Notes [not complete quotes or anything] from Martin’s talk at Rotman’s:

[Spends the first 8 minutes thanking the people who helped him with the book.]

Competitive advantage is going to come from companies that can advance knowledge faster than their competitors.

From mysteries to heuristic algorithms; which means inventing the future

There’s analytical thinking, and then there’s intuitive thinking.

Companies will probably go bankrupt between their intuitive leaps. So they need both intuitive and analytical thinking capabilities.

The book is about how companies can mix the two types of thinking.

[He gives us a long introduction to Claudia Kotchka, former VP, Innovation, Design and Strategy, Procter & Gamble.]

[Dr Steven Scherer is introduced. Again, long.]

Martin: You pay attention to things other people didn’t. What did you see?

Claudia: Understood how designers think. New mantra of customer is boss. DT furthered empathy with consumers.

Roger: Steven’s accomplishments come from everything others have thrown away.

Steven: They kept throwing outlier data away. You need to ask the proper questions to come to a solution.

Roger: We can get into traps just by going by models. Go against convention.

Claudia: In order to succeed you need to be delusional. Being delusional, a rebel can be your motivation. Start proving success, bring people along to accept it and embrace it.

Steven: Intuition- the ability to view a problem from a dimensional framework and then attack it. Education and experience prepares you, but intuition takes you there.

…

There are systems designed to consistency or validity. Many systems are designed for consistency.

By studying outlier data, you must be studying data that means something.

We have to figure out a way to explain something.

The higher education system teaches you inductive and deductive logic, but not abductive logic.

…

Roger: What teaches you to go beyond the way you were taught?

Steven: Expose yourself to experiences. Environment. My dad threw blocks at me and said “build something”. Push observations and ideas  into practical applications.

Have a system to help you identify what your strengths and skills are. Early. Undergrad educations should be kept very broad.

…

One of the biggest problems for organizations is that the reliability oriented people and the validity oriented people often don’t get along with each other.

…

Audience: How did you navigate through the system at P&G as a rebel?

Claudia: People see barriers thy don’t exist. Learn the language of the reliability folk.your goals are the same, how you get there might be different. Find different ways to make things happen.

Audience: What do you do about problems that go beyond your system (industry problems, government or environment)?

Claudia: Find common ground. Walmart and p&g are competitors, but they still work together.

Audience: What do you think about design as a group activity?

Claudia: At P&G they have designers and design thinking groups working together on the same problem and not trying to silo things. We want the design skills brought to the table in a design thinking process.

Audience: How does one persuade a group to take on design thinking in a high risk environment?

Martin: “Prove it” gives you toning and refining of existing ideas.

Panel: Start using design thinking in your current sphere of influence then move up from there. Nobody ever sees something “new” as low risk. Design thinking is being applied more in the service business more than anywhere else.