 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017. Brought to you by Oracle. Welcome back here, when we are here live in Las Vegas, the Mandalay Bay for Oracle's Modern Customer Experience Conference. I'm John Furrier with my co-host, Peter Burris, with theCUBE, and our next guest is Brian Curran, Vice President of Strategy and Design with Oracle Cloud. Great to have you on theCUBE, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for having me. So you're a design and strategy person, you've been in the art and science of designing experiences, not so much technology, fastest port, fastest server, and yet innovation is the number one thing people talk about in the digital transformation, certainly that's happening, but it's hard when you have all this legacy stuff, process, people, well that guy does that, that's his job over there, and this guy runs it over there, so that's all coming together as we were talking about on our intro, Peter and I were talking about that. How do you get at the innovation when you engage with customers, when you walk in the door? It's funny, it's still a dirty word in company's innovation, right? I mean people are scared of it, because I mean the fancy word is innovation, the real word is change, and now you want to make changes in an organization, and it's scary for people, and what I really do is I try to spend time with them trying to get them to understand that this is an art and a science. The science part is usually when you start first because I'm trying to get them to kind of go through the discipline of what it takes to do that, and it's really about getting the right people involved in that, and so I really try to spend my time saying look, let's find something really small to go work on, let's find a little problem that maybe you have, and let me show you the art and science of getting from that understanding of the customer need all the way to, hey I've got a way to actually solve that and we'll drive results from the business. It's interesting the psychology of the customer is under a lot of stress, because as you said it's a dirty word to innovate because it means change, but now it's interesting with cloud, you're seeing some of these technologies out there, there's more pressure on top of that speed, they have to do it faster, so now you have a speed game going on, and then agility and all these things that people are seeing as use cases that okay people are getting things right, but what do I do, and this is a lot of pressure point. How does that add to the complication when you have to come in and say, okay we got to change, we got to do it fast, your roles might change, and how do you take that, how do you walk through that? First of all, when you talk about the trends and the changes, what it's driving is these increased expectations, so customers are dealing with an Amazon, then they're coming back to another brand and say hey, how come your experience is not like Amazon? So companies feel that pressure right now and they realize they can't wait six months, 12 months to go make that change, they've got to make it like in six weeks or 12 weeks, and so one of the things I'm a big believer is in rapid prototyping, get your point to a test where you can actually get it out of the market, so how do you frame something to really understand in a couple of days, how do you ideate in a couple of days, how do you get everyone to understand what you're trying to do in a couple of days, and eventually you get to a point where maybe five or six weeks before you're driving at that point, but the old days of going hey, let's have a big strategy session and then we'll come through stuff in three to six months and nine months from now, but then you're out of business, so we're really focused on trying to get people to understand it is about speed, it is about understanding, and get to that point. But it comes back to the customer, ultimately the design point is what experience do you want the customer to have with you, so in many respects the challenge is the customer does things, and they does, and in a B2B setting they do things with a lot of other folks in their organization, and they do things with the seller, in a B2C sense it's by themselves, but they do things and they move through this different context, what they do together, how do you help companies get focused on that singular element, it's what the customer is trying to do and how you want them to invite you to do it with them, so to me there's a journey, there's a step by step process that the customer goes through in order to fulfill their need, and so it is about understanding that interaction, that engagement, and determining whether you're actually meeting the customer's need at that moment, do you understand the context, do you understand the expectations, do you have all the things that you need in order to understand that moment, but once you've chosen that moment, now what you really focus on is a value equation, how do I fulfill that need in a way, drive that experience, that perception, that changes the customer's attitude, so they think differently, that ultimately drives a different behavior from the customer, that leads to a result that's different for the business, so businesses need to understand that value equation, your job, number one job, is to fulfill customer's needs, and I'm not talking about just the end need, but the need at every single moment along that life cycle, and if you can understand and fulfill that need, you can understand how to deliver your results, then it's just about plugging that formula in to get that done. So a question that I have for a lot of design folks, and it's kind of a big question, but it ties back into some of the trends we're talking about. The cloud, which is this thing that presumably allows companies to be in a lot of different places, with at least a digital presence, has been instrumental in presenting services to the communities, to a lot of communities in new ways. To what degree do you think the cloud, which, and design thinking are reinforcing each other? By that I mean, design thinking gets a business to focus on what's the value in use, and the cloud is presented as a service, not as a product. So is design thinking the cloud helping to move us from thinking about products to the services that they provide overall? Yeah, I would say design thinking first came out to actually drive product design, but now it's starting to drive experiential design. The thing about the cloud is that I can quickly go from rapid prototyping to putting it right in front of customers, where before using legacy, on-premise capability, it would take me months and months to stand up something that I wanted to go