Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania – March 6, 2013 –
Veros Advisors LLC, the suburban Philadelphia-based strategy and
innovation consulting firm, recently brought together three of the region’s top
innovators for a panel discussion on “Innovation by Design” at the
University City Science Center.
Featured
panelists on the “Smart Talk: Innovation by Design” panel, held on
Wednesday, February 27th, were Jeffrey Friedman, Co-Director
of the City of Philadelphia’s Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics; Youngmoo
Kim, Director of the Expressive and Creative Interaction Technologies
(ExCITe) Center at Drexel University; and Lawrence Husick, an expert on
intellectual property and technological law with the firm Lipton, Weinberger
& Husick.
The
discussion was moderated by Frank Pulcini, founder and President of Veros
Advisors LLC. Over 75 local entrepreneurs,
business leaders and students from industries including bio-tech,
pharmaceuticals, life sciences and technology attended the fast-paced 90 minute
discussion, and a lively question-and-answer session.
Pulcini, who
has over 25 years of consulting experience advising Fortune 500 companies such
as GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson, told the group: “At Veros
Advisors, our mission is to rid the world of ‘Unnovation’ and replace it
with ‘Innovation by Design.’ The products, the companies, the businesses we
view as innovative are innovative because they are valued by people – they have
a human-centered design, a human-centered value. The design process
incorporates people, technology, and business. Design is a process that
can be applied to any problem, from finding a job to starting a business.
“In our work,
we show how design principles relate to innovation,” said Pulcini.
“Wherever there’s innovation, there’s design. If you want to innovate,
there’s no better way than to design. It’s not a nebulous process – it is
very codified. All the great organizations have been designed brands.”
Husick, who
has extensive experience as a technology consultant, computer system designer,
software author and intellectual property lawyer, related to the audience many
of his experiences with technology companies, notably his first meeting with
Apple founder Steve Jobs.
“I pitched
Steve Jobs on an idea when he was starting NeXT. One thing I saw right away was
that he didn’t suffer fools gladly,” Husick said. “The person who pitched
before me had 20 seconds before he was thrown out of the room. Steve gave
me one minute, and then said ‘that’s cool,’ and told his associate to give me
what I wanted and he walked out. Steve Jobs demanded unflinching honesty
and quality from everyone. Once he said, ‘Compare us to Phillips.
Here, if you do good work, it will ship. There, 98 percent of your work
ends up in the trash.’
“Most
traditional innovation is defensive, a reaction to a competitors," Husick
asserted. “It’s not safe to stand still. Design-centered innovation
is how I can create value – it’s like creative destruction. I’m not going
to wait to be threatened; I’m going to be in the vanguard, doing the
threatening.”
Friedman, the
co-director of Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter’s Office of New Urban
Mechanics, spoke about his perspective at an in-house civic idea incubator.
“I’ve been in
city government for a few years, and have led a number of initiatives to make
city government more open, participatory, transparent, entrepreneurial and
innovative. While I do have a law degree, I didn’t pursue a legal
career -- I want to be one of those who make changes in the civic space,” said
Friedman. “In government, traditional innovation is driven from the top
down. all departments are told to accept a change. User-centric,
customer-centric innovation is driven from the bottom, up.
"We have
several projects underway that are highly collaborative, engaging people and
resources from within city government as well as from the private and education
sectors,” Friedman said. “As with any new initiative, it takes time to
build coalitions that work and are sustainable, but we are seeing evidence that
we are on the right path and that innovation in government can be exciting and
productive. Critically important is commitment from the top, and we have
that."
An Associate
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Drexel University, Kim
discussed his role in establishing the ExCITe Center and his research lab, the
Music and Entertainment Technology Laboratory (MET-lab).
“We started
by combining music and science, but it wasn’t by design at first,” Kim
said. “With the ExCITe Center, we are bringing together a lot of
different researchers and disciplines under one roof, and that brings
innovation through collaboration. Traditional innovation has been
disciplined and focus – what can we create that is new? Design-centered
innovation requires advances in multiple fields.
“Design-centered
innovation has taken a strong hold in academia,” said Kim. “At Drexel, we
are trying to move from a single disciplinary approach – science, technology,
engineering and mathematics – because we don’t think that tells the whole
story. We are integrating art and design, too. We are now seeing
educators beginning to embrace a design-centered approach to building a
curriculum and activities from kindergarten to grade 12.”
According to
Pulcini, “Some organizations can’t seem to ‘get’ innovation. We recently
worked with a multi-disciplinary team at a company that came up with a great
idea, but they were told by their manager that ‘we don’t do things like that
here.’ Because they felt so strongly about their concept, they decided to
present the idea to their president and he gave them a push to go
forward. ‘Innovation by Design’ requires entrepreneurs and business
leaders to be open to new ideas and be willing to take risks.”
In response
to an audience question about how to persuade senior managers to become
champions of innovation, Husick commented that “pushing on a rope doesn’t
work. My thesis is that acceptance of any innovation recognizes two
things – people are lazy and cheap. Is it something that gives them more
money or more free time? Is there a value for the consumer? An
innovation that gives you pull in the marketplace, instead of something that is
pushed."
Friedman
noted that “bureaucracies move slowly, and traditionally don’t have an
entrepreneurial spirit. Innovation can expose problems in a system. You
need to bring in outsiders, especially in government, who have experience
solving problems.”
“You need a
strong immune system to be an innovator,” Kim said. “When you exist in a
genius environment, you can innovate. Bureaucracies treat innovators like
bacteria and work quickly to eliminate them from the system."
Husick asked
the audience if they knew the definition of an org chart. “An
organization chart tells you who you are not allowed to talk to,” Husick
said. “If you want innovation, you need to redesign an
organization. Innovation
always entails risk.”
About
Veros Advisors:
Veros
Advisors is a
strategy and innovation firm that helps individuals and enterprises take a
person-centric approach to innovation and growth. The company
collaborates with a wide variety of clients on innovation and strategy
initiatives, including brand, communication, business design, insights and
discovery, and product and service innovation. Additional information is
available at http://www.verosadvisors.com.
Media
Contact:
Jim
DeLorenzo
215-266-5943