innovation playground Idris Mootee

Media Disruption Is Not Slowing Down. Mobile Is Now The Center Of A New Ecosystem.

The media business is not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel yet. When people asked me about my magazine and the economics of that, they were saying why am I in publishing business. Well that is not my core business, just a hobby. It has been almost three years since the first publication of MISC and readership is growing nicely. We're now in 28 countries and we have have the digital version. I am getting a lot of positive feedback from readers from all over the world. Perhaps I should make the next issue the thickest one. This is the first cover that was shot in Milan. And the next cover will be shot in Shanghai.

The media business is certainly not easy with the never-ending technological disruptions we are experiencing and new behaviors keep evolving, we are nowhere near the end of it. The word social media makes no sense anymore as it is already main stream doesn’t matter how you look at it. Many traditional media types continue to cling to an old way of doing things, based largely on making minor adaptation to existing approaches and some are relentlessly experimenting with finding new revenue stream, largely still through advertising or sponsorship.

There aren’t many new opportunities for business model innovation if you take a strategic view, people are still thinking about advertising or sponsorship. Yahoo and Google are the same. The hybrid model of readers’ empowerment and buttoned-down professional journalism is already fullyoptimized. Media executives are spending a lot of time thinking about the future of their industry and what it will look like in 2020. 

Five years ago everyone is thinking about the online model and suddenly the tablets came and changed everything. And what’s next? Multiple screens device, new interactivity through voice, gestures and more external data sources, and glasses and watches etc. No one knows how content discovery and consumption model will evolve given the abundance of choice consumers have today. Neutrality is probably not the best interest for the media industry.

Media business is still suffering from an identity crisis, at least for another decade. The business model will not change, we will still end up paying for content through transactional, subscription or advertising models although there will be more flexibility on how we purchase them. With every person with a smart phone also has a video camera that can turn them into amateur journalists, news will become real-time and shows us different views of any event. And contextual bits will be consistently updated and events unfold. The Twitters of the world are the instant updates and these short bursts will create more noises than news value and readers need someone to break them down into manageable pieces.

Audience now lives in a multi-screens world. They can choose between raw news and organized news. The three key drivers of mobile disruption are hyper-local (geolocation), integration with home appliances and digital payments. The three together can put mobile at the center of an entirely new ecosystem. It is not merely another form factor. It is the biggest leap forward since writing first arrived about 7,000 years ago, which only impacted a tiny percentage of our population. Word of mouth was the only “information system” for most of humanity and now that will be turbo-charged by mobile as it unlocks an incredibly deep desire and capacity among us (humans) to share personally relevant information and feelings such as “I am waking up happy to a sunny morning” etc. These personal information is competing for attention with other news. And for me, I'd rather be reading what my friends are saying than the news. CNN is depressing.

Apple's Magic Is Not Repeatable. Innovation Means Reinvention. Not Taking A Page From Someone's Playbook. Here's The Proof.

Apple magic is not repeatable. And even if you think by poaching senior talents from them. The same can be applied to many great companies large and small. It is too simplistic to think that stealing talent from great companies larger or small can help a company to repeat the magic.

Here is a good example when Ron Johnson, former head of Apple retail joined JC Penny as CEO, his plan was to reinvent the company. From when Johnson took the reins Nov 1, 2011, the stock price dropped in half. He received $53.3 million in compensation for 2011 and his pay package for 2012 was $1.9 million, no bonus after the company booked a $1 billion loss for the year. Yes a $1 billion loss!

Johnson's strategy to bring some Apple Store magic to JCPenney was not innovative or strategic. His strategy was to move away from price and he started by taking off any discounts and introduce a store-within-a-store design that emphasized experience over value. According to him,"Inherently, department stores have significant advantages compared to all other retailers." I don't agree with that statement with the exception in some markets such as China, Korea and Latin America.

When he took over the job of the CEO, he said that successful retailers will be "the ones that start from scratch and figure out how to create fundamentally new types of value for customers" by asking "how do we reinvent the store to enrich our customers' lives?" Good questions to start with but did they end up with the right stategy? JCPenney’s business model needs reinvention, not just the retail format or taking a page from Apple’s playbook.

It takes more than that to transform a very out-dated business model. It was a bad idea in the first place to abandon the discounting that customers had come to expect, it’s a behavior they are not going to change. Instead they should embrace the idea of “discounting” and innovate around it. JCPenny wants their customers to feel "special" about discovering these discounts. And not getting rid of it. Reinvent it! Make it fun! Make it social! I can give you 10 ideas of how to innovate around the “discounting”. The backlash against this tactic was so strong that Johnson was forced to bring back sales and discounts last quarter. That was a big mistake. Innovation needs to be strategic. Design without strategy is useless.

JCPenny needs to rethink the needs of these middle-class shoppers that are shrinking in both total size and wallet. It should move down to aim at the expanding highest of the lower income group.This is where the opportunities are.

