As I mentioned in previous posts, the Portland Art Museum brought China Design Now, the London Victoria & Albert exhibit, to Portland to attract a new audience and elevate Portland's cultural discourse to a global level. The exhibition documents China's impressive advancement in graphics, fashion and design over the last 20 years. In my last post I discussed how the Portland Art Museum used story and metaphor to make the exhibition even more meaningful. The museum's most significant innovation, however, is not in the content of the exhibition--it's the museum experience itself.
A China Design Now display at the Portland International Airport welcomes visitors and offers a glimpse of exhibit artifacts and design elements
To attract and engage an increasingly complex and distracted audience and to broaden the cultural dialog throughout the city, the Portland Art Museum redefined the museum experience as a platform. Envisioning the museum as platform is a radical but necessary departure. It shifts the museum's role as curator and owner of content to moderator of a global conversation that invites real participation from the community. To succeed, the museum borrowed from social networking platforms and created a dynamic ecosystem that invites different levels of involvement from three types of people--creators, commentators and consumers.
Goldsmith Gallery's "Jelly Generation" features China's new and colorful culture with a concentrated eye on the past. Photographer: Andy Davidhazy
Inviting commentators and consumers to view a show and comment is what the museum had always done. The museum's bold step was reaching out to creators--Portland's creative community--and inviting them to make their own exhibitions and events exploring the creative revolution in China as part of the total China Design Now exhibition experience. Portland's creative culture jumped at the chance to extend the discourse beyond the walls of the museum and at times, beyond the museum's comfort zone.
The White Box's inaugural exhibit, "Inspiration China" displays contemporary student creations inspired by Chinese artifacts. Art: Mackenzie Schubert "Temple for a Disabled Sculpture" 2009 Paper, Wood, The Internet. Photographer: Andy Davidhazy.
Community-created exhibitions and events include an inspiring collection of more than 100 portraits made by Wieden + Kennedy's Shanghai office displayed in the W + K Portland headquarters ; an exhibition at the Goldsmith Gallery exploring China's Jelly Generation and how the youth of China are redefining what it means to be Chinese; University of Oregon in Portland's "Inspiration China" exhibit at The White Box; a performance art piece in the Ace Hotel where a young group of Chinese street artists perform in its lobby; and even an underground comic anthology from China, "Special Comics," filled with experimental Chinese comic art that the museum may never have shown in its halls.
Extensions of the Portland Art Museum's show extend across the city
To extend community involvement online, the museum created CDNPDX.org where sixteen different blog editors from the community contribute content and editorial perspectives daily. They are not museum employees, but people from the community that have insight into China and/or design, and are willing to contribute to the discourse for free.
While including potentially offensive underground comics and "amateur" art may make some traditional museum-goers uncomfortable, the museum believes that inviting people to be part of the experience is necessary to remain relevant and worth the risk.
Portland-based Wieden + Kennedy showcases mixed-medium portraits that Shanghai office members created of each other. Photo: Courtesy of Wieden + Kennedy
The Portland Art Museum's experiment will last until the end of the year. Creating an experience platform for people to contribute content is a dramatic shift for an institution that is used to controlling the door. It's also a wake-up call for businesses that have been slow to adopt platform thinking. Companies, non-profits and cultural institutions alike need to understand how to create meaningful platforms if they are interested in attracting and engaging a new generation of consumers. Like other social platforms, the biggest challenge for the museum will be finding a sustainable business model. In December, I will sit down with Brian Ferriso, executive director of the Portland Art Museum, and John Jay, executive creative director of Wieden + Kennedy and key contributor to the China Design Now experience to review this experiment, discuss measures of success and how this will affect the museum moving forward.
Steve
McCallion is a skilled innovation architect and brand
strategist. His groundbreaking work includes redefining Umpqua
Bank's role as an anchor for community prosperity, creating Sirius
Satellite Radio's award-winning experience for the "iPod fatigued," and
working with real estate developers Gerding Edlen to create more
meaningful neighborhoods. Other clients include Xerox, Black &
Decker, Whirlpool, FedEx, McDonald's, Coleman, Kenwood, and Compaq.
Steve's primary charge is to foster Ziba's consumer experience
practice. He founded the company's award-winning Design Research and
Planning practice group, which has developed proprietary research
and design planning methodologies.
