May 13, 2024 • 18 mins
This episode delves into the challenges corporate explorers face when introducing new business opportunities, emphasising the importance of crafting compelling value propositions. Featuring guest George Glackin, co-author of a chapter on value flows and design criteria maps, the discussion highlights these tools as essential for developing products or services that truly delight customers. Through the Swiffer Wet Jet case study, the effectiveness of these methodologies in real-world application is explored. Additionally, the episode covers the importance of overcoming the 'curse of expertise' and fostering diverse team collaboration to achieve innovation success. Sponsored by Wazoku, the episode advocates for connected collective intelligence in driving sustainable innovation ecosystems.
00:00 Introduction to Corporate Explorers and Value Propositions
00:43 Sponsor Spotlight: Wazoku's Role in Innovation
01:29 Guest Introduction: George Glackin on Value Flows and Design Criteria Maps
01:41 The Genesis of Value Flows and Design Criteria Maps
03:26 The Curse of Expertise and Its Impact
05:05 Exploring the Value Flow with a Practical Example
05:57 Deep Dive into Design Criteria Maps
09:07 Applying the Framework: The Swiffer Wet Jet Case Study
13:17 Breaking Down Silos for Successful Product Development
15:34 The Importance of Validation and Scaling in Innovation
17:07 Closing Remarks and Contact Information
Go to the book website – www.thecorporateexplorer.com/contact and complete the contact form requesting the corrected version of chapter 5 and chapter 10.
Also see here for chapter 5:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Aidan McCullen (2) (00:00):
Corporate explorers face multiple challenges when bringing
(00:03):
a business opportunity to market.
They must identify a market insight andcraft an opportunity story about how
this insight will dramatically transformor expand the company's business.
They must persuade colleagues andmanagement to follow them in developing
and launching this opportunity,and they must truly delight the
customers they intend to serve.
(00:25):
In today's episode, we will explore how touse what our guest calls value flows and
design criteria maps as best practices todevelop a delightful value proposition.
We'll also learn from the Swifferwet jet case study, which will bring.
The frameworks to life welcome tothe latest episode of the corporate
(00:48):
explorer series value propositions usingvalue flows and design criteria maps
to create customer delight, before iintroduce today's guest i wanna thank
our sponsor Wazoku Wazoku helps largeorganizations create effective sustainable
innovation ecosystems that accelerateefficiency gains and new value growth.
(01:09):
It does this through intelligententerprise software that connects
and harnesses the power of employees,suppliers, startups, universities,
and the unique Wazoku crowd of almost1 million global problem solvers.
Wazoku calls this , Connectedcollective intelligence and
you can find Wazoku at Wazoku.
Com so to the latest guest onthe corporate explorer series
(01:34):
the author of this chapter GeorgeGlackin and welcome to the show,
George Glackin (01:39):
Hey, it's great to be here.
Thank you.
Aidan McCullen (2) (01:41):
george i gave a little bit of a an introduction there
to introduce the chapter that youcalled third along with Andy Binns & co.
But let's share a little bit behindthat chapter, how you came up with
these value flows, how you came up withthe maps and why you needed to do it
George Glackin (01:58):
Yeah, happy to do that.
I've been developing new products fornew businesses for quite a while now.
I cut my teeth in this at Procter andGamble and moved to Asheville, North
Carolina, where I created a startupincubator, and I think one of the lessons
that hits me over the head every time isthat it takes the same amount of time,
energy, energy, , blood, sweat, and tearsto work on a small problem as it takes
(02:20):
to work on a big and audacious problem.
By the same token, it takes the sameamount of time and energy to work on
an okay solution as it takes to workon a delightful and obvious solution.
That hit me in the head, and I waslooking for a way to be a little bit
more intentional with the people Iwork with, whether it's a corporate
explorer, whether it's a founder, andI, I will relentlessly and sometimes
(02:43):
people tell me, annoyingly say.
Is it a hair on fireproblem we're working on?
Are we trying to develop adelightful and obvious solution?
So it was that it was out of that needto be a little bit more intentional
that these tools sprang to life.
