“We need new choices.”

I’m thinking this is the perfect mantra for association leaders as we approach 2010.  Associations face complex challenges, and the current options for tackling them don’t really inspire too much confidence in our ultimate success.  Not only do we need to think about our problems in new ways, but we literally need different strategies for solving them.  In other words, we need new choices.

Tim Brown’s excellent new book, Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, is all about how mindset and approaches of design thinking can help all organizations create new choices.  We had a terrific conversation about the nature of design thinking, the “new social contract,” and what makes IDEO a remarkable company.  Listen to our conversation, then go out and buy this book!

This podcast (22.5 MB download) is just over 24 minutes in length.  Please e-mail me if you have any comments, questions and suggestions for future guests.  And please don’t forget to follow me on Twitter!

Download audio file (timbrown.mp3)

Links mentioned during the podcast

+Stanford d.school

+IDEO’s Human-Centered Design Toolkit

+Relevance isn’t a purpose–How will your association’s pursuit of relevance nurture an authentic connection to purpose among your stakeholders?  The answer is it won’t.  There is nothing compelling or inspirational about being relevant.  The quest for relevance is a quixotic effort that undermines your association’s capacity to deeply engage its most passionate stakeholders in co-creating truly distinctive forms of value, and wastes precious organizational attention, energy and financial resources.

+Relevance isn’t a strategy–Since we’ve been talking about relevance for such a long time, you would think more associations would have cracked the code by now.  So why are so many organizations in our community still doing so much irrelevant stuff?  Why are so many associations still trapped inside their legacy programs, structures and systems?  It’s because relevance isn’t an actual strategy, merely a cognitive device we use to justify the painfully-slow incremental change we prefer over the systemic innovation our organizations require.

+Relevance isn’t a business model–As we enter a “reset economy,” associations are understandably concerned about the sustainability of their existing business models.  Arguably the most significant innovation challenge (and opportunity) associations will have during this still unfolding period of uncertainty is the task of designing and developing generative new business models that are grounded in purpose, and built on meaning, intimacy and support.  The relevance argument does nothing to advance our work in this regard, and associations should abandon any mental model that interferes with their ability to identify ways they can be better than relevant.

Associations face serious and complex problems today and in the years ahead, and relevance-oriented thinking will not help us solve them.  It’s time to start thinking in a brand new way about what will.

I’d like to share some of the experience, so here is my quick top ten list of favorite things from BIF-5 (#BIF5) Day One, with some help from my fellow Twitterers. (FYI, I’m @pinnovation) Thank you all for being so terrific.

10.  We talked openly about breasts and testicles, and everyone made it through any embarrassment they were feeling around those conversations, especially me.  (The common denominator:  take the early detection of cancer very seriously.)

9.  17 presentations. Not a single bullet point. Not a podium in sight. (via @tjsondermann)

When you’re right, you’re right.

8.  Roger Martin quotes The Economist: “MBA programs churn out jargon-spewing economic vandals” (via @chimoose)

Ditto.

7.  I am honored to be in presence of so many smart, accomplished people at BIF Summit. Wow. Brain spinning. Looking forward to tomorrow. (via @ericadriver)

The level of the intellects in the room, both on stage and in the seats, is quite staggering and quite humbling.  I was especially excited to meet Alex Osterwalder (@business_design), the lead author of the new book, Business Model Innovation, an extraordinary work in the creation of which I was privileged to participate along with 400+ community members around the world.  If you’re planning to be here tomorrow, try to meet Alex.  Great guy, great book.

6. Although we talk about velocity, sometimes an entrepreneur’s story is about way-finding, a journey over time, like @sweetriot (via @aptuscollab)

The notion of discovery or “finding” was present throughout the day, and it raises what I think is an important question about innovation we need to be able to answer:  if innovation truly is about discovery, i.e., finding, tinkering, experimenting/learning over time, how do we build organizational patience for discovery as an element of innovation capacity building?

5. Neri Oxman: manmade designs: model/simulate/fabricate=different systems. Biosystems simultaneously model/simulate/fabricate (via @kippworks) 

Neri Oxman totally blew me away with her talk.  It was incredibly thought-provoking, complex and nuanced.  Without trying to trivialize Neri’s work by extrapolating in a different direction, I believe the notion of design as “form-finding” rather than “form-making” has important implications for our organizations, especially as we think about business model innovation. 