Retail is a tough business overall and there weren't a lot of innovation happening. Those giant interactive screens, talking mannequins and RFID tags are bringing the virtual into ‘real’ retail spaces and tablet computers are turning up at pos’ from independent boutiques to multi-national chains. There are also companies working on virtual ‘touch’ for users to ‘feel’ the texture of products they want to buy. While still in development stage, the innovation would address one of the main problems of shopping online. Shopping is as much a tactile experience as a visual one.

In a creepy addition to the tech enabled retail experience, mannequins may now be watching you as you browse. Via built in cameras and facial recognition software mannequins are now able to collect data on your race, age, gender and shopping habits to assist retailers in their marketing strategies. While it’s not quite new, retailers have been using in store cameras to collect data for years, the addition of facial recognition is making it a simpler process. Big brother/sister is watching you shop!

Will The Facebook Phone works? And For Microsoft and Samsung, The Future Of Smartphones Is Dual-Screen.

The Facebook phone is here.The Facebook phone rumor has been around for a while and it is a matter of time it becomes real. I think they should have done it earlier and should have larger ambition other than just trying to design a ‘home’ for Android.  Home sounds like a PaaS personalization tool and not sure how many FB users will want this. FB see the potential for them but it is hardly a threat for others but Android might modify their terms so this won’t happen again in the future.

With FB already commands more than 20% share of people's time on mobile devices (excluding Instagram), it can further boost FB mobile usage particular for younger users. Will FB take over 20% of all Android phones, we have yet to find out. For now, FB is pretty convinced that people will want a phone designed around it and perhaps with additional hardware feature that is uniquely FB. 

FB should really be making its own phone, it is reported that they are working with mobile chipmaker Spreadtrum to pre-optimize its software for the cheapest Android handsets. It is hard to compete on the high end with Samsung and Apple, if Facebook prodcued its own low end phone, though, it could create a new business model in the mobile market and FB could negotiate better data plans for their members or partially subsidize them with advertising. This is not easy for Facebook to jump in and get carriers to agree to sell its phone.  For me, I see no reason to have a FB phone.

For Microsoft, they are waiting to see how well Nokia's Lumia phones Windows Phone 8x and 8s sell before making a strategic decision to enter the smartphone market on its own. I think it makes perfect sense for them to decide to play in the hardware space. They have made that decision with  Surface tablets. It is a matter of time that they will play in this smartphone market, they risk becoming irrelevant as market is switching into different computing format.

Microsoft is thinking dual-screen and has applied to patent a dual-screen phone interface. One screen for device interface and the other as a monitor and is detachable. NEC is making one and is marketing them as the "best cloud device," the dual-screen Android from NEC handset also has a super powered battery to keep both displays running.

It will be interesting to see what can we do with two screens. We're already designing dualscreen user experience models and I think this is catch on. The mobile industry is changing faster than anyone could have imagined and the interface paradigms there have been static. Here is the opportunity for us to introduce new ways of interacting with others and new ways these machines can understand what we need.

 

This Is Just The Begining Of The Mobile OS Battle. Plenty Of New Players Will Join The Game.

The mobile OS war is getting more interesting and the current market share battle is between iOS and Android will go on for a while. Will there be a breakout of it will be more like a Pepsi vs. Coca Cola market share battle that has been lasting for decades? Android is getting better momentum the last two years and I expect that to continue. I think the overall market share is stabilizing and the other two Windows and Blackberry will remain niche players. Newcomers will join the game and there are three in the US and they are Mozilla, Tizen and Canonical. There are a few emerging ones in Asia and they all worth keeping a close watch, especially those up and coming companies in China.

In China Android accounts for 86% of all new smartphones sales and there are three times as many Android users than the US. The business model is basically freemium, developers hoping to make money from in-app purchase. The Android ecosystem is growing like crazy as people find iPhone is getting a little boring and may be too restricted.  

There will be surprises that in the next 12 months perhaps cool smart phones from China that came from nowhere selling for half the price and have even better performance.  There was a private lab test done on the top 10 most popular smartphone in China a few months back and the result was 5 of the 10 most popular Android devices from local Chinese manufacturers perform better than the imports. They include the Lenovo A750 and the XIAOMI MI 1S.  

Apple is watching the market closely and also struggling whether to add a stylus for the next iPhone,  it will be a tough one as they have always been strongly against it and the Samsung Galazy stylus is nicely designed. There are no definite right or wrong in this business and the behavior changes so quickly.

Expect some big design shift for the next iteration of Android that leverages more of the Hybrid Card layout.  Android needs to jump into the next game in terms of user experience and it demands a shift in overall visual language from current Jelly Bean paradigms to something really different. The jump from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich was a big jump. I believe Android will be looking at gestures control beyond the screen, perhaps the back and even the side. Apple already has a patent filed 2006 relating to using gestures on its back and a recent Google patent might bring that concept to next generation of Android phones. The principle is as easy as touching the back casing of the Android device in order to interact with the gadget and that can drastically improve the user experience. Imagine back tapping to change page or call list etc. It will be powerful when combined with acoustic feedback. The battle of mobile interfaces design has barely begun. And Facebook is joining the party.

The Future Of Retail Is Full Of Challanges As Well As Opportunities.

