Noodleplay » business school

Are You an Integrated Thinker?

aperez — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 21:37:29 +0000

Are you a D School Thinker, are you a B-School thinker, or are you a combination of the two?

There are two very different approaches to thinking- left brain thinking and right brain thinking. Left brain thinkers are visual and process information in an analytical and sequential way, first looking at individual pieces and then combining them together to form a collective whole. Right brain thinkers however, are visual, intuitive, and often see the ‘big picture’ first. We all have a natural inclination towards either left or right brain thinking, while some people have a combination of both. Which of these characteristics dominate your personality?

Idea Couture has the answers- take This Quiz and find out if you are an integrated thinker.

Our resident scientists and anthropologists have spent months designing this quiz which was originally used as part of Idea Couture’s recruitment process. At Idea Couture, we pride ourselves as being D-School and B-School thinkers and that’s how we come up with innovative solutions to clients’ wicked problems. We have now decided to share the test…so post your results on Facebook and send the quiz to ALL your friends.

And so there it is- an Idea Couture quiz is born, a new addition to the ever expanding IC family

Business school is broken

Patrick Glinski — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:30:34 +0000

A few weeks ago, I was pointed to an article in business week that provides a harsh criticism of a classic business education. I think I’ve looked back over it a dozen times since it was first published, because it provide a powerful insiders look at business education

Take this quote for example:

… I spent a quarter-century as a professor at the Harvard Business School, including 15 years teaching in the MBA program. I have come to believe that much of what my colleagues and I taught has caused real suffering, suppressed wealth creation, destabilized the world economy, and accelerated the demise of the 20th century capitalism in which the U.S. played the leading role.

I’ve been a harsh critic of business education every since I went through the experience – largely because I always felt that my tier-1 Canadian business school decided what directions of business were of value or not. Having directed my education towards digital business as opposed to the administratively “approved” curriculums of traditional consulting, finance, or accounting, I always felt like my education was viewed as an afterthought.

I don’t expect the curriculums of business schools to change any time soon, but it’s nice to know that the tension I always felt as a student is represented by some professors as well.

A quick, but powerful read. Check it out.

So all the innovation people don’t work for your company.

Idris Mootee — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:06:33 +0000

“All the innovation people don’t work for your company.” – Rich Friedrich of HP. I often use this quote to kick-off workshops, as it is an interesting one with no simple answer. According to a McKinsey survey, a company’s main challenge with innovation today is finding enough talented people. In the survey, top managers agree that identifying the right people and aligning them for innovation is their single-greatest struggle and that the most important drivers of innovation are the organization’s culture and people. The survey further suggests, however, that companies discourage talented staff from pursuing innovation by offering limited incentives, being risk averse, and having no plan for dealing with failure.

The findings show that executives have very different perceptions of the struggles related to finding and aligning their people. In short, there is still a lack of common understanding despite its importance. Innovation is not in the core curriculum of MBA schools. Another interesting data point is 40% of top managers say that they do not have enough of the right kind of employees. Among respondents who do say enough people are available, however, nearly 50% say the right employees are in place, motivated, and protected by senior leadership, and only 22% say the organization’s culture inhibits them from making progress. The question that immediately comes to my mind when they say they do not have enough of the right kind of employees, I wonder if they have a definition of what are the “right” kinds of employees. That would be an interesting question to add to the survey.

I don’t think you will get answers such as “we need more senior executives with design thinking” or “we need more corporate misfits” etc. People who are trained in various disciplines of design are particularly good at using their instincts more than other individuals. Any innovation strategist must develop a keen interest in what works in marketplaces and what are the desirability factors as well as usability factors. Designers have an advantage and a key role to play in this innovation movement and that’s why I was saying MFA is the new MBA. The innovation field, per se, needs to use many different forms of design, crossover, jammed and integrated, to get beyond some threshold level of activity–enough to get commercially produced and, to be strategic. The great news for designers, about the rise of a corporate interest in innovation, is that it recognizes, more than ever before, the strategic contribution of “design thinking” to products, services, information, and corporate level business strategy. I think this as a long-term trend that will likely persist for at least another decade. I am not saying any designer should be given the decision making power for important business projects. I think we are talking about new capability. I don’t think we can simply put designers together with spreadsheet crawlers and expect innovation to happen.

Design thinking is not only about design. Design thinking is inherently an imagination management and prototyping process. Once you have the idea, you start to play with it. People ask me what is a “concept”, it is an idea that is ready for prototyping. The prototype is a visualization, working model, or even a small book or short film that describes a product, system, or service. Design thinking is about applying their mental models, languages and tools to complex business decision-making. I’d like to see practitioners, design schools, business schools and engineering schools coming together to create broad new cross-functional capabilities and professionalism that will actually meet the underlying need for objects, places, human-centered concepts, and distinctive experiences supported by sustainable business models that human beings crave–and enterprises must increasingly learn to deliver to thrive and prosper.

Original posted in Innovation Playground July 2007