Better science by exploring metaphors

Brewing with champagne yeast. Beverage and music production by Mitchell Sipus

Brilliant campaigns and sharp insights are not tied to rational processes. Business schools overlook this. We train young minds in rigorous and highly structured analysis, and yet, the ability to identify the uncanny and seize it is more frequently tied to open dialogue, fast moving conversations, and slow periods of reflection. In the meanwhile, we do not educate our MBAs to meditate or to work through metaphors.

I once read in Ray Kurzweil's How to create a mind, that Einstein wasn't so much a strong mathematician, but had a strong ability to think through metaphors. Kurzweil described Albert Einstein as a man who would read voraciously and daydream, but unlike most of us, would carry the imagined scenario many steps forward into the realms of abstraction. Once he these dreamlike scenarios were far and distant from reality - he would begin to analyze them, reverse engineering them into plausibility. He didn't do better math - he just did better at dreaming.

Over the last five years I have worked on this technique. While working at the EPA, I built rich metaphors for the organization as a car on a race track and as a dust storm on the moon (yeah, I realize, it doesn't have dust storms). I pushed these metaphors hard, imagining scenarios where the wheels fall off or static electricity evolves into a cosmic disturbance. And then I began to work backwards and sideways, repositioning these extended metaphors and translating them into something real. Sometimes it created value. Sometimes it did not. Sometimes it just gave me a headache. But when I injected the outcome of the effort into daily work - it always had repercussions. My colleague Ben Wilman and I did some great work at the EPA, and I suspect this was part of it.

In the video above, I am creating a metaphor. I was brewing hard seltzer at home and started to film the settlement of the yeast as it interacted with diamonnium phosphate,  a yeast nutrient. Through the camera lens, I found the interaction of the champagne yeast and the nutrient somehow romantic and extraterrestrial. I wrote some music and applied it to the imagery.

What is this? I do not know? How will it shape the next steps in the scientific process of alcohol production that I otherwise am constantly measuring and locking away into a database? I do not know. But by and large, databases only enable greatness, they do not create it. Metaphors can unlock new worlds, whereas science can only study them.

Service Design for Realizing the Invisible

Spotify also uses Service Design to better connect and understand how users interact with their service over time.

I am an avid practitioner of Service Design. I apply it broadly throughout my life, from the design of algorithms to the renovation of rooms in my house like the kitchen or the dining room. I rely upon it because Service Design is the practice to make visible the invisible.

Everyday we conduct sequences of actions to generate some kind of change in the world. Sometimes the relationship between the action and the result are direct - like you add oil to the car engine to lubricate the engine.  But other times we conduct multiple actions to reach a goal. Maybe we go to the grocery store with the end goal of bodily nourishment, or we go to the bar with the end goal of social engagement. Along the way you choose and pay for items.

Along the way you rely upon other persons and their actions. The grocery shelves must be stocked and the drinks must be served.

You rely upon an environment, such as the store or the bar, and expect the environment to be designed so as to support your actions. Food items are clearly visible and the bar has a surface upon which you may rest your drink, or maybe chairs, or at a minimum, enough space for a crowd of people to congregate.

Qualitative atmospheric element will shape these environments and influence your judgement although these elements are not directly connected to your goals or your actions. Within an upscale grocer like Whole Foods the lighting is often dim with dramatic spotlights creating strong shadows.  Is the bar full of energetic young people with nothing else to do or is it full of tired people in their 50s who just finished a day of work?

To provide a radical product innovation in these spaces can benefit from an understanding of how all these different factors - and others - inform and define the product as a service. I've seen AR apps to help people navigate grocery stores - and yet, I wondered "how is this better than the existing signage? Or how is a visual navigation system better than a 2D map?" 

Likewise, in a discussion about security systems, I've wondered how does face recognition on a camera actually improve security? Does it notify guards of unwanted persons? Does it seal the doors so the person can't enter the building?  What is the appropriate action for the venue to apply the technology?

Through service design, one can benefit from a structured approach, to identify the range of human interactions with a set of conditions to accomplish a goal, and how those interactions are distributed over space and time.  In this regard, it transforms the everyday experience into a gold mine of opportunity.

Companies Need Transaction Design for Faster Technology Returns

Many profitable, hard working businesses find themselves burdened over time by their own tools and processes. Maybe a tool like Excel or Quickbooks was the right tool for the job, once upon a time, but now the organization has grown to keep up with customer demand and you find it hard to manage as those tools are now a burden.  Or perhaps your company is competing in a crowded market and you feel a pressure to continually invest in technology to compete. This makes sense, given how companies like Amazon and Shopify have dramatically shifted retail models with their technology-first approach to customer frustrations like shipping, returns, and check out. 

There are usually only two ways that leadership approaches these problems. First invest into optimizing current and known bottlenecks, and this is a sound approach. By and large it's a great approach because you can identify clear metrics and double down on improving the numbers. This is winning. The second is that you invest into novel experiments - new flavors, new materials, or new customer experiences such as a digitized checkout lane or AI voice assistance in the changing room. These projects are expensive, so are limited to small-scale pilots, and performance impact can take a bit of effort to measure. 

I've found that a third model also exists. This model only exists "sometimes, is fleeting, and requires an anthropological rigor to identify. I call this kind of work Transaction Design, when you are able to thoughtfully craft a new kind of financial transaction, often by using a simple technology. For example,  Plaid was created by a startup as an API solution to streamline transactions for investment tools like Robinhood, so individuals can make small investments with lower fees, and do this quickly. Another examples include Sophi's use of housing equity to offset student loans, enabling millennials to buy a home and pay their loans; or the notion that security deposits for apartments can be outsourced as insurance, so that millennials do not need to save 3X the rent, while reducing overhead compliance challenges for landlords.Here is the thing - any time a technology enables a capital transaction that could not previously exist,  it becomes a repeatable model. 

Transaction design can be implemented with speed and low-costs, unlike and expensive tech-heavy pilot of novel gimmicks, and creates new kind of customer insights with less investment. In fact, transaction design can generate rapid returns on existing tools, and give insight into how to design a tech roadmap for future capability needs, not just to amend current gaps. After all, isn't the biggest waste of money to only exist in meeting current market conditions, when those conditions are certain to change? No one wants that - especially share holders. 

How do you conduct Transaction Design in your company? You should not just run out and start trying to slam them into your current enterprise - that's for sure.  Also brainstorming exercises are never the best place to start.  Rather, you need to find the right expert, someone who understands the breadth of conversion models out there and has the means to understand your organization through its data, it's structural design, processes, and people. At the end of the day, it's always about the right people, because that part never changes.