I get it. Deadlines, budgets, internal pressure and uncertainty don’t exactly create an encouraging environment in which to trust your crazy innovation partners. But, after taking clients through the process countless times, and coming out alive and better-armed with powerful insights on the other side, here are five things I’ve picked up from boardroom banter that might help.

1. Exploration isn’t validation

We have a series of approaches to tease out consumer attitudes, preferences, socio-cultural ties and opinions. Often, our clients want to use these opportunities to validate what they’re already doing, instead of looking at what else might be possible. If we jump to validation, we miss out on the purposely broad and open-ended nature of the exploration phase, and that means missing out on the things that have been overlooked or undefined.

2. Competitors aren’t good benchmarks

When we conduct global scanning to observe weak signals in comparative and competitive industries, we often get some pushback from our clients to stay in the industries they can most relate to, or worse yet, to focus on competitors. If your competitors are already doing it, it’s probably not enough to make you relevant. Instead, a push towards lateral thinking usually ends in our clients looking for insights in unlikely places – where their competitors never thought to.

3. Consumer insights first, tactics later

In a rush to get to the finish line, we often have to justify why it’s better to hold off on solving burning tactical and executional challenges until later in the process. It’s tough, but we force ourselves to trust the process and hold off on solving/designing until we finish the exploration phase. Getting the consumer insights right, without the loaded and leading questions, means that we’re eventually designing for the right outcomes.

4. If there is rigour, you won’t end up with meaningless data

Too often, we hear the tale of months of research that result in a pile of action-less data and deliverables. Rest assured that when there is a rigorous process that transforms insights into ingredients for a solid strategy, the fuzzy front-end can result in tangibles on route to your end goal.

5. We can translate

A lot of the initial discomfort comes from clients needing to sell the project and its findings internally. “This isn’t how we usually do things” is valid, but shouldn’t drive process decisions. It’s our job to help you tell the story. By identifying important points in the project where translation is needed, it is possible to take the work and translate it into a story  that is relevant and compelling within your organization.

As a parting note, I’ll leave you with something that I didn’t learn from work – this one comes from my old man. He’s always told me that the horrible discomfort you feel when you encounter something new usually precedes great learning – it’s simply the beginning of an ascent along the learning curve. So relax! A little trust can go a long way.

Rubber boots and metal sheers in tow, I was ready to heave and hoe (and all the other farm-appropriate gestures) my way along the learning curve – my green thumb had previously been limited to some potted basil and a few house plants. I expected organic farming on a large scale would be complicated. I didn’t realize it would be so inspiring.

This farm used permaculture, a design method that mimics the architecture and relationships in natural ecologies to develop sustainable agricultural practices. In other words, the organic ‘food forest’ (which requires zero fossil fuels) was bursting with diverse produce, wild flowers and life, thanks to the network of ecosystems nurtured within it. With a bit of nature-inspired design, a sustainable and rich ecosystem was created and did an unbelievable job at contributing to its own maintenance.

I was fascinated and unbelievably curious – farming is an obvious place to mimic nature’s design, but what about business? What about manufacturing, packaging and services? After all, 3.8 billion years of R&D later and we can’t deny that nature is the authority on the design of sustainable systems.

The interwebs led me to Bio-Mimicry, a design discipline committed to developing sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies.

What can inter-species cooperation and competition teach us about building communities? What can the butterfly’s wings teach us about self-cleaning material? What can wind-turbines learn from flying birds? How would nature heat and cool a home? These are the kinds of questions BioMimicry seeks to answer – and with cool open-source projects like The Biomimicry Institutes’ AskNature,, the answers are right at our fingertips.

At a time when the often-daunting task of designing for sustainability is a top priority for many businesses, this is especially intriguing. Biomimicry can be a powerful tool for innovation on the road to more sustainable designs and processes. Nature can demonstrate the underlying simplicity of seemingly complicated processes – so take another look, what can you learn from your own backyard?

Ps. Intrigued? Check out this great TED talk video for examples of how nature is already inspiring design.