Design of Business

The Funnel |

Through the training in architectural school, design thinking is not a new concept for us. However, Roger Martin describes it so clearly and logically, thus the design thinking is turn into a method that everyone can learn. He illustrates the process of knowledge formation with a "funnel", and actually "design" is the process for generating knowledge when mystery goes from top of the funnel and through the neck, finally to the bottom. 

Knowledge Funnel, Design of Business, Roger Martin, 2009

It is quite similar to what we learned in architectural school. First we need to analyze the site and find out the problem (or the mystery), and then we use logic and intuition to figure out the possible solutions. Through practice and experiments, we gradually establish the algorithm to address our issues gracefully and smartly. Actually, this process is not only for architecture design but also for other disciplines. Martin took McDonald as the example to demonstrate how design think worked in business. McDonald catch a mystery and made it go through the funnel. In the end, the mystery turned into a valuable, systematic and feasible methodology for company. 

From the lecture, we had some discussion about Blu Homes. It is another example to demonstrate the funnel. Blu Homes has a mystery which is "can we build a house in 40 weeks from nothing?" and this valuable idea is going through the funnel. During the process of establishing the algorithm (reliability), so many issues need to be addressed. For example, we talked about supply chains and how to integrate them together. The supply chain is a big deal because a product can not be delivered without a stable supply chain. Especially, "buildings" haven't been treated as pre-fab products before, so there is no supply for this kind of products. Hence, Blu Homes need to use the supplies which are not for architecture and try to combine them together as a stable, reliable, systematic and profitable supply chain. It's really difficult, especially each supply has its own culture, rules, laws and specifications. However, this is the neck point of the funnel, once they push the mystery through the neck point, a valuable and stable profit generator is born!

Connecting to Kevin Kelly's book, this may be the way to generate information (knowledge) with higher quality. Also, the knowledge can be accumulated in a systematic way which is repeatable and reliable. So, people can easily access that method and duplicate it. Once it is easy to access and copy, the knowledge starts to flow to every corner in the world. Generating, spreading and accumulating, three characteristics of our final destination.