英文摘要 Executive Summaries SEPTEMBER 2015

SPOTLIGHT
ON THE EVOLUTION OF DESIGN THINKING

CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Design for Action

Tim Brown and Roger Martin

CEver since it became clear that smart design led to the success of many products, companies have been employing it in other areas, from customer experiences, to strategy, to business ecosystems. But as design is used in increasingly complex contexts, a new hurdle has emerged: gaining acceptance of the "designed artifact" into the status quo. In fact, the more innovative a new design is, the more resistance it's likely to meet. The solution, say the CEO of IDEO and the Rotman School's former dean, is to also apply design thinking to the introduction of the innovation itself.

This process, intervention design, grew organically out of the iterative prototyping that designers did to help understand customers' reactions to new products. Not only did iterative prototyping create better offerings, but it was a great way to get organizational funding and commitment, because it improved the chances of success and reduced fear of the unknown. Intervention design uses iterative prototyping to get buy-in too, but extends it to interactions with all the principal stakeholders—not just customers.

When Intercorp Group devised a revolutionary concept for Peru's schools, it needed to win acceptance for corporate-run education and for a very different role for teachers. Thanks to intervention design, it now has 29 schools in operation and is rapidly growing.

HBR Reprint R1509C

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Design Thinking Comes of Age

Jon Kolko

In large organizations, design is moving closer to the center of the enterprise. This shift isn't about aesthetics and product development, however. It's about imparting the principles of design collectively known as design thinking—throughout the organization. The approach is in large part a response to the complexity of many products, services, and processes. People need help—they need their interactions with technologies and other complicated systems to be intuitive and pleasurable.

Design thinking is an essential tool for simplifying and humanizing. The principles include a focus on users' experiences, especially their emotional ones; the creation of physical models, such as diagrams and sketches, to explore problems; the use of prototypes to experiment with solutions; a tolerance for failure; and thoughtful restraint in product features so that even a complex piece of technology can be easy to use.

Creating a design-centric culture requires understanding that the returns on an investment in design are difficult to quantify, allowing people to take chances, and appreciating what design can and cannot achieve. Design helps people and organizations cut through complexity and imagine the future, but it doesn't solve all problems.

HBR Reprint R1509D

INNOVATION
How Samsung Became a Design Powerhouse

Youngjin Yoo and Kyungmook Kim

Until 20 years ago, South Korea's Samsung Electronics manufactured inexpensive, imitative electronics for other companies. Its leaders valued speed, scale, and reliability above all. The few designers working for the company were dispersed in engineering and new-product units, and they had little status in an organization that emphasized efficiency and engineering rigor.

Then, in 1996, Lee Kun-Hee, the chair of Samsung Group, grew frustrated by the company's lack of innovation and concluded that in order to become a top brand, Samsung needed expertise in design, which he believed would become "the ultimate battleground for global competition in the 21st century." He set out to create a design-focused culture that would support world-class innovation.

But shifting to an innovationfocused culture without losing an engineering edge is not a simple matter. It involves managing a number of very real tensions. Samsung's success in making this shift stems from a single early decision—to build design competency in-house rather than import it. The authors describe how the company created a committed, resourceful corps of designers who overcame internal resistance by deploying the same tools they use in pursuing innovation: empathy, visualization, and experimentation in the marketplace.

HBR Reprint R1509E

THE BIG IDEA

MANAGING ORGANIZATIONS
The Organizational Apology

Maurice E. Schweitzer, Alison Wood Brooks, and Adam D. Galinsky

At some point, every company makes a mistake that requires an apology—to an individual; a group of customers, employees, or business partners; or the public at large. And more often than not, companies and their leaders fail to apologize effectively, if at all, which can severely damage their reputations and their relationships with stakeholders.

Companies need clearer guidelines for determining whether a mistake merits an apology and, when it does, for crafting and delivering an effective message. In this article, the authors present their framework—the apology formula— to help companies navigate the tricky terrain. Leaders should ask themselves four questions:

· Was there a violation?

· Was it core to our promise or mission?

· How will the public react?

· Are we committed to change?

As a general rule, the more central to the mission of the company the violation is and the more people it affects, the more important it is that the apology be pitch-perfect.

Once a company decides that an apology is necessary, it needs to carefully consider the who, what, where, when, and how of executing it. For core violations, the "who" has to be senior leaders, the "what" has to show a tremendous commitment to change, the "where" has to be high profile, the "when" has to be fast, and the "how" must be deeply sincere and demonstrate empathy.

HBR Reprint R1509B

 How We Did It

LEADERSHIP
The President of SRI Ventures on Bringing Siri to Life

Norman Winarsky

The market vision that led to Siri, the virtual personal assistant that's now an integral part of Apple's iPhone, can be traced back to 2003, when a mobile phone's primary applications were still limited to ringtones and messaging. The author and his colleagues at SRI International recognized that the phone's growing capabilities would eventually put a communicating supercomputer in everyone's pocket. They believed that their company was well suited to be a leader in the inevitable technology and market revolution—as it had been in every previous computing revolution.

They didn't originally plan to create a stand-alone venture. They talked to dozens of telecom carriers and handset providers, with the aim of jointly starting a project that would license the technology. But because the few resulting commercial projects implemented only small parts of its original vision, the founding team decided to drop that idea and create and build its own venture. Speech-to-text was the easy part: SRI had launched Nuance, a world leader in speech solutions. The hard part was analyzing words so as to understand the user's intent and then reason about and answer the request. The runaway success of Siri demonstrates how well the team met that challenge.

HBR Reprint R1509A

 Managing Yourself

How to Embrace Complex Change

Linda Brimm

For ambitious executives working in dynamic global businesses, big career transitions—to new roles, organizations, industries, or geographic locations—are a fact of life. So is the need to constantly adapt to new technologies, work groups, strategies, and ways of thinking and behaving. And yet even seasoned professionals find this sort of change difficult. Management researchers have a lot to say about the best way to approach organizational change, but when it comes to personal transitions, there is no blueprint for success. Over years working with MBA students and executives, the author has developed a framework to help in thinking about change. It involves navigating the Seven C's: complexity (considering all the issues in a particular change effort); clarity (understanding and prioritizing those issues); confidence (believing that one can be successful in making the change); creativity (brainstorming innovative solutions to problems that arise); commitment (beginning to implement the change); consolidation (leaving behind the previous identity to adopt the new one); and change (living into the change and its consequences).

HBR Reprint R1509J