Retailers are goign through strutural changes as many proven formats are out dated and "showromming" is impacting many. The massive pentration of smartphones are driving showroomers for comparing prices and features. Amazon has even given users of its mobile shopping app the ability to simplify price lookups on its site by letting them scan product bar codes using their smartphone cameras. So we end up having 1/ the Amazons of the world where they have full range of products at a super competitive price of 2/ Experience-based stores that people that offers more than making a purchase. They provide a very different kinds of retail relationships with different brands and it is Cirque du Soleil meets Nordstrom.

There are no shortage innovations happening in the word of retail design. Most aim to integrate online retail with the traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ experience. Giant interactive screens, talking mannequins and RFID tags are bringing the virtual into ‘real’ retail spaces and tablet computers are turning up at pos’ from independent boutiques to multi-national chains.

Stores such as Tesco in the UK have introduced a ‘scan as you shop’ system that allows shoppers to bypass checkout lines; SK Telecom, a South Korean mobile tech company, are trialing a ‘smart cart’ a trolley complete with wi-fi enabled tablet computer that provides product information and collects data as people shop; Nordstrom, Harrods and Target are all trialing in-store navigation smart phone apps to give product location and stock information.

And for those who don’t like trying on clothes, there’s now a virtual answer: The AR Door prototype. UK high street store Top Shop introduced the virtual change room to shoppers in Moscow last year. Using Kinect motion sensor technology together with an Xbox console, the prototype allows shoppers to see how clothes will look without trying them on, via a full-length mirror/screen. There are also companies working on virtual ‘touch’ for users to ‘feel’ the texture of products they want to buy. While still in development stage, the innovation would address one of the main problems of shopping online. Shopping is as much a tactile experience as a visual one. 

Mobile payment systems are also infiltrating retail spaces. US hardware giant, Home Depot introduced PayPal to almost 2,000 stores last year. Square, the mobile payment system, that streamlines point-of-sale payments, has recently partnered with Starbucks to implement a smart phone app allowing Starbucks customers to pay via QR code or NFC-tap.

It’s not just bricks and mortar retailers breaking down digital barriers in retail, online retailers, such as the online grocery store Peapod, are establishing a physical retail presence. Product images and QR codes line the walls of transit stops in the US, shoppers can simply scan items to order while they wait for their train.

In a creepy addition to the tech enabled retail experience, mannequins may now be watching you as you browse. Via built in cameras and facial recognition software mannequins are now able to collect data on your race, age, gender and shopping habits to assist retailers in their marketing strategies. While it’s not quite new, retailers have been using in store cameras to collect data for years, the addition of facial recognition is making it a simpler process. So watch out for those mannequins!

 

Can Gadgets Save Healthcare? What's The Next Big Disruptive Technology That Can Reinvent Healthcare? But The Fact Remains That Our Health Care System Sucks, And Will Continue To Suck.

I like the lastest Bond movie and the only thing I missed is smart gadgets. Bond needs to have latest tech toys. I don’t want to see Bond becoming Jet Li. Half the fun of watching a Bond movie is reveling in the odd ingenuity of the clever devices. Bond needs all the tech innovation he could use. Her Majesty's government is not investing enough in innovation for sure. Mi5 has a lot of catch up to do. Perhaps they should retain Idea Couture to develop an innovation roadmap? I might get a call from Sir Jonathan Evan!

In Bond's world, the smart phones have access to intelligent databases; miniaturized radio homing beacons operate on their own encrypted frequencies, the cars come equipped with bullet proof glass—semi-autonomous or remotely controlled—and become invisible to the naked eye. Implantable, traceable RFID chips confirm your identity and carry your medical history. And a smart scan to show when enemies are nearby too. And no, Bond does not need speed dating gadgets at all.

Bond gadgets may have once seemed far-fetched, but in our tech-addled age most are at least possible, if not realized already. In 2009 Harvard Chemists collaborated to successfully develop a low cost micro-fluidic "lab-on-a-chip" (actually it was on paper) solution to identify various biomarkers related to the AIDS virus. This idea of a miniaturized bio-chemical lab is a solution currently being funded and developed by DARPA to get ahead of the bio-weapons curve.

In Casino Royal, a similar device helped save Bond's life after he was poisoned. After plugging into a cell phone, the data from his blood sample was transmitted in real-time back to HQ for analysis. A dedicated team of medical professionals including molecular biologists; immunologists, neurologists and virologists provided advice on how to mitigate the sticky situation of being infected with a designer biological agent from half a world away. The biggest idea here is this can become the premium health service for those who can afford it, specialists are all standing by and all one click away to saving your life. That’s an innovation.

Today, self-diagnostic technologies in tandem with the hundreds of personal health and wellbeing apps have emerged to take advantage of our over-connectivity. We are all a click away from massive global expert networks for information and advice related to described symptoms. Our helathcare economics is not working doesn't matter becasue the cost is too high and doesn't matter who is paying for it. The biggest opportunity for smartphone is not smartphone, it is Personal Health Device. That’s a $20 billion plus industry from the start. We need geniuses and mad scientists and designers to make his real and affordable.