4.  I heard more people use the word “generative” here today than I usually do in a month outside of this community.  We’re so caught up in being effective and productive, especially right now, I’m concerned that our organizations have forgotten what it means to originate, i.e., to be generative.  It really doesn’t have to be an either/or choice.

3.  Innovation requires a level of vulnerability that most are not comfortable with - Saul Kaplan (@skap5) (via @aphaneuf)

I think this is observation is spot on, and for me it is the flip side of the passion that innovators feel for their work.  Passionate people naturally want to share that passion with others, which creates vulnerability.  Saul has written eloquently on the subject of passion and innovation.

2.  Michael Samuelson: as an innovator, let the hubris go. Ask the stupid questiions don’t be practical. (via @jpamental)

Permission to defy conventional wisdom and standard expectations…exactly what we needed to set the tone for the two days.

1. Common theme at BIF:  you never know what creativity might come from disparate groups of people (via @rcorke)

I was especially excited at the diversity of disciplines represented by today’s storytellers…a very powerful mix of personal and professional reflections.

If you’re here at BIF-5, I hope you’ll share your top five or ten things from the first day.  If you don’t have your own blog where you can post them, you can always add your list as a comment below.  Can’t wait for tomorrow!

Related posts:

1. My Top Ten Favorite Things About #BIF5 Day One Please share your list!...
2. Follow my content creation at #ASAE09 Keep up wherever you are!...
3. Grab your virtual ribbons! Display them proudly!...

Download audio file (krminterviewonmobile.mp3)

As I’m sure you will gather by listening to either version of this interview, I’m very excited about the disruptive potential of mobile for associations.  If you share my excitement and want to learn more about what is possible in the mobile space, I hope you’ll join me this Friday, October 9 for my webinar, “Building Distributed Engagement: What Associations Can Learn from the iPhone and The Mobile Web.”

Many thanks to Mary for a great conversation and to KRM for inviting me to share my thoughts!

Jim Leach, a former Member of Congress and the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, reminds of this essential fact in a short speech delivered earlier this month at the University of Virginia.  In his remarks, Leach reflects on whether there is an “inalienable right” to curiosity.  He argues:

Many might find the importance I give the concept of curiosity itself a curious thought. But curiosity is imaginative thinking. And imagination fortified by knowledge is a powerful force. It is exactly what oppressive states fear. That is why oppressors are invariably censors. They attempt to close the ears of their people and cloak them with orthodoxy of one kind or another. But the human soul is by nature curious and responds to imaginative thought. It is no accident that it was a playwright in Czechoslovakia, a humanist labor leader in Poland, and a Pope in Rome who established that the human spirit is more powerful than a tank commander reporting to an ideologue in the Kremlin. Ideas matter. And when ideas are amplified by recognition that alternative models of governance exist, whether they be in far-away or adjacent places, people-centric approaches become more easily imagined and demanded.

Without trying to diminish the deeper meaning and broader implications of Leach’s powerful words, we should acknowledge that in the midst of our current crisis, associations must confront their own “oppressors.”  The tyranny of past orthodoxies–who we’ve always been, what we’ve always known, what we’ve always done–too often closes present-day minds to the possibilities of a still unfolding and uncertain future.  As we continue to move toward a reset economy based on rethought assumptions, however, our capacity to nurture and support human curiosity and imagination will be integral to any success our associations may achieve.

Far from being a luxury, Leach concludes that “…the future is now the province of the curious.” When it comes to the future of the association community and its stakeholders everywhere, I certainly hope he is right.

Learn about my upcoming webinar series at bit.ly/KcsTQ.
Please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

Announcements

On Friday, September 25, I am launching my three-part webinar series, The New Look of Associating: Innovation Strategies from the Social Web.  There is still time to register for the entire series, or for any of the individual webinars.  This is a unique and exciting learning opportunity for association leaders, and I hope you’ll consider being a part of it.

If you’re planning to be in the Reston-Herndon area this Thursday afternoon (9/24), please join me for the September Reston Idea Swap, sponsored by ASAE & The Center.  I will be speaking on the topic, “Leading in Turbulent Times: Hard Choices, Huge Opportunities,” and it promises to be a lively conversation.

