Nice looking site, great content, topics. Bill Gates is becoming like one of those great ex-presidents we got here in the US.
Apple represents the “auteur model of innovation,” observes John Kao, a consultant to corporations and governments on innovation. In the auteur model, he said, there is a tight connection between the personality of the project leader and what is created. Movies created by powerful directors, he says, are clear examples, from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” to James Cameron’s “Avatar.”
At Apple, there is a similar link between the ultimate design-team leader, Mr. Jobs, and the products. From computers to smartphones, Apple products are known for being stylish, powerful and pleasing to use. They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head, an affliction known as “featuritis” that burdens so many technology products.
“A defining quality of Apple has been design restraint,” says Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster and consultant in Silicon Valley.
That restraint is evident in Mr. Jobs’s personal taste. His black turtleneck, beltless blue jeans and running shoes are a signature look. In his Palo Alto home years ago, he said that he preferred uncluttered, spare interiors and then explained the elegant craftsmanship of the simple wooden chairs in his living room, made by George Nakashima, the 20th-century furniture designer and father of the American craft movement.
Great products, according to Mr. Jobs, are triumphs of “taste.” And taste, he explains, is a byproduct of study, observation and being steeped in the culture of the past and present, of “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then bring those things into what you are doing.”
His is not a product-design philosophy steered by committee or determined by market research. The Jobs formula, say colleagues, relies heavily on tenacity, patience, belief and instinct. He gets deeply involved in hardware and software design choices, which await his personal nod or veto. Mr. Jobs, of course, is one member of a large team at Apple, even if he is the leader. Indeed, he has often described his role as a team leader. In choosing key members of his team, he looks for the multiplier factor of excellence. Truly outstanding designers, engineers and managers, he says, are not just 10 percent, 20 percent or 30 percent better than merely very good ones, but 10 times better. Their contributions, he adds, are the raw material of “aha” products, which make users rethink their notions of, say, a music player or cellphone.
“Real innovation in technology involves a leap ahead, anticipating needs that no one really knew they had and then delivering capabilities that redefine product categories,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School. “That’s what Steve Jobs has done.”
Timing is essential to make such big steps ahead. Carver Mead, a leading computer scientist at the California Institute of Technology, once said, “Listen to the technology; find out what it’s telling you.”
Mr. Jobs is undeniably a gifted marketer and showman, but he is also a skilled listener to the technology. He calls this “tracking vectors in technology over time,” to judge when an intriguing innovation is ready for the marketplace. Technical progress, affordable pricing and consumer demand all must jell to produce a blockbuster product.
via nytimes.com
There’s a bit more article there on the NYTimes link. The above auteur approach has been my approach as well, but I don’t always execute on it as well as I’d like. I do get my head turned from time to time and have to reformulate my products.
iPad or Bust!
posted by Ken Case on 01.29.10 @ 4:56 pm
News, OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, OmniGraphSketcher, OmniOutliner, OmniPlan
One of the things we often struggle with as a company is deciding how much to talk about our future plans and our current work towards those plans. Our natural inclination is to be open about what we’re doing, but there are several problems with talking about future plans:
- Our plans can and will change, upsetting customers who were making their own plans based on our original plan.
- Our plans might interfere with current sales, as customers stop buying OmniGraffle 8 in anticipation of the future release of OmniGraffle 9.
- We might get accused of promoting vaporware, as when we started talking about OmniFocus.
But there are also problems with not talking about our future plans, as it leaves people wondering what direction we’re going and whether they’d like to be going that direction too. So, given the exciting event of this week, I think it’s appropriate for us to share some of our plans with you now…
Remember how Macintosh was intended to be the computer “for the rest of us“? That’s what we feel Apple’s iPad is: the best computing device for most of the things people use computers for. (Or, as Apple puts it, “the best way to experience the web, email, and photos.”) It’s the computer people can sit down and start using immediately, without training, whether they’re 2 or 92.
