"You're good. Get better. Stop asking for things." — Don Draper to Peggy Olson. He emphasized the importance of recognizing and asserting one's value. Similarly, architects must move beyond traditional deliverables and champion the intrinsic value of our creative processes.

We love to blame zoning, ADA, energy codes for stifling creativity. But the real culprit? Our own process. We've designed services that reward deliverables, not discovery. The market pays us for drawings, not ideas. And in a profession obsessed with craft, that means most of the creative breakthroughs happen off the clock—if they happen at all.

Meanwhile, industries that face just as much regulation—healthcare, finance, aviation—have figured out how to structure innovation into their process. They’ve turned creativity into a repeatable, billable system.

By June 2024, the ABI reported a 46.4 score—seventeen straight months of declining billings. This isn't just about regulations. It's about survival.

Case Study #1 – Huge Inc.: From Digital Design to Business Innovation

Huge Inc., a digital agency, saw design being commoditized. Their move? Shift upstream—from project-based work to business strategy. They stopped waiting for client briefs and started shaping them. They sold themselves as partners, not vendors.

Case Study #2 – Alinea: Reinventing the Fine Dining Experience

Alinea turned the meal into a performance, a story, an Instagrammable spectacle. What if we treated architecture the same way? What if design wasn’t just a line item but an experience clients couldn’t get anywhere else?

Frameworks That Force Creativity to Show Up (And Why You Should Care)

These case studies weren’t just interesting—they taught me something fundamental: Innovation isn’t random. It’s process-driven.

We don’t need to wait around for creative lightning to strike between CD sets and VE sessions.
We can build the moments where creativity happens—and charge for them.

• Design Sprints — One week. One challenge. Billable.

• Jobs-To-Be-Done — Design outcomes, not spaces.

• Evidence-Based Design — Measure your impact. Sell the data.

Takeaway: Innovation isn't luck. It's process. Reframe your business model, build moments where creativity is forced to show up—and charge for it.

Maybe we move beyond our processes and rethink our Product all together?

Apple Buys an Architecture Firm… Hear Me Out

This week, I ran a thought experiment—one I think every architect should try. It’s called Orthodoxy Flipping, and the setup is simple:

Pick a company known for innovation. Imagine they bought your firm. What changes?

I chose Apple (because duh). And the answers came fast:

• Our buildings would be modular, designed to update like iPhones.

• User experience wouldn’t be an afterthought. It’d be the whole brief.

• We’d own the spaces we design, turning architecture into recurring revenue.

• And the fee? You’d pay for updates, not drawings.

  
  

Sound crazy? Maybe. But tell me that doesn’t sound better than another RFP grind or VE meeting where someone deletes your design intent line by line.