The Dream Cafe. Bruce Duncan

‘The meeting of two personalities is like the meeting of two molecules. If there is any reaction, both are transformed.’1 Jung's focus on knowledge as a product of a dialectical process in which thesis and antithesis can lead to synthesis relates to our own work. He reminds us that there is an urgent need for an alternative to the cookie cutter approach to developing an innovation culture in which harmony is given more status than disruptive potential. No matter how well funded your innovation strategy may be, it ultimately depends on the interplay between the right (or the ‘wrong’) people in the right place and the level of permission that they are given to operate without rules.

      For those prepared to scoff at the preposterous suggestion that business should organize its innovation culture around the notion of a café, it might be worth remembering that successful cafés are very good examples of high stakes management efficiency. Our belief that a café offers a perfect location for disruption is built on our understanding of the management difficulty of creating profit out of an open invitation to a broad and perhaps incompatible group of people. Imagine trying to get funding for a business concept that depends on creating and servicing a wide range of emotional and functional needs (from creative stimulation to basic refreshment). Add to that the idea of selling short-shelf-life food and drink to a demographic that ranges from people who appear to just want to sit and talk to others who want to smash the crockery and experiment in defining new levels of belligerence.

People

      Even a brief study of the artists and other visionaries that have challenged and changed the world reveals the disruptive characteristics that the brand champions will need if they are to win the battle for the future. Author Robert Hughes described the avant-garde in the following way:

      Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that (they) could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants.

(Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New, 1991)

      We at The Dream Café spend a lot of time and energy ensuring that we get the right characters to inhabit the cafés that we create for our clients. That aid – our experience confirms that innovation is as much a product of place as it is of people. We believe that creating a culture of disruption is as much to do with changing the ways in which things are done, as it is to do with what people actually do.

Process

      Our research has enabled us to synthesize a range of transferable strategies and attitudes that will help brands adopt the radical approach to innovation that characterizes disruptive practise in the arts. Compared to the typical ‘scientific’ approach to innovation, which still dominates traditional brand thinking, the often ad hoc approach of the avant-garde appears random and chaotic. But it is this ability to challenge conventional wisdom that lies at the heart of its attraction.

      The following indicative summary gives a flavour of the open attitude that enables creative thinkers and doers to move beyond the known so effectively:

      • Forgetting.

      • No rules.

      • Unpacking.

      • Relaxing about how, where and when innovation opportunity is developed.

      • Being open minded about the kind of people that you collaborate with.

      • Embracing unpredictability as an opportunity.

      • Understanding that rapid and risky decision making is safer that slow iterative evolution.

      • Being at ease with any new strategy appearing to be counter intuitive.

      • Assuming that anything is possible.

      • Not always beginning with a definitive end in mind.

      • Developing playful approaches to prototyping that emphasize metaphor rather than formal function.

      • Celebrating the power of your imagination.

      • Understanding that application is an open opportunity rather than a conclusion.

Expecting the Unexpected

      Everett Roger's ‘5 Attributes: Diffusion of Innovations’ model continues to define assumptions that a ‘too much too soon’ strategy of innovation may limit widespread adoption. The safety first approach that typifies conventional innovation strategy is the antithesis of the behaviours that enable avant-garde practice to redefine norms and values:

      • Create an advantage over what's out there.

      • Aim for compatibility with existing norms and values.

      • Prioritize accessibility.

      • Ensure that affordability encourages ‘triability’.

      • Makes results and benefits visible.

      Implicit in the Everett approach is a commitment to iteration rather than disruption, which encourages middle of the road mediocrity that the avant-garde would see as part of the problem. The assumption that the present is the logical benchmark for any kind of innovation immediately removes the legiti- macy of imagining what does not yet exist. The desire for ‘compatibility’ further reigns in an innovation team's potential to think beyond the conventional. The emphasis on obvious functionality eradicates the ability to invent new forms, functions and values. The concern for obvious benefits denies what the avant-garde would assume was a primary motivation, namely conceptual opportunity thought to be the evolution of intangible opportunities.

Being Avant-Garde

      Our experience at The Dream Café has taught us that the art of radical innovation begins with some fundamental unpacking of the obstacles, inhibitions, habits and protocols that typically hinder change. Some of these obstacles are simply the result of becoming used to doing things in personal and particular ways – methods that we've inherited and/or unquestionably adopted. Others are the result of a much deeper conditioning process that has prompted our belief in rational deduction to dominate our strategy and the ways that we evaluate outcomes. Consider that, until recently, a lot of businesses believed it was possible to calculate which brands would sell and which would not, through a combination of strategic planning and market testing.

      The Dream Café argues that we can no longer trust in the clockwork universe metaphor and that the only thing we can assume is that nothing is predictable. In order for our clients to learn how to succeed and prosper from a world in which everything is in a state of permanent flux, they need to forget what they thought they knew and embrace the possibilities of benign chaos.

      The markets within which brands compete nowadays are changing every minute. There are no guarantees of success beyond a commitment to a permanent strategy of radical innovation. Disruption has emerged as possibly the best source of a sustainable future that we have available to us – and disruption is not for the faint hearted. It is deeply challenging. Much of what this book will reveal will appear to be counter-intuitive to our rationally conditioned mind-sets, but it promises the opportunity of leading rather than following.

      Coming to terms with the benefits of unpredictability requires a whole new mind-set, along with a reconnection between our heart and our head. We have to acquire the capacity to take risks based on hunches, rather than dodgy data dressed up as stats. And we have to discover the joy of trusting our instincts.

      Recognizing and profiting from chaos begins by relearning the rules of logic. This requires that we do away with the faith in rational deduction that was instilled in us as we served our time in formal education. And the more ‘formal’ our education was, the more likely we are to believe that taking creative risks is counter intuitive; that collaboration is cheating; and that unprecedented ideas are the products of idle speculation. We need to unpack that experience and accept that our ability to dream is probably the one asset that makes us capable of creating the future.

      Most of us grew up seeing the ‘dreamers’ in our midst as failures who were unable to cope with the intellectual demands of formal learning and the rigour of applying formulas. Yet these are the people that we need to learn from now – the ones dismissed because of their inability to cope with the culture of instrumental rationality. Hindsight shows us that their ‘failure’

1

Leonore Thomson, Personality Type: An Owner's Manual, 1998.