Comparing & contrasting innovation & change roles
Based on my consulting and teaching experience, service designers perform seven critical roles on complex, multi-faceted innovation projects: The Empathizer, The Sensemaker, The Creator, The Maker, The Navigator, The Storyteller, and The Servant Leader (Bau, 2013, 2020). A specific mix of roles is required for each phase of (or mode of activity in) the innovation process.
As mentioned in a previous blog post, the core roles for explorative, generative, and evaluative research are The Empathizer, The Sensemaker, The Maker, and The Storyteller. The core roles for ideation, concepting, prototyping, and piloting are The Creator, The Maker, and The Storyteller. The core roles for strategy development, value case development, and implementation planning are The Navigator, The Servant Leader, and The Storyteller. Finally, the core role for project initiations, recruitment, onboarding, process coaching, project tracking, post-mortems, etc., is The Servant Leader.
Let’s compare and contrast the 7 roles of service designers with the ‘designerly’ innovation and change roles identified by Kelley & Littman (2005), Yee et al. (2017), and IIT Institute of Design (2020).
Kelley & Littman (2005) identify ten roles people can play in organizations to foster innovation: The Anthropologist, The Experimenter, The Cross-Pollinator, The Hurdler, The Collaborator, The Director, The Experience Architect, The Set Designer, The Caregiver, and The Storyteller. For example, The Anthropologist ventures into the field to observe how people interact with products, services, and experiences to come up with new innovations. According to the authors, individuals should be encouraged to take on multiple roles and constantly switch between them as required.
Yee et al. (2017) identify seven roles to drive innovation and change within organizations: Cultural Catalyst, Framework Maker, Humanizer, Power Broker, Friendly Challenger, Technology Enabler, and Community Builder. For example, the Humanizer injects empathy into the process, creating a human dimension to the work and making business challenges easier to relate to and engage in. All seven roles use design to drive organizational transformation at three levels: (1) changing products and services, (2) changing the organization, and (3) changing the nature of organizational transformation.
IIT Institute of Design (2020) identifies four design roles to lead the organization from setting the intent to realizing the effect (the so-called Intent-to-Effect Pathway). The Executive Vision Partner is a visionary, business-oriented design leader who helps the executive leadership articulate its vision. The Vision Interpreter is a strategic design leader who translates the high-level vision into strategic opportunities, problem statements, and action plans. The Action Aligner is a strategic design leader who builds internal alignment around specific opportunities or problems. The Producers create the solutions, offerings, experiences, etc., required to realize the desired effect.
Kelley & Littman (2005), Yee et al. (2017), and IIT Institute of Design (2020) all emphasize the larger change journey organizations embark on, and the substantial impact innovation and design can make to drive change. In summary, this means that organizations need to create a compelling, purpose-driven North Star that people and teams can rally around; clarify the organizational need for innovation; determine the principles and desired behaviors underpinning all initiatives; define roles, responsibilities, and decision-making powers; establish ways to initiate, orchestrate, and balance initiatives across the organization; determine how to assess initiatives, measure performance, and reward desired behaviors; boost organization-wide innovation and design capabilities; smash silos and encourage cross-capability collaboration; and create the right environment (including physical spaces) for continuous collaboration and innovation.
See table 1 for a side-by-side comparison of ‘designerly’ innovation and change roles. These roles are mapped to the Double Diamond design process (Design Council, 2019) and the seven modes of the design innovation process (Kumar, 2013). I have added the pre-phase (or Phase 0) ‘Envision & Enable’ to the Double Diamond to emphasize the need to foster a culture of innovation and empower innovation teams across the organization (before framing and kicking off specific innovation projects).
Table 1. Comparing and contrasting ‘designerly’ innovation & change roles.
Additional takeaways:
Kelley & Littman (2005), Yee et al. (2017), and IIT Institute of Design (2020) all underline the importance of putting people at the heart of the transformation as well as putting users at the heart of the innovation process. This relentless focus on human needs brings a renewed sense of purpose across the organization, works as an antidote to corporate naysayers and devil’s advocates, and helps smash internal silos and diffuse tribal tensions.
IIT Institute of Design (2020) in particular seems to support the ‘directed change’ approach (Bau, 2020) – the top-down, leadership-driven and/or expert-led approach to change, supported by a compelling vision, deliberate action plans, and ‘scientific’ evidence. Employees are spurred or forced into action through a series of planned interventions (whether design-driven or not).
While Kelley & Littman (2005) and Yee et al. (2017) touch upon grassroots initiatives, it would be valuable to specifically discuss the role of design leaders and designers in bottom-up change processes (see Bau, 2020).
Kelley & Littman (2005), Yee et al. (2017), and IIT Institute of Design (2020) all downplay the contribution of specific design disciplines to innovation. While Kelley & Littman (2005) and Yee et al. (2017) highlight the need for researchers, experimenters, and storytellers on innovation projects, many other design competencies/disciplines seem to be missing. IIT Institute of Design (2020) puts the spotlight on design leadership roles.
Despite the emphasis on realizing the executive vision, IIT Institute of Design (2020) covers the post-production/implementation phase (piloting, launching, maintaining, and scaling solutions) in a rather cursory fashion.
The framework for the 7 roles of service designers might be missing a senior design leadership role to foster a culture of systematic innovation across the organization; explore and craft alternative futures; frame high-level innovation opportunities and manage the innovation portfolio; and provide oversight to implementation efforts. Perhaps this role could be a hybrid of The Executive Vision Partner and The Vision Interpreter.
References
Bau, R. (2013, October). What it takes to become a superb service designer. SX 2013 [Adaptive Path’s Service Experience conference], San Francisco, CA.
Bau, R. (2020). Service design to the rescue. The critical roles service designers play in organizational change. Touchpoint, 11(3), 74–79.
Design Council UK. (2019). What is the framework for innovation? Design Council’s evolved Double Diamond.
IIT Institute of Design. (2020). Lead with purpose. Design’s central role in realizing executive vision.
Kelley, T. & Littman, J. (2005). The ten faces of innovation: IDEO’s strategies for beating the devil’s advocate and driving creativity throughout your organization. Currency/Doubleday.
Kumar, V. (2012). 101 design methods: A structured approach for driving innovation in your organization. Wiley.
Yee, J., Jefferies, E., & Michlewski, K. (2017). Transformations: 7 roles to drive change by design. BIS.
10/10