Opening night at the China Design Now exhibition brought a diverse crowd to the Portland Art Museum. Bike messengers, baristas, architects, graphic designers, students, and more converged on the nation's seventh oldest museum to learn more about China's next great dynasty--design. As I mentioned in my previous post, the Portland Art Museum brought China Design Now from the V&A in London via Cincinnati to attract new audiences and elevate the cultural dialogue in Portland to a global discourse. It's the first international traveling show to hit Portland in over half a decade and it reflects executive director Brian Ferriso's vision to thrive in the new economy by redefining the museum experience.
The exhibition charts China's amazing 20-year transformation from manufacturer to creator. The massive amount of content makes the scope and significance of China's emerging design culture tangible, if overwhelming. The museum needed an over-arching story that would make the exhibition more accessible and meaningful. To create more urgency and immediacy, it decided to put China's current cultural transformation in the context of China's rich dynasty heritage. By introducing China's most recent dynasty-- the Design Dynasty--the museum was able to immediately communicate the scale and importance of the show and of this particular moment in time to the Chinese people and to the world.
The use of metaphor has helped clarify the story throughout the exhibition. China Design Now was initially organized around three cities (Shenzen, Shanghai, Beijing) and their respective design disciplines (graphics, fashion, and architecture). To help people understand this relationship, Elizabeth Blades, creative director at Ziba Design, used these metaphors to design the exhibition space. Shenzen, the birth of Chinese graphic design, is represented as a design studio; Shanghai, the fashion capitol of China, is a fashion runway; and Beijing, the capital city, is the central pavilion.
Throughout the journey, Blades explores five design principles Ziba identified through 10 years of research in China and in studying the pieces of the exhibition: the Power of Many, Neo-traditions, Contrasts, DIY, and Mashups. Visitors experience these principles in the work and throughout the exhibition design. Outside the museum, 200 red lanterns are suspended with cables 30 feet above the contemporary sculpture garden; in the entrance, China Design Now is spelled in simplified Mandarin with fluorescent lighting tubes; in the interior courtyard, everyday statistics make the scale and influence of China more tangible; and in the entry hall, a field of faces introduces the leaders of the new Dynasty--the Chinese designers whose work is showcased in the exhibition.
The museum's use of story and metaphor has helped make the work more meaningful. Opening night was filled with wonder and excitement. Oregonian art critic D.K. Row noted that the Portland version of the exhibition made this complex subject more understandable. For the museum, opening night is just the start. To truly transform the museum experience, the Portland Art Museum is extending the exhibition beyond the museum and engaging the entire city in a conversation about China's next great dynasty. In my next post, I'll take a look how the museum is leveraging social networking principles to remain relevant.
Steve
McCallion is a skilled innovation architect and brand
strategist. His groundbreaking work includes redefining Umpqua
Bank's role as an anchor for community prosperity, creating Sirius
Satellite Radio's award-winning experience for the "iPod fatigued," and
working with real estate developers Gerding Edlen to create more
meaningful neighborhoods. Other clients include Xerox, Black &
Decker, Whirlpool, FedEx, McDonald's, Coleman, Kenwood, and Compaq. Steve's primary charge is to foster Ziba's consumer experience
practice. He founded the company's award-winning Design Research and
Planning practice group, which has developed proprietary research
and design planning methodologies.
The Portland Art Museum in Oregon is innovating its way through the new economy. Its latest exhibition, China Design Now, which opened October 10th, uses the principles of crowdsourcing and experience design to shift the museum’s role from curator to moderator and to put the museum in the center of a global conversation.
In this new economy, everyone is searching for ways to attract more customers. Museums are no different. The traditional model of relying on contributions from a handful of large patrons is becoming increasingly challenging. Long-time patrons are contributing less, memberships are down, and admissions are falling, forcing museums to figure out how to live off the long tail--a fragmented population with a limitless number of entertainment and education options. Rather than becoming a victim of this changing market, the Portland Art Museum decided to innovate.
Founded in 1892, the museum is one of the oldest institutions in the country--so it's impressive that the museum is digging deep in its effort to attract and engage new audiences. Its first priority was Portland’s thriving design community. We were excited to be asked by Portland Art Museum’s Executive Director, Brian Ferriso, to help his team create a new museum experience.