And I think looking at my experiencein the corporate world and watching,
many, many founders pitching me.
(03:04):
It's very difficult for theindividual to capture that energy
and emotion of this out of the boxsolution that I've talked about.
So, if used well, these toolshave proven pretty effective, and
I finally coined the term, valueflows and design criteria maps.
And that's what we're goingto talk about in this chapter.
Aidan McCullen (2) (03:25):
before we get into the tools.
I thought about the, such an importantaspect that happens to many, many
corporate explorers, particularly ifthey've been a long time in a certain
industry or inside a certain company,and that's the curse of expertise.
And there's a quote I love by the painter.
He said there's nothing more difficult fora truly creative painter than to paint a
(03:47):
rose because before he can do so he hasto first forget all the roses that he had
ever painted before and i love how thatquote encapsulates the mental traps of
expertise and previous experience and youhighlighted in the chapter that corporate
explorers should start work on the valueproposition with skepticism about their
(04:08):
own experience i thought we'd share thatfirst before we get into the toolkits
George Glackin (04:13):
Yeah, it's interesting, I was just working with
a founder last week, and I said,you have the curse of knowledge.
You're literally the fish that'sswimming in the fishbowl and does
not know you're in the water.
Yeah.
And I think being more intentional aboutactually having to watch, I use the
example of a six year old girl tying hershoes because it's such a simple example.
(04:34):
We've all tried, we've all learned totie our shoes, hopefully, and it's You
know, if you tied your shoes this morning,do you even remember doing the steps?
So I think being a little bit moreintentional about laying out those steps,
that's the insight behind the value flow.
And then we get into such a routine.
I think as we get used to technologyit becomes so commonplace.
(04:58):
We forget the wow factorthat we saw the first time.
We only think about, well,did I get it done or not?
And we forget that power of emotion.
Aidan McCullen (2) (05:05):
perfect segway as you mentioned there the girl
tying shoes and what could havehelped her get around that problem.
So i'm gonna show on the screenfor those people watching us the
value flow ofputting on shoes
George Glackin (05:19):
the easy place to start is the, is where the value flow,
because it gets us grounded in seeingit through the eyes of the consumer.
And , the simple objective ofthis, , the six year old girl wants
to go from being barefoot to havinga securely fastened shoe on her foot.
And, you, first time you tried to doanything, the fingers fumble with this.
And parents are watching this andthey're saying, Oh my goodness,
(05:40):
it's taking so much time.
And the girl's getting frustrated.
So the, the inventor behind thisone saw that and said, well,
there must be a better way.
And Velcro exists.
And the insight now seems so obvious.
You just, just pull the Velcroaround and it takes less time and
effort for the girl to do this.
The magic behind this also comes withthe design criteria map because There's
(06:05):
more to it than just the function,
Just to unpack this tool, thefirst thing to notice is that the
scale on the left hand side doesnot go from poor to excellent.
It goes from not good enough, goodenough, delightful, and overshot.
And this captures the insight that it ispossible to have too much of a good thing.
And I would tell you frommy laundry care experience.
(06:26):
It's possible that Procter and Gamble wasguilty of going from clean to cleaner to
so ridiculously clean that we can measureit technology wise, but nobody cares.
And the notion of overshotcomes into this, and we'll
refer to that in these examples.
So that's the left hand scale.
Going across the side, you'veheard me talk about capturing
this magical, emotional moment.
(06:49):
Well, most of the time, a designerwill gravitate to the functional
criteria and forget about Well, waita minute, there's emotional and social
criteria running through this as well.
So that's, that's thematrix we're working with.
Not good enough to overshot andfunctional, emotional and social.
And so now back to our six year old girl.
(07:09):
It's true.
Velcro allows her to get the shoe on withless effort and fasten it more securely.
But what else is going on here?
The framework captures notjust the functional, but the
emotional and the social benefits.
And what's wonderful about this example,is yes, , The little girl got her shoe
on more quickly and more securely,but she gets to feel like a big girl.
So there's the first emotionalbenefit and the parents get to
(07:33):
feel like they're great parents.
And they have the emotional comfort thattheir daughter is now developing normally.
