Analytic Design Group

Three weeks ago I was at CANUX 07 listening to David Armano’s talk, The Fuzzy Tail, where he described an approach to fostering collaboration and innovation at Critical Mass.. His approach to achieving collaboration and innovation is to combine a hierarchical structure with a collaborative model. His talk was good and there’s no doubt that innovation and collaboration are much needed elements in the web design space today. I loved David’s diagrams, particularly his diagram, Developing an Experience Strategy in 4 Parts.

At the time, however, I was troubled by the talk. Not that I didn’t agree with him, I did (and do still). I just felt that there was a gap. I could not see how he planned to integrate traditional hierarchical structures with an open collaborative mode. Further, the examples he gave of great innovative moments and the products that came out of those moments, all seemed to happen outside of the hierarchical structure and indeed outside of the project scope.

Since then I’ve been considering how to foster innovation and collaboration at ADGi. Not that we don’t innovate, but just like the examples that David mentioned, it just seems to happen outside of the project and and normal work times. Some of our best ideas have happened on road trips, at conferences or waiting in airport lounges.

Why is that? And more importantly, how do I tap the richness of collaboration and build a culture of innovation at the office and within the project boundaries?

I’ve been reading The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelly. He’s one of the big cheeses at IDEO. The chapter on brainstorming holds the key, I think, to opening that innovation and collaboration door. By building focused brainstorming sessions into every project, we can start to generate ideas and can start to float the best ones either for the client or inside projects that we do for ourselves. The thinking here being that if we never try to innovate, if we stick to the strict confines of the deliverables, we’ll never do it.

I know what you’re thinking. ADGi is a small company and IDEO is The Premier Design Firm in North America. They have budget and reputation to do all manner of cool stuff for every project. ADGi, not so much. True. But we have to start somewhere.