New ideas need new behaviors - a behavioral focus on innovation

JULY 18, 2012

Mark Pollard, VP Brand Strategy - @markpollardOut on Good Behavior

Modified with subtitles for Slideshare.Read with an Australian accent.

Last Saturday, I was playing frisbee with my six-year-old son at Coney Island beach when Frankie, a local eight year old, joined in. After a few minutes of play, I asked Frankie why he had a black eye. He said that a kid had cursed him at school so he hit the kid in his stomach but got headbutted in return.

A few other boys joined in and we switched to volleyball with a soccer ball. About ten minutes in, I turned to pick the ball up only to return to the kids racially slurring each other and threatening to beat each other up. Frankie’s teenage brother was coaching him to stand his ground against three other wild kids saying: “It’s a cold world out there.”

Sometimes, the ideas that

help you survive trap you

These kids are trapped in a cycle. Their ideas will keep them in fights that sometimes they will win; and sometimes they won’t. It made me realize how ideas that help you survive can also trap you.

Title HereSubtitle Here

Like in advertising: the politics, the competing, the infighting, the sex, the beheadings. Advertising is engorged with people who have survived with ideas that are trapping them.

Ideascompel

behavior

Why are they trapped? Well, their ideas compel their behavior.

There is so much research about this. This classic business book shows how good management necessarily leads to worse performance unless you can create a new culture and an approach to innovation outside the everyday approach to business.

New behaviors compel

new ideas

The only way to get to unexpected new ideas is to encourage new behaviors because new behaviors beget new ideas. And it’s this focus on new behaviors that I want to discuss with you today.

What happens after advertising?

Which brings us to this question: What happens after advertising? It’s important to me for two reasons. First, a lot of great people I know pose this question to themselves every day because they’re tired of the toxicity and bad behaviors of the industry. Second, this question shapes our behavior at Big Spaceship.

How we behavee culture and structure of Big Spaceship

I.

1. There’s nocreativedepartment

Creative Commons: Darwin Bell http://www.flickr.com/photos/darwinbell

Less politics leads to less noise and more focus on issues at hand.

2. There’s no production department

Teams bleed into each other’s realms and everyone expects to contribute to the making of a project - through whatever skills one has at hand.

Cross Disciplinary Teams

This is how we sit. And each team has its own name.

3. Culture is critical to the CEO

Creative Commons: T Krueger http://www.flickr.com/photos/55249741@N06/

There are 2 types of CEO: one who fixates on money almost at the cost of culture, and the other who creates a culture in which great work happens.

4. Values trump process

Creative Commons: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons

Much of Big Spaceship is a self-organizing organism. Tools and systems exist but each team works the way it wants to.

Collaborate.Produce exceptional work.Take care of each other.Partner with your client.

e rest is up to you.

Four Principles

5. It’s a very self-aware culture

Creative Commons: Leonard John Matthews http://www.flickr.com/photos/mythoto/3943777830/sizes/o/in/photostream/

What we stand for and what we are good at is a constant discussion. On every project, we try to bring the best of our culture to the work.

6. It’s a quiet culture

Much of our culture happens through Gchat, AOL chat, Basecamp and on our internal blog. Loudness doesn’t indicate anything; making stuff does.

You know you’ve made it when this happens to you.

7. If change matters, don’t service it with lips

Creative Commons: Cobalt http://www.flickr.com/photos/coblat/525132270/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Jazz hands and lip service can only get change so far. We’ve made several changes over the years - from making movie websites in Flash, to now, where a majority of our work involves products and platforms.

How we focus on behavior

An unprocessed approach to strategy in 5 slides

II.

Ideascompel

behavior

If we take this as an obvious given...

Purpose is the new

ideaHow does the business serve humanity?

Then purpose - because of its ability to compel behaviors - is the new idea.

And the planningis in thebehaviorHow will the business behave?

What behavior are we trying to affect?What behavior can we play to?

Stage

Step

Actions

Insights

Content

Metrics

The future of planning is in the experience

Make-behavingTurning behavior into made things

III.

SkittlesSkittlesWrigley

Understanding that Skittles lovers enjoyed certain types of bite-sized content led to a never-ending rainbow of absurdism.

Before

Starwars.comLucasfilm

Understanding that Star Wars needed to engage superfans as well as less involved people, led to a website that allowed depth as well as simpler exploration.

stronger screen

VW add

What do you love?What Do You LoveGoogle

Understanding that people learn by doing and that their passions are key to their online behavior, instead of a messaging campaign, we created this tool for Google.

Before

Most Awesomest Thing Ever

Big Spaceship

Understanding that people love comparing random things and debating which is better led to this: The Most Awesomest Thing Ever.

So, that’s how a focus on behavior affects our culture, our approach and our work. And, while I hope that Frankie from Coney Island escapes the cycle that his ideas may trap him in, and if we treat Frankie merely as a metaphor, then our industry doesn’t need more Frankies.

Can good behavior get you out in time?

www.bigspaceship.comMark Pollard, VP Brand Strategy - @markpollard