Cense

Innovation to Impact

Inspiration As Outcome

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Anyone working in design or consulting knows that no amount of advice will guarantee action with your clients or colleagues. Great, thoughtful designs are important to success yet are not guarantees for adoption.

What is critical above all is that designs inspire people. Without inspiration and excitement, there is no action.

Designer Bruce Mau came to this realization during his teaching when he was asked by trainees how it was that he designed and while he was able to speak to the production and philosophy behind his work, he was stuck with how to describe the process of the work. It was in reflecting upon this process that he came to realize that without inspiration design was dead. Prototypes would not get realized. Design culture within an organization would not change and the kind of transformation and innovation requested by clients and communities would never materialize.

For our clients, we are recommending that inspiration be considered the primary outcome of any project. No matter what kind of process is undertaken to create something — whether it was co-design, expert-driven, or some other model — the end result must be that what you produce must inspire people.

That will not guarantee success, but without it there is near guarantee of failure.

Consider inspiration as the precursor to any kind of innovation adoption or impact and you may find the correlations between those projects where people felt inspired, saw a future vision and felt motivated to act and their overall success rate in being implemented is close to 100 percent.

Seth Godin on Picking Yourself

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2013/05 Seth Godin | Backwards from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

One of the most remarkable tools we have is the Internet powered by personal computers or tablets. There is nothing that generates more power to transform than these two tools taken together. When you step back and notice, it’s easy to see how these tools create something that once only large media companies had at their disposal. Consider the notion of writing something original or remixing something else and within moments be able to share that with the world. That is what we have.

Seth Godin is someone who knows how to pick people, but more importantly how to pick himself. By assuming that the responsibility for change lies with others we give permission to not use the tools we have to make remarkable things. It means less knowledge translation, fewer accessible products, smaller reach and more squandered potential. By writing a blog, connecting on social media, write and publish your own book, film your own presentations or create a video or podcast you adopt the power of these technologies to make a difference and change.

No, publishing a blog won’t change the world by itself nor will sharing a podcast, but it’s a lot more compared to having those ideas picked by others for launch (maybe) some other time, some other place when the conditions are perfect. In 20 minutes, Seth inspires us to pick ourselves and make the change happen with small steps, done often to give ourselves permission to create and maybe others credit at the same time.