Registration for in-person attendance is required, but if you’re not able to be there F2F, you can watch the livestream beginning around 3 pm EDT.  The Twitter hashtag is #pisessions.

In the next day or so, look for another announcement here about two other sessions I hope to be livestreaming early next week.

Resources

You can download the PDF of my article, “Association Success in the Era of Social Business,” in the current issue of FORUM, the truly superb magazine of the Association Forum of Chicagoland. (It is a 280 KB download.)

Please listen to the interview I gave to my friend and fellow blogger, Sue Pelletier, on whether social technologies are making us antisocial.  My conclusion: I don’t think so, they are simply challenging us to rethink what it means to be social.

A recent interview I gave about the mobile opportunity for associations should be posted this week, so stay tuned for an announcement about that resource as well.

If you have an opportunity to share your feedback on anything included in this post, it would be great to hear from you.  I hope everyone has a terrific week!

Please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

+Interaction is cheap and plentiful, but trust is not.

+Contributing is more useful than joining.

+Purpose and meaning are more valuable than products.

There is more to come on each of these points, and others as well…stay tuned.

The timing of this dialogue is interesting because it is taking place just as I am about to begin a three-part webinar series called The New Look of Associating: Innovation Strategies from the Social Web.  During the series, I plan to explore the membership question in the context of the broader shift emerging around the concept of associating in a Web-enabled world.  Here is additional information on the three sessions of the webinar series:

September 25, 2009

Building Social Platforms: What Associations Can Learn from Facebook and Twitter

Public social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have made it possible for us to see and manage valuable relationships that were previously invisible to us, as well as create new virtual connections that can be sustained with less effort than face-to-face. This session will challenge participants to question long-standing assumptions about membership, and re-imagine traditional association approaches to building and coordinating member relationships.

October 2, 2009

Building Collaborative Communities: What Associations Can Learn from Wikipedia and Firefox

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia and the social browser Firefox are more than just powerful Web properties. Both are dynamic knowledge-based resources created by global collaborative communities in which all contributors are involved on a voluntary basis. This session will challenge participants to think differently about how communities can drive innovation, and devise new strategies for organizing association stakeholders for value creation.

October 9, 2009

Building Distributed Engagement: What Associations Can Learn from the iPhone and The Mobile Web

The worldwide adoption of Web-enabled smartphones continues to grow unabated. In less than two years, the iPhone has become the market standard for mobile devices, and the mobile web is already emerging as a promising platform for distributed engagement. This session will challenge participants to explore new forms of stakeholder participation, and embrace the design of simple and lightweight opportunities for meaningful engagement.

There is still time to register for the entire series (the better deal), but you also have the option of registering for any of the three webinars on an individual basis as well.  (The titles above are linked to registration pages for each webinar.)  I hope you will consider joining me for this unique learning opportunity.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  I am pleased to announce three associations that have already decided to join me for all three sessions are the recipients of a BONUS webinar with me at the conclusion of the series, during which we will consider the specific implications of the series content for those organizations:

Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists
Cascade Employers Association (Oregon)
Pennsylvania Association of Homes and Services for the Aging

Your association still has an opportunity to win a BONUS webinar as well, but only if you register for the three-part series by this Friday, September 18.  Three more associations will be chosen at random and announced early next week. I hope your organization will be one of them!

Learn about my upcoming webinar series at bit.ly/KcsTQ.
Please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

1.  PLEASE VOTE for my South by Southwest Interactive presentation proposal, “The iPhone Volunteer: Can Mobile Devices Save Society?”  I really, really, really need your help since there are so many terrific proposals competing for a limited number of slots.  Your votes matter a great deal, so if you can cast a ballot and encourage a colleague or two to do the same, I would be most grateful.  You can vote using the link below.  You will be asked to create an account.  If you have time, please also leave a comment in support of the proposal as well.

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3975

Voting closes at the end of day on Friday, September 4, so please do not wait to vote!  THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for your support, and for helping to spread the word!

