Remember that speech from a Few Good Men where Jack Nicholson famously ranted at Tom Cruise "You can't handle the truth?" I was vaguely reminded of it when I saw this picture. It reminded me that, when it comes to creativity and innovation, if you want the innovations, money, and prestige it sometimes produces, you've get to be ready to handle the mess.
I love this picture because it is such a great demonstration that prototyping -- like so many other parts of creative process -- is so messy that it can be distressing to people with orderly minds. This picture comes from a presentation I heard at an executive program last week called Design Thinking Bootcamp.
It was by the amazing Claudia Kotchka, who did great things at VP of Design Innovation and Strategy at P&G -- see this video and article. She built a 300 person organization to spread innovation methods across the company. She retired from P&G a few years back and now helps all sorts of organizations (including the the Stanford d school) imagine and implement design thinking and related insights. As part of her presentation, she put up this picture from a project P&G did with IDEO (they did many). We always love having Claudia at the d.school because she spreads so much wisdom and confidence to people who are dealing with such messes.
That is what prototyping looks like... it even can look this messy when people are developing ideas about HR issues like training and leadership development and organizational strategy issues such as analyses of competitors.
I am forever startled by clients who choose not to pursue the messy aspects of innovating -- be it products, services, strategies, business models, whatever -- and prefer a more predictable course that never yields breakthrough results. George Gilder said "Fail fast. Fail cheap. Win big." What can we do to help leaders and those at the front line to get past only hearing the word 'fail' and instead hear 'win big'?
Posted by: Joe Marchese | July 17, 2012 at 10:47 AM