Welcome Back
Welcome back to fluid thinking. Did you try solving the bridge problem at the end of Part 1? In this article we will be looking at the type of thinking that leads to the solution below, and seeing how the same thinking can be used to explore and exploit business model innovations.
Indonesian Living Root Bridge
The bridge above was created by training tree roots to reach across the river. Roots are strong, flexible, and grow a protective bark when above ground, but remain an obscure resource for most people, why?
In Part 1 we invited you to ignore labels and think about the proprieties of things. The properties of roots make them an ideal solution with the added benefit of not killing the source of the material. So why do few people innovate this bridge building solution?
When we think about bridges and trees we think of "wood" so our attention is drawn to the trunk of the tree, and our minds tend towards answering the question, how do I produce more wood? As there is no time limit to the task, you can grow more trees, get more wood, job done! This solution is in-line with fluid thinking part one, i.e. the qualities of the trunk are considered and used. Its strength, and its ease of being shaped to form joints, means its use an obvious solution.
To reach beyond the trunk, and traditional notions of "wood", we have to engage another form of fluid thinking - 'parts of' thinking. 'Parts of' thinking starts with considering what are the parts of […..], without judgment and then moving on to explore the features and purposes of those parts.
What are the PARTs OF a tree? What are the PROPERTIES / PURPOSE of each part?
We will start by looking at the tree and the bridge solution, but we will explore how this sequence of thinking can reveal opportunities to exploit business models across sectors, industries, products and services.
Applying ‘parts of’ thinking requires standing back to do a bit of simple analysis by answering the question ‘what are the parts of......?’ Then we look at the attributes and purpose of each part, instead of diving straight into developing solutions. Applying this to a tree, as per the diagram above, you can see how roots can become a more obvious solution. If you explore the properties of roots a little further you will also discover the roots of two trees can bond together through a process known as inosculation, a really useful property for bridge building!
This is a simple example of mapping, i.e making your categories or concepts about a thing or topic explicit. Mapping provides an opportunity to notice what we may have missed, e.g. considering roots and their properties. It also allows us to expose prior assumptions and innovate by shifting boundaries and transforming the content of our concepts and categories. Over the next few articles we will be looking at multiple ways to enrich our conceptual maps and manipulate them for innovation. For now we will look at using ‘parts of’ thinking, and two associated forms of innovation:
1. Expanding Boundaries, and
2. Moving Parts to Other Categories.
Exploring and Exploiting Business Models (Moving Boundaries and Parts)
By using ‘parts of’ thinking to explore innovative business models you can often identify innovation strategies that can be utilised to innovate in other sectors.
Taking IKEA as an example, we start by asking two rounds of what are the parts of IKEA? The first round is represented by the dark blue ellipses, the parts from the second round are show in the blue lined ellipses.
What are the Parts Of Ikea’s Operations?
The above diagram represents the activities associated with IKEA; however, it doesn’t represent the novel way IKEA has organised these activities. As shown in the diagram below, IKEA has rearranged the parts of typical furniture production and retail operations.
They have also stepped outside the typical boundary of their role in this industry.
IKEA’s rearrangement and extension of furniture production and retail
Four business model innovations become clear from the diagram above. The first three comprise moving an activity (a part) to a different category (a collection of parts) i.e. the customer. Picking stock from a warehouse, assembling products and home delivery are all re-assigned to the customer. When you then consider the properties and purpose of these parts, you quickly see compound benefits. Warehousing and retail are housed in a single property that is storing unassembled products that take minimal space. Assembly, a significant and more complex and difficult to automate part of production, is outsourced, and reduced bulk means transport costs are greatly reduced. For the customer this enables instantly available furniture, no-longer do you have to order and wait weeks or months for delivery of many items, and it’s easy to self-transport.
The forth innovation solves a critical problem overlooked by many retailers; most people aren’t great at room design and can’t afford an interior designer. Magazines try to help, but many examples shown are in houses beyond many people’s reach and combine products that are less than convenient to acquire as an ensemble. Having interviewed many people visiting IKEA, most confess to struggling to visualising how products can be utilised to create a stylish room and so find the show rooms very helpful, particularly ones that maximise the use of space.
Compare IKEA’s solution to how many retailers try to help, i.e. providing swatches of material to take home. This requires the ability imagine what it would look like at scale, so you're left thinking about a big financial commitment in the face of uncertainty of the outcome.