We’re really excited about Apple’s iPad, and we want to make all of our products available for it as soon as we can. Yes, we already had a big year planned for 2010, with several long-anticipated major product releases—but we think iPad is really important: important enough to spend some time juggling our plans to figure out how we can introduce five new iPad apps.
Yes. Five. We want to bring all five of our productivity apps to iPad: OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, OmniPlan, OmniFocus, and OmniGraphSketcher.
This is a big undertaking, and we can’t do it all at once. We started working on iPad adaptations of OmniGraffle and OmniFocus as soon as the SDK was made available Wednesday afternoon, and we’re hoping to get started with OmniGraphSketcher for iPad within the next few weeks.
OmniPlan for iPad will be a little further behind, simply because the OmniPlan development team is on the home stretch of their two-year OmniPlan 2 development cycle, and we’d like to get that out the door before bringing OmniPlan to another platform.
Similarly, the OmniOutliner team is also heavily into a major development cycle—one which affects not only the next major release of OmniOutliner, version 4, but also the upcoming major releases of both OmniFocus and OmniPlan—so that team is booked up for at least the next several months. But while it won’t be on iPad on day one, OmniOutliner is where all of our projects start and we think it will be a great fit for iPad, so we plan to adapt it as soon as possible.
What does this mean for our non-iPad apps? Well, for the apps we’re bringing to iPad immediately there will be a bit of a delay in their next major Mac release cycle: for example, while we’ve already done a fair bit of work on OmniGraffle 6 for Mac, we’re going to put that work on hold while we work on the iPad adaptation. Not that we don’t think OmniGraffle 6 is important or exciting, but we think OmniGraffle for iPad is even more important. For the other apps, OmniPlan 2 and OmniOutliner 4, we’re hoping for little or no delay in our upcoming releases, but there’s likely to be a bit of a pause immediately afterwards as the teams shift gears and start working on bringing those apps to iPad as well.
So, that’s our current plan. As I said in my introduction, our plans do change over time—obviously, they’ve changed quite a bit just this week!—so please don’t rely on things happening according to today’s particular snapshot of those plans. But I hope that this snapshot at least gives you a sense of what we’re doing and why (and perhaps even an idea of when), so you can decide whether we’re going in a direction you’re interested in. Either way, I hope you’ll let us know!
The Omni Group is a venerable producer of Mac productivity software who has changed its plans to produce FIVE products for the iPad. Seeing what Apple has done with iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) was really invigorating.
One of the side effects of the iPad reveal will be the increase in Mac version of iWork suite. I have been using it for over two years and love it. No more MS Office for me.
I sure would like to see a certain development environment produced in Scotland get iPad fever like Omni Group did.
Beautiful job, Apple! Great teamwork. To get the whole iPad picture in minutes, just watch this video.
I believe it’s time for the Runtime Revolution’s development team to forget about Windows Mobile at least temporarily (if not altogether) and focus all their energy on getting its loyal customers a RevMobile that develops iPhone and iPad apps. Something tells me it would be worthwhile financially. But what do I know?
I’ve been told that it’s a more difficult task to develop a version of Revolution for iPhone and iPad than developing it for Windows Mobile. I thought they had a genius on the Rev development team. Not a financial one, at any rate.
Color Theory Quick Reference Poster
January 18, 2010 by Jeff
It’s always good to be able to articulate design choices to your clients; why you put something where, why you chose the color scheme you did, etc. This knowledge is one of the biggest differences between a designer and a non-designer. But there is a lot to remember when it comes to the realm of graphic design – so much so that it’s pretty much impossible to remember everything from all the theories of graphic design, to web design best practices to Photoshop keyboard shortcuts.
With that in mind, I decided it would be useful for me to have all of the basics of color theory contained in one place – specifically, a cool infographic-esque poster. This way, I can quickly reference things that may have slipped to the back of my mind since design school. The end result is this: The Color Theory Quick Reference Poster for Designers.
The idea is that this graphic can be either printed out or used as a desktop wallpaper. During meetings, phone calls, or any other sort of client interaction, you can reference this poster if you need to – either for your own benefit, or to point something out to your client.
