instructor Hood's Key Ideas from The Human Side of Innovation
by Mauro Porcini

To achieve excellence, firms must stop thinking of their customers as consumers. Thinking of customers as users helps innovators focus on creating functional value for them. Going a step further and viewing them as human beings emphasizes users’ happiness. Rather than seeing good products solely as a way to generate profits and business growth, human-centered businesses look at them as a way to make people happy.

“Consumer-centricity is about understanding people in order to sell them something. Human-centricity is about understanding people to build real value in their lives.”

A human-centered approach to business mirrors the logic of “design thinking”: Design thinking focuses on the experience of the human being using the product. When creating new products, designers balance the three pillars of innovation:

1. Human beings, or the product’s desirability for the user.
2. Science and technology, or the product’s technical feasibility.
3. Businesses, or the product’s economic viability.

“Designers are essentially trained to become innovators: holistic, multidisciplinary innovators who are able to deal with any kind of problem.”

How do designers respond to these 3 criteria? They use design thinking. Design thinking activities:

• “Empathy” – The designer gets into the heads of users to find out what is relevant to them.
• “Strategy” – A designer must find out if an idea is relevant for the company.
• “Prototyping” – Prototyping catalyzes thinking about strategy and empathy.

“From doodling on Post-it notes to the first functioning model of a car, the prototype is an example of the aesthetic and functional characteristics of a product…created with the aim of generating reactions, interactions, thoughts and reflections.”

Unicorns have entrepreneurial gifts that let them create business strategies and make their dreams realities:

They balance imagination and execution, risk and caution – Unicorns are original thinkers, imagining impossible things and then finding ways to make them possible. They understand that innovative things always involves risk and that calculated risks are necessary to gain knowledge. 

They are proactive – They don’t take things at face value. They ask fundamental questions to see if ideas are being accepted unquestioningly, hiding a better approach. 

They are kind and trustworthy.

-They love diversity –

-They encourage dialogue –

-They are respectful – 

-They know how to tell a story –

-They are good mentors –

-They have a sense of fun –