Here is an excerpt from an article written by Roger L. Martin for Harvard Business Review and the HBR Blog Network. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, obtain subscription information, and receive HBR email alerts, please click here.

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The logic we use to understand the world as it is can hinder us when we seek to understand the world as it could be. Anyone who comes up with new ideas for a living will recognize the challenges this truism presents. It means that to get organizational support for something new, the designer needs to pay as close attention to how the new idea is created, shared, and brought to life as to the new idea itself.

The Normal Way of Generating Commitment….

Normally, we commit to an idea when we are rationally compelled by the logic of the idea and we feel emotionally comfortable with it. In the modern world, we focus disproportionately on the logic, assuming that the feelings will naturally follow. Analysis has become the primary tool in this regard. A logically plausible proposition, combined with supporting data, is presented to produce a cognitive “sense of proof.” Hence the modern equation is: logic plus data provides proof, which generates emotional comfort, which leads directly to commitment.

The tricky thing about new ideas is that there is no data yet to analyze – otherwise the idea wouldn’t actually be new. The absence of data undermines our modern commitment equation. For a new idea, the equation is likely to be: logic without data produces speculation, which results in emotional discomfort.

….And Its Consequence: an Over-Commitment to Exploitation over Exploration

No wonder so many new ideas are dismissed out of hand. Our training and experience tell us logically that ideas without data can’t reach our standard of proof, and proof is the prompt for emotional comfort. We are biased, then, against new ideas – based on the way we have been trained to see the world. Moreover, our bias toward analysis makes us blind to the limitations of analytical “proof.” Proof comes from the analysis of past data. But, when we look ahead, the proof is only robust to the extent that the future is identical to the past. Despite the obvious fact that the future is notoriously different than the past, the comfort generated by logic and data combined into proof keeps us continuing to exploit what we believe to be proven true rather than exploring unproven directions.

The net result is that we overexploit and underexplore. The consequence in the business world is that start-ups who are more willing to explore new ideas systematically outflank and often demolish established companies trapped in exploitation mode.

The Importance of Intervention Design

In the face of this dynamic, it isn’t enough to create new products and services. Unless we also design new ways of talking about ideas and exploring the future, those product and service innovations will never be embraced by the organization and never make their way out into the world.

The problem of the absence of data in the logic + data + emotions equation means that both logic and emotions have to be exceedingly strong. Strong logic alone is not enough to generate commitment to a new idea because logic alone makes us emotionally uncomfortable. Similarly, appealing singularly to emotions makes us uncomfortable too. We know that we aren’t being rigorous if we make a commitment to a new idea on the basis of emotions alone.

Thus, great intervention design requires attention to both logic and emotions – equally. Commitment is possible only when driven by a strong combination of both of them. Fortunately, the tools of design thinking, which have for many years been used to create great new ideas, can also be brought to bear on the methods of gaining support for those ideas – or what we in design thinking call “the intervention.” The case of John Shuttleworth and his team at BT Financial Group (BTFG) illustrates how this can work.

Shuttleworth, a member of BTFG’s Executive Management Team, is responsible for Platforms and Investments. The company, Australia’s largest wealth platform provider, is the wealth management arm of the Westpac Group (Australia’s second largest bank in terms of market capitalization).

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Roger L. Martin is a professor at and the former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He is a co-author of Playing to Win (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013).