UXmatters has published 4 articles on the topic Innovation Strategy.
One program I helped develop and now lead at my company is an innovative, deep-level customer-engagement program that combines design thinking, business-value analysis, and enterprise architecture to help potential clients look at their business challenges in a different way. Rather than focus on features, functions, or even software in general, we focus on helping clients to better understand their business needs and frame them in a way that prevents their seeming insurmountable or like something they could fix only through a massive investment in the wrong technologies.
Overall, this is a highly successful program that has really unlocked benefits for our clients, as well as our own company. In general, our win rate is rather high when we get involved, so many clients want to engage with us—and not just one time but for a longer-term, strategic level of engagement. While that is an achievement for which we are striving, nothing is perfect. So, even when we get involved, we don’t always win. When we don’t win, we often become discouraged and beat ourselves up about what we could have done differently to prevent our losing. Read More
Shifting trends are forcing technology companies to reimagine their value proposition. IBM has chosen to create disruption through design. In embracing the future, the company is essentially invoking its past. Back in 1956, IBM was the first large company to establish a corporate-wide design program. But this time, the company’s goals are more ambitious.
Recently, we interviewed Karel Vredenburg, Director of IBM Design’s worldwide client program and head of IBM Studios in Canada, who told us, “We’ve put everything into this transformation.” The company is investing more than $100 million in becoming design centered. Read More
If you, like most UX professionals, have worked within organizations that seem to respond to User Experience in much the same way that the human body responds to a virus and want to understand why that happens, you should read Creative Change: Why We Resist It… How We Can Embrace It, by Jennifer Mueller, PhD. If you want to understand why organizations struggle with innovation, you should read this book.
Creative Change is a great book about creativity within organizations that is grounded in solid research. Mueller has been studying creativity for almost twenty years, and her research has revealed that, even though many business leaders lament a lack of creativity and innovation within their organizations, they commonly reject creative, innovative ideas. They tend to be biased against and fail to recognize the value of creative leadership as well, believing that creative leaders lack business acumen. This does not bode well for UX leaders.
Occasionally, among the many books I read, I discover a book whose ideas are so transformative that I feel impelled to share them with UXmatters readers. This is one of those rare books. Read More