Portland’s design community is a DIY, social networking culture that's not used to passive experiences. From custom bikes to craft beers, they are physical learners who expect to be involved in the discourse. They are more likely to spend time on Etsy selling their latest creations than in a museum studying van Gogh. To connect with this elusive audience, the museum broke the rules of content and control. In the process, they redefined the museum experience.
First, the museum needed relevant content. Ferriso discovered China Design Now, the Victoria & Albert exhibition featuring the progression of design in China over the last 20 years. The exhibition’s focus on Chinese design was a departure for the museum--but necessary in order to pique the interest of Portland’s design community. Portland has been a trade partner with China since the Gold Rush, and strong relationships in computer technology, apparel, and emerging “green” technologies continue to thrive.
While some people in Portland were familiar with the advancements China has made in design and innovation, research indicated that the ‘Made in China’ stereotype persisted. In reality, China has undergone a dynamic cultural transformation in just 20 years, and is at the crossroads of its isolationist past and a global future fueled by creativity. The sheer scope and willingness of China’s fashion designers, graphic designers, and architects to experiment and take risks would be inspiring and enlightening to Portland’s design community. For Chinese youth and designers, China Design Now is a coming out party. The exhibition would help shift preconceived notions from China being an imitator to a recognition that China is actually an innovator, and would create a global conversation.
The biggest issue, however, was the museum experience itself. To connect with Portland’s DIY design culture, the Portland Art Museum did something radical--it invited the community to be part of the exhibition. Rather than focusing on attracting people to the museum, it decided to bring the museum to the people. It reached out to its audience to create content and contribute to the experience: The Ace Hotel showcased an exhibit of Chinese street art, retailer Office PDX + Froelick Gallery had a pop-up store and panel discussion, the Goldsmith Gallery ran a Jelly Generation exhibition, the University of Oregon created an “Inspiration China" exhibit with pieces that riff off ancient Chinese artifacts, and the Floating World Comics curated a Special Underground Comix exhibit from China. The museum relinquished control of the experience but maintained its mission of community involvement and discourse. The exhibition is envisioned as a hub and spoke experience, with events that engage institutions and businesses throughout the city. Layers of interpretation include film, architecture, art, social science, fashion, and food.
Over the next few weeks, the Portland Art Museum will be hosting a citywide discussion about China, design, and innovation--and testing the limits of a museum’s role in a community dialogue. I’ll be blogging about how the museum re-invented the museum experience and about the experience itself. I'll also try to determine measures for the exhibit’s success. And, in the spirit of the exhibition, you, too, can join the conversation online.
Steve
McCallion is a skilled innovation architect and brand
strategist with a rare balance of design sensibility and strategic
thinking. He has led groundbreaking work including redefining Umpqua
Bank's role as an anchor for community prosperity, creating Sirius
Satellite Radio's award-winning experience for the "iPod fatigued" and
working with real estate developers Gerding Edlen to create more
meaningful neighborhoods. His other clients include Xerox, Black &
Decker, Whirlpool, FedEx, McDonald's, Coleman, Kenwood and Compaq.
Steve's primary charge is to foster Ziba's consumer experience
practice. He founded the company's award-winning Design Research and
Planning practice group which has developed many proprietary research
and design planning methodologies that have helped numerous clients
understand the essence of their customers, win design awards, obtain
patents and succeed in the market.
"I promise." It's a simple statement. One uttered by children trying to convince their parents that they will be good, by husband and wife on their wedding day (and every week on trash day). A promise builds a strong emotional connection between two people. They are simple words, but when spoken from the heart (and delivered on), they form the foundation for meaningful relationships--and consumer experiences.
Meaningful consumer experiences are based on a relationship between brands and people. By clearly promising something to people that is authentic and relevant, brands can increase the value of their products and services and connect on an emotional level.
Companies that deliver great consumer experiences understand the importance of a promise. Beyond a communication device, a good promise defines what a brand is willing to do for its customers and delivers on that through a series of artifacts. A good promise is simple and clear. It's relevant to people, but if it's only relevant it remains empty. As we wind down the age of overabundance, people are exhausted by empty promises. An effective promise must also be an authentic expression of the brand--something that a company cares deeply and passionately about. A promise built on relevancy and authenticity forms the foundation of a relationship built on trust. Today, people are looking for that.
