(with lunch boxes)

Hosted by Sanofi

Meet corporate anthropologists, sociologists and engineers at the cutting edge of the people-centered design movement, to discover the difference this approach can make and what still holds it back.

HOST WELCOME:
Yoshiko Naito, Manager, President's Office, Public Affairs - Sanofi Japan

MODERATOR:
Mark Zeh, Writer & Educator, Consulting in Innovation and Project Management

SPEAKERS:
Gretchen Addi, Associate Partner and Location Lead, IDEO

“No matter what we do, we can all take a people-centered approach,” said Gretchen Addi of IDEO, a leading U.S. design and innovation consulting firm. Multinational pharmaceutical company Sanofi took a people-centric approach to the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan by chartering a helicopter to deliver drugs and relief supplies to its employees, said Yoshiko Naito of Sanofi Japan. While some companies might argue that putting people at the center of their business is a luxury in these difficult economic times, Addi said it was essential. The key to success, she explained, lies in careful observation and the ability to develop empathy and understanding. To illustrate how the process of creating people-centric design works, Addi presented four examples of projects developed by IDEO for four very different clients — the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Air New Zealand, Kaiser Permanente and The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

« Quelle que soit notre activité, nous pouvons tous adopter une approche axée sur la personne, » a déclaré Gretchen Addi d’IDEO, une société de conseil américaine spécialisée dans le design et l’innovation. Le groupe pharmaceutique international Sanofi a appliqué cette approche lors du séisme et du tsunami qui ont touché le Japon en mars 2011, affrétant un hélicoptère pour livrer des médicaments et de l’aide à ses employés, a expliqué Yoshiko Naito de Sanofi Japan. Pour certaines sociétés, placer l’être humain au centre de son activité est un luxe en cette période de crise économique, mais pour Mme Addi, c’est essentiel.  Selon elle, la clé du succès réside dans une observation attentive et la capacité à faire preuve d’empathie et de compréhension. Pour illustrer le processus de création d’un concept axé sur la personne, Mme Addi a présenté quatre exemples de projets développés par IDEO pour quatre clients différents, la Fondation Bill et Melinda Gates, Air New Zealand, Kaiser Permanente et The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

IDEO created the HCD (Human Centric Design) Toolkit at the request of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a set of tools and a common language to help NGOs find innovative solutions. IDEO’s design team went out in the field in Kenya, Ethiopia and Cambodia alongside the people for whom they were designing. They realized that using visual aids and collage were very useful in developing a common language to express core values and needs. The free innovation guide they developed for social enterprises and NGOs working with impoverished communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America is available online, and when the Women’s Forum started, it had already been downloaded 64,000 times.

Air New Zealand wanted to improve the long haul experience for international travelers by rethinking the entire customer experience while reflecting on the culture of the company itself. IDEO spent two months working with ANZ in the air and on the ground on how to bring a sense of luxury to economy class travelers.

For Kaiser Permanente, IDEO worked alongside nurses in tackling the negative experiences that shift changes often produced for both them and their patients. Giving the initially skeptical nurses creative input to the design process provided them with a sense of empowerment. The IDEO team brainstormed with doctors, nurses and administrators and worked with them to create prototypes. In the maternity ward, they developed “Journey Home Boards” to help new mothers and caregivers understand and keep track of where they were in the post-natal process. The boards were so successful that 30,000 nurses adopted them throughout the Kaiser Pemanente system.

IDEO also created the bedsider.org website, a free support network for birth control aimed at women aged 18 to 29. Part of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, it is a valuable tool, giving young women accurate information about birth control and creating dialogue with other women. Using humor to debunk sexual myths, the website has been hugely successful largely because it uses real people telling their own stories to get its message across.

Addi said that people-centric approaches practiced by her own company included a bottom-up approach, close collaboration with teams and with clients, growing skills and careers, an openness to sharing ideas, a lack of hierarchy and a willingness to make the work experience gratifying.

“By using people-centric design we can help solve problems, not just by providing the answer of the day, but in a way that is strongly grounded in core issues that are really important to people. As a result these solutions have validity and can stand the test of time,” Addi said.

“Looking at extremes is the most inspiring part, that’s where people get creative.”
Gretchen Addi, Associate Partner and Location Lead, IDEO, USA 

“For people to be able to develop people-centric design in business they need to have a passion to move things forward.”
Yoshiko Naito, Manager, President’s Office, Public Affairs, Sanofi Japan

Host Welcome:
Yoshiko Naito, Manager, President’s Office, Public Affairs, Sanofi Japan 

Moderator :
Mark Zeh, Writer & Educator, Consulting in Innovation and Project Management, Germany

Featuring:
Gretchen Addi, Associate Partner and Location Lead, IDEO, USA