“All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards thier goal. The great scientists, the philosophers, the religious leaders - all maniacs. What else but a blind singlenee of purpose could have given focus to thier genius, would have kept them in the groove of purpose. Mania ... is as priceless as genius.”

                                            ― Ian Fleming, Doctor No

This is anexcerpt from an article co-written with M. Lincez to be appeared in the March issue of MISC magazine the Gadget Issue.

I Imagine Over 95% Of All Patents That Apple Filed Are Useless. Here's A Good Example.

The patent wars are continuing as we speak. With the proliferation of cheap sensors people are talking about putting them everything. We use them in our cars to see if the tire pressure is correct and washroom etc. It is part of our everyday lives already.

Apple just filed a patent application to put sensors in your sneakers so they can send signals to your iPhone to tell you it is time for a new pair. If I am Nike, I would file 100 patents to put sensor in everything from sneakers to sport pants. Is this patent really useful? I think we all have a pretty good sense when do we need to replace them just by looking at it. I don't need sensors to tell me.

The application describes a "Shoe wear-out sensor, body-bar sensing system, unitless activity assessment and associated methods." The application's summary describes the system thus:

A body bar sensing system for sensing movement of a body bar may be provided. The body bar sensing system may include a housing having a coupling mechanism operative to couple to the body bar, a detector disposed within the housing and operative to sense movement of the body bar when the housing is coupled to the body bar, and a processor operative to determine a number of repetitions of the movement based on the sensed movement. In one embodiment, a shoe wear out sensor includes at least one detector for sensing a physical metric that changes as a shoe wears out, a processor configured to process the physical metric, over time, to determine if the shoe is worn out, and an alarm for informing a user of the shoe when the sole is worn out.

I really think this is a pretty useless patent. Perhaps a more useful one is we can have them in our leather shoes and it sends a warning signal to me when the pavement is slippery just like my Mercedes. Today’s sensors are mostly simple designed for specific purposes, like measuring temperature, gas, light or tyre pressure.

Most sensors are designed as part of a closed system design and not connected to any networks. Future network sensors will drastically expand the possibilities by using wireless, radio waves, ultra sound and infrared signals to connec to big systems, we can do a lot with the information that they collect.

The most fascinating ones are those we can put under out skin. LifeCare in Bergen is working on the development of a new type of sensor that can be placed under the skin for measuring the blood glucose level.  It is small enough to be injected underneath the skin and no operation is needed. A nano membrane moves when the blood sugar concentration is irregular. One big challenge is power supply because all sensor needs energy. You don’t want to rely on battery. Some researchers have consequently developed wireless energy transfer between the glucose sensor and a bracelet carrying a battery. 

What I find really cool is the EPOC's Neuroheadset. It is the next competitive field in gaming. The headset features 14 saline-based sensors and a gyroscope and is primarily designed to gamers. Think shoot and think jump! Another application is to help people with disabilities to regain control of their lives. It includes EmoKey, which is a lightweight application running in your computer's background to allow user ot to map out thought-controlled keystrokes. This headset is the used by the Dartmouth Mobile Sensing Group, which created a brain-to-mobile interface that allows you to call your friends by thinking about them. Imagine I am looking at other people’s Facebook pages and it will leave a comment or 'like' for you.

Now I Can Read Your Tweet On Your Dress. Or You Can Program Your Dress For Any Special Occasions.

It was at least 10 years since I was talking about wearing technology and fashion in conferences and 10 years later we don't see any mass commercialised products out there. It is another example of innovative technologies usually takes way longer that we imagine for diffusion for a number of reasons. May be this is the year we start to see it coming.

There are a few out there working hard to make it happen. CuteCircuit is one of them. It is a wearable technology and design company based in Shoreditch, London. Founded by Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz, the company incorporates LEDs, telecommunications, and smart textiles into fashion, bringing a sense of style and tech fun to wearable tech. I visited their studio a month ago and talked to them about the challenge and opportunity.

Rosella's background is in fashion, having worked at Valentino and Esprit, while Genz was an artist and anthropologist. The pair met while studying interactive design at the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy in 2001 and began to collaborate almost immediately. The first collection Rosella and Genz designed, called TransforMe, was based on the idea that garments could change shape, color or illuminate during the course of the day in response to the mood and activity of the wearer.

The most well known piece from the collection is the Kinetic Dress, a dress with embroidered electroluminescent fibers that light up in response to the wearer's movement. The dress features Victorian style mutton-sleeves and a train, and is made from black elastic that creates a sleek, body hugging silhouette. And their famous “Aurora Dress”  which was designed for an opera singer, features 10,000 LED lights and hundreds of Swarovski crystals.

The fashion industry’s manufacturing system has been using the same supply chain design for many years, disrupting this process, even slightly, has to be done slowly. Facing the manufacturing process has helped refine the products and streamline designs, and has given the opportunity to create viable products. Like any other industry innovation, the biggest barrier is always the supply chain. The industry needs a new flexible supply network to achieve scale. Perhaps in another 3-5 years. May be more. I can't wait to see when we all have a "smart" wardrobe.

