All Ears: What the IIAB team is listening to this May

I have worked with user-centred innovation at IS IT A BIRD for almost half a decade, and have seen three recurring myths about the user centred approach that come up time and again in the organisations I engage with. I would like to debunk these three myths here and now.

When I think about the current discussion around disruption, there are a few things that I see as red flags. The discussion of disruption tends to be about tech and is often accompanied by warnings about the importance of boarding the tech train into the future. I fully recognise the importance of technology as a key driver of innovation and disruption, but I believe that's only half the truth.

I often meet people who refer to Henry Ford’s famous quote: ”If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses …”

Innovation is very popular and for many companies it has become a trite buzzword. Both politicians and business leaders use it interchangeably when setting goals and developing strategies for the future. But what’s the best way to go about innovation? How can your company really adapt, and how can you implement a more innovative culture? From IS IT A Bird’s own work, and taking inspiration from a number of international innovation blogs, we have compiled 7 quick tips on becoming more innovative.

With a background in sociology and philosophy I have always been driven by understanding the world and find ways to uncover the complexity out there. This curiosity is inherent in everything we do at IIAB. Our purpose is creating insights about people that have the potential to add value and solve problems by revealing hidden connections and bringing clarity to complexity. However, the quality of insights is dependent on the clarity and vision of the researcher seeking them.

Having a background in design, I am used to working with prototypes. I am trained to reduce complexities and deliver concrete answers to complex problems in the shape of products, services, and user stories. But when we zoom out and take a bird’s-eye view of a business, I miss having a tool that is able to convey strategies and business plans in a simple and comprehensible way. But in The Business Model Canvas I have found a tool that makes it possible to work with business models, in the same way as I normally work with product development and I will share a few tips on how you can use the canvas.

How do you mobilize emotional engagement? How can your business adapt to the necessity of new, user-centered approaches? And how can our organizations meet the needs of real people

"How do you really know if what people tell you is true?" Anthropologists and other researchers are asked this again and again. Either out of curiosity or outright skepticism about the capability of qualitative methods. The answer is that we do not know. In fact, it turns out that people often say things that are not true during an interview.

"I'm a cyclist, that’s how I have always defined myself." This is how a middle-aged man presented himself during a workshop that we facilitated for Copenhagen Cycle Secretary. The statement surprised me because during an in-depth interview a few weeks earlier he said he drove his car on trips around the city almost every day. He saw himself as a cyclist, even though his behaviour would show him as a driver.

A core concept in market research is consumer insight. It is a slightly misleading term, if you start to think a little about it in an innovation context. Firstly, it reduces the people to consumers and thereby narrows our research focus to use and purchase of products. Secondly, it is based on a hidden premise that consumers must create value for your business, rather than vice versa: how do you create value for people.

The former Mayor of Bogotá (the capital of Columbia), Antanas Mockus, used very non-traditional methods when he created significant changes in a South American metropolis with massive problems.