Dixon on Problem Solving - Bad Times or Good

Combine engineering and architectural credentials with a deep expertise in brand strategy, and you get why Prophet Senior Partner Peter Dixon’s perspective is unusual and his insights are in demand. “It’s all about making values visible,” he says. In an interview, Dixon shares the kind of thinking that helps businesses transform – whatever the economic conditions.

What would you say are the greatest challenges in this business environment?
This is an environment that calls for strong strategy, and what’s doubly important is the execution against that strategy in a way that brings it to life. Now, more than ever, we need ideas that are relevant to the business and to customers and are not indulgences. Design has to be effective. It has to help change behavior more than ever, and that makes it imperative to link design to business strategies.

Your specialty is translating strategy into experience. What are the challenges here, and are they heightened in the current economic environment?
It’s a challenge in any environment, but success at it really is what differentiates leaders. McDonald’s is a great example with its full-blown brand strategy around this idea of “Forever Young.” It was all about continually being relevant, and a whole set of activities were tied to – new products, new pricing, new nutritional efforts, and a new advertising campaign with the “loving it” tagline. While at my former employer, I was involved in helping translate “Forever Young” to the restaurant environment. A lot of this was tied to young adults, figuring how to make McDonald’s relevant to them. You know, a restaurant that would let them hang out, and where they wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen. Because it offered things that were about their lifestyle. So we brought in elements like music, WiFi connectivity, and in-store videos – all these elements that brought the strategy to life, but in a way that was also appropriate for moms and younger kids. That translation represented a big leap for McDonald’s.

Prophet talks a lot about the art and science blend that makes for the best marketing. How does that concept tie back to your philosophy and how it has unfolded in the work that you have done?
A lot of businesses characterize themselves as creative and intuitive, experientially driven, like Apple. Or, they see themselves as completely analytic and process driven. Both, I think, are finding that they need a bit more of the missing element – science on one hand, art on the other – to be more effective. In fact, I believe organizations are ready to embrace more deeply a design thinking philosophy, which calls for the synthesis of a much broader range of inputs from both the art and science sides to create the best, most innovative results.

Design thinking? This isn’t typical marketing-speak.
Two things differentiate design thinking. One is the notion that input comes from a variety of places, not just the focus group, or syndicated marketing research, or the inspirational ideas gained through graphic observation. A broader set of inputs allows you to synthesize more powerful solutions to business problems. The second is the whole iterative nature of a designer’s approach: Whether you sit in front of a screen or work on a little model of something, it’s going to be wrong a whole bunch of times before its right. You learn every step of the way through this iterative process. Business thinking is about getting it perfect and then launching it. In design thinking, it’s about trying different things and iterating the solutions faster.

Design thinking is not a flavor of the month. It is an intrinsically powerful way to think about the world, whether brand or design, and going beyond the marketing jargon. It’s essentially a different way of thinking to devise powerful ideas that will help build business. And that’s a relevant notion to be exploring these days.

To learn more about Peter and his work, please view his bio here