The way teams work has a huge impact on their ability to create successful new products and services. And while there are well-known business processes for many of a company's core activities like product development or supply chain management, there is not a well-articulated model for working on initiatives aimed at innovation. In this talk, Chris Conley will highlight how they work at Pixar Animation Studio and highlight principles that can provide companies in more "serious" businesses a similar level of success.
About Chris Conley
Chris Conley's teaching, research, and consulting is focused on a creative, multi-disciplinary approach to business innovation called Integrated Definition. This way of working integrates research and design to create meaningfully differentiated products and services that drive business growth. He practices what he preaches as a Director of Gravity Tank, a rapidly growing consulting firm that delivers Integrated Definition to Fortune 500 clients including Unilever, Goodyear, Samsung, Office Max, Motorola, and McDonalds.
As an Associate Professor and head of the Human-Centered Product Design track at the Institute of Design, Chris has taught product design, planning, and user-centered methods to design and business students over the past 14 years. He is routinely rated as an outstanding instructor for his ability to relate advanced theories to professional practice. Chris is a regular contributor to design conferences and competitions worldwide and is the 2006 Chair of the IDEA/BusinessWeek Awards.
Prior to Gravity Tank, Chris was Director of Global Design Planning for Motorola where he established a global experience research process that enabled the company to better understand users' wireless experience in key regions around the world including Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
He holds a Master of Science of Design degree from ID and an engineering degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Notes
Marketing: identify market opportunity
create new customers
Innovation: develop a new offering for the opportunity
Need to do both well to be successful
Problem: how talent is organized within company
today: achieve innovation through informal channels
EEEMP: email, meeetings, presentations
The First Straw ...
Creative Director/Business Director
Creative Production by Chris Conley, Gravity Tank
Overview: Talking about big companies who are trying to do things new . Business & how you work on a daily basis
1) sense of how gravity tank works
2) case that this is necessary
3) look at case of someone who dies that well--Pixar
Who we are:
A lot people working together: new content, new ideas, using design to design businesses
Why?
Peter Drucker, business mgmt said that
2 purposes of business: marketing and innovation
can't grow a business by focusing on profit--it's a byproduct of marketing and innovation: discover latent needs, identify opportunity, create new customers
innovation: developing and launching it
marketing: identifying opportunity
examples:
CueCat: bad marketing, bad innovation (who surfs the internet with magazines in hand?)
Pontiac Aztec: good marketing, bad innovation (too expensive for the people that wanted it)
Segway: bad marketing, good innovation (works really well, no one really wants it)
iPod: good and good: whee!
Why can't we do both with regularity?
How talent is organized:
traditional: marketing engineering design management (silos not so good for innovation)
How we work right now: "EEEMP" Email, email, email, meetings, presentations
Who needs a creative director? Not just the fashion industry
How it should be organized: Pixar case example
How does Pixar innovate? How do they do what they do?
Watching "Making of the Incredibles" -
notes on what are like, how do they work, environment
- creative messy space; the "flow" their characters are "real"; collaborative process; scene by scene perfection but "no scene stands alone"; everything is about the story; get into character, everything is a performance, passion to selling the project; storyboarding/planning first; getting into the minds of the characters, what is a kid going to do in this situation?; going over things again and again to get it right
- lo-fi to hi-fi
- not easy to make movies, lots of possibilties; drag something into being which suggests another thing; it's fun!; no scene stands alone; pitch: get into character so they can visualize it; the more you lay in the better; animating: adding movement to story boards; going over sequences again and again and again;
Lessons learned from Pixar:
- Use Director (guides quality) and Producer (time & resources) roles
- Many talents contribute
- orchestra rather than department (ensemble)
- shape things from day one
- work on all aspects at once
- pitch the idea-- bring the emotion to it
- using dailies - review work regularly, pushing beyond talent,
- create an environment that encourages critique & feedback
CREATIVE PRODUCTION:
Cross disciplinary team, r&d, in a fast iterative way to shape a new product/design
Book suggestion: Artful Making
How to bring this into your organization:
Change meetings into actions/discussions: intellectual challenge
Encourage culture of critique
In some way you have to forget about the outcome - Pixar relies on talent to affect the outcome, opening up the conversation to the creativity of the team