2.  PLEASE REGISTER for my upcoming webinar series, “The New Look of Associating: Innovation Strategies from the Social Web.”  This is a high-impact learning opportunity that is all about developing the “next practices” your association must master to create value and be successful in the 21st century.  The investment for this three-part series is just $299, which is three webinars for the price of two.  This is an incredible value!  To learn more or to register, here is a link:

http://tinyurl.com/newlookofassociating

And just to make the deal a little bit sweeter, here’s a bonus incentive:

Register for the three-part series by September 10, and your association will be eligible to win a BONUS webinar session with me to explore the specific implications of the series content for the future of your organization.  Three associations will be selected at random to receive this additional learning opportunity, making it FOUR webinar sessions for the price of two!

Once again, thank you!  I am very grateful to all P.I. Blog readers for your support.  Let me know if I can answer any questions for you, and look for new posts in the coming days!

Learn about my upcoming webinar series at bit.ly/KcsTQ.
Please vote for my SxSWi proposal at bit.ly/iHY1T.
Please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

If you haven’t started reading SmartBlog Insights, for which I am honored to serve as editor-at-large, I hope you’ll start today by reading my post on “How your association can start innovating today.” Here’s the last paragraph:

Innovation is very much a part of the future of the association community, borne out of the dual imperatives of profound necessity and enormous opportunity. As a leader in your association, you cannot wait for “the right time” to begin the work of innovation. There is no right time. The time is right now.

Please let me know what you think of the post, and the blog!

Learn about my upcoming webinar series at bit.ly/KcsTQ.
Please vote for my SxSWi proposal at bit.ly/iHY1T.
Please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

CLICK THE IMAGE AND YOU WILL BE TAKEN TO MY PROPOSAL!

I have submitted a session proposal for the South by Southwest Interactive (SxSWi) Conference coming up in March 2010 in Austin, Texas.  If you’ve never heard of SxSWi, let’s just say that it is one of the most important technology conferences of the year, and your vote can help me get there as a speaker!

By visiting this link and creating an account, you can vote for my session proposal!  Your vote really matters…voting counts for 30% of the formula used to select sessions for the conference.  (The other 70% is split between the SxSWi staff and the conference advisory board.) Voting is open until September 4, which means we have less than two weeks to get as much support as possible.  Here is the session description, and the panelists:

The iPhone Volunteer: Can Mobile Devices Save Society?

Mobile is the next great platform for engaging volunteers, and the timing of its arrival is excellent, given the “wicked problems” we face. The enhanced capabilities of today’s mobile devices and the power of inventive applications are creating a new generation of “iPhone volunteers” who may well change the world.

Jacob Colker, CEO, The Extraordinaries

Jeff De Cagna, Chief Strategist and Founder, Principled Innovation LLC

Premal Shah, President, Kiva.org

Katrin Verclas, Co-Founder and Editor, MobileActive.org and 2009 TED Fellow

It’s going to be an awesome session, and I REALLY NEED YOUR HELP!  In addition to casting your vote, if you’re willing to help me build support, that would be completely awesome!  To do this, you can:

+Write a blog post in support of my session!

+Tweet and re-tweet items in support of my session!

+Post to your Facebook page asking others to vote!

These are just a few of things you can do to help me in this process.  The more you do, the better the chance this session will be chosen.  There are over 2200 proposals for SxSWi, and only 300 slots, so I’m sure you can understand the importance of this voting process.  I truly appreciate any help you offer in spreading the word about my session proposal.  I can’t do it alone!

DON’T FORGET that you need to create an account to cast your vote, and please be sure to share a direct link to the proposal (http://bit.ly/iHY1T) so it can be easily found.  Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks again for your help!

Learn about my upcoming webinar series at bit.ly/KcsTQ.
Please vote for my SxSWi proposal at bit.ly/iHY1T.
Please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

Instead of looking back, let’s look ahead at what I hope we’ll be discussing next August at #ASAE10 in Los Angeles.  If the growing consensus among political leaders and pundits is to be believed, we will be out of the current recession by the time we gather for the next Annual Meeting, and the emerging “reset” economy will be underway.  In that context, here are three questions I hope we’ll be discussing in sessions, in the hallways and everywhere in between next summer in L.A.:

+What does it mean to be a 21st century association?–As we look toward the next decade of this still nascent century, associations need to rediscover the original beliefs and purposes that led to their creation, and explicitly connect those intentions to the new realities of the Web-enabled world.  For years, I have implored association leaders to stop living in the past.  Now, as 2010 approaches, it is critical for associations to shed their historical baggage once and for all, and focus on nurturing the cultural attributes, strategic capabilities and human creativity that blend to enable innovation.

