Redefining Innovation

Robert Fransgaard.
Creative Director, EMEA.
Salesforce CXD.
twitter.com/fransgaard
www.linkedin.com/in/fransgaard

My office,
Salesforce Tower.
www.salesforce-tower.com

Salesforce, a founding driving
force of Cloud Computing.
www.salesforce.com/company

Salesforce Customer Experience Design 2015 Reel: https://vimeo.com/121897634

Forbes 2014 list of “The World’s Most Innovative Companies”
1. Salesforce.com
2. Alexion Pharmaceuticals
3. ARM Holdings
4. Unilever Indonesia
5. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
6. Amazon.com
7. BioMarin Pharmaceutical
8. CP All
9. VMware
10. Aspen Pharmacare Holdings
11. Vertex Pharmaceuticals
12. Red Hat
13. Hermès International
14. Hindustan Unilever
15. Monster Beverage
16. The Priceline Group
17. Rakuten
18. Marriott International
19. Fastenal
20. Chipotle Mexican Grill
www.forbes.com/innovative-companies/

The Innovation Premium is
a measure of how much
investors have bid up the
stock price of a company
above the value of its
existing business based
on expectations of future
innovative results (new
products, services and
markets).
“”
How Forbes Defines Innovation.

My View on what Innovation is:
Making it Real!

Chinese delegation to USA
discovered Science Fiction being a
key driver to Innovation.

One type of Science Fiction is the
Utopian, far out in the future
with shiny spaceships colonizing
planets.

Another type of Science fiction is
Cyberpunk: A future just around
the corner where technology and
the web is a humming in the
background of everybody’s lives.

However, that Cyberpunk future
is the world of today.

Reality has surpassed the fiction:
A hacker army located in the
basement of a restaurant.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32926248/bureau
-121-north-koreas-elite-hackers-and-a-tasteful-hotel-
in-china
The crowning jewel is the in-house North Korean
restaurant that can bring you delicious Korean
food right to your room.

The Internet is Everywhere.
It is all possible.
It is all here.

For people outside the Digital
Industry all of this is still
Science Fiction and not relevant
to their daily lives.

In a workshop to define the future
of an internal system, we asked
participants:

“If you had a magic wand, what but
be your one wish that would make
your job easier? You can wish for
anything.”

One participant said “I want to be
able upload photos as easy as on
Facebook”.

Don’t underestimate the real value
of small, tactical initiatives
like that. In some situations this
is exactly what,
and all that, is needed.

What is transformational to the
Digital Industry can be very
different to what is
transformational to the a
business.

Don’t confuse
Transformational
with
Cutting Edge.

While the Web may be maturing, it
is not slowing down. Rather it is
speeding up and even we, as
professionals living and breathing
Digital, are struggling to keep
up.

The distance between digital
professionals and everybody else
is getting bigger, not smaller
because of the increasing speed of
the evolution of the Internet.

Here are three things to address
in order to bring Customers on the
journey to Digital Innovation:

1.
A too big a focus on Strategy,
Blue Sky Thinking and
The Big Picture.

2.
Not appreciating the Craftsmanship
required to actually get it done
and deliver something.

3.
Using classic Idea
Generation Methodologies, which
are based on the physical world
with physical limitations.

3. Classic Idea
Generation
Methodologies.
A classic workshop exercise
is to imagine a real obstacle
doesn’t exist.

3. Classic Idea
Generation
Methodologies.
e.g.
“what would a kettle look like if
it didn’t need power?”

3. Classic Idea
Generation
Methodologies.
However, removing obstacles in a
digital context where there’s
already almost endless
possibilities, makes a too wide
playing field even wider.

But what if we flip the method
around and add obstacles instead?
3. Classic Idea
Generation
Methodologies.

e.g.
“Design an app, but only 10% of
pixels can be coloured”.
3. Classic Idea
Generation
Methodologies.