 

At CES Everything Is Touch, Touch, Touch. Will Touchscreens Make Typing Obsolete Soon?

At CES this year everything is touchscreen, TV, laptops, tablets and kitchen appliances. Is the future of interfaces is moving to touchscreen? Is this the end of keyboards? We are seeing a completing transition in the design of user experiences to software based and touchscreens. The notebook computer is the final piece of the migration. Most people would find no reasons to touch a screen on a laptop or notebook, but we are also increasing used to the habit of touching screen even most of the time even we’re not aware of. Thanks to the iPhone and iPad.

Our view will change even when we don’t think touchscreens on laptops are useful; just see someone use a keyboard with an iPad or Galaxy. For many, it just feels more natural to touch the screen. I sometimes find myself touching the screen forgetting that it is not a touchscreen device.

Blackberry will join it even they will still keep the keyboard as an option for people like me. Automobile entertainment will move there too. Your next laptop will likely be touchscreen and you might not have any choice, whether you like it or not. I wonder when will Apple launch a touch screen macbook? I think it is only a matter of time before all laptops become touch-enabled. LG was showing a prototype of interactive retail display so you can try differetn outfits without going into the changing room.

With touchscreens, we will never worry about spilling coffee onto your keyboard but will have to deal with the problems of greasy fingers. I think touch will become the key user experiences but there is still a lot of room for innovation. Touch-enabled devices will accelerate adoption in the enterprise market and next will be education market. The next generation of workers will forget what a physical keyboard looks like.

Hong Tan, a professor at Purdue University who works for Microsoft came up with an interesting way to add the feel of buttons and other physical controls to a touch screen by using vibrating piezoelectric actuators installed on the side of a normal screen generate friction at the point of contact with a finger. The nice thing about the innovation is it can make an ordinary sheet of glass feel as if it has physical buttons or even a physical slider with different levels of resistance. That is a bug jump forward from just touchscreens. The haptic feedback could help users find the right control on compact or enable the use of a touch screen without needing to look at it.

RIM is working really hard to win this. They called it a “writing without typing”, a technology only apply to the keyboardless Blackberry London devices. This is a riksy bet as Blackberry loyalist (like me) likes typing on physical keyboards rather than tapping on a screen. I am eager to get my hands on the new Blackberry London... a few weeks I will know if that works for me.

More Gadgets..Smarter Devices...CES Doesn't Want Us To Stop! Where Do We Go Next?

In Vegas for the CES, it is exhausting. I skipped last year but didn’t feel I missed anything. I was not a fan of 3D TV and not impressed with the Microsoft / Ford automobile operating system. It has been a crazy first week this Jan with lots of management stuff to get done as well as finalizing the March issue of MISC magazine to print. It is the GADGET issue. Very happy with it and couldn’t wait to see it out in bookstores and newsstands in eight weeks.

Here I am prepared to be exposed to all kinds of crazy gadgets once I set foot on CES, as usual many are useless and hopeless. There is distinction between the two. “Useless” is product that does not answer to any customer unmet needs, it is just novelty. “Hopeless” is me-too product that tries to compete on price. I hate to think how many tablets will end up going to the landfill. With no Apple presence, it is like everyone here is try to compete with Apple. It is the world against Apple.

Many of these consumer electronic gadgets solve our problems. Problems that we know and problems that we know we have. Often they create new ones while solving the old ones. Humans are supposed to be good at problem solving but we’ve become so reliant on the gadgets in our lives that there are problems we find ourselves unable to solve without them. Sometime in the not too distant future gadgets will not just respond to our commands, they will be able to understand our mood, read our minds and learn our preferences.

When I was sitting at Starbucks, my mind was trying to visually map all those data exchanges between Macs, tablets, mobile devices, watches, cameras, and people. The visual just blows my mind and we forgot how crazy and connected we are.

Never before we have that much access (and speed) to information and knowledge at the palm of our hands and we can almost (yes almost) live our lives without thinking. We tether our brains and other senses to our smart devices and relying on them to tell us when we’re sad, confused, tired, hungry, where to go and what to buy. How far are we before we’re ready to raise the white flag and formally “surrender” to our cognitive independence? What about humanity?  

We are living in a technology-addled age, our gadgets are necessity. I wonder what’s the average number of apps for iPhone users? And how many of them they rely on in their everyday lives? We are becoming lazy. We do less walking because we have cars. Now we do less thinking because we have smart gadgets. Your brain is like a muscle. If you stop using your cognitive skills and instead rely on gadgets to do the thinking for you, in time, those skills will start to atrophy. For me, I used to be able to do complicated calculation looking at tons of numbers and within a few minutes come to sense of what it is telling me. Now I can’t even add up a restaurant bill without a calculator (app). I used to be able to map out the route mentally when I drive from one place to another, now I just listen to the command of my GPS. I used to be able to spell and thanks to auto correction, my spelling is worst than when I was 12.

