Willing to Go Off-Road

My friend Philipe Barreaud runs the Customer Innovation Lab for Michelin. He’s the kind of guy who tells the technicians to “hang the sign upside down” in the main office, just to signal the value of seeing things differently and challenging people’s perceptions.

Perry and I were interviewing him today, talking about the impact of design methods on the lab and the broader organization. One of the themes that emerged was the importance of putting ideas into the world in order to learn what's worth putting into the world. It’s true that experimentation begets ideation. It's paradoxical, but sometimes the only way you can discover what's worth doing, is by putting some thing out there that's not worth doing.

To give an example: Philipe described how one team had framed a challenge for the off-road enthusiast community that had to do with understanding tire pressure. But as they put a low-resolution prototype into the hands of users, they started hearing the same thing over and over again: “I don't need this… but you know what I do need?” In a sense, their idea failed. But it was only because of that failure that they discovered something really worth doing. They had proven through their prototype efforts that they were “in the game” to help off-road enthusiasts, and their experimentation unleashed a flood of sharing.

This is often the case: bringing a rough first idea out into the world, and putting it into the hands of real live users, provokes a radically fresh conversation, and yields new insights about a better problem to be solved. The question is, is the team willing to deviate from the plan? Are they willing to let go of the first idea, and jump onto a better problem?

As Philippe said, “Most of the time, the problem is the problem.” And if you’re not willing to reframe the problem to be solved, you’re unlikely to launch something that will truly delight customers.

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