International DesignCamp2012 – Designing positive behavioural change
Introduction
Diversity is the Father of Invention By Mette Strømgaard Dalby Head of Culture and Communication, Kolding School of Design
’Necessity is the Mother of invention’, they say. But who is the Father? For the fourth year in a row, the Kolding School of Design DesignCamp claims: diversity. This is why companies can benefit greatly from participating in this annual design event.
A lot has been written about innovation: We must live off innovative labour. Schools must teach our children to be innovative and industrious. Companies cannot base their existence on producing and selling yesterday’s commodities and services alone; they must create innovative products. The prerequisite for innovation is cultural and cognitive diversity. In other words, we shouldn’t be too much alike, neither in thinking nor in background. The DesignCamp lives up to this in every way: Hand-picked Danish and international design students, researchers and experts, companies and NGOs, each standing on a burning platform or facing a meta-challenge work alongside each other to come up with the right questions and create solutions to the challenges and problems that have been selected. Still, why should a company invest time in a DesignCamp when everyone knows that dayto-day running and development activities take up plenty of space on the company agenda? Because research shows that small and medium-sized companies need to be challenged on their habitual and innovative thinking alike. On page one of every management book it says that building common values and creating a mutual basis for understanding these are essential in order for a company to be successful. Sometimes this is taken to the
next level in a common code of conduct. Of course, this makes sense; the only downside is that it can create a uniformity which does not promote innovative thinking. Indeed, research from Aarhus University, Business and Social Sciences, shows that employees who think alike tend not to seek external knowledge and expertise but rather to assert each other’s assumptions. Naturally, this is dangerous for a small or medium-sized company which cannot possibly cover all competencies. Thinking that you cannot learn from others got a name of its own in the 1960s: the NIH syndrome. NIH stands for Not Invented Here and basically means that you would rather reinvent the wheel than learn from others. It goes without saying that this is an ineffective and risky strategy. A paradigm example of the NIH syndrome occurred at Kodak when they faced the same transition as everyone else in the business of going from paper to digital photography. The top management at Kodak recognised digital photo technology as being the way forward but the middle managers resisted and today, the result speaks for itself. Due to Kodak’s failure to adjust to the new technological era, the company ended up having to dismiss 80 % of its workers and file for bankruptcy. The fact that the employees were not susceptible to outside knowledge was one of the reasons why the company was not able to switch over in time.
The annual DesignCamp isn’t likely to save companies from bankruptcy. However, we can offer anything but uniformity. Indeed, a large part of the ingredients in the DesignCamp pot are the many different people who each play a part in the innovative solutions that are created to the challenges of the year. To that we add a little bit of spice in the form of expert input, design methodology teaching and encountering other nationalities. Clearly, the more time you spend at the Camp, the more you will gain. And even though we make a great effort to get the DesignCamp the publicity it deserves, this does not mean that we suffer from the Not Invented Here syndrome. On the contrary, we are pleased with the fact that the individual groups present their challenges, suggestions and solutions publically. The ideas must get out there and do the job. We realise that implementing the ideas takes hard work and that the companies are the ones to do it. Hence, our message for small and medium-sized companies is clear: Participating in the DesignCamp isn’t just fun; it’s a really good idea if you want to create an organisation where employees don’t just invent the wheel but openly include outside knowledge and experience.
— Source: Ana Luiza Burcharth, PhD and Assistant Professor, Aarhus University, www.ledelseidag.dk #1/2012
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