do. So I think we're at the beautiful time for design, right? Is that all the disciplines around design, the ability to really understand the customer, to have that empathetic understanding, to actually design experiences that are very relevant to that customer, but now to be able to actually take that experience and go multi-variant, A, B, test it immediately, not months from now, but like days from now. And to get that learning, because part of great design thinking is not just the first iteration. When I think design thinking, I'm also thinking service design, lean, agile. So I get the ability to take my minimal viable experience, not minimal viable product, get it in the market very quickly, get the learning from that, come back and make that iteration, put it back out in the market again. So the cloud allows you to do that on the fly, where before you couldn't drive at that kind of speed. Talk about the commitment level, because that's a commit that they have to make organizationally to... To fail? Well to be ready for the iteration, because you're throwing something out there but it's also, I mean some people just got to get over the, hey the parachute will open. Yes. You know, kind of get over that fear and then once they're there, they have to commit, they can't just leave it there. How do you walk through that with the customer? Because that to me, I think, is the trend that I see, maybe it's different across different customers, but it's the same organizational commitment. You got to stop thinking about projects and you got to start thinking about learning and engaging. And so for me, the process is really about going, hey can I design something? Can I actually test it very quickly? Can I learn? And learn to me is fail. I mean, I was involved in building the first Apple store. I will tell you the first Apple store was a complete failure. And it was the best learning that Apple could ever get in order to be able to use to build the next store, which was a much more successful piece. You have to build that in your DNA that says, if I'm fast, then I can actually reduce my risk. I can get to a point where I actually be able to learn very quickly and then I can go make that change come in place. That's great. I got to ask you a question in terms of customers because this is awesome. You have a lot of experience with the customers. What's the pattern that emerges as you go out and look at the transformational heroes out there that are taking the transformation from and the evolution of that? Is there a pattern that emerges? They kind of get nervous at first and they snap in line here and then things kind of happen. Can you share what you've seen as a pattern? So the pattern for innovators is usually they're just a little off center and they have a little less fear than the rest of us about losing their job the next day. And they're so passionate about what they want to do. They're willing to actually kind of push the envelope. What I find is that's the innovator. That's the guy. And by the way, usually not up high, usually down around the middle of the company. Now, when they run into someone who on high also is passionate about the change but not sure how to do it. When the two of them come into combination, that innovator who's passionate and that leader who understands they need to build that DNA, what I find is when those two come together, that is the pattern for success. So bottoms up, tops down, innovation is really what works the best. I also find that the people who actually embrace discipline, embrace design thinking, embrace all of those aspects but also have the arty kind of, hey, let's try some new things. Let's be willing to kind of put our nose out. I find the stodgy people who are not willing to make the change are the ones who actually just get stuck and we've seen those companies all go out of business, right? So the people who are willing to be leading edge. What's great is though if you see really great leaders, they're also willing to be credible and authentic and get in front of audience and say, I designed this, it was a failure. I'm willing to actually now go do the next thing. And we see this from great leaders from Starbucks on. That way I tried to do a bar in Starbucks and actually it didn't work. So we're going to go on to something else. But doesn't it also, I mean, I agree with you totally, Brian, having studied this a lot myself over the years. But it also means data, that you have to build measurement into everything. Because the innovator doesn't get acknowledged or recognized by the leader if there isn't some data that transmits a message. You don't realize you're failing if you don't have data that alerts you early before you double down and triple down and quadruple down on a bad idea. So how does the science of design thinking come into play here? Because it's the designing in the measurements, the changes that become so crucial to actually moving us from just a good idea into something that actually manifests change. To me, the value equation is the first thing you work on, which is the math. I need to understand the customer's needs and I need to understand the results that you're getting to. So I need to understand the attitudinal, the behavioral, the operational, the execution, all of those measurements. So financial measurements, customer measurements, all those pieces. That data is crucial. I don't start, by the way, on any innovation projects till we have a current state understanding of that. The design is actually about how do I get that movement? How do I get that attitudinal, behavioral, operational, execution, financial movement by the design of what I'm doing? So data actually becomes more crucial. What's great too about the cloud is that I actually have more access to data that I didn't have access to before and the data is in the hands of the innovator. Not some other group. I don't have to wait a long time for analysis so I can literally go, here's our current state. Let me go do AB multivariant testing. Wow, I got this change right here. Look at the pattern of behavior that I'm getting from customers. Now I say, okay, that's working. We will eventually get the results and the fear for businesses in some cases, they need the financial result immediately but now what we can say is actually if you watch this track of behavior, you'll eventually get to the results. So if you're getting the behavioral change, you're actually heading the right direction. With risk management too, to your other point. So there's also a piece of don't just jump to where's the ROI? Correct. To, no, you're going to get there. Well, we're talking about things like advocacy and retention and these are loyalty. These are long term