The Aquaduct and the Innovation Process

In my previous posting, I noted several social innovations, not the least of which was the Aquaduct, a pedal driven tricycle/water filtration device designed by IDEO. Since the folks at IDEO are known for innovative design—and are indeed called upon as outside designers/consultants by a whole host of companies—I wondered about their innovation process.

Before delving into the process, here’s a little background on the Aquaduct:

The Aquaduct vehicle was a direct result of the Innovate or Die contest hosted by Specialized, Google, and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. The contest challenge was to design and build a pedal-powered machine with some environmental benefit. After deciding to enter, we spent the first six weeks brainstorming ideas ranging from a machine that would clean up oil spills, to a machine that would boil an egg, to a machine that would reduce smog while biking to work. (1)

IDEO’s process to generate ideas and facilitate creativity is called the “deep dive.” Back in 1999, IDEO was challenged by ABC News’ Nightline to redesign the shopping cart in a week. IDEO’s creative team spent a few days completely immersed in the problems in order to suggest solutions. This process of immersion is called the “deep dive.”

We have come up with some guidelines to facilitate your “deep dive” in the Searching Phase of the Innovation Journey. Below are the guidelines, taken from our Managing Innovation program:

• Agree on norms that facilitate systematic, divergent and insightful searching.
• Separate the generation of ideas from the evaluation of those ideas.
• Create intersections and opportunities for diverse ideas to collide; encourage playfulness.
• Find ways to get ideas from multiple sources (not just within your organization).
• Look systematically for political, economic, social, technological and environmental factors that may impact your search. Ask “what if” questions related to possible scenarios. (2)

The above guidelines are meant to facilitate creativity. Many organizations think that innovation is synonymous with facilitating and generating the best creative ideas. The truth of the matter is that creativity is only part of the story. I was rather surprised to find out that the Aquaduct has not really arrived, it is only a prototype:

In its present configuration it is not a feasible solution for most developing communities due to production costs and durability. But in fairness to the IDEO team, they have stated that, “In its current state, the Aquaduct is a prototype aimed squarely at demonstrating a concept and raising awareness around the issues of clean water in developing countries. The Aquaduct team plans to continue the concept’s development into an economically and technologically viable solution that addresses challenges such as cost, suitable purification technologies, and the logistics of addressing an issue that [affects] billions.” (3)

A “deep dive” alone is not sufficient by itself to implement an innovation. Even the super innovative folks at IDEO recognize that. If we take our Innovation Journey model, I would guess that the Aquaduct is somewhere towards the middle or end of the Realizing phase—having realized a prototype, but not a manufacturing process to make the Aquaduct a feasible solution—and the beginning of the Optimizing phase, in which they could realize the innovation’s maximum value.

I’m not saying that IDEO uses our Innovation Journey model—although I’d love to know what, if any, model they do use. I am saying that this super-innovative company realizes that innovation is a process, a process that extends even to a wonderful social innovation such as the Aquaduct.

—Joel Kleinbaum

(1) From theaquaduct.blogspot.com 
(2) From Managing Innovation: Optimizing the Power of Ideas, B. Kim Barnes & David Francis, Ph.D.
(3) From inhabaitat.com, “Aquaduct Bike Purifies Water as You Pedal“