402 - Matthew Milan Presentation at Prototypes, Process & Play 2017

This podcast features Matthew Milan, CEO of Normative, and his presentation, “Making Moonshots” from the design leadership conference Prototypes, Process & Play on August 10th, 2017.

Prototypes, Process & Play presentation podcasts are sponsored by Balsamiq - with Balsamiq Mockups, anyone can design great software.

Matthew Milan - Presentation

CEO of Normative

Matthew is a complex systems specialist with a focus on software innovation. He has degrees in Ski Area Management, Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Planning, and has spent most of his career helping organizations make concrete decisions about the future through the integration of strategic design and technology prototyping.

Matthew has spent the last decade at Normative leading teams on the fuzzy front end of emerging technologies. Along the way he’s discovered that when you work at the intersection of people and technology, change is the only constant. Dealing with ambiguity is what gets him up in the morning.

Matthew married with three children under 10 years old. They ski a lot.

For more, keep up with Matthew at normative.com or on Twitter as @mmilan.

Making Moonshots

A critical part of leadership is the reduction of ambiguity for your team. Your job is to make it clear, so the team can work towards the goals you’ve set. The reality is that many of the goals you’re setting are make-or-break for the future of your organization. If you work in a field like design or innovation, you’re probably already sick of hearing the word “moonshot.” Maybe you’ve even been part of one, or more likely, you’ve unwittingly part of many. As a leader, moonshots are part of the job.

There’s just one problem with the “moonshot” approach: the real moonshot wasn’t a single giant leap forward. It was a series of incremental experiments designed to test the riskiest parts of going to the moon, as soon as possible. This approach put humans on the moon within a decade of Kennedy’s famous speech, and it’s the same approach that the best innovators like Elon Musk use to get rapid traction on the hardest and most complex problems of our times.

This session will demystify complex, challenging “moonshot” initiatives and give you a set of principles and practices that you can use to wrestle the riskiest innovation challenges to the ground. You’ve already got the tools: research, prototyping, planning and production. Now, let’s help you to connect them together with the right questions and perspectives, getting the traction you need make innovation work practical and successful.

About Chicago Camps

Chicago Camps, LLC (chicagocamps.org) was founded in 2012. They plan multiple low cost, high-value events primarily in Chicago.

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"In the Basteal" music written and produced and performed by Christian Lane | @christianlane01

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About Tent Talks

Chicago Camps hosts irregularly scheduled Tent Talks with people from all across the User Experience Design community, and beyond. Who really likes limits, anyway--If it's a cool idea, we'd love to hear about it and share it!

What is a Tent Talk? That's a great question, we'd love to tell you.

Tent Talks are short-form in nature, generally lasting from 10-20 minutes (ish) in a recorded format--we like to think of them as "S'mores-sized content" because that's pretty on-brand. Tent Talks can be a presentation on a topic, a live Q&A session about the work we do, or the work around the work we do, or really just about anything--we don't want to limit ourselves, or you.

You should send along an idea or topic of your own so we can learn from you, as well! You don't have to be a published author or a professional speaker on a circuit to be good at your job, so please, put yourself forward, and let's have some fun, talk, and share your experience with others!