May be the next innovation is not a product. Just like we’re try gin to think of ways to encourage people to walk or bike to make us more healthier and do less damage to our environment, we should be thinking about applying design thinking to help us to use our brain more – and use less gadgets. What does computational humanity means? Time to get back to the show.

 

I Am Not A Gadget! Or Am I Becoming One? How Close Are We From A Full Blown Computional Culture?

Sometimes I feel like I am a gadget. We all performing various specialist and general tasks everyday and somehow you feel each of these tasks are not related. And the worst part of our job is to perform something that is so tedius and doesn’t really require any creativity, analytic and imagination. And you wonder why this work cannot be done by a gadget. Or if I am doing the job, does it mean I am a gadget?

There are over 600,000+ personal pocket gadgets out there for whatever purposes and over 700,000 apps for iPhone 7000,000; Android and 99,500 Blackberrys to turn your smartphone into a gadget. There's an app for almost anything and someday my resume will look like my iPhone and people will look at how many apps I have to decide whether I qualify for that job.

Human is supposed to be good at problem solving. Or at least we think we are, I am not getting into that debate. There are differences between the different types of problem solving from pure creativity to system level thinking or analytical processing.  Creativity requires periodic, temporary “encapsulation” as opposed to constant calculation or recalculation. You need time for working privately as well as times for group ideation. Encapsulation is what allows for the possibility of self-testing that enables a quest for excellence.

The big question is will the proliferation of gadgets push us towards a more creative culture where our time is better spend on the creative side while our gadgets take care of the rest or in another scenario where these micro-computing machines (gadgets) will take over and we will be pushed towards a computational culture?

All these micro devices, bit data-warehouses and pervasive communication facilities are now omnipresent in our daily activities. The way we live, work, play, communicate and interact with each other is in permanent flux due to the influence of these cool gadgets. Historically speaking, technologies are developed as a result of the need for faster means of calculation to achieve the unachievable before the world emerging into a full-blown computational culture. Emerging in its modern form in the seventeenth century after the introduction of typography, that culture, it is here argued, remains dominant today.

Can future gadgets evolve to a point that they understand our feelings and not just commands and preferences? As part of our extended mind and heart and algorithm that can add feeling to an otherwise mathematical, non-physical, and consequently non-aesthetic, thought? This is the theme of the next issue of MISC for March. Look out for the big Gadget Issue.

Thinking Usability Beyond Simplicity And Can We Really Afford Simplcity? Is Dieter Rams' 10 Principles Of Design Still Applicable Today?

Came back from beautiful Thailand speaking at the Design Is Opportunity event. Everyone is thinking about design not only as producing great products but also as a competitive advantage for creating new industries and as comparative advantage for countries. Met many people who are passionate in design and design thinking.

There are 16 remote controls that sit on my coffee table at home, and I have no idea what they are all for. It’s enough to make one think twice about turning on their phone, buying a new camera or downloading a new app. Looking around my surroundings, I’m struck with how overly complicated life is. Products that are supposed to simplify our lives now require a steep learning curve and possibly a special diploma.

Which leads me to wonder whether the concept of ‘usability’ means anything to designers and manufacturers anymore. Are they not concerned with alienating a large part of the market with their constant stream of complexities and change? Are they so sure that we’ll loyally follow them to the ends of the earth, syncing our lives to their products? Only a handful of companies are doing it right.

Usability springs out of a discipline called Human Factors, which has deep roots in military strategy. Crucial during wartime, when soldiers needed to design tactics to easily and accurately protect themselves while defeating their enemies. In the most intense and critical moment of one’s life, human factors mean the difference between survival and death. Many are confused over the difference between Industrial Designers (ID) and Design Engineers (DE), let alone between Industrial Designers and Human Factors Engineers (HF).

Industrial Design (ID) is an applied art whereby the aesthetics and usability of products may be improved. Depending which school of design you come from, you can be an artist or a designer that follows most if not all of the 10 principles of good design from Dieter Rams. Design Engineering (DE) on the other hand is a discipline that creates and transforms ideas into a product definition that deliver on customer needs.


The key difference between the two is: ID is an applied art, whereas DE is a discipline. This means that industrial designers' job is to dream up products and design engineers' job is to make it work. Dieter Rams is both a indistrial designer, artist and human factor engineer. He wants his product to be usefil, elegant and easy to use. Sometimes an indsutrial designer performs all three roles.

How did human factors come into design? WWII launched the starting point for electronic systems with user interfaces that were controlled by human operators. At the time, industrial psychologists like John Flanagan discovered that reducing the amount of clutter, such as buttons, switches and knobs on the control panels of aircrafts could dramatically improve operator performance. New models became increasingly streamlined, such as the P-51 Mustang fighter, “one of the conflict’s most successful and recognizable aircrafts.”

Aviation and weapons designers must consider a myriad of human factors, including how to prevent accidental firing, decrease use fatigue, withstand climate conditions, and equipment maintenance, to name just a few. Perhaps the most important factors that guide design involve the human condition. In short, the design must take into account those that will operate the equipment. The degree of automation and ease of maneuverability also play a role. Usability is all about transcending human limitations to achieve the upper hand.