Another classic workshop method is
“Cherry Splitting” where
participants divide a problem or
object into the individual
functional parts.
3. Classic Idea
Generation
Methodologies.

e.g
when redesigning a bicycle, you
would divide it into wheels, seat,
steer, chain etc.
3. Classic Idea
Generation
Methodologies.

But a digital product can divide
it into very very small, but still
functional chunks to the point
where the exercise becomes
useless.
3. Classic Idea
Generation
Methodologies.

Maybe for digital a better way is
to rearrange the individual parts
into new structures.
3. Classic Idea
Generation
Methodologies.

e.g. take all components of a
contact form and rearrange them
into a new order.
Button first maybe?
3. Classic Idea
Generation
Methodologies.

2. Craftsmanship.
At Digital Shoreditch 2015 I explored what Digital Professionals
can learn from Creatives working with physical tools and Materials.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=agZYtFOTpdc

2. Craftsmanship.
For the presentation I decided to
go to the source and interview an
artist friend of mine:
Phuc Van Dang.
www.Phucisme.dk.

2. Craftsmanship.
Phuc produces art on anything from
paintings and drawings to
porcelain and photography to
fullsize wall art and performa
art.

2. Craftsmanship.
One of the things I didn’t cover
in the Digital Shoreditch
presentation was Phuc’s focus on
delivery and understanding his
tools and materials.

2. Craftsmanship.
Because of the nature of some of
his pieces, it is crucial he fully
understands how to bring his ideas
to life.

2. Craftsmanship.
There is no “undo” for Phuc.

2. Craftsmanship.
The non-committal nature of
Digital Production means the
craftsmanship doesn’t get the
respect it deserves.

2. Craftsmanship.
It can be updated later.
Fix it in phase 2.
etc.

2. Craftsmanship.
But we are forgetting once it is
live, it is committed and judged
by the users. Some may not
appreciate it. Some may never come
back.

2. Craftsmanship.
While we can fix the product, it
is much hard to fix the lost
relationship with a customer.

And finally back to point 1
on the heavy focus on
Big Picture thinking.
1. Strategy and
“The Big Picture”.

A customer has a simple request, a
simple thing that will mean a lot
for their company.
1. Strategy and

It may not be cutting edge and the
knowledgeable Digital
Professionals want to show a
display of their vast knowledge of
the Web.
1. Strategy and

Present all the many many
solutions to the customer ranging
far beyond the original problem.
1. Strategy and

Lift the thinking beyond the
immediate problem and look at the
Bigger Picture and present
Strategies to approach the problem
and all its new-found cousins.
1. Strategy and

Not only does this sometimes mean
the customer think they are being
oversold…
1. Strategy and

…it also leaves the customer
overwhelmed and questioning
whether what they wanted was right
in the first place.
1. Strategy and

The barrage of options and how far
it takes the conversation away
from the immediate problem leads
to indecisiveness.
1. Strategy and

And nothing gets done.
1. Strategy and

Customers are not stupid. But they
naturally focus on the problem
they have at hand. That’s where we
need to start the journey.
1. Strategy and

“You Must Walk Before You Run.”
1. Strategy and

Another analogy with reference to
physical limitations because it
assumes all are affected by the
same gravity, friction, wind etc.
1. Strategy and

There is no physical limits to how
fast we can move on the web. Going
from walking to running may take
exactly the same time as going
from walking to flying lightspeed.
1. Strategy and

We have to find the right speed of
the customer to make sure they are
with us.
1. Strategy and

But as soon as we do, then the
real tangible transformational
stuff happens. Not only in our
thinking, but also what is being
delivered.
1. Strategy and

It is made Real.
1. Strategy and

Salesforce Services at Dreamforce 2014: https://vimeo.com/114378626

Final thought:
The only wrong decision
is not to make one.

Don’t make the vast possibilities
of the Web become an obstacle to
making decisions and prevent ideas
from becoming real.

Redefining Innovation

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