Catalyzing Innovation on the Frontlines

All businesses today are on the look-out for leaders with the innovation instincts of Steve Jobs, the political skills of Lee Kuan Yew, and the emotional intelligence of Desmond Tutu. But, should the truth be told, such people are rare, if they’re at all. When it comes to innovation, a business enterprise may be lucky to have a leader of Steve’s caliber; but, I’d like to argue that they can innovate just as well even without such a leader at the helm. In one of his HBR articles-The Innovation Catalysts-Professor Roger Martin, a former Dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and the man who is credited for coining the much popular phrase today – ‘Design Thinking’ tells us how the software giant Intuit catalyzed innovation on the frontlines.

One day in 2007, as he wrapped up of his five hour-long PowerPoint presentation on the merits of design at the Design for Delight (D4D) workshop, Scott Cook, Co-founder of Intuit had an epiphany. Much to his disappointment, Cook realized he was no Steve Jobs and that his presentation fell flat on the Intuit’s top 300 managers in the audience. Their respectful attitude, dutiful attention and appreciative applause hardly dissembled the fact that there was scant energy in the room. But, shortly afterwards came the moment that sparked off the Intuit’s transformation.

While Scott Cook and then Intuit’s CEO Steve Bennett had organized D4D program on the advice of Claudia Kotchka, then P&G’s Vice President of Design Innovation and Strategy and a prestigious IDEO Fellow now, Cook had also invited Alex Kazaks, a young Consulting Associate Professor at Stanford whom he’d met some time back to present for an hour at the event. The young Stanford professor climbed on to stage and like Cook himself started with a PowerPoint presentation. But he’d conclude his presentation in 10 minutes and spend the remaining 50 minutes on a participatory exercise. He had the managers work through a design challenge, crafting prototypes, getting feedback, iterating and fine-tuning. It was an inspiring exercise, indeed.

When Cook polled the participants informally at the end of the workshop, they said two thirds of the day’s lessons had come from the participatory exercise during Kazaks’ presentation. Presently, it dawned on Cook that perhaps Intuit didn’t need a Steve Jobs and that with a couple of tools, coaching and practice, those on the frontlines could achieve success in innovation and galvanize customers.

The new-found insights, albeit nascent yet, spurred Cook to action. His trusted lieutenant, Kaaren Hanson, a highly talented young design director, convinced him to let her build a team of ‘Innovation Catalysts’. Once Cook nodded approval, she hand-picked nine people for her team. While all of them were designers one way or another, they all also shared a broad perspective on what it meant to be a designer, that is, beyond creating a compelling graphical user interface, they understood whether the software addressed the customers’ problems in a delightful way. The team of six women & four men, were all influential at Intuit, but were still one or two levels below the post of director. Ipso facto, they were closer to the bottom of the company than the top.

Intent on hardwiring design thinking into the Intuit culture, Cook and Hansen then organized a series of Design for Delight (D4D) forums. Before long, it was increasingly evident that the bold initiative by Cook and Hansen was starting to pay off. In 2008, sans any direct support from the management, two employees who’d been with Intuit just for four months designed ‘Brainstorm’, an online social network for the D4D programs. In its first year, the forum saw the birth of 32 ideas which made it to the market. Notably, the focus shifted towards learning directly from customers about what they truly wanted.

‘Painstorm’, a process developed by Rachel Evans and Kim McNealy, two innovation catalysts, identifies the true pain-points of customers which Intuit can offer relief for. In a ‘Painstorm’, team members talk to and watch customers at their offices or homes. Over time, it’s led to tremendously successful customer-centric innovations.  A Painstorm is generally followed by a ‘Soljam’ where people first come up with as many ideas & suggestions as possible to address the pain points they’ve already identified and then whittle it down to a shortlist for prototyping and testing. The third step is ‘code-jam’ where people do the coding which is far from air-tight but is still good enough to pass the application into the customers hands. Interestingly, they carry out the whole process within just 4 weeks.

Since 2007, Intuit has been steadily growing the team of innovation catalysts and reinforcing its innovative culture. It’s been yielding impressive results. In 2014, the company posted a net profit of US $907 million. Perhaps Brad Smith, Intuit CEO & President today, sums it all up best as he remarks “We are 30 year old 8,000 employee startup. All 8,000 employees are entrepreneurs and they’re innovators. It’s everybody’s job to create, to invent, and to look for new and better ways to improve our customers’ lives.” Only Intuit can do it?