A handful of companies are willing to make meaningful promises. The Spanish shoe company Camper promises that your life will be better if you slow down and walk. Camper shoes are simple and built for walking. Its stores have no elaborate fixtures, just shoe boxes stacked with shoes on top of them--an expression of Camper's commitment to simplicity and slowing down.
Billy Reid, a fashion designer out of Florence, Alabama, promises to bring back southern hospitality in the age of 500 friends, emoticons and text abbreviations. His clothing stores are reminiscent of southern houses complete with whiskey bars. Remedies, a new brand of first aid products, promises simple solutions to whatever ails you. Help Remedies' first six products are packaged in biodegradable molded paper pulp and embellished only with the does-what-it-says product name: Help I Have A Headache; Help I Have An Aching Body; Help I Have Allergies; Help I've Cut Myself; Help I Have A Blister; and Help I Can't Sleep. The results are deep emotional connections between people and brands.
So why don't more companies have clear promises? Because it's difficult to do, particularly for larger companies. A promise is a personal, intimate commitment. It often requires going out on a limb and taking a risk. Larger companies struggle with consensus building. Group writing exercises move things through the organizational system, but lose meaning in the process. Today's over saturated consumer doesn't register watered down promises that make everyone happy. They respond to sharp focus and clear promises.
The great thing about promises is that they are difficult to copy. Products and services can be copied, but promises are so deeply embedded into the culture of a company that they are difficult to copy. What do you promise your consumers?
Over the last several years the innovation discussion has
shifted from a focus on product and business innovation to consumer
experience. Companies are increasingly interested in creating value by
delivering better consumer experiences, but many are not quite sure how
to get there. The results have ranged from a proliferation of
Apple-like genius bars to frustrated project teams whose projects never
make it to market. These companies are finding it surprisingly
difficult to deliver great consumer experiences. This week,
Steve McCallion explores some of the challenges companies face when
trying to deliver consumer experience innovation.
Steve
McCallion is a skilled innovation architect and brand
strategist with a rare balance of design sensibility and strategic
thinking. He has led groundbreaking work including redefining Umpqua
Bank's role as an anchor for community prosperity, creating Sirius
Satellite Radio's award-winning experience for the "iPod fatigued" and
working with real estate developers Gerding Edlen to create more
meaningful neighborhoods. His other clients include Xerox, Black &
Decker, Whirlpool, FedEx, McDonald's, Coleman, Kenwood and Compaq.
Steve's primary charge is to foster Ziba's consumer experience
practice. He founded the company's award-winning Design Research and
Planning practice group which has developed many proprietary research
and design planning methodologies that have helped numerous clients
understand the essence of their customers, win design awards, obtain
patents and succeed in the market.
Repeat after me: "Your customer doesn't have the answers!"
I thought we put this to rest fifteen years ago, but apparently there are a number of companies still trying to create innovative consumer experiences by asking people what they want. Consumers want what their neighbors have. They have no idea what's next--they consume!
Asking customers what they want blinds companies and prevents them from delivering innovative consumer experiences. Traditional research methods are limited for two key reasons: 1) people's existing reality limits their understanding of future possibilities; and, 2) people cannot envision how the parts come together equal more than the whole. Consumer experience innovation is based on deep consumer insights, but those insights rarely come from asking them what they want. Malcolm Gladwell asserts: "Asking someone to explain [their behavior and intent] is not only a psychological impossibility...but it biases them in favor of the conservative, in favor of the known over the unknown."
Imagine twenty years ago asking a room full of moms if they'd be interested in paying $4.50 for a cup of coffee. Or even better, what if they were told it wasn't for the coffee it was for the coffee experience. We would never have had Starbucks. Fifteen years later, imagine asking moms if they'd like to have cute stuffed animals with that $4.50 cup of coffee that has become central to their existence. They say "yes" and the great erosion of the coffee experience begins.
Every industry has its issues it gets hung up on. Hospitality has many--shower soap is just one of them. Determining whether to switch shower soap from a bar to a bulk dispenser consumes an inordinate amount of energy. Switching would save a hotel over $4 a day per room. But if your ask consumers, they'll tell you they prefer bar soap. They will describe how bulk dispensers remind them of truck stops and how gross those bathrooms are and how once in a truck stop... A lot of companies would listen to this and stick with the bar soap. It's easy. The customer said they wanted it.
