Nothing like putting your heart and soul in an innovation, and then getting this:
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Man, tough audience. But very much in keeping with some the best advice on innovation. Which is, you can’t have innovation without some failure along the way. It’s inevitable.
That advice is both true, and glib. Innovation consultant Jeffrey Phillips catches the right spirit when he says:
Another thing about “failure” is that we try to kid ourselves that failure is a “good thing” a learning opportunity. Well, not in most cultures.
This is the reality of innovation. It’s tough. The more disruptive an innovation, the tougher it gets. And we’re in the middle of seeing how it plays right now with Apple iPad and Google Buzz.
Let me ask you this: Do you personally think either the iPad or Buzz will be guaranteed successes for their respective companies? Be honest now.
My guess is you’re like most of us: I don’t know.
Well, truth be known, neither do Apple and Google. But they’ve got a history you’d bet on.
Apple and Google: Big Time Failures, Big Time Innovations
Both Apple and Google have had their share of duds in the market:
Obviously, these companies do not have a perfect record of successful innovations.
But they do have a record of pressing through failures and continuing to roll out innovations. In fact, they’re consistently ranked the best in the world:
It pays to stick-to-it in trying out innovations. But can everyone?
Does Your Company Really Want Radical Innovation?
In Psychology Today, a professor at the University of Michigan gets to the issue:
From vaccines to Velcro, many inventions were spawned from accidents, seeming failures. But when Fiona Lee, psychology and business professor at the University of Michigan, explored which conditions help people experiment with novel ideas, she uncovered an interesting phenomenon: “Managers talk a lot about innovation and being on the cutting edge, but on an individual level, many people are not willing to try new things.”
What’s holding us back? A fear of failure.
Think about your own reaction to the question of whether the iPad and Google Buzz will be successful. It’s easy enough to be uncertain as an observer. But imagine if you have to put shareholder capital in to it, affect your brand in the market and risk some career trajectories?
I will often read of the importance of taking risks and accepting some level of failure for companies to be innovative. This is very true. But it can be glib to summarily dismiss companies for not “getting it”. When they’re made up of people like you and me who possess ordinary…well, human characteristics.
Because how do you know when you’re iterating toward a true high-value innovation, or you’re just spinning your wheels? I’ll turn again to Jeffrey Phillips:
As Edison and countless others have demonstrated, you rarely get it right the first time, and if you are stymied by early failure, then you’ll never find and implement the best ideas. Innovation, as has been pointed out by individuals with far more to say about it than me, will create some failures. Your job isn’t to avoid the failures, since you can’t predict them in advance, but to reduce the cost and impact of the inevitable failures. In other words, keep moving.
As I said before, I can’t know for sure whether the Apple iPad or Google Buzz will be successful. But kudos to those companies for rolling out innovations that might fail. And in case you’re wondering whether allowing employees some latitude to fail is worth it, check out the 5-year stock performance of Apple and Google versus the S&P 500:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Ultimately, the iPad is a large iPod touch: a great device to draw your inspiration from, but perhaps not the seismic shift in technology that we were expecting.
The much anticipated announcement of Apple’s iPad tablet was met with a resounding…”ho hum” or worse from much of the technology crowd. The biggest criticisms were its lack of key features (no Adobe Flash, lack of USB ports, where’s the camera?, etc.). Apple iPad as a technology innovation disappointment.
But with Apple, and Steve Jobs, that’s not really the point now, is it?
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Sure, Apple has had plenty of technological innovations along the way. But then, so has its competitors. Yes, Steve Jobs is a showman, but that effect only lasts for MacWorld presentations.
No, what Apple does well is put forth “radical innovations of meaning”. That term is from Roberto Verganti, who wrote about the concept in his excellent book Design-Driven Innovation.
Apple’s skills with design-driven innovation are what will make the iPad a success.
Design-Driven Innovation: Innovation of Meaning
“Market? What market! We do not look at market needs. We make proposals to people.”
Verganti’s books builds the case for a different form of innovation. One in which companies tap the undercurrents of societal changes early, and create products addressing them. As Artemide chairman Gismondi puts it, these products are so different, they are akin to “making a proposal” to a market. They are not linear updates to existing products.
As Julian Bleeker notes in his review of the book, design-driven innovation is not a “follow the trends” approach. “Trends” are what any company can do. Rather, it’s deciding that conditions are right to introduce a product that plumbs changes previously unexplored in your industry.