She's achieved this important,developmental milestone.
Everybody's feeling good aboutthemselves and this tool allows
us to capture that magic.
Aidan McCullen (2) (07:51):
It's such a difficult thing to capture through a questionnaire
or asking questions because it's emotionalso you can't measure that even an
fmri scanner can't articulate it for
George Glackin (08:02):
That's true.
That's true.
Well, I think that the power of havinga framework like this is it's not just a
tool to capture, it's a tool to promotecritical thinking in a different way.
And so if I give a corporate explorer ora founder this tool, they've got an empty
space staring at them that they have tothink about and they have to fill in.
Aidan McCullen (2) (08:24):
i'm gonna share as well george website where people can
find you to reach out about these tools.
But also if you go to thecorporate explorer website so www.
thecorporateexplorer.
com forward slash contact.
You can complete a contact form andrequest a version of both chapter
5 which also george co authored andchapter 10 because there's a corrected
(08:50):
version of the diagram from the book.
That we just showed on screen here.
So go to www.
thecorporateexplorer.
com forward slash contact to request acopy of that, and the team will share
that with you, but George, you mentionedthat you have experience working with P&G.
One of the great tools that P&Gcreated to, satisfy so many
(09:14):
emotional needs for, for thecustomer was the P&G Swiffer wet jet.
George Glackin (09:19):
Obviously it's a more complex story than the the six year
old girl tying her shoes, but hopefullywe've got a handle on the tools so that
we can dive into that more completely.
So this story comes from back in 1994,and there was a corporate explorer who
was watching his family mop the floors.
And he was a pretty curious guy.
(09:42):
You could say he was a, an anthropologistin his own home, and , he watched this
and he had been challenged to come upwith the next billion dollar business.
And he's looking at this one going,this might be the one and took
these tools that we've just talkedabout to the team and said, okay,
let's all go be anthropologists.
Let's go into the homes of a dozenfamilies and just watch them do
(10:05):
this process of mopping the floor.
And the value flow that's in the bookwas even more dramatic than the shoes.
It shows that many steps went down tofew from a functional level, including
the amount of time that it took.
To clean the mop the amount of timeit took to clean the person because
the person very typically got dirtyand there was another very intriguing
(10:28):
insight that most of the consumerswere sweeping the floor to get the
crumbs up before they mopped the floor.
So, this is classicfish in its own water.
All these steps are going onand people who are supposed
to be experts in this space.
We're not picking up on it.
So the discipline of going througha value flow really laid this out.
(10:49):
So now the team using the value flowtechnique, they're grounded in the
reality of the problem and they canswitch their thinking over to, okay,
let's think about this as we're designingthe solution from both the functional,
emotional and social standpoint.
And because it was a diverse team,it was an incredibly diverse team.
It was one of the most diverseProctor ever put against this.
(11:11):
It had the usual suspects, of engineers aspart of this and people who are going to
turn it into a production ready product.
It also had some people we justwould not expect to see in the room.
At the time, it was unusual to haveindustrial designers as part of the team.
So we have this immensely diverseteam from a skillset standpoint, and
(11:32):
we brought in people from differentdivisions within the company.
So we had a diaper divisionwas using non woven substrates.
Obviously we have a hardsurface cleaning division.
We didn't quite have a device division.
But that, that wasspurred when this came in.
So you have different skill setsin the room, you have different
functional divisions in the room, andwe have this functional, emotional,
(11:53):
and social imperative to think about.
Great.
We're set up for success now.
And , what we found in goingthrough this is yes, fewer steps.
Didn't have to sweep, didn'thave to clean my own clothes,
did not have to clean the mop.
The really powerful insight thatI believe made the franchise
is that consumers played back.
(12:13):
You won't believe this.
I got the whole family involvedwith cleaning the floors
because it was so fun and easy.
So that, that may have madethe franchise right there.
And I think in this specific example,homeowners want their guests to
come into a house that's alwaysguest ready and a bucket and mop.
Can you imagine?
We've got guests comingover in 15 minutes.
(12:35):
Good heavens.
There's just no way to do this,but you take out a wet jet and
you push it around the floor.