Starwood didn't listen. It redefined bulk dispensing by putting its Bliss branded spa products in a redesigned dispenser and connecting it to an overall story of cheap-chic modern travel. In the process they enhanced the customer experience and pocketed $4 per room.
So what do you do? We need consumer insights, but we have to find better ways to get them. We need to model existing behaviors, attitudes and values and then apply what we know about future trends to create experiences that surprise and delight consumers. We need to leverage the archetypal models of Abraham Maslow, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell because they've done some pretty deep thinking on the subject of peoples needs, meaning and storytelling. Their frameworks allow us to understand hierarchy of needs, define consumer journeys and develop meaningful character. When we do ask consumers for feedback, we need to help them envision the future by building scenarios and prototyping early in the process. These tools are no less rigorous than traditional market research tools. Based on a combination of scenario planning, social science and decision management practices, these tools create frameworks that are necessary to drive consumer experience innovation.
It is often at the moments when the customer says not to do something that an opportunity to innovate exists. What new consumer insights tools are you developing to drive consumer experience innovation?
Over the last several years the innovation discussion has
shifted from a focus on product and business innovation to consumer
experience. Companies are increasingly interested in creating value by
delivering better consumer experiences, but many are not quite sure how
to get there. The results have ranged from a proliferation of
Apple-like Genius Bars to frustrated project teams whose projects never
make it to market. These companies are finding it surprisingly
difficult to deliver great consumer experiences. This week,
Steve McCallion explores some of the challenges companies face when
trying to deliver consumer experience innovation.
Steve McCallion is a skilled
innovation architect and brand strategist with a rare balance of design
sensibility and strategic thinking. He has led groundbreaking work
including redefining Umpqua Bank's role as an anchor for community
prosperity, creating Sirius Satellite Radio's award-winning experience
for the "iPod fatigued" and working with real estate developers Gerding
Edlen to create more meaningful neighborhoods. His other clients
include Xerox, Black & Decker, Whirlpool, FedEx, McDonald's,
Coleman, Kenwood, and Compaq.
Steve's primary charge is to foster
Ziba's consumer experience practice. He founded the company's
award-winning Design Research and Planning practice group which has
developed many proprietary research and design planning methodologies
that have helped numerous clients understand the essence of their
customers, win design awards, obtain patents and succeed in the market.
He was named as one of Fast Company's Masters of Design in 2006.
We were wrapping up a meeting with a client who was developing a new neighborhood. Through a combination of field research, trend studies and historical analysis we defined a story and collection of artifacts and experiences that would make this place meaningful to potential residents as well as the neighboring community. After the meeting our client said, "I finally understand what you guys do. You orchestrate the obvious."
At first I resisted the idea. Innovation must include more than orchestrating "the obvious." But then I shifted my attention away from the "obvious" to the "orchestration." In an orchestration it's the collection of things that create value, not necessarily the things themselves. It's not the individual notes in the song, but the collection of those notes. When creating meaningful experiences, it is often this orchestration that is the primary source of value creation. Our client was able to put this into sharp focus.
A lot of companies struggle with the idea that this orchestration can create significant value. They are often looking for a silver bullet--a single product concept that they can patent and protect. But with experience innovation, the organizational device that holds a collection of products and services together is critical to value creation--the silver bullet is often a metaphor. A metaphor creates value by transferring associations from a previous experience to a new one. It functions as shorthand to help people understand the offering and what it means in their lives.
Only a handful of companies embrace the value creating power of metaphor. While other retailers were focusing on rearranging shelves and picking new colors and finishes, Apple, Whole Foods and REI redefined their respective categories by leveraging the power of metaphor to create a meaningful experience. In the Apple Store, the metaphor of a learning center helps you feel comfortable returning for help even after you purchase your computer; in Whole Foods, an outdoor bazaar shifts the shopping experience from being a chore to being fun.
At the outdoor retailer REI, an outdoor industry expo invites you to test and try gear before you buy. The elements within these stores are often obvious and shared by competitive stores. But, by orchestrating these obvious elements around a metaphor helped Apple, Whole Foods and REI redefine their categories and win in the market.
