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NewNorth Center for Design in Business President Nate Young leads a discussion of Innovation Methods Certificate candidates at the organization’s Holland headquarters.

“West Michigan is doing what other regions no doubt will be doing soon: Developing design education for business people who aren’t designers. Because so many of the problems we face today – from climate change to health care to economic development itself – are design problems, only design thinking will get us out of our rut and onto a brighter path.”

Daniel Pink, Author of  “A Whole New Mind,”  “The Adventures of Johnny Bunko” and “Drive”

West Michigan isn’t about to sit back and wait for things to get better. It wasn’t brought up that way. With its strong work ethic, diversity of businesses, history of innovation, and culture of design, the region has always managed to move ahead, even as other areas of the state have fallen behind.

“We’ve gone through some real economic challenges, but business leaders in West Michigan agree that we have something special here and it’s worth fighting for,” says Randy Thelen, president, Lakeshore Advantage.

But what’s worked in the past doesn’t necessarily work today. Sometimes, working hard isn’t enough. Neither is hunkering down when tough times pose serious threats.

“With all due respect, many of the companies who hunkered down during the past few years needed to,” says Nate Young, president of the NewNorth Center for Design in Business. “But if they come back doing everything the same as they did before and expect to be competitive again, we don’t think that is great logic.”

“Companies that fail often fail to change,” says Rande Somma, chairman of the NewNorth board and a member of the task force that led to its formation. “When things get tight, they put aside investing in the future or developing new competencies.”

NewNorth Board member Craig Hall, also a member of the original task force, says that “our past success can lessen risk-taking and blind us to the need to move forward. Just because we’ve done things a certain way in the past is no reason to continue in that direction.”

That’s especially relevant today because, as Jim Brooks, NewNorth Board member and founder of the West Michigan Strategic Alliance, says, “The world has changed. West Michigan manufacturers can no longer compete with countries like China and India to produce products with high labor and low transportation content. To compete in the global marketplace, our companies must innovate to offer products and services at a higher level on the value scale.”

West Michigan has shown it can go to that higher level. “Over the past 20 years, West Michigan has built a deep core of talent for implementing lean manufacturing practices,” says Randy Thelen, task force member and president of Lakeshore Advantage, which helped fund the NewNorth initiative. “This region is recognized for these efforts. Now we need to apply the same kind of energy toward creativity, innovation, and new design – and not rely on mature products or services.”

And that’s what the nonprofit NewNorth Center is designed to help companies do.

“The nexus of what we are trying to accomplish is to say to companies in West Michigan that we deeply respect all the logical systems they’ve embedded into themselves,” says Young. “The quality, procurement, manufacturing, and lean systems that they’ve learned over the past 20 years have served them well. They’ve optimized themselves extremely well. But you can’t optimize yourself to a future. You can only optimize what you have in your current vision.”

Helping companies learn how to expand that vision in the pursuit of lasting, sustainable growth is at the heart of NewNorth’s mission.

“We help companies develop repeatable, value-based creative systems to lay alongside their logical systems,” says Young. To do so, he says, requires thinking in new ways – learning to use creative systems and tools that unlock an organization’s potential and strengthen its ability to evolve and change.

The need to develop both logical and creative systems is symbolized by NewNorth’s logo: half an apple (representing logical left-brain thinking) merged with half an orange (representing creative right-brain thinking). “When both halves are working together, you have what Daniel Pink calls ‘whole-mind thinking,’” says Young. “We have a t-shirt statement that reads, ‘Why would you run your company on half a brain?’ Very simply, we’re trying to put those two sides together for companies.”

He calls the ability to draw upon both left- and right-brain thinking “toggling.”

“You need to be able to toggle between the two. That ability is one of the most undervalued business notions that I’ve ever run across. I hate the argument that one type of thinking is better than the other. That doesn’t answer anything.”

Participants in NewNorth’s certificate program work on many projects designed to help them understand how right-brain and left-brain thinking come together in the innovation process. Pictured are some of their projects and some of the idea cues they use to come to a better understanding of the design process. NEWNORTH PHOTOS BY JOE BOOMGAARD

Young says that many companies aren’t leveraging right-brain, creative thinking – what IDEO President Tim Brown calls “design thinking” – enough, or even at all. “Everyone and every organization has a creative capacity. If you marginalize the creative side because you’re afraid it may affect what you’ve established as your system, then shame on you.”

NewNorth Board Chairman Somma, former president of Johnson Controls and a member of the Gentex Board of Directors, says that whole-mind thinking can help create businesses where one plus one equals more than two. “When there’s right and left brain synergy, you can look through a different prism and open your mind to ideas you wouldn’t otherwise think of. When you see what you couldn’t see before, you’ll be astonished. At NewNorth, we’re passionate about helping companies discover this.”

“It’s through harnessing such creative energy that innovation is born. “And innovation isn’t just about product, although the popular press makes it seem so,” says Young. “Innovation is a process, and it should be in every corner of a business. Finance, maintenance, communications, human resources – everything should be innovative.”

“At NewNorth we’ve gathered practitioners, call them adjunct faculty, who come in and help us lead this journey to understanding innovation and innovative systems. The big ‘ah-ha’ of the graduates of our recent class in Innovation Methods – designers, business owners, CEOs, product developers, educators – is that innovation is a process. It’s not magic.”

“We serve many different sizes and types of organizations,” says Forrest Large, who, as program navigator at NewNorth, helps participants set up and coordinate their educational experiences. “Our programs are for anyone, not just designers. Often, one or two members of an organization sign up together. We also offer programs for groups of four to as many as 15 from the same company.”

NewNorth instructors represent an array of expertise and experience. “We attract people, both locally and nationally, who bring with them various perspectives and proven competence,” says Large.

“Design West Michigan has been a good resource for us,” says Young. “It gives us access to a community of creative people and great instructors.”

“As a nonprofit organization, we sustain ourselves through students,” says Young. “You can go to our website, newnorthcenter.org, to see classes and workshops. In addition to established businesses, we’re encouraging entrepreneurs who have just one or two employees to participate. If they can learn these systems now, before they’re big and hard to change, it’s a real advantage for them.”

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• craig hall
• forrest large
• jim brooks
• midesign
• newnorth
• rande somma
• randy thelen
• tim brown
• west michigan strategic alliance