering innovation and design, everyone in the kitchen needs to ask, Is there a real appetite for this? Do Americans really need another pie? If the answer is no, then why are we even talking about ingredients?

To get to the answer, over pie or not, organizations need to talk about why they continue to create clutter and cultivate calories in an era when many of us want to simplify, even purify our lives. If it’s about feeling the buzz of being part of this innovation thing, maybe the C-suite should consider something like an extension move into the celery business. Designers need to talk about why they’re taking another pie gig. If it’s just for the money, they should remember that the best pie is made with love and what they ultimately pull out of the oven could be a total disaster.

2. Who wants a piece of the pie?

Everyone’s hungry. Me-Too Innovation afflicts enough large organizations it’s no wonder so many of the good and/or new ideas are being brought to market by small companies and start-ups. Examining institutional, processual and cultural barriers to innovation isn’t something most organizations are willing to fund, unless they are actually trying to build an innovation process rather than simply adopt job titles to reflect the dubious existence of one.

Cue the Tina Turner song: we don’t need another knock off. If an organization does engage in the copycat business to keep its sales scale tipping, fine. But at this stage in the game, there’s little to no reason in talking with consumers. Like Grant says, it’s just “banging away.” A more valuable use of conversational time, over a slice or not, would be to talk about some of the causes and symptoms of Me-Too Innovation and, perhaps, address that corporate cultural malaise with an institutional ethnography.

I’d be interested in any other pie-related questions and concerns you might have about designing projects that come to fruition – blueberry, strawberry, rhubarb, whatever.

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