The graphic contains info on:
- the basic color wheel
- passive vs. active colors
- cool vs. warm colors
- subtractive vs. additive color
- color types
- color relationships
- meanings attached to colors
- basic terms pertaining to color
Hopefully this will be as useful to you as I’m hoping it will be to me. Here are the various files for download – please share, but don’t pass off as your own!
- Print-ready, PDF (11″ by 17″, 300DPI)
- Print-ready, white background, PDF (11″ by 17″, 300DPI – click to view)
- 1920X1200 Wallpaper
- 1680X1050 Wallpaper
- 1440X900 Wallpaper
- 1280X800 Wallpaper
- EPS file (if you want to make your own changes)
Rev developers: check it out. Good to know as CMYK comes to Revolution.
GREAT poster!
Contact me at this email address:
[email protected] This email address has been retired: [email protected] Best, Jerry Daniels The latest Rev Editor Video:
I had a dream
What about this: You have a tablet, which stores all your media like music, pictures, movies, contacts, personal documents… It has a touchscreen, wifi, bluetooth, fast SSD storage and a lot more. Everything you can dream of in a tablet, a nice “computer” you could use on the couch, in bed, on the toilet, in the kitchen. Let’s say it looks like this:
Exhibit A: The Tablet
Next, imagine an iMac sans the internal computer, just a screen with some extra storage, extra RAM, a stronger video card, maybe even an extra processor, and a docking bay for the tablet. Sounds familiar? Yes it does. Combine this “shell” with our tablet, and you get a fully functional desktop computer:
Exhibit B: The Desktop
Finally, to come back to our original source of inspiration, we have something that looks like the bottom part of a laptop. Built in you have a keyboard, a trackpad, some extra hardware and most importantly: A large second battery. If the battery life of the tablet would be something between 6 and 8 hours (in my opinion that’s the minimum), this peripheral would extend that to 12-16.
Exhibit C: The Laptop
This would be a perfect solution when you are traveling, when you need to take notes in a long meeting… All your files, with you all the time, and no need to keep multiple devices in sync.
Exhibit D: The Complete Package
But I’m not an idiot. I’m well aware Apple will never launch something that can slide or click into a peripheral. Too many loose parts that can break, too many separate “devices”. Like I said: a dream.
“Why would I buy a device like that?”
Maybe you love using a laptop, but would like something more powerful for when you’re in your office. Maybe you’re a die-hard fan of desktops, but you miss having all your files with you when on the road. The possibilities are endless, especially when you add the option to install third party applications (like on the iPhone).
If it’s not running Mac OS X, but something more like the iPhone OS, it could be the perfect computer for your parents or grandparents. Or for your kids. Imagine the possibilities when using this device at schools. It could be a notebook, a diary, multiple textbooks…
Don’t expect Apple to advertise the device as an electronic book reader though. Yes, it’ll be used as one a lot, but it’s not catchy enough to sell it under that name. Just like with the iPhone, the software independent developers are going to write for this device will reveal the true power of it. There’s a lot you can do with a 10” touchscreen device.
Conclusion
Nobody (not even the people who say they do) has any idea what Steve will pull out his sleeve on January 27th. Right now, it’s a big blur, but as soon as the keynote is over, it’ll be so clear, so logical, that we’ll all say “Now why didn’t I think of that?!” The only thing I know, is that I’ll take 2.
What’s not to like? But it’s so un-Apple. I’m still a laptop guy, but something like this could turn my head. I’d use an iMac with a tablet slot for watching TV and movies; my faux laptop with a slot loaded tablet for work; my solo tablet for reading or watching in bed.
Then, the mondo Christmas bundle from Revolution disappears. I’m just sayin’.
Revolution developers and entrepreneurs: THIS is the business book to buy in 2010. Click here to learn more or order it. Release date: March 9.
Steve Jobs as Moses with the tablets from the Ten Commandments movie? Amazing lessons in spin: just create great stuff and ignore the press who then start feeding upon themselves.