And in five minutes,your home is guest ready.
So I think.
Yes, functional imperatives weredelivered on, but the franchise got
made based on emotional benefits.
Such a great story and the frameworki mean i started applying it to stuff
i'm doing on a on a day basis and cani go where am i missing or where am i,
(12:58):
leaving in steps for even the listenerfor the show that i shouldn't be and
that's a question to listeners of thestuff i'm doing that is annoying for you
please reach out and let me know cuz.
You become blind to this stuffbecause you develop this expertise,
develop a way of doing things.
And it's very, very difficultto rewire your thinking.
But I had a final question for you,George, which is more for corporate
(13:23):
explorers who deal with the silomentality , because you mentioned there
about how that team in P&G was verydiverse, but I'm pretty sure like would
happened in most of those very firstmeetings that comes along, everybody's
sizing each other up looking at us andthem across the organization, because
(13:43):
that's the way organizations weredeveloped, particularly successful
organizations, but that breaking downof silos is something that's so, so.
Key to successful product developmentincluding bring in the customer in
like these anthropologist going in somecases going living with the customer i
love you to share some ways that thatcan be broken down in organizations
(14:08):
and the value of breaking down silos.
The value of breaking out thesilos just cannot be understated.
It's really a one plus one equals threemoment in most cases, because people
just look at the world differentlybecause they've been trained to
look at the world differently.
And I thought I was a prettygood product developer.
A new business developer before Ihave these insights, but it's amazing,
(14:30):
even after decades of practice,what I would miss that someone
else just with a different lens.
I use the term alien eyes a lot.
You bring somebody into the room whodoesn't have this curse of knowledge and
they just look at things and go, like,I can't believe you missed that, George.
And it's it's not a bad moment,it's a wonderful moment, it's
very empowering for everybody.
. There was a project that Andy Benz andI did for a client where the engineers
(14:55):
were convinced they had no right tobe in the room with the end user.
They said, that's somebody else'sjob, and it may even not be
somebody in the company's job.
It may be someone we haveto hire from the outside.
And to put a tool in someone'shand and say, you can do this.
You can take, you can just createa log when you go and watch
(15:15):
someone doing the task, you cando this is amazingly empowering.
And, now you've got an engineer isacting like industrial designers and
industrial designers, acting likeengineers, and it's just, it's a
phenomenal experience for the entire team.
It's very, very empowering.
One last thing I'd be remissif I didn't mention this.
So we've been talking about the,sort of the insight phase of a,
(15:37):
of a new project and then thedevelopment phase of a new project.
There has to be the validation andscale phase or it never gets to market.
And I think one of the things that'svery difficult when you bring in , the
downstream players, let's say youbring in an advertising agency.
Their first instinct might be to say,well, these guys haven't looked at it.
(15:59):
Like we would, we need to reinventthe wheel or, or even worse.
They're not familiarenough with the space.
They think they are andthey create nonsense.
Hypothetical situation, of course.
And I think that when we've done thisparticular, the design criteria map,
all of the success criteria have beenlaid out for design, for development,
(16:21):
for manufacturer, for marketing, forsales, all the talking points, if you
take it all the way downstream fora sales script have been laid out.
So it's a powerful tool in terms ofthe scale and validation of this.
It supports test marketing.
It supports selling experiments.
I've been pleasantly surprised at thepower of having a, an artifact that
(16:43):
captures the original thinking of theinventor and the designer, how, how
powerful that is flowing downstream.
Aidan McCullen (2) (16:50):
it's powerful to have a new lens through which to look
at things and you mentioned aboutthe, neurodiversity or the different
elements of a team coming togetherlooking at the same thing from their
different perspectives but alsohaving a different lens which is your
toolkits as well as so so powerful.
George for people who want to reach outto you, maybe they have a project or
(17:11):
new product they're trying to develop. Where's the best place to find you?,
George Glackin (17:14):
probably the most simple way is I'm on LinkedIn.
That's an easy way to find me.
And of course you mentionedthe ChangeLogic portal.
That's a way too.
Aidan McCullen (2) (17:21):
Absolutely.
