Dear Herman Miller, Thank you for the Aeron Chair - it’s an era-defining and category-redefining demonstration of the power of innovation to change the fortunes of an organisation. And a neat encapsulation of innovation as a fluid, evolving, iterative eco-system, rather than a linear A + B + C = D stage-gate or pipeline process.
Now personally, subjectively, aesthetically, I don’t really like the Aeron Chair. (I’m more of an Eames Aluminium Group Chair (also by Herman Miller) sort of fellow - and have just bought one (a replica I’m afraid) for our teenage son as his desk-chair.)
Yes, and, individual and personal liking is very rarely the point when it comes to innovation.
Asking stakeholders, executives, colleagues “Do you like it?” has to be one of the worst ever questions, when it comes to innovation.
It doesn’t matter whether they like it.
Because they, typically, are not the customer. As indeed, I am not when buying a chair for our teenage son’s bedroom.
What matters is whether the market likes it. Whether customers like it.
That said, it’s a different matter when a stakeholder, executive, colleague says (or is prompted by a sharp-minded external, ahem, consultant, to say) “I like it, because…” and then lists out a series of market or customer-orientated criteria, or references how the innovation or idea might propel the organisation towards its business and brand strategy. “Because” is one of the most powerful words in any context and any language, but especially in the world of innovation.
Thank you for creating the time and the space to enable pivots as you developed the Aeron.
The story goes that designers Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf, realised as they worked through the design problems that were solving universal seating challenges that applied to everyone spending long hours seated, not just for elderly people and comfort for aging bodies as per the original brief.
And thank you for taking your time - it took you around seven years of research and iterations. And thank you for ignoring internal research that showed many people, based on their personal liking, initially found it ugly, describing the Pernille mesh as unfinished, industrial.
And thank you for landing on a simple but revolutionary functional insight: traditional office chairs were fundamentally uncomfortable because they trapped heat and created pressure points through continuous padding and upholstery.
Equally important was your conviction that the chair's mechanical workings shouldn't be hidden. Unlike every other office chair that concealed its adjustment mechanisms, with the Aeron you exposed them as part of its design language. So that the chair looked like what it was - an ergonomic tool, an honest expression of function.
But if those were the functional insights, what about the human or cultural insights?
Well you came along right around the time of the emergence of a whole new class of progressive companies who didn’t care about tradition, the old way of doing things. No wonder the Aeron became the chair of Silicon Valley, the ultimate status symbol during the dot-com boom, where every startup and tech company had to have Aerons. It meant that, you, Herman Miller, with all of the permission and equity you had built up via your sequence of ground-breaking designs since 1905, became the furniture brand of the future-focused tech world.
And thank you for still being here, albeit with an updated design launched in 2016, following your initial launch in 1994. The sure sign of a compelling innovation is whether it’s still in market, years after its launch. Over 8 million units have been launched and at its peak in the early 2000s (the start of the tech-boom), was generating over $200m annually.
So thank you Herman Miller for the Aeron. A chair that teaches us so much about innovation and shows how a brilliant innovation can rescue and reinvograte an organisation and make a brand relevant to a whole new generation.
Ned