steelcase blog

Blue Ocean Strategy…

  … it’s not only the title of an international best seller on ‘marketing’ by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne,… but it is also a responsibility we all own as residents of planet earth, to develop a strategy for the future health of our oceans.  I was frightfully reminded of this at TED 2009, held for the first time in Long Beach.  There were two invited speakers whose presentations were about the oceans.  The first was Jake Eberts, producer, who talked about a film called simply Oceans, to be released by Disney Nature in 2010,… filmed by legendary Jacques Perrin (he also did Winged Migration, a wonderful account of migrating birds).  The second was Sylvia Earle, oceanographer, who has spent her entire life exploring the deep oceans.  Sylvia was in fact one of the three TED Prize winners.  And it was her TED Prize ‘wish’ that came on the heels of another TED Prize winner, Jill Tarter, the astronomer.  You could not have picked two topics more distant,… from the unknown heights of our universe’s cosmos, to the unknown depths of our planet’s oceans.

And as a result of the two talks back-to-back, I’m absolutely convinced I’m more interested in the oceans than the cosmos.  I just can’t get excited about looking for something millions of miles away, when we don’t even understand what is but a few miles under the surface of the oceans.  We’re not sure there is life outside of the earth’s atmosphere,… but we are darn sure there is life we have yet to discover here on our own planet.  The oceans could well have more life forms yet to be identified than all those already identified, above or below the oceans.  We just haven’t spent the time to search our very own planet,… which is why it seems so odd to me that we would look up (even though I love a beautiful amber sunset and a bright moon in a starlit sky as much as anyone), when we haven’t even yet looked down.  Jill Tarter, who is very good don’t get me wrong, said that ‘if’ we are able to pick up an intelligible sound from sentient (capable of feeling and perception) beings elsewhere,… we would be hearing it tens of thousands of years after it was sent, since it would be coming from many light years away…!

Now wouldn’t that make for a great conversation…?  Someone says “hi” thousands of years ago,… and you’re just now saying “hi” back, which they’ll hear thousands of years from now.  Talk about a long-distance relationship…!  But back to the oceans,… not only don’t we know what’s beyond where we can reasonably explore today,… but where we can get to, we’re destroying it.  I’ve talked before how we have eaten most of the large fish in the ocean, and before they reached the age of reproduction.  So when they’re gone, they’re gone.  In addition to eating them all, we have tossed so much plastic into the ocean we are choking off their natural habitat and existence, literally.  The fact is we do far more in the way of protecting land areas, than we do the ocean (where we only protect a fraction of a percent),… which doesn’t make any sense considering how much of the earth is covered with water.  And that’s Sylvia Earle’s wish, expressed to the TED audience.  She said, “I wish you would use all means at your disposal -- films! expeditions! the web! More! – to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, ‘hope spots’ large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet.”  Hope spots; I really like that.  Our hope and wonder lies in the ability of the oceans to heal the damage we have inflicted on them, if we just leave them alone.  A worthwhile strategy…? 

We Don’t Know…

… a phrase that, I admit, I occasionally use when responding to a question from a client regarding the future.  It’s certainly not an admission you want to make too often, especially as the head of research,… but if you really don’t have a credible answer, it’s better than making a guess and getting called out.  And by saying ‘we’ it takes a bit of the sting out of personally acknowledging that ‘I’ have no clue; it groups my function and the company together as the collective ‘we’.  It wasn’t until I attended a couple of conferences these last several weeks that I realized just how common this phrase is.  At first I found this a bit odd, especially when one considers the amount of new information being generated each-and-every second on the World Wide Web.  But then I thought, the way I, the way we, realize what we don’t know is by asking questions about what we do know,… like why, how, where…?  These questions, when answered, prompt even more questions.  Bottom line, we don’t know everything,… and there will always be more that we don’t know than we do know.