I'll link to that as well.
And last but not least, I wantto thank our sponsor Wazoku.
Many people emailed in to ask what doesthe name Wazoku mean Wazoku is Swahili.
And it just means great idea.
And the Wazoku team are advocates ofeveryday and total innovation inside
organizations and strives to makeinnovation a part of everyone's role.
(17:42):
Just like George saidin every organization.
Recently, Wazoku acquired Innocentive,Change in Columbia, Mindpool, IdeaDrop.
And most recently poster lab, andyou can find Wazoku at Wazoku.
com.
Finally, thank you to our guest today.
Co author of the corporate explorerfield book, George Glackin.
(18:03):
Thank you for joining us.
George Glackin (18:05):
Excellent.
It's great.
Thank you very much.
Corporate explorers face multiple challenges when bringing
(00:03):
a business opportunity to market.
They must identify a market insight andcraft an opportunity story about how
this insight will dramatically transformor expand the company's business.
They must persuade colleagues andmanagement to follow them in developing
and launching this opportunity,and they must truly delight the
customers they intend to serve.
(00:25):
In today's episode, we will explore how touse what our guest calls value flows and
design criteria maps as best practices todevelop a delightful value proposition.
We'll also learn from the Swifferwet jet case study, which will bring.
The frameworks to life welcome tothe latest episode of the corporate
(00:48):
explorer series value propositions usingvalue flows and design criteria maps
to create customer delight, before iintroduce today's guest i wanna thank
our sponsor Wazoku Wazoku helps largeorganizations create effective sustainable
innovation ecosystems that accelerateefficiency gains and new value growth.
(01:09):
It does this through intelligententerprise software that connects
and harnesses the power of employees,suppliers, startups, universities,
and the unique Wazoku crowd of almost1 million global problem solvers.
Wazoku calls this , Connectedcollective intelligence and
you can find Wazoku at Wazoku.
Com so to the latest guest onthe corporate explorer series
(01:34):
the author of this chapter GeorgeGlackin and welcome to the show,
George Glackin (01:39):
Hey, it's great to be here.
Thank you.
Aidan McCullen (2) (01:41):
george i gave a little bit of a an introduction there
to introduce the chapter that youcalled third along with Andy Binns & co.
But let's share a little bit behindthat chapter, how you came up with
these value flows, how you came up withthe maps and why you needed to do it
George Glackin (01:58):
Yeah, happy to do that.
I've been developing new products fornew businesses for quite a while now.
I cut my teeth in this at Procter andGamble and moved to Asheville, North
Carolina, where I created a startupincubator, and I think one of the lessons
that hits me over the head every time isthat it takes the same amount of time,
energy, energy, , blood, sweat, and tearsto work on a small problem as it takes
(02:20):
to work on a big and audacious problem.
By the same token, it takes the sameamount of time and energy to work on
an okay solution as it takes to workon a delightful and obvious solution.
That hit me in the head, and I waslooking for a way to be a little bit
more intentional with the people Iwork with, whether it's a corporate
explorer, whether it's a founder, andI, I will relentlessly and sometimes
(02:43):
people tell me, annoyingly say.
Is it a hair on fireproblem we're working on?
Are we trying to develop adelightful and obvious solution?
So it was that it was out of that needto be a little bit more intentional
that these tools sprang to life.
And I think looking at my experiencein the corporate world and watching,
many, many founders pitching me.
(03:04):
It's very difficult for theindividual to capture that energy
and emotion of this out of the boxsolution that I've talked about.
So, if used well, these toolshave proven pretty effective, and
I finally coined the term, valueflows and design criteria maps.
And that's what we're goingto talk about in this chapter.
Aidan McCullen (2) (03:25):
before we get into the tools.
I thought about the, such an importantaspect that happens to many, many
corporate explorers, particularly ifthey've been a long time in a certain
industry or inside a certain company,and that's the curse of expertise.
And there's a quote I love by the painter.
