A product named FreeStyle Flash is…? Take a guess, then look at the answer.
-
How a competitive stance blocks innovation
W. Chan Kim and Ren̩e Mauborgne in Think for yourself Рstop copying a rival make a great case for reducing the focus on competition and refocusing on innovation:
Assisted by new means to analyse competitors and influence their behaviour, companies [in the 1980’s] placed competition at the centre of strategic thinking, where it has remained ever since. But should organisations be motivated in this way? Our research suggests not. Focusing on building competitive advantages detracts from reshaping old industries, driving young industries to new frontiers and building entirely new industries. It blocks creativity.
I experienced this first-hand years ago while working on a project alongside one of the big management consulting firms. They had morphed the best practices mantra into a design method, aggregating disparate features of the competitors products into our product, and viola — this would somehow result in a cohesive whole that would trump the competition.
Seth Godin says, “The reason it’s so hard to follow the leader is this: The leader is the leader precisely because he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken — so it’s no longer remarkable when you decide to do it.“
-
Lemme just email you the wiki…
It’s written in HTML and JavaScript to run on any browser without needing any ServerSide logic. It allows anyone to create SelfContained hypertext documents that can be posted to any web server, or sent by email.
Whoa, wikis for the masses. It’s not as if they’re hard to setup (I’ve set up two personal wikis in about 10 minutes) but hosting is still a major hurder for many writers.
And it’s combined with a novel layout system:
A TiddlyWiki is like a blog because it’s divided up into neat little chunks, but it encourages you to read it by hyperlinking rather than sequentially…
Go and click a link, it’s fun!
Link courtesy Peter.
-
Those wonderful blue Greek coffee cups
…you find all over New York are now available in a more environmentally-friendly ceramic version.
-
My birthday is Tuesday…
…and I’d like everyone in America to chip in and get me a new president. Thanks!
Oh, and some tickets to The Incredibles.
-
Ketchup desire lines
Just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s article on ketchup, which Peterme and Christina liked so much. The article explores the connection between consumer research and our tastes. The best quote: “The mind knows not what the tongue wants.”
Immediately afterwards I was grocery shopping (and bought some Gulden’s mustard, incidentally) and saw this:
I wouldn’t be surprised if the upside-down ketchup bottle came out of similar ethnographic observation that resulted in the “EZ pour” child-friendly bottle. In this case it’s about adjusting the product to fit the way people actually use it, like desire lines. I just wonder if they had to educate stock clerks on which way to display the bottles.
Also, Nick writes in with a pointer to their bitchin’ label copy.
-
Customer culture and company value
The recent legal scandal involving four insurance companies in the U.S. caused them to lose $4 Billion of shareholder value in 2 days and now one chief executive. Having worked in one of those companies, and for others who are similar, I’d say a deep, underlying cause is a severe lack of empathic concern for the customer. There are many levels of hierarchy and bureaucracy between workers and customers than breeds insensitivity, and eventually greed.
Those of us who care about helping companies improve their products and organizations should absorb this lesson and teach it as a morality tale. Bad companies get punished, not just by the law but also by the stock market. In the longer run sales will suffer as wary customers punish them by taking business elsewhere.
Being customer-centered leads to better products and to better companies.
Update: And Marsh has to lay off 3,000 people as a result. Very sad.
Another Update: And several Marsh board members are losing their seats.
-
What’s next for iLife: Film Direction
iLife let’s you be composer and editor with production capabilities that required an entire studio 15 years ago. The next logical step in consumer production is full-on film direction, a combination of simulation and multimedia that completes the DIY promise. An example of what amateurs are hacking together is Mike Fraser’s 100 years (Windows Media), made using The Sims 2 and set to Five for Fighting’s 100 years (iTunes). It’s rough but wonderful. Wait for the ending.
Update: Brett writes in to compare this to machinima, which it is, and which I should have thought of after discovering the hilarious Red vs. Blue last year. But what if Apple comes at it from the other direction – building a complete production studio on your mac, instead hacking together a movie using a game engine — it could suddenly own the commercial machinima market before others realized there was a market.
-
Steve Jobs on managing for innovation
From an interview in BusinessWeek…
On motives:
…motives make so much difference. …our primary goal here is to make the world’s best PCs — not to be the biggest or the richest. We have a second goal, which is to always make a profit — both to make some money but also so we can keep making those great products. For a time, those goals got flipped at Apple, and that subtle change made all the difference. When I got back, we had to make it a product company again.
On creating a design culture:
You need a very product-oriented culture, even in a technology company. Lots of companies have tons of great engineers and smart people. But ultimately, there needs to be some gravitational force that pulls it all together. Otherwise, you can get great pieces of technology all floating around the universe. But it doesn’t add up to much.
