Workshop
Selling-In Innovation
Jon Kolko & Matt Franks
Get a great idea through the wringer and into the world.
There are many challenges to shipping successful product and service innovations, but "having a good idea" is rarely one of them. Instead, one of the biggest roadblocks to bringing a new innovation to life is telling the story of the innovation in a way that is charismatic, compelling, and persuasive. To help a company drive towards a north-star, team members and stakeholders need help imagining a new vision of the future, and understanding why that future is valuable. This storytelling is fundamental to design strategy: it's a way of selling-in innovation.
During this hands-on workshop, facilitators Jon Kolko and Matt Franks will introduce a three-step process for bringing an innovation to life in a way that drives alignment and generates groundswell. This process includes:
- Building a succinct and concrete value proposition
- Drawing a new, optimistic vision of the future
- Structuring and telling a persuasive story
As a result of taking this workshop, attendees will:
- Be able to synthesize ethnographic data into meaningful pillars of value
- Understand how to show a story of value in a short sketch or storyboard
- Know how to present a case for a new idea in a way that is charismatic and convincing
Workshop tickets are sold separately from other conference events.
Outline
Introduction (30 minutes)
Participants will learn about the fundamentals of design strategy.
Moving from Data to Themes to Insights (1 hour)
Participants will learn to move from data to themes, and ultimately, to value-based insights that describe a new value proposition.
Sketching Value (1 hour)
Participants will learn to draw a visualizations to bring ideas to life and communicate value.
Crafting a Persuasive Story of the Future (1 hour)
Participants will learn how to leverage data, themes, insights, and sketches to convince people to follow them.
Reflection (30 minutes)
The group will identify challenges in this approach in their companies.
Target audience
While valuable for all practitioners, this topic is most relevant to product and service designers, product managers, and leaders responsible for setting or driving an agenda through a large, opinionated organization. This content resonates with participants who struggle to navigate a plurality of opinions about innovation, and are looking for ways to help communicate their perspectives and approaches to different disciplines and stakeholders.
About the speakers
Jon Kolko
I'm a Partner at Modernist Studio, and the Founder of Austin Center for Design.
I was previously the Vice President of Design at Blackboard, the largest educational software company in the world. I joined Blackboard with the acquisition of MyEdu, a startup focused on helping students succeed in college and get jobs.
I've also held the positions of both Principal Designer and Associate Creative Director at frog design, a global innovation firm. I was a Professor of Interaction and Industrial Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where I was instrumental in building both the Interaction and Industrial Design undergraduate and graduate programs. I've also held the role of Director for the Interaction Design Association (IxDA), and Editor-in-Chief of interactions magazine, published by the ACM.
I've written six books, including my most recent, Creative Clarity.
Matt Franks
Matt is a Partner at Modernist Studio. He was previously a product owner and creative director at Blackboard. He is also an instructor at Austin Center for Design. His work focus includes social system design, mobile systems for both handsets and tablets, entertainment experiences for TV, web, and video, and strategic design thinking for large-scale system design and product rollout. He's been awarded patents and a silver IDEA award for Target’s ClearRX bottle.