Cool Technology and the Intelligent Enterprise
Open Minds and Bad Music
This is getting intense, but I think we’re all learning a lot about cool technologies that make our lives easier. Even simpler. Without further ado, let’s continue. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, start here to catch up.)
The following day I took Donovan’s advice and made an appointment to see “Gentleman Jim Giles, the Genius of Wicker Park.” I slid through a narrow door between a used book store and fortune teller’s shop on Milwaukee Avenue, and made my way up the creaking stairs to the second-floor apartment. As I approached the door, I heard the annoying sound of sitar music, and I knew I was in for an interesting interview.
Outside the apartment was a sign asking visitors to leave their preconceived notions in a recycle bin, and only enter with an open mind. I figured I was already in trouble because I have some very entrenched notions about sitar music and New Age aphorisms. I paused momentarily, but decided it was too late to turn back and pushed the door open.
I expected to see a half-stoned aging hippy sitting lotus-style on the floor. Instead I found an intense professorial type in his 50’s, sitting at a desk behind a stack of sketches. The room was filled with small works of art and bric-a-brac that must have taken years to collect. Most notable however, was that Vitruvian Man-SAPience-movement poster hanging askew over a well-worn loveseat.
“Are you Jim Giles?” I asked.
“You must be Tony.”
“Yeah. I love the sitar music,” I said trying to suck up to him.
“I can’t stand it,” he said snatching an old vinyl disc from the phonograph and sending it sailing into the wall behind me. The splintering clatter followed by sudden silence left me standing with my mouth agape for a moment.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said meekly.
“Not at all. I was expecting you. I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Why do you listen to it if …”
“Government grant. I’m trying to learn why some music is more annoying than others to different people. I think the digeridoo beats both the bagpipes and the sitar, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably a cultural thing.”
“Your neighbors must love you.”
“They all moved. That alone makes the project worthwhile.”
“Why the phonograph? Are you a technophobe?”
“I’d like to think I’m more of an iconoclast, but I’m really just sentimental.”
“What exactly do you do here?”
“I’m a consultant. A one-man think tank. People come to me with problems and I look for solutions.”
“What sort of things do you consult on?”
“Whatever doesn’t bore me. That’s why I work alone. Like Sherlock Holmes, it pains me to work on mundane problems. They call me ‘the Genius of Wicker Park.’ There’s a modest appellation for you. I’m a polymath I guess — I have all kinds of interests.”
“And you’re behind this SAPience movement,” I said referring to the poster.
“In part. Da Vinci was a polymath too you know. He was both a great thinker and a great designer. In fact, he was the personification of design thinking. However, contrary to common belief, he was not an engineer. Do you understand the fundamental distinction between a designer and an engineer?”
“Um … no …”
“Engineers solve problems, but designers look for solutions. Do you see the difference?”
“Not really.”
“An engineer will posit that if something isn’t broken, there’s no need to fix it, but if something does break, you need to fix it right and make it last. A designer, on the other hand, will constantly look for new ways to fix things even if they aren’t broken. And when they find a solution, they’ll continue to look for better solutions. And even when they’ve found the perfect solution, they’ll look for new problems, or they’ll just break things so they have something to fix.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“Absolutely. Without designers there’d be no innovation. Everything would stagnate. Right now, the entire world is going through a Digital Renaissance and just as Leonardo led the Italian Renaissance 500 years ago, design thinkers are taking the lead today. That’s central to the SAPience movement.”
“Okay, you’re going to have to slow down for me; I’m just your average guy from Elmwood Park. What is this ‘Digital Renaissance’?”
“The word ‘renaissance’ means rebirth, right? The great Italian Renaissance was about the rebirth of classical ideals. So naturally the great artists, writers, and philosophers of the Italian Renaissance were inspired by the ancient Greeks and Romans.”
“So what does that have to do with a Digital Renaissance?”
“Well, relative to our fast-paced digital world, the 1990’s is like ancient history, and today’s innovators are looking to recapture the enthusiasm of that decade.”
“Yeah, but it seems to me that we’ve been innovating right along. Is this really a Renaissance?”
