— 15 July 2004
The Responsible Innovation Strategist
I admit it. I’m a philatelist, but please don’t rush to conclusions; philately isn’t a new disease or anything to be afraid of. For many of those who don’t know the meaning of the word, philatelist means a stamp collector in proper English. However, there’s a difference between a philatelist and a stamp collector that goes beyond wording issues. A philatelist is someone who enjoys learning about history, geography, art, and cultural manifestations as they occurred or were perceived at different points in time. Collecting and studying stamps provides us with an opportunity to own a testimony, a glimpse of what happened years or centuries back in time, as well as what happens today- that is-if the postal system allows you.
In the midst of the research project I was working on in Paris, I managed to run to the post office to send a couple of pieces of mail.
The post office building itself wasn’t anything special. Inside, it was modern and clean. I stood in line. After a few minutes I started getting impatient. The teller was taking so long with each customer. When my turn came I walked to the teller’s desk. It was clean, modern, with a digital scale and a computer comparable to those in the US postal offices. A very friendly teller greeted me. I handed my two envelops to him and I was expecting him to weight them, attach a sticker on them and pay quickly to leave. Instead, to my surprise and self-embarrassment, I experienced a revealing deja vu of the post office experience in my country of origin-Peru that I had already forgotten.
The teller weighted the two envelops; next he pulled a classic looking portfolio worth of carrying something valuable. With a pleasant gesture typical of those who have a passion in life, he carefully pulled out of the portfolio a few sheets of stamps for me to choose from. He knew well what he had. The stamps were beautiful, non-glossy, indented for real, and had glue on the back. They came in different sizes and were commemorating some historical events in France. He gave me the time to choose my favorite ones. He carefully detached them from the sheets (because missing teeth lowers the value for collectors), and tested different positions to neatly place them on the envelope. Then he moistened the back of the stamps one by one and carefully attached them. Finally he crowned the mint stamps with a nice round and clean official seal. The result: the nicest looking, most informative and worthy philately material I have sent out to my family since I moved the US.
The wait in line was worth the experience; the aftertaste wasn’t so sweet though. When did I forget what stamps are for? I mean, not only pre-paid postage pieces of paper but educational instruments, cultural manifestations worth collecting and studying. I was appalled by the realization that I have let myself, a true philatelist who owns thousands of stamps, be reduced to ignorance and apathy by sending out letters with those stickers that say “I love you” or that feature a flag, as it was the only thing a nation has to share with the world.
But how does this relate to innovation strategy and experience design?
Innovation can take place in many forms. New products, services, business models, branding, processes all count as forms of innovation. Therefore, we can easily equate innovation with being a source for value generation. However, innovation does not come free of risk. And I don’t mean financial risk as much as the risk of destroying something worth existing beyond its immediate financial adequacy; for instance education.
As a specialist in innovation strategy, there are three key questions I always ask: Who are we creating value for? With what purpose? And at what cost? Asking these questions is a responsibility of ethical dimensions anyone working in this field should ask before “destroying” for profit. Famous economist Joseph Schumpeter brilliantly termed the process of creating value while destroying the older order as “creative destruction”. Creative destruction involves the creation of new economic value, and often the destruction of certain human values in the process. This well represents the case of philately, and the culture of knowledge it ought to promote, as it predominately exists today in the US.
Generally the postal system in the US in, in its pursuit of efficiency, has abandoned its traditional role of educating all and every one of its users and those who live abroad through the emission of relevant, artistic, informative, and therefore collectable and worth studying philatelic material. Sure there are special stamps available in the US for philatelists; however, the experience itself has evolved to be confined to those who are actually aware of it. If I’m walking and need stamps, I have the vending machines which will be loaded with mostly educationally meaningless stamps. If I go to the counter in a post office and hand in a letter, they will rush me and stamp on it whatever the standard is. The result is a missed opportunity to be relevant beyond efficiency, and a negated privileged role in providing customers with a meaningful experience through imparting and promoting a culture of knowledge.
But that’s not all. At a second layer, we need to understand that users aren’t only those who buy stamps or mail packages. The postal employees themselves are users of the postal system. They are the face of a system that has lost its charm. They are participants of an experience that nobody looks forward to, much less appreciate or see the value of spending an extra couple of minutes on it. This creates a vicious cycle that impoverishes the overall user experience for everyone. I will never forget the French post officer’s expression of satisfaction and understanding of being a participant of something meaningful. And what happened with the efficiency? True, I spent a few extra minutes in the post office, being refreshed by beautiful stamps, and being mind picked by some historic events I saw on them. The letters arrived from France to Peru in three days.
Who did the US postal service create value for? For all of us who are too busy to stop for a minute and see what’s out there. The value created is a fast, one size-fits-all system designed with the sole purpose of delivering mail quickly and cheaply. But there’s a very high and dark hidden cost: the destruction of its educational value and relevance in reaching everyone with a meaningful and cultured message. The mastery of innovation strategy resides not only in understanding market forces, R.O.I, technologies, and immediate user needs but in understanding first the values a system supports and then innovating outwards to make the best out of supporting those values, in this case culture and knowledge for all. Preserving positive human values and reinforcing them through meaningful experiences will always pay off.
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© 2008 Cheskin Added Value
Brilliant thinking...,I remember your stamps.
Posted by Sandra P. on May 27, 2005 06:09 PM | Permalink to Comment