Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

I’ve recently posted about what some are calling the rise of the “Age of Analytics”, and also posted several times on innovation (such as this note about 5 “discovery skills”).

Not sure how I stumbled upon this article in Business Week – it’s titled “The Design of Business” and is written by Roger Martin (of Rotman School of Management) to coincide with the launch of his new book (which we have duly added to our Amazon cart and will review in due course).

In the article, the author examines whether it is possible to reconcile the two (often conflicting) schools of thought about business:

1)  One school (propagated by many management consultants packed with young MBA-grads) which proposes that it’s all about:

“strategy based on rigorous, quantitative analysis.  In this model, the basis of thought is analytical thinking, which harnesses two familiar forms of logic – deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning …

2)  The other school of thought is:

“centered on the primacy of creativity and innovation”

I am happy to live within the paradox of these two opposing views (as noted in another context, the ability to hold competing viewpoints simultaneously is something that comes with experience).

However, I have always been curious when I have watched business grapple with the reconciliation of competing focus (such as the drive for efficiency, and the need for growth).  Hence I was curious to know where the article led.

A key observation made in the article is as follows:

… organizations dominated by analytical thinking enjoy one very important advantage: they can build size and scale.  In organisations dominated by intuitive thinking, innovation may come fast and furious, but growth and longevity represent tremendous challenges.

Intuition-based firms cannot and will not systematise what they do, so they wax and wane with individual leaders.

In his article, the author uses the history of McDonalds to illustrate how businesses start with innovative thinking, and scale with analytical thinking.

In my view, the challenge of business is to reconcile the two conflicting points of view.  The author agrees:

Neither analysis nor intuition is enough … The most successful businesses in the years to come will balance analytical mastery and intuitive originality in a dynamic interplay that I call design thinking.

Not sure I know much about the “Design Thinking” label, just yet, but will review the book with great interest.

What we’re doing about the challenge

We are a company now approaching 10 years, and so have been giving increasing thought to the next 10 years and beyond – and are grappling with ways to do this.

The way I see things, an analytical methodology is very useful for driving efficiency and effectiveness in an established stream of business – for ongoing incremental improvements.  In addition, we need to retain our ability to innovate in order to continue making discontinuous jumps (such as we did successfully with the launch of a couple of software products, but less successfully with others – the nature of the process).

As you might have gathered, we’re looking at different sources of information for inspiration:

1)  Jim Collins, in “Built to Last” (for instance) labels this “preserving the core and stimulating progress”

2)  In terms of practical examples, there’s the Virgin business model (using cash cows to fund other ventures), Google’s 20% time, Atlassian’s FedEx days, and the list goes on…

Check back in the future to see how we go in this respect!

Tags: "Design Thinking", business growth, entrepreneur, innovation, quantitative analysis

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 12:20 am and is filed under Analysis, Article Review, Innovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.