The concept expanded when computers came on the scene. The evolution of the computer, from military technology to personal use, spanned many decades but it finally reached the hands of the public. For the first time, employees could have personal computers, but during this first introduction there were little to no instructions or guides. Despite this, software designers continued to assume that their users were knowledgeable and competent enough to understand the technical lingo and structure of operating systems to not only use the systems but also troubleshoot errors. Such implicit assumptions proved unacceptable, especially if computers were to achieve mainstream success. Today, we expect them to accommodate our limitations, intuition and even emotions.

Adapted from an article Usability Beyond Simplicity from the upcoming Sept issue of MISC- The Simplicity Issue which be available in newstand around the world in the third week of Sept 2012.

The Five Rules Of Business Reinvention: What You Can Learn From Burberry?

The word ‘Reinvention” is a beautiful word. It links people to a path of hope, dreams and possibilities. It is a point when people or organizations are ready to claim and design a new defining moment that will cause a major transformation in their lives and in their organizations.  It takes commitment, reflection and action and in the process removing distractions, making peace with realities and sometimes completely letting go of the past.

Business historian can come up with a long list of great names of firms that failed to adapt and change with the times. For every Apple and Jobs; IBM and Gerstner; and GE and Welch, there are dozens of firms - many of which once held great status in households around the world - that are no longer great, good or even exist. 

Companies that have reinvented themselves successfully typically have some combination of factors on their side. Committed leadership, a deep sense of trust among employees and the courage to throw away irrelevant legacy systems are but a few. The new issue of MISC Magazine is the Big Reinvention Issue. The cove feature story is Burberry – the Reinvention of a British Icon.

So, why are some companies successful in reinvention while others fail? To begin to answer that question, consider the road taken by the company that can arguably claim the biggest success story of the past decade, Burberry. What's the difference between Aquascutum and Burberry? Both are famous for their trenchcoats but while Burberry's success is the luxury brand equivalent to the iPod, Aquascutum's is the MP3 player. Here's an excerpt from the article Burberry: Reinvention of A British Icon. You can download the full article here.

So, how did Burberry do it? While its secrets are woven in and out of the ideas, experiences, inspirations and actions of Ahrendts, Bailey and their senior executives, here are five ways that the iconic British brand has reinvented itself over the past six years.

Rule #1 - Reignite The Passion

Too many organizations attempt to spark a reinvention with an over simplified vision or a strategic statement like "double sales by 2015" or "achieve an ROI of 15% by 2015." These goals may be achievable, but they're uninspiring. At best, they provide a measure to evaluate strategic outcome. At worst, they are more suited towards pursuing efficient operations than encouraging innovation.

From smart shareholders to employees, people being told about a reinvention in the works need stories they can get behind. While never losing sight of how to make the firm more competitively effective, Ahrendts and Bailey clearly understood that Burberry needed bigger aspirations and goals powered by passion. They achieved this by making brand the core focus and announcing to executives that art, not business, would drive major decisions. In doing so, they reconnected employees around the world to the legacy of the iconic 150-year-old British brand, enabled strategists, to planners and beyond to experience the real spirit of their industry and inspired everyone to design beauty into every facet of the business.

Rule #2 - Refresh the Brand Core

Having a globally recognized brand is one thing. Making it magical is something very different. In failing to understand meaning, purpose, promise and history as defining features of a brand, too many companies hope to spark reinvention with a new logo, tagline, communications strategy or other 'brand' sleight-of-hand. With years of what some critics suggested was irreparable neglect and damage to the brand caused by copies of its trademark tartan, mass-market designs produced by franchises and a dearth of product presence in discount outlets, Burberry could well have fallen into this trap. It didn't. Instead, since 2006, its comeback has been elegantly executed with constant brand refreshing, courtesy of Bailey and his design team charting a sustainable growth path through collection after collection. Surprising and delighting customers with every new handbag, jacket, trench or dress, Burberry keeps the magic alive by reimagining its spirit of 'disheveled elegance' with every season. From the latest collection inspired by the color and energy of Henry Moore's textiles to the opening of its more causal Brit store in London's Covent Garden, surprises are always around the corner.

Rule #3 - Reinvent The Brand Experience

Companies often think about customer experience in a very limited sense and are often far too conservative in adapting to and using new social technologies. And luxury companies have, arguably, been the most reluctant to embrace and adapt to the new. To reinvent its brand experience, Burberry brought a redefined promise to life by designing a customer experience that was truly global, true to its core and what other luxury houses at the time could never have imagined and would never have implemented: democratized access to luxury. With an agnostic and borderless approach to social media, Burberry gave customers total access to the brand across any device, on multiple platforms and anywhere, anytime. As a result, it's the dominant luxury brand on Facebook. With a belief that fashion is for everyone - not just the press and industry elite - it opened the locked doors to the runway by livestreaming each season's show and then allowing customers to order pieces for home delivery before collections arrived at stores. The result is excitement, interest and loyalty among consumers who are not yet even customers.

