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The three lenses of innovation
July 26, 2010I playfully have referred to this concept as “becoming a three eyed monster” like this picture here.
This is not a new concept by any stretch of the imagination. The faculties of industrial design and engineering here in the Netherlands have organized their departments around these three ideas for 25 years or more. Tim Brown in his book, Change by design, talks about three related concepts: Feasibility, Desirability, and Viability.
What I’m saying is that we need to look through three different lenses in order to innovate well and successfully. They are technology, people, and business.
Technology
Technology constrains what is currently possible, and of course there are a number of patent, licensing, and standards issues that are associated with technology. Technology asks questions about what can be built, and how to build it.
People
The people lens is all about what people want, what human value does it serve, how does it fit into our human lives, and does it share the values we do? There are many ways to study people inside of innovation, broadly they are quantitative and qualitative.
Designers and people who use user-centered design (UCD) tend to study people qualitatively. We value the lived experience of being in the field with those we are interested in, and if we’re not in the field ourselves we are close by helping to plan the study and we’re there first hand when the analysis of the study is done, participating and drawing our own conclusions about it.
Marketers have long honed their skills at studying people quantitatively. Compared to UCD and design research marketing research is a well established field with standard methods and well-known and respected journals with established disciplinary and sub-disciplinary boundaries. Marketing research is almost always conducted by an outside party thus bringing an objectivity to the data, and of course sampling size and generalizbility is important.
Business
Business concerns are many and varied in this description, but here are some samplings: how well does this idea fit within our current business, can we make money with this product/service/experience, what are the supply chain implications for this and does it fit within our current system, and of course many more.
My hypothesis
I think we can create better, more meaningful innovation by having a fuller understanding of people from both points of view in the new product creation process. I am studying how we do this, it is the focus of my research.
Does the idea of these three lenses make sense to you?