…and losing it:
Some very good product people invent some very good products, and the company achieves a monopoly. But after that, the product people aren’t the ones that drive the company forward anymore. It’s the marketing guys…
And who usually ends up running the show? The sales guy. John Akers at IBM is the consummate example. Then one day, the monopoly expires for whatever reason. But by then the best product people have left, or they’re no longer listened to. And so the company goes through this tumultuous time, and it either survives or it doesn’t.On juggling:
I did everything in the early days — documentation, sales, supply chain, sweeping the floors, buying chips, you name it. I put computers together with my own two hands…. Not everyone knows it, but three months after I came back to Apple, my chief operating guy quit. I couldn’t find anyone internally or elsewhere that knew as much as he did, or as I did. So I did that job for nine months.
On systematizing innovation:
The system is that there is no system. That doesn’t mean we don’t have process… But that’s not what it’s about. Process makes you more efficient. But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea… And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much.
On the company story:
When I got back here, Apple had forgotten who we were. Remember that “Think Different” ad campaign we ran? It was certainly for customers to some degree, but it was even more for Apple itself.
You can tell a lot about a person by who his or her heroes are. That ad was to remind us of who our heroes are and who we are. We forgot that for a while. Companies sometimes forget who they are. Sometimes they remember again, and sometimes they don’t.
-
Espresso has less caffeine than brewed coffee
Zap recently told me this, and I was happy to confirm it: 1 oz. of espresso has 35mg of caffeine while 8 oz. of coffee has 250mg (31.25mg per ounce). So I’m happily downing my second double-espresso of the morning.
-
PBS series on innovation
They Made America is a four-part series in November:
American history is filled with the stories of influential innovators, whose ideas and entrepreneurial spirit gave birth to commercial milestones like the steamboat and cultural touchstones like the Barbie doll. Twelve of these individuals are profiled in They Made America, a four-part television series from the producers of American Experience.
-
Google word clustering and the UI plunge
John Battelle reports on Google’s recent demo of word clustering algorithms, which could force them to take the UI plunge:
What do I mean by that? Well, of all the major engines, only Google has strictly maintained what might be called the C prompt interface to search: put in yer command, get out yer list of results (Google Local is a departure, but it’s still in beta). Yahoo, Ask, A9 and others have begun to twiddle in pretty significant ways with evolved interfaces which – by employing your search history, your personal data, clustering, and other tricks – deliver more filtered and intentional results (though it is still arguable if they are more relevant).
Link courtesy of Alex.
-
Debate commentary
Katharine Q. Seelye’s live commentary of the presidential debate is better reading than the debate itself…
9:33 p.m.
Bush should probably not laugh in response to a question about why health care costs so much.She must be there, or watching a non-delayed feed, as her comments come up before the candidate’s answer. It’s a great way to view what they’re saying through an expert analyst’s point of view.
-
MBA class experience
I attended an MBA class last night at New York University’s Stern School of Business. I was both interested in the topic of the class and as an observer of the professor’s teaching style and MBA students in general. I noticed:
- Students were predictably clean cut. Diverse ethnically as you’d expect in New York or in a good MBA program, but in many ways not very diverse.
- They served free coffee in the classroom.
- Each student had a little nameplate they carry with them and position in front of their seat, like at the United Nations.
- I pulled out my laptop to take notes and looked around to notice not a single other person with a laptop (the room did offer sufficient electrical outlets, ethernet jacks, and wi-fi). This could be explained in several ways, such as the idea-heavy rather than fact-heavy nature of the lecture. But it surprised me; I thought all the hip, well-to-do kids would be doing everything digitally.
Update: David reports that students are explicitly asked not to use laptops in the classroom, a guideline he feels is vital to the educational experience.
-
Symbiosis
Symbiosis is a dependent relationship between two organisms. There are three basic kinds: parasitism, in which one partner (the parasite) benefits and the other (the host) is harmed; commensalism, in which one partner (the commensal) benefits and the other partner (the host) is indifferent, and mutualism, in which both partners benefit. These three states are evolutionarily related to each other: parasitic relationships tend to evolve into commensalistic relationships, and commensalistic relationships tend to evolve into mutualistic relationships. This makes perfect sense. Any accidental genetic change in the host which reduces the harm (or causes benefit) from the parasite would certainly be favored by selection; any accidental genetic change in the parasite which keeps its host, upon which it depends, healthy and alive longer would also be favored. So the selective pressure on both sides is toward less and less damage to the host.
From Life Together: The Origin of Mitochondria and Chloroplasts