It's difficult for many companies to respect that something as intangible as a metaphor can create real value, but the numbers don't lie. In 2006, Apple's annual sales per square foot was $4,032, compared with Best Buy's $930, Neiman Marcus' $611, and luxury store Tiffany & Co.'s $2,666. On average Whole Foods and REI stores deliver two times the annual sales per square foot than that of the typical stores in their category.
Companies that are successful at delivering consumer experiences understand the value of metaphor. Are you using metaphors to create value?
Over the last several years the innovation discussion has
shifted from a focus on product and business innovation to consumer
experience. Companies are increasingly interested in creating value by
delivering better consumer experiences, but many are not quite sure how
to get there. The results have ranged from a proliferation of
Apple-like Genius Bars to frustrated project teams whose projects never
make it to market. These companies are finding it surprisingly
difficult to deliver great consumer experiences. This week,
Steve McCallion explores some of the challenges companies face when
trying to deliver consumer experience innovation.
Steve McCallion is a skilled
innovation architect and brand strategist with a rare balance of design
sensibility and strategic thinking. He has led groundbreaking work
including redefining Umpqua Bank's role as an anchor for community
prosperity, creating Sirius Satellite Radio's award-winning experience
for the "iPod fatigued" and working with real estate developers Gerding
Edlen to create more meaningful neighborhoods. His other clients
include Xerox, Black & Decker, Whirlpool, FedEx, McDonald's,
Coleman, Kenwood, and Compaq.
Steve's primary charge is to foster
Ziba's consumer experience practice. He founded the company's
award-winning Design Research and Planning practice group which has
developed many proprietary research and design planning methodologies
that have helped numerous clients understand the essence of their
customers, win design awards, obtain patents and succeed in the market.
He was named as one of Fast Company's Masters of Design in 2006.
A few years ago, we were asked by a regional coffee roaster to redefine the coffee experience for fine dining. We knew that Americans drank coffee after dinner for functional purposes (to wake/sober up), but we wanted to understand how we could create a more emotional experience. We grabbed our notepads, went into the field, drank a lot of coffee, studied coffee rituals from different cultures and ultimately crafted a compelling coffee experience that could have resurrected the after dinner coffee ritual in America. The client loved it, but never brought it to market. Why?
It used to be that you could invent a widget, patent it and dominate a market. Today that's becoming more and more difficult due to the mass-commoditization of products. From Microsoft to BP, companies that have traditionally won with product and business innovations are trying to create value by delivering better consumer experiences--integrated product and service experiences that attract and engage consumers and extend that relationship over time. These companies know that winning in the future means managing a portfolio of innovation that includes business, technology and consumer experience. They aspire to deliver experiences as compelling as Apple and Whole Foods, but few have the culture it takes to deliver these types of experiences.
Like our coffee roasters, many companies are attracted to the concept of consumer experience, but are hampered by the very cultures that made them great at delivering product and business innovations. They are often looking for the next "silver bullet"--a single product or service that they can roll out--and struggle with the idea that great experiences can be a collection of seemingly ordinary things. Their organizational structures have evolved into functional silos that are efficient at bringing new products and services to market, but not effective at delivering deep, rich experiences across multiple touch points. Consensus-based decision-making prevents them from creating strong stories that are necessary to create real value. The result is an overemphasis on what (offering) they are delivering not the why (promise) and how (delivery) it is delivered.
Creating successful consumer experiences requires shifting the way companies think about innovation and how they are organized to deliver it. Companies need to give up trying to be everything to everybody, discover their authentic DNA, be willing to take a stand for something and deliver on it. Companies need to understand that myth, metaphor and theme create real value and that there are rigorous methods used to identify the right meaning-creating devices. They need to develop new research tools that unearth deep consumer insights, rather than just scratching the surface by asking the consumers what they want; new decision making methods that don't water down ideas; and, different organizational structures and values that embrace the consumer experience, not just organizational efficiencies.
Smaller companies like Rapha Racing get it. Created to "celebrate the glory through suffering" of the road cyclist, Rapha delivers an integrated consumer experience that extends from this single promise across a diverse range of touch points including apparel, a magazine, a racing team, guided tours of some of the most epic rides in Europe. They are equally focused on the why, what and how (promise, offering and delivery), and their loyal following is willing to pay a premium for their jerseys, bibs and bags. Their business has doubled over the last year and their average price is twice that of competitive gear.