Verganti describes this work as the radical innovation of meaning. Many purchases are based as much on meaning as they are on features. Innovation of features is an ongoing process for companies. But innovation of meaning is a stunted process for many firms.
Take a product that has an accepted use, a common set of features, and provide something new that turns the traditional meaning of the product on its head. In the book, he describes multiple examples of this, drawn mostly from Italy, his home country. For example, Alessi, a manufacturer of household items, successfully innovated the meaning of many common items. It introduced a series of playful characters that represented everyday kitchen items:
While it may sound trivial as you read this, this product line was an absolute gangbuster in sales. Alessi figured out that people still enjoyed playful experiences, even as adults. No one else was thinking this way in the industry at the time. But now the kitchenware actively pursues emotional design. It was no accident either. Alessi spent time researching changes in societal norms. That we still like to be kids was a change they saw (and one that many of us today take for granted).
Companies that do this well are both influencers and participants in what Verganti describes as the “design discourse”. This is an ongoing conversation with thinkers, tinkerers, researchers and companies who target the same evolving changes in societal context. Often, these are people outside your industry who are studying the same changes you are interested in.
It is by accessing these networks where companies can “see” evolutions of societal norms that offer opportunity. These are opportunities not driven by expressed consumer desires, but by shifts in cultural norms. Done well, companies that successfully innovate the meaning of products enjoy significant growth and profits.
Oh, and early on, these innovations of meaning can be slow to gain acceptance by the market. Explains the early iPod and Nintendo Wii reactions.
Apple iPad: What Is Its Radical Innovation of Meaning?
OK, if iPad is innovating meaning even more than it is technology, what meaning might that be? Here’s my best guess:
iPad is tapping into an emerging dynamic of a more interactive, tactile experience with digital technology and information. These interactions make technology less of an interface, and more of an extension of ourselves and our environment.
The tweets above are a couple that show the natural way children engage with technology. Given the iPhone experience, they turn around and want to apply it to other devices. Buttons on devices, our traditional form of interaction, are divorced from the screen. They provide a measure of distance from the digital experience.
Touch, however, represents a new level of intimacy in the digital experience. In technology terms, it’s just an alternative form of interface. Touch, mouse, tab, whatever. But touch is a vital human sense, and a core part of experience. It’s how we interact with others, how we shop, experience textures and so much more.
In terms of the “design discourse”, there are pointers of changes ahead in terms of integrating touch more deeply into our digital engagement.
Digital Wellbeing Labs: Responsive Feedback Behaviors
The Wii and iPhone, and before the iPod click wheel, have created a popular introduction to gesture based interfaces, demonstrating responsive feedback behaviours, applying “natural” physical effects like flipping and inertia, similar to the ones we are accustomed to in the real world, to improve usability expectations of an interface.
As new “cultures of use” emerge we are creating opportunities to form a language of gestures, similar to the conventions of “right-clicking” and standardised keyboard shortcuts.
Note the term “culture of use”. Not industry trends. Because the dominant form of interaction for computers and video games is still mouse and buttons. And consumers aren’t asking for touch.
But there is an underlying change in thinking about how people interact with technology and information.
Architectural Design: Digital Intimacy
University of Nottingham Nottingham UK student Stephen Townsend received a commendation in the recent President’s Medal competition in the U.K. His entry, Digital Intimacy, depicts a concept where interaction is built into the architecture.
If you notice the graphic to the right, you will see people reaching out their hands and interacting through touch. Townsend calls it the “kinesthetic interaction space”. Kinesthetic refers to a style of learning based on physical activities.
He designed this kinesthetic interaction space as a therapeutic solution for children with special needs. Here’s how he describes it:
The ‘Kinesthetic Interaction Space’ is conceived as an interactive architectonic intervention aimed at children with autism, providing sensory stimulation to assist with intervention methods and aid interaction with other children through shared kinesthetic experience. The focus of the thesis is on the development of dynamic material systems that could enable new forms of interactive environment. Architecture is conceptualised as an embodied interface and physical space has been fused with digital media in order to stimulate the imagination of inhabitants. K.I.S. is intended to facilitate playful explorations and fluid dialogues between people. The user learns to interact with their environment through an intuitive process, engaging the physical presence of inhabitants and forming spatial narratives.
While Townsend’s concept addresses children with autism, the underlying design is consistent with greater digital intimacy overall.