He said there's nothing more difficult fora truly creative painter than to paint a
(03:47):
rose because before he can do so he hasto first forget all the roses that he had
ever painted before and i love how thatquote encapsulates the mental traps of
expertise and previous experience and youhighlighted in the chapter that corporate
explorers should start work on the valueproposition with skepticism about their
(04:08):
own experience i thought we'd share thatfirst before we get into the toolkits
George Glackin (04:13):
Yeah, it's interesting, I was just working with
a founder last week, and I said,you have the curse of knowledge.
You're literally the fish that'sswimming in the fishbowl and does
not know you're in the water.
Yeah.
And I think being more intentional aboutactually having to watch, I use the
example of a six year old girl tying hershoes because it's such a simple example.
(04:34):
We've all tried, we've all learned totie our shoes, hopefully, and it's You
know, if you tied your shoes this morning,do you even remember doing the steps?
So I think being a little bit moreintentional about laying out those steps,
that's the insight behind the value flow.
And then we get into such a routine.
I think as we get used to technologyit becomes so commonplace.
(04:58):
We forget the wow factorthat we saw the first time.
We only think about, well,did I get it done or not?
And we forget that power of emotion.
Aidan McCullen (2) (05:05):
perfect segway as you mentioned there the girl
tying shoes and what could havehelped her get around that problem.
So i'm gonna show on the screenfor those people watching us the
value flow ofputting on shoes
George Glackin (05:19):
the easy place to start is the, is where the value flow,
because it gets us grounded in seeingit through the eyes of the consumer.
And , the simple objective ofthis, , the six year old girl wants
to go from being barefoot to havinga securely fastened shoe on her foot.
And, you, first time you tried to doanything, the fingers fumble with this.
And parents are watching this andthey're saying, Oh my goodness,
(05:40):
it's taking so much time.
And the girl's getting frustrated.
So the, the inventor behind thisone saw that and said, well,
there must be a better way.
And Velcro exists.
And the insight now seems so obvious.
You just, just pull the Velcroaround and it takes less time and
effort for the girl to do this.
The magic behind this also comes withthe design criteria map because There's
(06:05):
more to it than just the function,
Just to unpack this tool, thefirst thing to notice is that the
scale on the left hand side doesnot go from poor to excellent.
It goes from not good enough, goodenough, delightful, and overshot.
And this captures the insight that it ispossible to have too much of a good thing.
And I would tell you frommy laundry care experience.
(06:26):
It's possible that Procter and Gamble wasguilty of going from clean to cleaner to
so ridiculously clean that we can measureit technology wise, but nobody cares.
And the notion of overshotcomes into this, and we'll
refer to that in these examples.
So that's the left hand scale.
Going across the side, you'veheard me talk about capturing
this magical, emotional moment.
(06:49):
Well, most of the time, a designerwill gravitate to the functional
criteria and forget about Well, waita minute, there's emotional and social
criteria running through this as well.
So that's, that's thematrix we're working with.
Not good enough to overshot andfunctional, emotional and social.
And so now back to our six year old girl.
(07:09):
It's true.
Velcro allows her to get the shoe on withless effort and fasten it more securely.
But what else is going on here?
The framework captures notjust the functional, but the
emotional and the social benefits.
And what's wonderful about this example,is yes, , The little girl got her shoe
on more quickly and more securely,but she gets to feel like a big girl.
So there's the first emotionalbenefit and the parents get to
(07:33):
feel like they're great parents.
And they have the emotional comfort thattheir daughter is now developing normally.
She's achieved this important,developmental milestone.
Everybody's feeling good aboutthemselves and this tool allows
us to capture that magic.
Aidan McCullen (2) (07:51):
It's such a difficult thing to capture through a questionnaire
or asking questions because it's emotionalso you can't measure that even an
fmri scanner can't articulate it for
George Glackin (08:02):
That's true.
That's true.
Well, I think that the power of havinga framework like this is it's not just a
tool to capture, it's a tool to promotecritical thinking in a different way.
And so if I give a corporate explorer ora founder this tool, they've got an empty
space staring at them that they have tothink about and they have to fill in.
Aidan McCullen (2) (08:24):
i'm gonna share as well george website where people can
find you to reach out about these tools.