We have seen some analysts criticising IKEA for the significant retail space their concept room displays take up; however they are wrong. The displays are critical because they solve a real barrier to purchasing home furnishings - room design.
The innovations derived by extending industry boundaries and shifting activities between categories as described above have been seen elsewhere, but in limited instances, and never before combined in a single business in this sector, or indeed any other sector.
Opportunities thus arise by answering the following question:
Where else could some or all of these types of innovation be applied?
e.g. Where are there other examples of people struggling with design capability and or capacity? Could selecting and purchasing clothes be an instance?
What if M&S was more like IKEA?
An Example of NOT Assisting Customers with Design (thus an opportunity)
Research reveals two ways people struggle when shopping for clothes in a store, firstly, knowing what something looks like when worn, and secondly, which items go well together.
Looking at the first problem - knowing what something will look like being worn - we find people often struggle to mentally transform the two dimensional presentation of an item on the rack into a three dimensional mental representation of what it looks like when worn. The dress in the above being a prime example; it’s not easy to anticipate the way the dress looks in lower left picture from the one in the upper right.
Interestingly, people often struggle the other way around, i.e. they see something being displayed on a shop dummy and then can’t find it on the racks. We found shop staff are often asked where to find an item of clothing that is being displayed on a dummy, even if the rack containing the item is placed directly underneath the display. For example, people don’t expect the blazer being worn in the picture above to look as it appears in two dimensions, i.e. on the hanger.
Obviously the complexity of the shopping challenge is further compounded by having to deciding what items might go well together, to create an outfit for a particular type of occasion.
So why then do store displays look like picture in the centre above? With numerous hanging rails (two dimensional displays of clothes), clustered into types of clothes, rather than combinations of clothes that work together. Worse, many items are folded on a shelf, how do you know what they would like like? While mosts stores do include some mannequins, they are normally limited in number in comparison to the variety of clothes on sale.
Perhaps this is one reason why on-line continues to grow in-spite of the inconvenience of returns and the loss of tactile engagement with a product - on-line you can see what an item looks like when worn and what it combines well with.
Does this mean the design problem is more of a barrier to purchase than the inconvenience of delay and returns, and the loss of tactile engagement with the material of a garment? Interviewing consumers strongly suggests it is, and reaffirms the simple and retrospectively obvious genius of the IKEA model.
If you have the money, one solution is easy, hire a personal shopper! The question is how to implement an IKEA design ideas solution in a clothing store so everyone has a similar experience. We suggest the technology and space is available to create viable solutions. Indeed, there are basic low tech solutions already deployed by some retailers, but for food instead of clothes, e.g. a recipe card for a two course meal with wine, with a vivid picture of the end result prominently on the front.
The point of this example is not to solve M&S’s problems, but a demonstration of the clarity and value that can be derived from a simple explorations of concepts and categories of a business model using ‘parts’ and ‘features / functions’ thinking.
We can also show the value of this form of analysis by looking at another of IKEA’s identified innovations - moving activities into the domain of the customer.
An Example of Shifting ‘Parts’ (Production to The Customer)
Like the IKEA business model, you can assemble this car at home!
The Ultima RS car is exceptional in many ways, so much so you will have to wait two years for delivery from when you place your order. However this small company has massively increased its production capacity by including the customer in its production business model, in a similar vein to IKEA. If you want to build it yourself, or get a friendly garage to do it for you, then the waiting time for delivery is 22 weeks.
They are not alone; Caterham have being supplying Lotus 7 cars fully built or in kit form for decades.
So key innovations can arise from answering the questions - Where are there other opportunities to redistribute production to the customer? - and thinking about the near future - What opportunities could 3D printing offer for re-distributing production and assembly?
Summary and Next Time
Fluid thinking is ultimately about making conceptual structures explicit and then enriching and creatively playing with them to innovate. In this article we have started simply by mapping the ‘parts of’’ a tree and a business model, along with considering the features and purpose of those parts. We then looked at what this mapping can bring forward for explicit consideration, and the solutions and innovations such exploration can afford.
In the next article we will be looking at adding two options for enriching concepts and playing with conceptual maps/structures. Including sharing how this leads to another solution to the bridge, the building of a concrete bridge without breaking the rules of the task, and without chopping down any trees to sell for timber to buy concrete! Plus how these options would have anticipated airbnb and provide innovative luggage products that would compliment an airbnb trip around the world.