The first conference was PopTech!, a great gathering I attend yearly in beautiful, quaint Camden, Maine.  Their agenda is packed full of wonderful presenters and performers, which attracts a crowd from across the globe (though I would guess the majority are from the east coast).  For all they know, so many of these brilliant speakers either directly or indirectly implied there is so much we don’t know.  For example David Harrison, the director of research for Living Tongues Institute, said we know of 7,000 plus languages in the world (many unfortunately going extinct with each passing year),… and yet we don’t know of all those that disappeared before we were able to capture the essence of their culture and the human knowledge it embraced.  Or John Priscu, a renowned polar scientist (and self acclaimed guitar rocker and Harley rider), who has been studying the amazing topography beneath the Antarctic solar cap.  We know there are rivers, lakes, and mountains beneath this 3-mile thick sheet of ice (which is constantly moving); and we know there are numerous micro organisms that don’t exist anywhere else on earth,…but we don’t know the mystery behind how these organisms have thrived totally deprived of sun light (for 20,000 years!).

I also had the privilege of speaking at the Santa Fe Institute Business Network Symposium.  The line-up of speakers was again impressive, each speaking to some aspect of ‘complexity’ which is at the core of the Institute’s ongoing work.  There was one very energetic speaker named Avidan Neumann, a professor and leading expert in the field of viral kinetics.  His subject was titled The Future of Medicine, in which he argued for the importance of tracking one’s biological profile,… early and often.   The professor believes that by the time most illnesses are discovered, such as cancer, the medical treatments are facing an uphill battle to fight off the negative effects of the illness.  If instead the treatments are started early, based on certain known ‘markers’, the results have been proven to be much more successful.  But professor Neumann also stated that as much as we know about how to treat certain conditions,… we don’t know the body’s response and long-term impact of prescribing certain medications before they are known to be needed,… or when mixed with other medications.

So these days, I’m much more comfortable admitting “we don’t know”.  And like others, the more I do learn,… the more questions that arise.  But that’s what makes the pursuit of knowledge and ongoing discovery so exciting.  The path is long and winding, and you can be assured there will always be something more to question and ponder.  This is life,… so beautifully designed.  Do you know…?

Captain Nemo Lives…

... who hasn’t read, or at least hasn’t been assigned to read in school (and maybe just skipped that assignment), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea…?  The star figure of this 1870 Jules Verne novel was Captain Nemo, who roamed the sea in a submarine named the Nautilus.  I hadn’t much thought about this fictional character until I attended this year’s TED Conference in Monterey, CA (which was phenomenal by the way),… and saw and heard first hand a modern-day version of the Captain himself.  His name is Dr. Robert Ballard, a geologist and geophysicist, probably best known for his deep sea discovery of the unsinkable Titanic in the North Atlantic, 73 years after it vanished below the crest of the waves.  His current day version of Verne’s Nautilus is called Alvin.  This submersible vehicle also allowed the Dr. to discover other famous ships of historical significance – the German battleship Bismarck sunk in World War II, and the Lusitania passenger liner torpedoed in World War I.

This would have been reason enough to listen to Dr. Ballard,… but it’s what ‘else’ he discovered while down there that is really amazing.  And that is that the entire volume of our planet’s oceans is recycled through the earth’s crust every six million years or so,… which explains their mineral composition (its salty taste).  It’s done through these hot thermal springs.  He talked about the total absence of sunlight miles below the surface, and yet their cameras took pictures of living plants,… that used chemosynthesis instead of photosynthesis.  Now that’s cool.  There were animals down there too, living in these hot springs,… an ecosystem that doesn’t live off the energy of the sun…!  Now what does that say about the potential of life on other planets, life that lives off the energy of the planet itself…?

But the most interesting fact he shared was the disproportionate time and money spent in exploring the planets and stars in our galaxy vs. exploring what is under the oceans.  Facts like; 50% of the USA is beneath the sea; almost a quarter of our planet is a single mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge; there are more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions under the ocean than there are on land by a huge factor; and most of our planet’s surface does not receive any sunlight.  I can’t remember the exact figure,… but Dr. Ballard said something like one year of our national budget on space exploration, could fund over a thousand years of what we spend to study the oceans on our planet.  I found this somewhat depressing, and encouraging at the same time.  Just think what we might find…!  New species of plants and animals that may enhance and extend human life beyond what we know today.  New sources of energy that could support our growing demand for sustainable power.  Can you imagine…?