Some great design concepts for an eReader are brought forth here. Worth a watch. I especially like the “heat up the content” method of showing contextually appropriate admin tools.
Today at the COP 15 Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, M.I.T. students introduced the technologically advanced Copenhagen Wheel. In addition to including various sensors and Bluetooth capability, the tire stores kinetic energy from braking for a later burst of speed.
The makers of the Copenhagen Wheel from M.I.T.’s SENSEable City Laboratory claim that the new features mark the advent of “Biking 2.0,” a new era based on smarter bikes and easier rides. The wheel is certainly a step in that direction; it includes sensors for detecting distance, speed, direction, all of which are beamed via Bluetooth to the rider’s iPhone. The wheel also includes a built-in lock that sends the rider a text if tampered with.
But the most notable feature of the Copenhagen Wheel is its KERS or Kinetic Energy Recovery System, a mechanism by which energy from braking is stored up for later use, giving the rider a boost when going up a hill or speeding through traffic. Some bicycle purists have already dismissed the wheel as a novelty while others suggest that M.I.T. has succeeded in reinventing the wheel.
via fastcompany.com
Clever, economical design. I’ll be interested to hear how the users of the wheel respond.
Apr 2nd in Web Roundups by Danny Outlaw
While many of us can create something that looks good in Photoshop or attractive when spliced into CSS, but do we actually understand the design theory behind what we create? Theory is the missing link for many un-trained but otherwise talented designers. Here are 50 excellent graphic design theory lessons to help you understand the ‘Whys’, not just the ‘Hows’.
Typography
1. Typography, Part 1
“Good typography depends on the visual contrast between one font and another, and the contrast between text blocks and the surrounding empty space.”
This article will take away any excuse you had to do poorly designed Revolution apps.
Incremental versus Disruptive
by Hutch CarpenterI recently wrote up a post, “Innovation Perspectives – No Shooting Stars.” In it, I discussed the issue of organizations myopically focusing on only disruptive innovations to the exclusion of more incremental or sustaining innovations.
In doing more research on the subject, I began thinking about the dynamics that apply when a firm pursues different kinds of innovation. A post by Venkatesh Rao, Disruptive versus Radical Innovations, was very useful for distinguishing between disruptive and radical innovations.
Building on that, I wanted a framework for delineating innovations based on their technology and business impacts. Because they’re not necessarily the same. The four quadrants below describe the dynamics for innovations according to their technology and market impacts:
In each quadrant, there are different rationales and issues that apply. Let’s take a look.
Existing Tech, Manage Existing Market
The lower left quadrant represent innovations that leverage existing technology, and service existing customers. This is every day innovation. The block-n-tackle innovation that keeps companies nimble and operating at rates above industry averages.
Example? See how Wal-Mart improved the fuel efficiency of its vehicle fleet:
“Wal-Mart has taken a number of steps, including the installation of diesel Auxiliary Power Units on all its trucks, and applying aerodynamic skirting. On the tire side, Wal-Mart is working with super single tires. and is testing nitrogen-filled tires and an automatic filling process to maintain constant tire air pressure.”
Improving the customer experience is also a critical opportunity. In an era of social-media empowered customers impacting your brand, the consequences of failing to improve the customer experience are higher than ever.
But this quadrant is the one often pooh-poohed by many in innovation. I like the way PriceWaterhouseCoopers puts it in this blog post:
“An unintended consequence of the Innovators Dilemma has been that companies have begun believing that unless they were pursuing a strategy of seeking disruptive innovations, they were somehow losing out.”
Wal-Mart’s efforts have paid off. The retailer has held relatively strong during the Great Recession, as seen in its stock price. And Toyota famously gathered over million ideas a year from its employees to emerge as a global leader in the automotive industry.
Existing Tech, Create New Market
In this quadrant, existing technology is leveraged to create a new revenue streams. This is the quadrant where the following phrase applies:
“Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.”