behavioral things. So you actually have to even go even further up and start measuring attitudinal. Am I getting the movement for customers of how they talk about our brand and how they talk about engagements? That will eventually lead to the behaviors that I want will eventually lead results. So there is a leap of faith here that says if you understand the formula you should be able to actually drive the outcome by understanding the pieces across the formula. But the good news is that by doing a better job of management, by having a disciplined approach to thinking about design, how it leads to innovation and getting leadership in place, you actually look at risk management as a way of thinking about what options am I going to buy in the future by failing now. So I've learned something that says, well, so now that group of options, we're pairing off. We still have this group of options. Let's pursue this group of options. Oh, something didn't work. Let's pair these options up. And each time the risk of movement, of action goes down. Well, the speed of it does too. So time actually costs money, right? So if I can make quick bets, I can test them very quickly and I can determine what I should scale and what I should not scale. It's actually cheaper to de-risk that piece that way. Yeah, this is an interesting point. You guys bring up the psychology and the DNA of the innovator. Whether it's the person in the trenches who gets the data and makes the discovery and the innovation to the executive. But one area that we've seen is, and certainly this is always talked about at the conferences and the stages, the no manager, they're looking for ways to say no. Right. Then there's the guy who says, look up to get to the yes. Yes. Take me through your experience on that because if you see, you have to know, you have to get to yes. Correct. You have to find that person that's looking for yes. Correct. In our process, by the way, we go from framing to ideating to share. And in share, we believe that showcasing is really important. The ability to actually put your idea in front of someone the right way. But when people say no, they spell it NO, and I always spell it K-N-O-W, right? Most cases that leaders say no is because they don't actually have enough information. So if you've framed, you really understand the customer, and you've done a really good job of ideating, and you're really putting some good proof of concepts together and getting them validated internally and externally, and you've done the disciplined work, by the time you get to a decision, you should be able to give enough of that K-N-O-W to get that leader to move in the direction. Yeah, because they're looking for information, they're looking for, they're looking to learn. Which means that you want an informed yes. Correct. You don't want the, because if you don't get the informed, yes, you're not getting the leader. You're really not getting the leader. Correct. You're getting rubber stamping. But leaders ask great questions, right? That's right. And they're looking for other people to have the answers, and they want to make sure that they went to the process. So when you bring me an ROI model, I want to say, well, wait a minute, how'd you put this together? How do you know that actually is going to get the increase? And I back them up to, well, wait a minute, here's the customer's attitude, and here's the behavior, and here's how I measure it. Okay, look at, you have to, well, how do you know it's going to cost this much? I went to every activity resource partner, I've determined what I believe it's going to take. If you're doing the discipline work along with the artwork, you have a much better chance of actually getting things done. The other piece too is that by the time you go to execute, even if you were wrong, you had so many measurements in place that you're able to make those tweaks and iterations, or decide to kill the innovation quick enough. So for leaders, I'm thinking, don't make scale decisions, make test decisions, make very small little bets, very quick rapid prototyping, and then make scale decisions based off of those tests. Now you've de-risked the whole project. Well, you get clear visibility on what will the flywheel be for the scale, get the visibility on the metrics and unit economics, or whatever you're. All right, so final question since we got the wrap up is, what's the coolest thing that you've seen or been involved with with a customer? It could be an aha moment, it could be, you walked into a train wreck and then you cleaned it up, or big discovery or big innovation. So I try not to share too many of the individual customers I'm working with, I'll give you a story, I was in the Middle East, the customer that I'm working with, they were looking at, it's a communications company, they were looking at their bundling process of how do I sell wireless and broadband at the same time. So after going through the whole customer ethnography work and framing it, they realized that what they were doing is actually selling two silos that didn't make any sense. The customer just wanted connectivity. They didn't care whether it was broadband or wireless or anything, so they started thinking differently, which was maybe we should step back from this and actually stop trying to bundle or special pricing based off of the bundle, but let's just sell connectivity. Let's just do away with the whole thought process that is actually two different things. And it worked? They're in the process of actually doing that design. I thought you might say, well, here's how the American companies do it, do it the exact opposite. Yeah, well, yeah, because let's face it, the process is not right, but they actually got to the point, and by the way, we didn't come in with okay, here's the idea that you should go do. They came to a conclusion that said, it's not unified billing, it's unified delivery of fulfilling the need. The customer's need is not broadband and wireless. The customer's need is connectivity. If that's the need, we should be fulfilling that and not thinking about the duck below the water of whether that's broadband or this and that. That's a great point. A lot of companies just stay in their product lanes and say, buy the products, not what they want. Focus on the service. All right, all right. We are, Brian Curran here inside theCUBE, really laying out some great insight into the design, thinking, the role of the innovative, the role of the organization. Congratulations on all your work. Great insight here on theCUBE, appreciate it. Thanks for sharing the data. We learned a lot. We're going to iterate more of the great interviews coming up from Oracle Modern Customer Experience after the short break.