STRATEGY CENTRAL

What is the point of design-driven innovation?  Better, what distinguishes design-driven from simple innovation?  I need to introduce a new way of looking at innovation today.  It’s not as simple as coming up with something more than incremental.  It actually has to do with a radical improvement in performance and a radical change in meaning.

Meaning?  Yeah…meaning.  Like when Xbox and Playstation came out with more powerful processors and high-definition and Nintendo came out with the Wii system that incorporated a physically active experience.

This diagram (lifted from Design-Driven Innovation) does a good job of illustrating the concept.

Let me point out a few things:

• Notice the two axis in the diagram.  Performance is about improving the way an existing solution works.  Meaning has to do with developing solutions for problems that people don’t even know they have.
• Incremental improvement with slight evolution in meaning explains most product development.  It’s more about a new version than a new thing.  This is most often prompted by existing user interest.
• Radical improvement along with completely new meaning is rarely prompted by user interest.  Rather, it is design-driven.  Nintendo’s Wii is an instance of this kind of innovation.  Simple and elegant.

How does this impact all of us?  I’m not entirely sure.  I do know that what many of us provide hasn’t changed in decades (if not centuries or millenia).  What if there was movement not only in the way services were delivered…but what was delivered?

What does the future hold for your organization?  Will it be more of the same?  Pretty much business as usual with a twist of incremental change?  Or will radical new innovations dramatically change both what your organization does…and even what is normal and customary?

Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean by Roberto Verganti is on every recommended list of innovation titles.  Couldn’t tell you which list persuaded me to pull it out of the stack and start reading it.  What I can tell you is that this is a very interesting read.

Verganti is working on the basic understanding that game-changing innovation is not “pulled by users but is instead proposed by firms (p. 41).”  What he’s getting at is related to Steve Jobs observation that “a lot of times people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

So here’s the question.  Could that be true in your organization?  In your field?  Is it really true that no knew that the iPod was the answer to their dreams until they held it in their hands?  Okay…the evidence is in there.  What about in your field?

This is interesting stuff.  I don’t know if you’re as fascinated by it as I am.  If you’re looking for ways to move things to what’s next…this may be a book you want to pick up.  And you can do that right here.

Great post today over at Guy Kawasaki's blog about a new book coming out.  In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing sounds fantastic.  Can't wait to review it here at StrategyCentral.