2012: Design for the Innovation Age
Let’s design products, processes and systems that can survive the Innovation Age
An organisation and its customers is by definition human-centric, it is sustained by people in communication. Despite this, organisational design of digital products, processes and systems rarely take on a humanistic perspective. They usually seek a final fixed structure rather than bending to the needs of the individual user and yielding to their changing needs over time.
One reason is that business owners find it extremely difficult to commit to ‘living’ products, processes & systems that flex and change according to the shifting demands of the people that use them. Another is that analysts often seek to address an immediate opportunity or problem against which they’ve been tasked to deliver, rather than thinking more widely and advising business owners strategically.
The reality is that a finite definition, fixed structure, for a product, organisational process, or system can never remain valid over extended time. It will become redundant, inefficient, and lose market share. This redundancy cycle is becoming faster and faster in the current Innovation Age. So to continue designing digital products, organisational processes and systems based on a final structure is in itself to implement built-in rapid redundancy.
Redundancy may have some value in commercial product design but most business owners should be concerned if they realised their products, organisational processes and systems are being designed with redundancy that makes them liabilities faster than ever before.
If you wish to understand more about how to design ‘living’ products, organisational processes and systems for your organisation, then please contact me.
Ben Stewart