TEDEx Talk: Phones That Touch Us
PhD student Fabian Hemmert presented at a recent TEDx talk. He is working on a concept where phones include physical movements that better connote actions to people using them. In the video below, you’ll see him describe how the phone would shift weight in relation to changes in movement on a map.
As Hemmert notes, humans live in a physical world, one “which tastes good, feels good smells good”. He wants to design products that better integrate that experience.
iPad: The Future of Computing
Those three examples I just gave are part of a larger design discourse about the nature of digital engagement in our future. Are we “locked in” to the mouse and keyboard? Or will we continue to evolve the interaction experience?
If you think about how a computer like this will impact people sociologically, suddenly the iPad is far more than a larger iPod Touch, as many have described it. It’s the computer for everyone: an idea Apple has been working toward for years.
That doesn’t mean the iPad will be the only computer for everyone and destroy every PC on the market, because that’s not even remotely likely. But it will introduce a significant new category.
Bold pronouncement for sure. But entirely consistent with a radical innovation of meaning. Henry Blodget sees an outcome of this drive for digital intimacy: pervasiveness.
They won’t live on desks, the way desktops do, and they won’t be carried everywhere, the way mobile phones are. They’ll just be there, around the house, on tables and counters, the way today’s books, magazines, games, and newspapers are, booted up, ready to use.
Keep in mind student Stephen Townsend’s kinesthetic interaction space, built into the house. How about an iPad in every room of the house, ready to go? You can see thinking evolving on similar lines here.
I can see people becoming quite attached to their iPads. Their little units of digital intimacy.
Once you see where this is going, it should come as no surprise that Apple may be working on a larger version of its iPad, as a full computer. Steve Jobs is placing his chips on this radical innovation of meaning.
From the home office at the annual retreat of Republican members of the House of Representatives in Baltimore, where I’m taking questions on my blog care plan…
#1: RT @cbneese My coworker: “Hey everyone I got the iPad, only I got the smaller, more portable version, with internet, a camera, and a phone.”
#2: RT @dhinchcliffe The PC officially died today: http://bit.ly/aATwBS Nick Carr probably does the best sum-up of the week.
#3: RT@ jbrewer RT @fchimero: Headline: “Tech nerds everywhere pissed Apple made a product for someone other than them.”
I’m in the market for a new phone. And I’m pretty damn easy.
Apple has now released the next version of its phone, the 3G iPhone. With all the buzz around it, it’s hard not to consider buying one. But before taking the plunge, I wanted to understand what I’m getting myself into. I also wanted to consider what many people claim is a superior phone on the market, the Nokia N95.
But first, about my being pretty damn easy…
I’m a Mobile Phone Luddite
When I bought my current mobile phone, I really didn’t want all the fancy stuff. Just the ability to talk to someone. And that’s just what I got with my Nokia Sprint phone, pictured below:
Not much “smart” about that phone. Just cheap and functional. Any phone that does the things I list in the picture above will be a quantum leap forward for me. Obviously, I’m no early adopter.
Hence, I’m easy when it comes to smart phones.
Apple iPhone vs. Nokia N95
The crux of the argument seems to boil down to this:
3G iPhone offers a superior web browsing experience
N95 offers superior camera and actually has video
Oh, there are other things…
Apps for the iPhone are supposed to be really cool. But I’m really not interested in Tap Tap Revenge. One thing I learned from Facebook is that most of these little apps grow boring quite quickly. However, there’s always the possibility that some interesting app will be developed.
There’s also Apple’s closed platform and restrictive DRM, which means all development requires approval of Apple. But considering that I’ve been using a phone without anything that would cause such concern, I’m mostly unconcerned about this as well.
The Knocks Against the iPhone
Here are the the biggest knocks I’ve seen on the iPhone. Gotta know what could ruin my day if I buy one.
Short battery life. This consistently comes up as a negative for the iPhone. It sounds awful, especially in comparison to my current lowly Nokia phone. The battery on that phone can last for days. But it sounds like any 3G smart phone may suffer a similar battery life issue. Here’s what GigaOm said about the Nokia N95:
The battery on this device [Nokia N95] simply sucks. It doesn’t even last the whole day, and that is when you are using it in GSM mode, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS turned off.
Apple does provide tips for preserving battery life. In addition, Cyndy Aleo-Carreira reports that a simple change to one feature – push email – can dramatically improve battery life.
