Where the Rubber Meets the Road (... or Where the Silicon Meets 1818 H Street)

On May 11, 12 and 13, I joined WBI’s Learning Journey team – Eric Chinje, Kirsten Spainhower, Alexis Sampson, Katherine Park, and Marilyn Markman – for visits to IDEO, Singularity University, Stanford’s D School, Berkeley’s I School, and UC Santa Clara's GSBI Program. To say that it was an edifying several days might be the understatement of the decade. Who wouldn’t want to sit around a sparsely furnished room with a cross-section of Silicon Valley elite, spitballing ideas that are … what’s the word? Cool. But this was only a small part of the experience. I, like my colleagues, participated in these meetings with several particular priorities in mind: to examine the core elements of these organizations’ product innovation culture, process and philosophy; to bring this information back to WBI; and, hopefully, to start a dialogue with colleagues on both sides about what we observed and what it might mean for WBI in a practical sense.

I should begin by mentioning that the Kool-Aid looked delicious. But I didn’t drink it. To paraphrase Samuel Butler, an open mind is important, but watch that your brain doesn’t fall out. More on that in a moment.

A key task of the trip was to observe at least a snapshot of what these organizations are doing, to enable our team to take the long view: what value do these organizations/institutions add to connect supply to demand up and down the value chain? This naturally implicates avoiding replication of effort. In that spirit, I won’t try to re-capture the information which is already excellently provided by Eric, Kirsten, Alexis, Katherine, and Marilyn – please be sure to read their contributions to this blog (either before or instead of this one). This entry instead comprises an initial, cursory attempt to connect the dots, and to segue into a dialogue about the experience through the prism of what might be learned on both sides. To that end, as each meeting at each location unfolded, certain common practices and characteristics became apparent.

Take, for example, IDEO’s fairly straightforward methodology by which it executes ‘human-centered design’:

Phase 0: Understand/Observe (understand client’s business and feasibility of product; empathize with end-user)
Phase 1: Visualize/Realize (Form three-dimensional model and manufacturing strategy in close coordination with client)
Phase 2: Evaluate/Refine (enhance design prototype through testing)
Phase 3: Implement/Detailed Engineering (design and verify product works and can be manufactured)
Phase 4: Implement/Manufacturing Liaison (product moves from shop floor to client’s manufacturing)

Each organization and institution we visited pointed to some iteration of these five steps as comprising their development framework, each of which are viewed as more of a flexible guideline than a hard and fast rule. A premium is placed on collaborative experimentation—we heard the phrases ‘collaboratory’ and ‘pfab-lab’ (as in “participatory fabrication laboratory”) – and each organization celebrates (and so has institutionalized) experimentation, which is generally termed “the room to fail.” Further pervasive practices include:

Multi-Disciplinary Teams: Teams are loosely assembled (in many cases, particular client needs are advertised throughout the organization and teams actually self-select instead of waiting to be assigned) to solve problems; teams comprise a spectrum of disciplines, and reflect a range of perspectives. Each organization emphasizes and actively searches for so-called “T-shaped” people, who possess a broad range of skill-sets, with some intersection of an impressive academic pedigree and robust operational experiences in a variety of contexts.

Focus on the End-User and Leveraging Existing Momentum: Each organization/institution is completely focused on the needs of the end-user, to the point of collaborating with clients from project inception to completion. To this end, client strengths are carefully identified, and not only inform the project team’s priorities, but are actually assimilated into its project development methodology. This enables the teams to build onto existing momentum on the ground, and so most projects achieve traction before operational work begins.

Room to Experiment: All team members (from junior staff to senior management) are encouraged to “fail often to succeed sooner.” Prototyping is likewise important; we heard a team leader say, “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth ten thousand.” We likewise heard the phrases “the 3 R’s: Rough, Rapid and Right” and “the Deep Dive approach,” which both describe prototyping as an iterative and potentially time consuming process. Efforts to perfect a model prior to deployment are thought to be a waste of time. Brainstorming sessions are convened around ideas, with teams (no more than 8 people in a session) encouraged to express wild ideas, to build on ideas of others, and to hold only one conversation at a time. Some discarded ideas are archived for potential future use.

These ideas are interesting; members of our Learning Journey team reacted to them in different ways. They might have sounded great because we were dazzled by the inviting spaces, with candy and toys, funky seating, and demos of projects everywhere (most of the organizations we visited seemed to have the psychology of the first impression fairly well figured out). But are these ideas really that mind-blowing? Or even valuable? Could we learn from them? Or could they learn from us? Perhaps both? The team is anxious to discuss these questions with colleagues from throughout WBI.

Before we launch an in-person discussion, I’m interested in assaying a handful of (what will likely be horribly overgeneralized) differences between WBI and Silicon Valley. Here’s a quick example:

WBI. At the risk of painting with a broad brush, an important dimension of WBI’s (as well as other parts of the Bank’s) value added is that it generally develops and executes technical assistance and training activities using the same rigorous analytical approaches used to make traditional economic and financial decisions. This includes the use of measurable, evidence-based indicators of improvement (the conventional wisdom is that without pointing to evidence, it is difficult to authoritatively demonstrate improvement).

Silicon Valley. Project heads emphasized the need to stay ahead of the curve, to keep innovating, and to stay hungry. I asked about the kind of quantitative analysis undertaken to identify certain clients’ needs and general trends, and how these might inform the organizations’ approaches. The short answer from each – and this includes IDEO, Singularity University, Stanford’s D School, Berkeley’s I School, and GSBI at UC Santa Clara – is that they generally do not undertake such analysis. Interestingly, each organization/institution we visited recognized both the analytical gap in their practices and the value of WBI’s and the Bank’s broader analytical approaches, and each indicated an interest in exploring opportunities to partner or to otherwise inculcate similar practices in their own product/service development methodologies. These organizations/institutions also generally point to the accelerating obsolescence of technology as a key challenge, which is why they typically start from scratch after each project or semester. When I asked how one project or semester informs subsequent ones, it became clear that this was likewise not a normative practice. Most acknowledged that the knowledge and practices of each organization/institution are not systematically captured, and much rests with the institutional memory of the people working for them. Each recognized that sustainability might be problematic as a result.

So what, if anything, does this mean for us? And are these gaps deal-breakers? Or perhaps I’m over-emphasizing quantitative indicators of progress? What do YOU think?

These and other questions will be taken up at a BBL focused on this Learning Journey in the coming several weeks, and we encourage you to participate, and to otherwise contact us to discuss the details of the Learning Journey. We hope to hear more from you, and to see you at the BBL. The details will be posted on this blog in the coming few days.