The Innovation that Launched a Thousand Ships

In my own teaching I’ve adopted a lesson from Larry Keeley, my mentor and the thought leader at Doblin Group (now part of Deloitte). Larry has for years hosted the introductory course for innovation in the masters program at the Institute of Design in Chicago. More recently, as business schools have come to recognize innovation as an important competence, they have added a similar course – or in some cases, as at Stanford d school – an entire new field of study. Larry was asked to develop such a curriculum for several prominent MBA programs.

As a foundation, Larry employs the same introductory “Innovation 101” course that he uses with design students. He retrofit the course as part of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business, in what is now the Segal Design Institute. He did not yet realize that he was about to bisect the lobes of our opposable minds.

Here’s how it plays out.

Larry arrives on day one to bright shiny faces eager with anticipation. Then he simply issues a challenge.

“Organize yourselves into small groups. You have one week to solve the following problem. I want you to show me how you would eradicate the plague of malaria from the human condition within five years.

“Let me repeat. No malaria. Five years. How would you do it? What would it cost? See you next week.”

Shiny faces twist into quizzical expressions. Larry refuses further instruction. Several faces bloom to a warm rosy hue and – as he departs – bright WTF red.

A week later, confident future business executives present something like this:

“We’ve examined the possible solutions. Within five years a vaccine appears too remote to consider, but three protections can prevent spread of the disease by attacking the carrier – malarial mosquitoes. One – netting prevents access. Two – insecticide can wipe out populations and temporarily protect small areas. Three – mopping up stagnant water bodies reduces breeding grounds.”

Teams invariably trot out clever combinations of these three – insecticide permeated netting; not only draining stagnant water pools but filtering water in safe wells, supplemental irrigation, impressive distribution channels; etc.

Spreadsheets project reduced infection rates, and lives saved per dollar invested. All very impressive.

Failure of Ambition

Larry offers his critique.

“You’ve reduced malaria’s impact and saved tens of thousands of lives at a reasonable cost. So apparently you missed the assignment. No malaria. Anywhere. You’ve barely made a dent. You fail.”

Indignant retorts exclaim that there’s no way to achieve this goal; this is the rational outcome, etc.

Then Larry shares a response from his Design masters students. They present something like this:

“Okay. First the good news. Malaria was successfully eradicated from the Southern United States, Europe and much of the Caribbean during the 1940s and 1950s. The problem is less about the technology than the social coordination required. So we looked at all attempted interventions in Africa, ground zero for this plague. Even in combination, none of the proven programs can eliminate malaria in the five year window, or hope to coordinate such fragile and disparately governed regions. So we need to start with what success looks like, five years from now, and then back into the minimum required program to achieve it.”

“Our calculations tell us we need to requisition the entire US Navy carrier fleet – Atlantic and Pacific. Depending on success rates we may also need to call on France and Japan. Fleets will approach the east and west coasts of Africa simultaneously. Tactical aircraft will be equipped with a highly toxic form of insecticide – basically DDT – deployed through spreaders. Think crop dusting with bleach. To wipe out this mosquito, a robust parasite, we must accept collateral damage. So we will need to offload the entire population of these regions to the carriers. Once clear, coordinate the launch of aircraft to carpet bomb the breeding grounds and infected regions from Western Sahara to Somalia, following wind patterns, moving diagonally south by southeast along both coasts.”

“Over the next three years, we project clearing all of Africa of infestation, effectively eliminating transmission to humans. This comes at a massive cost to the local economies and endemic species. Corralling and collecting flora and fauna will require dramatic shifts similar to those used to rehabitate endangered species, but on an unprecedented scale. As in biblical scale; Noah’s ark scale. The economic cost represents approximately 3 to 5 years of the aggregate GDP of the affected nations.”

“Now unfortunately, only 90% of malaria infection occurs in Africa. The CDC has pinpointed smaller but concerning trouble spots in Asia, South and Central America. So, depending on early results in Africa, starting in year two…”

You get the point. You want big results? You better think big. You want high return? You better accept high risk – and then introduce a second level of determined research and innovation design to mitigate it.

Then, once you really know what you’re asking for, you can start to moderate the request and calculate the compromises.

Why Such Stark Difference?

Why do the MBA students consistently underwhelm, and the Design students consistently shoot for the moon? Martin, Keeley and others have offered their hypotheses, and I’ve formed my own from personal observation. This is not original – it’s the foundation of the rapidly evolving observations of behavioral economics. In short, most of us are wired to the present. We don’t challenge the boundaries. We don’t question current reality. We allow the very human, short-sighted default approach – to push forward from the known present into a predictable future.

By contrast, unfettered creative minds start with the desired end state – what does good look like. They work their way back, eliminating failed options along the way, until they arrive at today with the few surviving possibilities, no matter how daunting. Like Michaelangelo sculpting a statue by envisioning the figure trapped within and chipping away the encasing marble to set it free.

How would YOU describe this minority? Uninhibited? Creative? Intuitive? Completely bananas?

All of the above. I submit that the same design method that allowed Howard Hughes to launch the Spruce Goose or Elon Musk to launch Space X comes from this same entrepreneurial spirit of possibility.

Figure out what, then figure out how.

Howard Hughes launched his monumental flight ship, the “Spruce Goose” in 1947, (ironically built primarily with birch wood); it still commands the longest wingspan in aviation history.

Sadly, most of us do the reverse. Maybe it’s not the designers who naturally think backwards. Maybe everyone else is looking at problems the wrong way around.

Bold challenges, innovation, new sources of growth, new anything; these all demand a design approach.

To conceive the new, think like a designer. Pull from the future.