But also if you go to thecorporate explorer website so www.
thecorporateexplorer.
com forward slash contact.
You can complete a contact form andrequest a version of both chapter
5 which also george co authored andchapter 10 because there's a corrected
(08:50):
version of the diagram from the book.
That we just showed on screen here.
So go to www.
thecorporateexplorer.
com forward slash contact to request acopy of that, and the team will share
that with you, but George, you mentionedthat you have experience working with P&G.
One of the great tools that P&Gcreated to, satisfy so many
(09:14):
emotional needs for, for thecustomer was the P&G Swiffer wet jet.
George Glackin (09:19):
Obviously it's a more complex story than the the six year
old girl tying her shoes, but hopefullywe've got a handle on the tools so that
we can dive into that more completely.
So this story comes from back in 1994,and there was a corporate explorer who
was watching his family mop the floors.
And he was a pretty curious guy.
(09:42):
You could say he was a, an anthropologistin his own home, and , he watched this
and he had been challenged to come upwith the next billion dollar business.
And he's looking at this one going,this might be the one and took
these tools that we've just talkedabout to the team and said, okay,
let's all go be anthropologists.
Let's go into the homes of a dozenfamilies and just watch them do
(10:05):
this process of mopping the floor.
And the value flow that's in the bookwas even more dramatic than the shoes.
It shows that many steps went down tofew from a functional level, including
the amount of time that it took.
To clean the mop the amount of timeit took to clean the person because
the person very typically got dirtyand there was another very intriguing
(10:28):
insight that most of the consumerswere sweeping the floor to get the
crumbs up before they mopped the floor.
So, this is classicfish in its own water.
All these steps are going onand people who are supposed
to be experts in this space.
We're not picking up on it.
So the discipline of going througha value flow really laid this out.
(10:49):
So now the team using the value flowtechnique, they're grounded in the
reality of the problem and they canswitch their thinking over to, okay,
let's think about this as we're designingthe solution from both the functional,
emotional and social standpoint.
And because it was a diverse team,it was an incredibly diverse team.
It was one of the most diverseProctor ever put against this.
(11:11):
It had the usual suspects, of engineers aspart of this and people who are going to
turn it into a production ready product.
It also had some people we justwould not expect to see in the room.
At the time, it was unusual to haveindustrial designers as part of the team.
So we have this immensely diverseteam from a skillset standpoint, and
(11:32):
we brought in people from differentdivisions within the company.
So we had a diaper divisionwas using non woven substrates.
Obviously we have a hardsurface cleaning division.
We didn't quite have a device division.
But that, that wasspurred when this came in.
So you have different skill setsin the room, you have different
functional divisions in the room, andwe have this functional, emotional,
(11:53):
and social imperative to think about.
Great.
We're set up for success now.
And , what we found in goingthrough this is yes, fewer steps.
Didn't have to sweep, didn'thave to clean my own clothes,
did not have to clean the mop.
The really powerful insight thatI believe made the franchise
is that consumers played back.
(12:13):
You won't believe this.
I got the whole family involvedwith cleaning the floors
because it was so fun and easy.
So that, that may have madethe franchise right there.
And I think in this specific example,homeowners want their guests to
come into a house that's alwaysguest ready and a bucket and mop.
Can you imagine?
We've got guests comingover in 15 minutes.
(12:35):
Good heavens.
There's just no way to do this,but you take out a wet jet and
you push it around the floor.
And in five minutes,your home is guest ready.
So I think.
Yes, functional imperatives weredelivered on, but the franchise got
made based on emotional benefits.
Such a great story and the frameworki mean i started applying it to stuff
i'm doing on a on a day basis and cani go where am i missing or where am i,
(12:58):
leaving in steps for even the listenerfor the show that i shouldn't be and
that's a question to listeners of thestuff i'm doing that is annoying for you
please reach out and let me know cuz.
You become blind to this stuffbecause you develop this expertise,
develop a way of doing things.
And it's very, very difficultto rewire your thinking.
