Blue Sky Talks with Richard Seymour
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Following a welcome speech by Katie Murphy, senior event director for Aircraft Interiors Expo and World Travel Catering Expo (AIX and WTCE), a well-attended one-day Passenger Experience Conference kicked off this morning in Hamburg with a plenary keynote session entitled “Blue Sky Talks.”
Richard Seymour, founder of prolific design and innovation firm seymourpowell, brought to the stage more than 30 years of creative insights, as well as his extensive aviation industry experience. Throughout his 45-minute presentation, Seymour challenged delegates to free up their thinking about what is possible in aviation now, and how to establish a culture of forward thinking within their organizations.
An exceptional passenger experience, he explained, is the by-product of imagination, willpower, a bit of psychology and an over-arching awareness of the wonder and beauty of flight.
“The future, in the 1950s and 1960s was remorselessly positive and optimistic,” he said. “We thought we could do anything. Prevailing attitudes in all areas (engineering, marketing, design) … was based on this. You stood in the future and pulled the present towards you. Now we are trying to push the future. Shove it forward bit by bit.”
So how can our industry stand in the future and pull the present towards us, instead of doing it the other way around? Seymour suggests looking first at the composition of our own organizations, moving away from the traditional “pyramid” shaped ladder of command and trimming away people or processes that create drag.
“As Steve Jobs said, its not a lack of technology [that slows innovation], it’s the fact that we have to be able to make the decisions earlier and we need to have the willpower to carry them through,” said Seymour, having had the pleasure of knowing the late Apple CEO. “If Steve Jobs was the CEO of an airliner, he would fire his first tier of management. Hire geniuses. Hire brilliant people. Hire awkward ones.”
Seymour admits that such radical organization change is terribly daunting for a lot of businesses, but it’s something he feels is absolutely necessary to avoid investing needless time and energy into the development of concepts already on their way to becoming out-dated.
“Its very hard to do this. You’ve got to install in the business a long-term vision and you’ve got to talk to people who know where it’s going. If I deliver a product based on what I know now, it’ll be – in a few years, minimum – out of date. Engage with other industries, work with them.”
Finally, Seymour advises us all to appreciate flight and the experience of air travel for the spectacular achievement is truly is. “If you dissociate yourself from the miracle of what we are creating together, the wonder of it, then it is just stuff.”