The Design of Business is Your Business

Greetings branded individuals!
Some of you may have read that unemployment has ticked up a bit in my home state of Virginia.  We are actually in pretty good shape, with an unemployment rate nearly 3 percentage points lower than the national average (6.2% VA vs. 9.2% national).  Interestingly, though, corporate profits are up. Way up.  How is this happening?

Most of the corporate growth has been overseas, for one thing, which obviously means no American jobs.  Ssecondly, corporate productivity continues to rise, so business feels no need to hire.  Unfortunately, they feel no need to give raises either, since there is little competing demand for their human capital.  Business is by nature conservative; most businesses fight change.  Innovation is often sacrificed for efficiency.  Which, I believe, is the reason social media is not yet universally recognized for its massive potential as a marketing and sales tool.

I just finished a book about the struggle between efficiency and innovation in business called The Design of Business.  It is written by Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and gives fascinating insight as to why both "new knowledge" (innovation) and "current knowledge"(efficiency) can amd must coexist in an organization.  Martin makes the point that a business totally reliant on analytical thinking may be blind to opportunities and resistant to change.  "Design thinking" accelerates the pace at which information moves through an organization, which means costs of the knowledge will decrease as it creates productivity increases.  At a more rapid throughput, business may still have a competitive advantage when the information is applied or adopted.

Being an innovation champion in an organization can sometimes be perilous to your career. (Editor's Note: That is why you need your personal brand!) At this time, there are still CEO's thinking social media is for his kids, or crowding the responsibilities for social media on someone's already loaded job description.  The challenge lies in making the traditional organization see the value in social media applications. A design thinking organization will understand the balance required between efficiency and innovation to keep its business competitive.  That is the organization with whom I want to stake my future.

Thanks for reading!
SH