Larger companies like Nike are rethinking how they are organized to deliver better consumer experiences like the small guys. Nike is transforming its organizational structure from a product innovation orientation (shoes, apparel, equipment) to a consumer experience one (basketball, running, soccer) in order to deliver deeper, richer stories. It's a long way from the waffle shoe to Nike Plus, but Nike is making the moves it needs to deliver innovative consumer experiences and round out its innovation portfolio.
These companies are making the competency and cultural changes necessary to win with consumer experience innovation. Does your culture support consumer experience innovation?
Over the last several years the innovation discussion has shifted from a focus on product and business innovation to consumer experience. Companies are increasingly interested in creating value by delivering better consumer experiences, but many are not quite sure how to get there. The results have ranged from a proliferation of Apple-like Genius Bars to frustrated project teams whose projects never make it to market. These companies are finding it surprisingly difficult to deliver great consumer experiences. This week, Steve McCallion explores some of the challenges companies face when trying to deliver consumer experience innovation.
Steve McCallion is a skilled innovation architect and brand strategist with a rare balance of design sensibility and strategic thinking. He has led groundbreaking work including redefining Umpqua Bank's role as an anchor for community prosperity, creating Sirius Satellite Radio's award-winning experience for the "iPod fatigued" and working with real estate developers Gerding Edlen to create more meaningful neighborhoods. His other clients include Xerox, Black & Decker, Whirlpool, FedEx, McDonald's, Coleman, Kenwood, and Compaq.
Steve's primary charge is to foster Ziba's consumer experience practice. He founded the company's award-winning Design Research and Planning practice group which has developed many proprietary research and design planning methodologies that have helped numerous clients understand the essence of their customers, win design awards, obtain patents and succeed in the market. He was named as one of Fast Company's Masters of Design in 2006.
The use of metaphor has helped clarify the story throughout the exhibition. China Design Now was initially organized around three cities (Shenzen, Shanghai, Beijing) and their respective design disciplines (graphics, fashion, and architecture). To help people understand this relationship, Elizabeth Blades, creative director at Ziba Design, used these metaphors to design the exhibition space. Shenzen, the birth of Chinese graphic design, is represented as a design studio; Shanghai, the fashion capitol of China, is a fashion runway; and Beijing, the capital city, is the central pavilion.
Companies that deliver great consumer experiences understand the importance of a promise. Beyond a communication device, a good promise defines what a brand is willing to do for its customers and delivers on that through a series of artifacts. A good promise is simple and clear. It's relevant to people, but if it's only relevant it remains empty. As we wind down the age of overabundance, people are exhausted by empty promises. An effective promise must also be an authentic expression of the brand--something that a company cares deeply and passionately about. A promise built on relevancy and authenticity forms the foundation of a relationship built on trust. Today, people are looking for that. 
Billy Reid
Asking customers what they want blinds companies and prevents them from delivering innovative consumer experiences. Traditional research methods are limited for two key reasons: 1) people's existing reality limits their understanding of future possibilities; and, 2) people cannot envision how the parts come together equal more than the whole. Consumer experience innovation is based on deep consumer insights, but those insights rarely come from asking them what they want. Malcolm Gladwell asserts: "Asking someone to explain [their behavior and intent] is not only a psychological impossibility...but it biases them in favor of the conservative, in favor of the known over the unknown."
Starwood didn't listen. It redefined bulk dispensing by putting its Bliss branded spa products in a redesigned dispenser and connecting it to an overall story of cheap-chic modern travel. In the process they enhanced the customer experience and pocketed $4 per room. 
It used to be that you could invent a widget, patent it and dominate a market. Today that's becoming more and more difficult due to the mass-commoditization of products. From Microsoft to BP, companies that have traditionally won with product and business innovations are trying to create value by delivering better consumer experiences--integrated product and service experiences that attract and engage consumers and extend that relationship over time. These companies know that winning in the future means managing a portfolio of innovation that includes business, technology and consumer experience. They aspire to deliver experiences as compelling as Apple and Whole Foods, but few have the culture it takes to deliver these types of experiences. 
Smaller companies like 
