Posted by guest blogger Andrew Rogers
Marty Neumeier, author of Zag and The Brand Gap, has just released The Designful Company: How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation. The idea is that design-aware thinking will help companies confront complex problems and do more innovative, inspired work ("We've been getting better and better at a management model that's getting wronger and wronger," Neumeier writes).
For purposes of Neumeier's discussion, a designer is "anyone who tries to change an existing situation to a better one." "For businesses to bottle the kind of experiences that focus minds and intoxicate hearts," he continues, "they'll need to do more than HIRE designers. They'll need to BE designers."
As nonprofit marketers working to "design" a better world, we already have a head start. Here are four of Neumeier's "levers of change" that have particular relevance to donor-powered fundraisers.
- Take on wicked problems. "A compelling core idea of what the company stands for can inspire a surprising amount of passion," Neumeier writes, citing Google with their stated vision to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Whether you're an international relief agency or a community food bank, are you out to change the world? Do your donors know that?
- Weave a rich story. "All the little stories you tell about your company and its products should add up to one big story," he says in a recommendation that should come as no surprise to readers of the Donor Power Blog. "Often, a leader need only act as a kind of managing editor, shaping the stories to align with a shared vision."
- Think big, spend small. Here Neumeier is talking mainly about "stage-gate investing," but I see a reminder of the importance of continual testing -- both "tweaks" to controls and new offers and techniques. "The biggest hurdle to innovation," he writes, "is the corporate longing for certainty about costs, market size, revenues, profits, and other quantities, all of which can't be known when an idea is new. Ironically, there seems to be no hurdle to investing in dying businesses, decaying strategies, and shrinking markets, all of which can be seen without a crystal ball."
- Design new metrics. In product development, Neumeier reports, there is often reluctance to let analytical rigor intrude on pure imagination. "In one study, over 90% of advertising creatives believed metrics to be 'unhelpful,' and nearly 65% believed them to be 'harmful' to the creative process." "Yet in reality," he continues, "the testing of communication prototypes can be a creative person's best friend -- it teaches valuable lessons about audience cognition, and frees creativity from the whimsical disapproval of uninformed decision-makers."
After all, "in the end, ALL innovations get measured -- by the marketplace. The trick is to get a preview of those results before you commit the bulk of your resources." You have to know how to measure what you're seeing, and how to learn from the measurements. That's one more advantage of working with an agency with a really solid handle on both testing and analysis (cough).
"As we move from the spreadsheet era to the creative era," Neumeier concludes, "economic value will come from human networks more than electronic ones." That's a conclusion any donor-powered marketer should be able to endorse.
Available at Amazon and at Powell's.
Technorati Tags: fundraising, design, marketing
Thanks for posting about Designful Co. I love Brand Gap and had no idea a new book was out. Ordering.... now.
Posted by: Nick Fellers | 15 March 2009 at 20:17