Crappy camera, no video. There’s no getting around this one. The iPhone’s 2 mega pixel camera is woeful compared to the N95’s 5 mega pixel. Here’s a picture that Fred Wilson took with the N95:
Look at that quality! And with two young children, I think great pictures would be nice. Not to mention the ability to do easy video.
Forced to go with AT&T. This is a big one for many folks. They don’t like AT&T for whatever reason. AT&T appears to have good 3G coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area. But outside the region, coverage gets dicey. As Robert Scoble tweeted about his drive from southern California back to the Bay Area:
Out of the past 7.5 hours of driving we have had 3G for less than an hour. AT&T needs to do a much better job at coverage.
My Sprint phone actually has pretty bad coverage inside my house. So I’m not sure AT&T can get much worse, unless I was unable to get any signal. I did ask about what happens when 3G isn’t available on FriendFeed (comment on Scoble’s tweet). Here’s what Zach Flauaus said:
The iPhone’s priority is 3G, then EDGE, then GPRS. Aka: Fast, ehh… And “Oh hell no!”
So even if I can’t surf the web, I get a phone signal. OK…I probably can live with that.
The new apps crash the iPhone. Let me repeat that: NEW APPS CRASH THE iPHONE! Tim O’Reilly describes the laments of iPhone users and their crashing phones. He includes a Summize Twitter search for iPhone crash. The search reults are frightening:
“so it seems writing mobile applications is not such a trivial task. On the iPhone they crash like crazy”
“first iPhonecrash since I restored it 4 days ago, I guess my strategy has worked, and coincidently it crashed on a newly installed app”
“Experienced my first iPhone app crash tonight. Screen turned black. After a few tries the phone came back to life but I deleted the app.”
“Just had my first iPhone app crash. Facebook!”
Sounds like it’s best to avoid putting apps on the iPhone for the time being. But I am hopeful about downloading some good apps down the road.
No copy and paste. Honestly, this one doesn’t bother me so much…yet. The iPhone doesn’t support a clip board to copy things you find. My initial reaction is “so what?”. But I”ll probably want that. One example: wordpress.com’s new iPhone interface. You can post blog entries from the iPhone. As you can see in this post, I’m a huge fan of copy-n-paste. Not having this feature could chafe.
The Nokia N95 Knock: Web Surfing Is Bad
The N95 does include web surfing and email. But this is what I’ve been reading about that experience:
“@Jonathan – does Nokia have a decent web browser?” – Yolanda
“@Yolanda, no, it’s crap. But there’s Opera mini (http://operamini.com) which is somewhat decent.” – Guillermo Esteves (link)
Question: “If you could only take one device to a tropical island would it be a smartphone or a laptop?”
Robert Scoble: “Assuming I am going on vacation to get away from it all? My Nokia N95. Good camera to take pics and videos of me drinking MaiTais. GPS so I can get around. But hard to use for Web and Email so I am not too tempted.”
“After seeing, feeling & experiencing the Web on the iPhone, I Know I need one, even though I have an N95 (hate it for browsing)” (link)
“Yes, I borrowed a friends N95for a day and they had my Blackberry. Phone quality is important to me with a hearing aid. The web browsing sux on the N95, phone was ok. The camera and video were way cool though, nice but not necessary toys.” (link)
iPhone Gets Some Real Love Though
I’m impressed by the number of people expressing their affection for the iPhone, despite its limitations.
Gina Trapani of Lifehacker wrote this in a generally negative piece on the iPhone: “But Mobile Safari’s tabbed browsing convinced me to trade in my principles for convenience. This job requires me to be online everywhere I go, and as far as I could see, the iPhone was the best way to do that.”
And here’s the Twitter search for “love my iPhone“. Look at all that love!
What About You?
So I’m close to making a decision. My use case is more web browsing than picture/video taking. But there are definitely issues with the iPhone.
If you’ve got thoughts about the 3G iPhone or the Nokia N95, I’d love to hear ’em.
UPDATE: ReadWriteWeb covers the Apple vs. Nokia issue this morning as well here.
Today was Apple’s big day, the release of its new 3G iPhone…geeks lined up days beforehand…stores were full of new iPhones…money was burning holes in pockets…the doors opened…customers rushed in to be the first ones to have the shiny new gadget…they claim their iPhones and go to activate in-store, an Apple requirement…and…the activation FAILS…
Apple requires a special kind of workforce. The place is divided by product but also by function along what COO Tim Cook calls “very faint lines.” Collaboration is key. So is a degree of perfectionism. Apple hires people who are never satisfied.
