Archive for October 4th, 2008
HTC’s innovation recipe: "Magic Labs"
“HTC already had innovation DNA for many, many years. About three years ago, I started Magic Labs inside HTC more to formalize the innovation process. Magic Labs today has about 60 magicians (…) I’m the chief marketing officer of HTC, but if you look at my business card it says “Chief Innovation Wizard” (…) what is important is that this is the only group within HTC that does not have product ship date deadlines.”
Read Kermit Pattison’s article, “How innovation led HTC to the Dream,” on FastCompany.
HTC’s John Wang explains that his recipe to innovate relies on assembling a cross-functional team formed by people with diverse backgrounds. They cover different areas of expertise ranging from human factors and graphic artists to software and hardware engineering.
Most interestingly, John acknowledges that his team’s failures happen to strengthen the company’s chances for success.
Here is how: the so-called “magicians” are expected to generate a number of product and application concepts out of which just a selected few will translate into actual products.
“Magic Labs is an ideation engine. If you are sitting inside in one of the Magic Labs brainstorming rooms, within an hour, probably 200 ideas will be generated all over the wall. The culture is really good at doing that. Every day there are many brainstorming sessions taking place, many prototypes being built and most of them are to demonstrate, prove or disapprove certain concepts.”
Sounds familiar? That’s pretty much how most creatives and industrial designers go about their jobs. So, nothing new so far. What’s more important is that “failing often, fast and cheaply” speeds up HTC’s learning curve when dealing with emerging technologies. This ends up being a key risk mitigation strategy and the opposite of the “zero defects – get it right the first time” mindset, often imposed by misunderstood quality management practices and budgeting processes undermining innovative thinking.
There is also an implicit acknowledgement of the fact that innovating has to do with both, listening to customers as well as leveraging the company’s in-house talent. This means advancing products and features which the market might not have yet thought of. It comes down to understanding the basics behind “pull and push” innovation models. Even better, blending them becomes a best practice, a recipe freeing your company from “Clayton’s innovator dilemma.”
Links of interest:
Related posts:
- Nokia’s innovation recipe: “there is no blueprint.”
- Nokia’s design research for everyone
- Apple’s innovation recipe
| José de Francisco López |  |
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| Chicago, IL 5 Oct 08 |  |
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