The simple application of a technology that serves one purpose toward a different purpose can be disruptive from a market perspective. It’s not a large technological leap. It’s the intelligent application of what’s already at hand.
Twitter is a great example. The technology itself is…simple. Web form. Subscription model. Limit to 140 characters. Yet it’s revolutionized the way people share and find information, causing Techcrunch’s MG Siegler to compare it to a modern day Walter Cronkite. All for a simple little web app. Here’s what WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg says about Twitter:
“Whether the Twitter team intended it or not, they’ve built a killer and highly addictive reader platform with dozens of interesting UIs on top of it.”
The thing with these innovations is that they are very much a market-determined disruption. This isn’t some sort of EUREKA! the moment the technology is rolled out of the labs. It takes the market to say that it’s disruptive.
Clayton Christensen (Innovator’s Dilemma) types of innovation will often fall in this quadrant. Existing technologies applied in new ways to address the lower end of the market.
Venkatesh Rao has a great perspective on this quadrant:
“In fact, in most documented cases of disruption, the disruptive innovation was a minor/incremental change and well within the technical capabilities of the incumbent (and was often taken to market by a renegade spin off from the original company).”
This quadrant is the best one for producing organic growth for companies. It has lower risk, but produces meaningful revenue growth.
Radical Tech, Create New Market
If any one quadrant defines the popular view of innovation, it’s this one. And that’s not without good reason. In the previous quadrant, existing technologies are applied to new markets. Well, existing technologies have to come from somewhere. That’s this quadrant.
This is the cool stuff that the press writes about. Check out AT&T’s Technology Showcase for a great example of some of these new technologies.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has done well in this quadrant. His latest innovation, the Kindle, is an example. It includes a new “electronic ink“. Ability to read text aloud. It’s incredibly thin profile.
And it’s paying off. Amazon reports that the Kindle set a new sales record this November. Which points to the Kindle as a strong new revenue stream down the road, and a new source of sales for Amazon’s book sales. A home run in this quadrant.
These types of innovations are important for maintaining the long-term growth rates of companies. They provide needed growth, replenishing changes in existing markets.
Which leads us to the final quadrant…
Radical Tech, Manage Existing Market
There are times a company’s business is under attack, and it needs to address changing behaviors in its market. Innovations in this quadrant share the high risk profile of the previous quadrant, but they have a defensive nature to them. They don’t seek to find new opportunities, they seek to address changes in customer behavior.
Hulu strikes me as an example of this. A joint venture of NBC, Fox and ABC, Hulu lets users view shows on computers. This initiative addresses the emerging market shift away from televisions to viewing on all sorts of devices. It’s a better answer for this shift than the music industry initially had for the proliferation of MP3 songs on various P2P sites.
Gary Hamel has noted the increasing volatility of markets across the globe. Customers have better access to information about new options, and are willing to shift their spending more quickly. With this dynamic, expect some increase in activity for innovations in this quadrant.
Companies Need a Portfolio of Innovation Opportunities
In a recent Accenture survey, 58% of executives said their organization is looking for the next silver bullet rather than pursuing a portfolio of opportunities. When I hear that, I think first of the upper right quadrant (radical tech, create new market). These types of innovations are incredibly important, and should be part of a company’s innovation efforts.
But there’s really a good basis for expanding that view to look at the other types of innovation: technology vs. market, disruptive vs incremental.
Hutch Carpenter is the Director of Marketing at Spigit. Spigit integrates social collaboration tools into a SaaS enterprise idea management platform used by global Fortune 2000 firms to drive innovation.
Labels: Accenture, amazon, ATT, Disruption, Hutch Carpenter, Incremental Innovation, Innovation, kindle, Toyota, Twitter, wal-martEnjoy this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and join our Continuous Innovation group!
posted by Braden Kelley at 5:27 AM
This is a good one to read and explore if you’re about to put a good bit of effort into building an app in Revolution. Although Rev is a fourth generation language (4GL), it still requires a great deal of effort to build a product with it and bring it to market. Therefore, forethought and strategic thinking are very much still in order.