Today’s activation flub has got to be eating them up sumthin’ fierce…Apple has worked hard to achieve and maintain its air of excellence and coolness…
Fake Steve Jobs recently retired from his blogging…but surely this is too delicious to not write one more post…
All that said, Robert Scoble gives the new iPhone a thumbs up…
*****
Loren Feldman is currently following only 3 people on his Twitter account…he unsubscribed from everyone he was following…wow…he does say that he will be on FriendFeed going forward…
I’m not comfortable damning this guy, as I’ve never heard of him outside of recent events…he seems pretty tightly wound and people describe him as funny…he messed up with TechNigga…I’m willing to watch what he does going forward…and was this really Wayne Suttoncommenting on Loren’s blog?
Thanks for the official statement, continue to create videos and I hope everyone from this situation has learned something and does not stop the future of sponsorship from other national outlets with the online video blogging community. I’m looking forward to your next project.
Lots of discussions this week about the fast growth of subscribers for big name people on FriendFeed…Allen Stern does a nice job of breaking it down in this video…the issue is that same people tend to show up in two key places on FriendFeed…(1) the first 12 subscriptions listed on users’ Me page…and (2) the same 9 people are often displayed on the recommended page…shaking things up on those listings would be nice…
For my part, I was really surprised at the number of subscriptions (~100) that occurred because of Mike Fruchter’s post about ten people to follow on FriendFeed…thanks for the shout-out Mike…
On Twitter, there are two ways to broadcast a blog post:
Tweet a link to your own blog post, usually including something like “blog post” so people have a heads up its your own post.
Tweet the word “reading” and the name of the blog post with a URL. This lets people know that you’re reading someone else’s blog post, and you like it enough to tell others about it.
Jason Calacanis tweets “reading” for his own blog posts. Huh? Reading? He wrote it! Here’s one example:
Over at TechCrunch, they’ve got a post up discussing the top six personal homepages. #1? MyYahoo. MyYahoo has been around for quite a while. 6-7 years? It’s an oldie, but still a goodie. It’s my homepage.
There are others on the list. #2 iGoogle looms as the big scary challenger. Given Google’s success over the past several years in other arenas, it’s surprising they haven’t taken the #1 spot here as well.
It’s a testament to inertia. Not inertia in any negative sense, like laziness or user ignorance. Rather, inertia as a reflection of human sensibilities and value systems. Something called the “9X problem“.
Harvard professor John Gourville put forth the idea of the 9X problem. The gist of his thesis: “a mismatch of 9 to 1 between what innovators think consumers want and what consumers actually want.” The mathematical term “9X” actually does have a little math behind it. And that math is key to understanding the 9X issue.
First part of the 9X equation is based on our comfort with what we have. Things we already know, things that we have invested time in learning and using, have a high psychological value for us. They satisfy some need. We’ve learned their strengths, and live with their weaknesses. When we compare something new to something we already have, we tend to overweight the value of what we already have by 3X. It’s a little scary to give up what you know.
Second part of the 9X equation is based on our natural skepticism about claims made for new things. This probably resonates for most of us. I know I tend to dismiss most commercials and advertisements. This is a healthy trait of people – otherwise we’d all be getting duped left and right. But it also means that we underweight the value of features for something new by a factor of 3X.
Multiplied together, this gives us the 9X factor.
This is powerful stuff. It means new things really have to deliver healthy gains in benefits. Some examples of “9X masters” come to mind. Google was such a leap forward in search relative to its competitors: very relevant results, clean interface. Apple’s iPod just blew the doors off other music players in so many ways. Honda’s reliability and fuel efficiency were miles ahead of Detroit in the 1980s and 90s.
But there are plenty of other cases where good products failed to dislodge incumbents. Supposedly, many other search engines have attained search results parity with Google. I wouldn’t know…I still use Google exclusively. And so do many others.
So there’s the 9X problem. It’s actually a really interesting concept. If you’re doing a startup, can you do in it a way that does not force someone to give up an existing “thing” they like? That way, you only have to deal with the 3X new product benefits underweighting problem?
9X is really about inertia. MyYahoo fulfills a personalized homepage need: news, email, stocks, sports, weather, etc. iGoogle, Netvibes and others have really nifty options for their pages. But have they delivered 9X the value?
The key is to hook your users. Once you get them, it’s hard to lose them. On that note, how about adding my little blog to your RSS reader? You can remove it any time you want… 😉
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