+How do we design next practices?–Thriving in the reset economy will require associations to make real the emphasis on innovation heard throughout #ASAE09.  To do this, leaders must drive the development and implementation of new ways of working, especially fresh approaches that fully capitalize on emerging tools and technologies, including, but not limited to, social technologies.  By applying design thinking, associations can craft next practices to support the immediate innovation of products, services and experiences, and the longer term innovation of our rapidly decaying approaches to management, strategy-making and governing.

+How do we solve wicked problems?–Our society, our industries and professions and our association community all face extremely complicated and intractable problems that defy easy solutions.  Despite the complexity of these wicked problems, the time to tackle them is at hand, and continuing to defer them to future would be irresponsible.  Associations need to embrace what Clay Shirky calls “convening logic” and proactively cultivate the social assets that make collective action possible.  In the reset economy, the capacity to create deep meaning will be the central strategic imperative of association success.

By no means do I think these are the only three questions on our learning agenda for #ASAE10, and I reserve the right to revise and refine my choices as the next 12 months unfold in ways that are sure to be unpredictable.  For now, though, I believe these three questions offer a useful platform from which to launch a dialogue about the future of the association community.  So, please share your thoughts and your learning questions as comments below.  I look forward to your ideas and insights!

Learn about my upcoming webinar series at bit.ly/KcsTQ.
Please vote for my SxSWi proposal at bit.ly/iHY1T.
Please follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/pinnovation.

Big thanks to my friend and colleague Jamie Notter for allowing me to use his laptop for the livestreaming and recording.  I look forward to your questions and reactions.

BTW, don’t be alarmed by the test pattern.  Just press the “play” arrow and the video will begin.  If you’re interested, you can also view the video on Vimeo.

Beginning on September 25, Principled Innovation LLC, in collaboration with Peach New Media, will present a unique three-part webinar series that will help you create a truly 21st century association.  How much is that worth to you?  Read on, and find out more!

The New Look of Associating: Innovation Strategies from the Social Web

In the era of social business, the experience of associating is taking on a new look. Open, inclusive and lightweight networks and communities offering the opportunity for meaningful contribution are creating new value for individuals and organizations around the world. As the traditional containers for engagement diminish in value, associations must learn to innovate in this new context by integrating the social architecture of co-creation and collaboration with the technological infrastructure of the social web.

Join Jeff De Cagna–the association community’s leading voice for innovation–for this unique webinar series.  Participants will do a “deep dive” into the on-going innovation of associating and learn from well-known examples such as Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and mobile platforms. This series isn’t about implementing the so-called “best practices” of the past. It is about the leadership challenge of designing and developing “next practices” that will unleash the creativity, passion and energy of contributors today and going forward. If you’re ready to reinvent your association for the 21st century, you will not want to miss this high-impact learning experience!

September 25, 2009 at 2 pm EDT

Building Social Platforms: What Associations Can Learn from Facebook and Twitter

Public social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have made it possible for us to see and manage valuable relationships that were previously invisible to us, as well as create new virtual connections that can be sustained with less effort than face-to-face. This session will challenge participants to question long-standing assumptions about membership, and re-imagine traditional association approaches to building and coordinating member relationships.

October 2, 2009 at 2 pm EDT

Building Collaborative Communities: What Associations Can Learn from Wikipedia and Firefox

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia and the social browser Firefox are more than just powerful Web properties. Both are dynamic knowledge-based resources created by global collaborative communities in which all contributors are involved on a voluntary basis. This session will challenge participants to think differently about how communities can drive innovation, and devise new strategies for organizing association stakeholders for value creation.

October 9, 2009 at 2 pm EDT

Building Distributed Engagement: What Associations Can Learn from the iPhone and The Mobile Web

The worldwide adoption of Web-enabled smartphones continues to grow unabated. In less than two years, the iPhone has become the market standard for mobile devices, and the mobile web is already emerging as a promising platform for distributed engagement. This session will challenge participants to explore new forms of stakeholder participation, and embrace the design of simple and lightweight opportunities for meaningful engagement.

So…is $299 too much to invest in creating a more vibrant future for your association?

Register now!