Docs for Change…

… a room full of them.  This past week I was asked to speak at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.  The name of the gathering was called Transformation, a Symposium on Innovative Health Care Delivery. It was an unbelievable couple of days; an opportunity to hear and discuss new ideas, insights, methods and models for designing the future of medical practice and patient care.  The symposium started with Larry Keeley (Doblin Inc.), who is right up there at the top of the list when it comes to the subject of innovation.  If you have not seen his ten types of innovation, you should,… it makes it so clear why some market launches take hold and others do not.  Larry then outlined where he thought the focus of healthcare innovation would yield the greatest results (e.g., tailored healthcare service and stretching resources in new ways).  He ended by encouraging everyone to be curious, confident and courageous,… great coaching.

There were too many excellent speakers to review them all, but there are a couple that really caught my attention.  One is Jane Fulton Suri, Chief Creative Officer at world renowned IDEO.  As a spokesperson for human centered design, Jane used photographs to show how the simple act of looking at a process through the eyes of the user, gives one an entirely different perspective.  For one project they had a design researcher play the role of a patient, using a video camera at the side of their head to capture exactly what the patient sees before, during and after a surgery procedure.  It created an emotional stir in the audience,… as they saw first hand just how unnerving and unforgiving the patient’s experience is, as they lay flat on their back on the hospital gurney.

The last I would like to mention is Michael Howe, CEO of MinuteClinic.  What caught my attention was the how cost effective and accessible MinuteClinic,… it’s been referred to as the 7-Eleven of patient acute care.  It proves that you don’t have to be everything to everyone to be valued.  MinuteClinic makes a few procedures available to large audiences, by integrating their service into the consumer’s lifestyle.  They locate where people frequent such as shopping areas,… how brilliant is that.  Get a Starbuck’s cappuccino and a flu shot as you shop for a new pair of shoes.

These three speakers, as well as other presenters, urged the doctors and medical professionals to seriously consider their role in driving innovative change.  It’s not going to happen on its own.  It takes their getting involved.  This is true of any business, not just healthcare.  Look all around you for the seeds of innovation are generally right in front of your eyes.  You know what’s not working, what creates a hassle for your users, the process redundancies and inefficiencies you work-around every day.  So just as Larry Keeley suggested; be curious, in your search for opportunities; be confident, that you can make a difference; and be courageous, in taking action to shape your future.  You in shape…?

Blog this blog that…

blog, blog, blah, blah, blah…  Why the craze…?  I just didn’t see it,… it seemed like a hobby for techies that had too much free time.  Then it happened.  Someone who I consider an expert in their field sent me an email with a link to a blog.  I figured he’s not the type to waste my time,… so I ‘clicked’ on it.  Two hours and three cups of coffee later,… I not only realized I was late for a conference call,… but that I had learned a thing or two, had questioned several others, and had strongly disagreed with one statement.  I posted a response.  I was hooked.

This still doesn’t explain why ‘I’ should start a blog…?  Why me…?  Then I thought,… my role at Steelcase has me talking to, emailing, or meeting with insiders and outsiders on a daily basis.  And it never fails that somewhere in the conversation,… they either ask for my opinion on a subject, or I offer it up anyway to make a point.  That’s what we do in research, we ask questions -- tough ones -- then spend whatever time it takes to study, explore and create answers to those questions.  So my team and I have definite opinions,… thus having a POV is not something we shy away from.

But, admittedly, we don’t have all the answers, and we certainly have not asked all the questions,… which is another reason why it made sense to start a blog – to extend our network.  Even though we are engaged in pioneering efforts at leading universities and major corporations, and collaborate weekly with the world’s thought-leaders in ours and related fields,… it honestly just scratches the surface when one considers the domain of work experience – for individuals and groups.  We could, we can, learn so much more by hosting a dialog.  Whether you design spaces, manage spaces or simply work in a space, your opinion matters. 

“So why not…?” I said.  Why not share and learn together,… using this blog to forge an entirely new level of connectedness?

I plan to go deeper on specific insights and specific challenges in the weeks ahead,… for now, welcome…!  Join the conversation.