Article: Innovation is the New Black

UIEtips 6/1/06: Innovation is the New Black

The spring conference season is upon us and, by coincidence, I’ve recently found myself at several conferences where many of the participants were executives from organizations such as GE, The World Bank, Bloomberg, Intuit, Microsoft, and Best Buy. Hanging out with these folks has given me a chance to hear the challenges they are currently facing.

Executives, for the most part, now face the same challenges as they always have: the need to increase revenue and customers, decrease costs, and enhance shareholder value. However, I’ve noticed a real shift in their strategies. Many are now turning to innovation as the mantra for tackling the hurdles they see.

This shift to innovation is a good thing for us, the design practitioners. We thrive on being innovative and love the opportunity to show what we can do. Now we can get attention for our talents all the way to the corner office.

The more we understand what executives are seeking, the more support we can generate for those things we love doing. This can only be a good thing, since innovation thrives in both growing and shrinking economies. This thrust will serve to cement our value to the organization as time goes forward.

This week’s featured article, Innovation is the New Black, talks about this new executive attention on innovation. In the article, I explain how the designers at Apple and Netflix have made a profound impression on executives everywhere giving experience design a new focus.

Have you noticed an increased focus on innovation in your organization? What are you doing to respond to it? Share your thoughts below.

Read the article here.

[Since experience design is an essential skill set for innovative companies, we’ve made the theme for this year’s User Interface Conference be “Enriching the Experience.” If you haven’t registered yet, you’ll want to look at the conference program, as we’ve packed it full of valuable expertise on all aspects of creating innovative designs. Details about the conference are here.]

Update: Apparently, the @issue conference isn’t the first place Bruce Nussbaum talked about innovation being the new black, as Michael Bierut points out.