“Change, even if it’s continuous improvement, is not the same as innovation. It’s true that devices have gotten smaller over the years, and data storage has gotten larger, and the ubiquity of technology has pervaded our lives. On the other hand, at the turn of the millennium, businesses in every segment, both large and small, started to lose their way. They began to engineer fixes instead of designing solutions. As technology became more complex (and often more expensive), their efforts were focused on keeping things running instead of innovating. Even small start-up companies got in the game by trying to sell concepts that were more focused on attracting investment rather than finding solutions.”
“So what’s design thinking?”
“Design thinking is the catalyst of the Digital Renaissance. Many companies get stuck focusing on continuous improvement when true innovation is what they need most. Every company in every industry needs to rethink how they do business, and it begins by putting the customer at the center of their innovation.”
“Okay, this sounds like one of those things where companies suck up to their customers, and do trust exercises, and pretend to be melting ice cream cones and all that crap. Then at the end of the day they end up doing whatever they can just to keep the lights on.”
“It’s not about being emotional or experimental; that’s art. And it’s not about being purely pragmatic; that’s engineering. Design is about finding ingenious, purposeful solutions.”
“So how does it work?”
“Well, it’s a way of thinking, and not a tangible asset. You have to be trained to engage in design thinking. And it’s an iterative process, so while it begins with the customer, it never ends.”
“Okay.”
“There are five stages to design thinking:
- The first is to empathize with the customer — or in the case of internal processes, it could be employees, suppliers, or partners.
- The second stage is to precisely define their challenges.
- The third stage is to brainstorm ideas — no matter how impractical — to resolve the challenge.
- Stage four is prototyping. This is a critical stage when things move from daydreams to pragmatism, and if the ideas fail to become pragmatic, they merely loop back to the idea stage.
- Once a prototype is constructed, it enters the testing stage. That’s number five. The prototype gets measured against its ability to resolve the precisely defined challenge. If that’s successful, either new challenges are defined, or better ideas are formed, and everything starts over again.
It’s really a way of thinking about innovation.”
“Okay, so I’ve just spent the last few weeks trying to get a handle on how technology has been transforming our lives. I’ve learned about the Internet of Things, and Big Data. I’ve learned how data is stored and secured in the Cloud. And I’ve learned how it’s managed and analyzed, and how it can be used to predict future events. Some people have even tied it to time-travel …”
“Time-travel?”
“That’s a long story. But now you’re telling me that none of that leads to true innovation?”
“Err. Okay. Well, all of that helps foster innovation, but those things are merely tools. It’s knowing how to use those tools that makes the difference.”
“Every time I think I understand all of this, it gets more complicated. You know how da Vinci supposedly said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication?”
“He never said that.”
“I know. I found that out. But what is the relationship between sophistication and simplicity? Does all of this innovation make our lives simpler or more complicated?”
“Think of an airplane cockpit. It’s crammed with controls and switches and displays. Does that make the plane easier to fly or more difficult? It’s not enough to have great technology, or even the knowledge of how it all works. You have to have an understanding of how to use it.”
“So, simplicity is not the same as sophistication, but when you achieve the ultimate sophistication, things become simple.”
“That’s SAPience.”
And so, I may not have entered his office with an open mind, but I did leave more willing to look at technology from a philosophical point of view. It became clear that while complex automation may not make anything simpler, having an understanding of how to use it, might.
In my next blog I write about my experience at the SAPience Forum. I was able to go with all of my friends, including Russo, Kay, and Charlotte. And if you haven’t been keeping up with Charlotte’s show on Apple Podcast, it’s worth a listen.
###
Tony
Blogger Extraordinaire
DISCLAIMER: The Searching for Salaì podcast and the “Cool Technology and the Intelligent Enterprise” blog series are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
[DESCRIPTION]
Tony is intrigued to finally understand how design thinking encourages business innovators to rediscover their entrepreneurial mindset and creative spirit.
[KEYWORDS]
SAP Leonardo podcast, Innovation, Digital Transformation, Intelligent Enterprise, Analytics, Big Data, Blockchain, The Cloud, Design Thinking, The Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning, Data Intelligence, Digital Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, Searching for Salaì, Cool Technology
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