But I had a final question for you,George, which is more for corporate
(13:23):
explorers who deal with the silomentality , because you mentioned there
about how that team in P&G was verydiverse, but I'm pretty sure like would
happened in most of those very firstmeetings that comes along, everybody's
sizing each other up looking at us andthem across the organization, because
(13:43):
that's the way organizations weredeveloped, particularly successful
organizations, but that breaking downof silos is something that's so, so.
Key to successful product developmentincluding bring in the customer in
like these anthropologist going in somecases going living with the customer i
love you to share some ways that thatcan be broken down in organizations
(14:08):
and the value of breaking down silos.
The value of breaking out thesilos just cannot be understated.
It's really a one plus one equals threemoment in most cases, because people
just look at the world differentlybecause they've been trained to
look at the world differently.
And I thought I was a prettygood product developer.
A new business developer before Ihave these insights, but it's amazing,
(14:30):
even after decades of practice,what I would miss that someone
else just with a different lens.
I use the term alien eyes a lot.
You bring somebody into the room whodoesn't have this curse of knowledge and
they just look at things and go, like,I can't believe you missed that, George.
And it's it's not a bad moment,it's a wonderful moment, it's
very empowering for everybody.
. There was a project that Andy Benz andI did for a client where the engineers
(14:55):
were convinced they had no right tobe in the room with the end user.
They said, that's somebody else'sjob, and it may even not be
somebody in the company's job.
It may be someone we haveto hire from the outside.
And to put a tool in someone'shand and say, you can do this.
You can take, you can just createa log when you go and watch
(15:15):
someone doing the task, you cando this is amazingly empowering.
And, now you've got an engineer isacting like industrial designers and
industrial designers, acting likeengineers, and it's just, it's a
phenomenal experience for the entire team.
It's very, very empowering.
One last thing I'd be remissif I didn't mention this.
So we've been talking about the,sort of the insight phase of a,
(15:37):
of a new project and then thedevelopment phase of a new project.
There has to be the validation andscale phase or it never gets to market.
And I think one of the things that'svery difficult when you bring in , the
downstream players, let's say youbring in an advertising agency.
Their first instinct might be to say,well, these guys haven't looked at it.
(15:59):
Like we would, we need to reinventthe wheel or, or even worse.
They're not familiarenough with the space.
They think they are andthey create nonsense.
Hypothetical situation, of course.
And I think that when we've done thisparticular, the design criteria map,
all of the success criteria have beenlaid out for design, for development,
(16:21):
for manufacturer, for marketing, forsales, all the talking points, if you
take it all the way downstream fora sales script have been laid out.
So it's a powerful tool in terms ofthe scale and validation of this.
It supports test marketing.
It supports selling experiments.
I've been pleasantly surprised at thepower of having a, an artifact that
(16:43):
captures the original thinking of theinventor and the designer, how, how
powerful that is flowing downstream.
Aidan McCullen (2) (16:50):
it's powerful to have a new lens through which to look
at things and you mentioned aboutthe, neurodiversity or the different
elements of a team coming togetherlooking at the same thing from their
different perspectives but alsohaving a different lens which is your
toolkits as well as so so powerful.
George for people who want to reach outto you, maybe they have a project or
(17:11):
new product they're trying to develop. Where's the best place to find you?,
George Glackin (17:14):
probably the most simple way is I'm on LinkedIn.
That's an easy way to find me.
And of course you mentionedthe ChangeLogic portal.
That's a way too.
Aidan McCullen (2) (17:21):
Absolutely.
I'll link to that as well.
And last but not least, I wantto thank our sponsor Wazoku.
Many people emailed in to ask what doesthe name Wazoku mean Wazoku is Swahili.
And it just means great idea.
And the Wazoku team are advocates ofeveryday and total innovation inside
organizations and strives to makeinnovation a part of everyone's role.
(17:42):
Just like George saidin every organization.
Recently, Wazoku acquired Innocentive,Change in Columbia, Mindpool, IdeaDrop.
And most recently poster lab, andyou can find Wazoku at Wazoku.
com.
Finally, thank you to our guest today.
Co author of the corporate explorerfield book, George Glackin.
(18:03):
Thank you for joining us.
George Glackin (18:05):
Excellent.
It's great.
Thank you very much.
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