Building Innovation:

Must all researchers be vandals?

Lucy Blakemore, Gravity Planning & Research
June 2008

Building Innovation
Who we spoke to
The vandals hypothesis
Working on innovative ideas: Grand Designs
Meet the Innovation Team
A constructive approach to Innovation

Some of our respondents

People kill ideas far too easily - you

need to nurture ideas

(Planner, International Creative Agency)

Innovation Team
Roles

Shared Project
Vision

theyre trained
People arent trained to think into ideas,
think in executions

(Global Planning Director)

The Challenge

QuickTime and a
H.264 decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

TalkbackTHAMES UK Limited 2008

Meet the Innovation team

The Architects
The Client?
The Agency Planner?
The Creatives?
the Researcher?

Theres a real tension here: you cant do good

things by committee

(International Drinks Client)

The Town Planners

Research is used by the marketing department

to justify to the purchasing department what they
propose to do
(Creative Director)

The Inhabitants

The Builders

How many great ideas have been extinguished because

someone in the middle - a link between the source of the idea
and its eventual outlet - dropped the ball?

(Heath & Heath, 2007)

The Vandals

Research is not a matter

of asking questions to find
out answers, but rather
designing an experiment
to find out answers
(Global Planning Director)

New builds are all Magnolia

Researchers as Structural Engineers?

Research should be
there to stress-test
ideas: if it cant be done,
they should show us
why, and if it can be
done, they should show
us how
(Planning Director)

Town
Planners
Architects

Inhabitants

Builders

Structural
Engineers
Vandals

Creating a virtual tour with research

Being more constructive in the Innovation process

Be a good surveyor at the start of the process
Build a picture of the landscape products and services will
live in

Talk to the right inhabitants, in the right environment

Respondents on their own territory can more easily
communicate their needs - and show us what they mean

Identify the architects, project managers, builders and

town planners
Understand where the research fits in with their priorities so
there are fewer vandals later on!

Look out for ideas the market isnt ready for - but may be
in the future

If the building analogy doesnt work for you