Rule #4 - Reinforce A Balanced Culture

Creating a results culture requires not only producing the right results but also producing the right results the right way. For too many companies, that means relentlessly promoting a single way of thinking, working and doing. At Burberry, where 'balance' is one of the key words in the company's vocabulary, there is no single way of thinking, working and doing. Instead, by hiring people with an EQ as high as their IQ, pursuing cross-disciplinary collaboration between right- and left-brain specialists, and encouraging informal mentorships across and between various departments, tacit knowledges, divergent processes and asymmetrical personalities are shared. The result is that ideas are born, decisions are made and designs are discovered in ways that are more organic and holistic. It's not a formula; Burberry recognizes that maintaining balance is not an end game, it's an ongoing practice.

Rule #5 - Reimagine The Future

Making the right trade-offs between investing in today and investing in tomorrow can be one of the most daunting challenges for any organization. Performing well or not, every company feels the short-term pressure that often forces managers to make bad trade-offs. Very few have the capabilities or the culture of trust that empowers management to make the right trade-offs to balance the need for long term strategic health, cash flow and shareholder expectations. Burberry does. In addition to a clear, creative vision at the top, a Strategic Innovation Council pools the interdisciplinary and intergenerational wisdom and experience of some of the company's best and brightest to consider, examine, feel, see and sense what might be ahead. Stacked with Millennials who live and breathe the kind of cultural shifts that are or potentially will be relevant to the industry, it's a place to challenge assumptions, imagine solutions and, ultimately, dream about what this iconic, 150-year-old British brand could become in the years ahead.

(Disclosure: Burberry is a client of Idea Couture)

The New Battlefield Between iPhone, BlackBerry and Android Smartphone: The Keypad and VBBM.

Apple iPhone has officially become the “defender” instead of the “attacker”. The battlefront so far has been on the screen and apps and now the battlefield is switching back to the keyboard. There are two camps: physical keyboard and virtual keyboard. I definitely belong to the group that I needed a real keyboard and therefore I use Blackberry. And there are those who can type at lightening speed on iPhone virtual keyboard.

Since last week, there were rumors that the next generation of Blackberry will come without a physical keyboard (which BlackBerry CEO Heins reassured that RIM is not getting rid of its tried-and-true physical keyboard) and this is no easy decision.

One exciting new feature for the BlackBerry 10 is the redesigned user interface. The clean design features "cascades," which let users flip through apps with a simple swipe gesture, replacing a back key or physical button. It will also feature an intelligent virtual keyboard that takes touch-screen keypads to another level. It learns the words that you often use, your typing style and compensates for sloppy typing (I admit I am one of those sloppy typers). If they solve this problem, another good reason for me to stick with Blackberry. I currently have three BlackBerry and a Playbook.

There were reports that now Apple is considering offering a real keyboard for the iPhone 5. While this is highly unlikely, it will be a smart move for them to change the game again if they can completely rethink the design and engineering of a physical keyboard. The next competitive front will not be the camera, screen size or processor speed, it will be battle of the keyboard.

I speculate that RIM is betting (and committed) on winning the keyboard battle because they know it well, typing for BlackBerry users is everything and this is the last defense.  And now RIM is properly equipped with the smarter, faster QNX platform.

Let the battle begins…..and here's a few free advice:

• BlackBerry should seriously push the design front and explore the BlackBerry DNA and go against Apple’s simple design and opt for more sophisticated European asthetic.
• BlackBerry should turn up the keypad battle and bring in new function and keys to allow new document management capabilities. I can tell you 5 ways you can improve the keyboard typing experience.
• BlackBerry should stop engineering creeps and hold back innovation on those features to reduce distractions.
• BlackBerry should drop the Apps race and give that up completely. Don't fight a battle that you cannot win.
• BlackBerry should turn BBM into an open software and get mass adoption including all Android phones.
• Blackberry should add voice to BBM and that will be a killer app.
• Blackberry should explore innovative features on “identity” management. I think there are lots of rooms to innovate here.
• Blackberry should innovate about live document sharing. Talking and reviewing a word of power point doc is another killer app.
• BlackBerry should innovate around “security” features (not just data security) but real security and design service around it.
• Blackberry should design a business mode and a personal model so the phone switch personality. We don't want to carry two phones.
• BlackBerry should leverage the 200+ million cars are on the road using RIM's QNX operating system and create the most sophisticated integrated features. Most BlackBerry users like me take calls in the car for hours everyday.

I can go on and on for hours and give BlackBerry another 100 ideas to compete for the future. The big strategy is to ignore “Apple”. I mean completely ignore Apple. And all you need to do is to do three of the above right and that earned you the right to play. Next step is to attach and fight back. Go RIM Go!!!

Success For Organizations Comes From The Ability To Drive The Strategic Transformation At The Most Critical Points. “Business As Usual” Is A Very Dangerous Expression These Days.

What is "Strategic Transformation?" For some, it is the framework and process of altering the way in which an organisation does business using new technologies and processes. For others, it is the effort to develop a measured, goal-orientated response to marketplace events, or to improve performance by becoming more customer-centricity. But the most stratgic reason is the design and execution of an integrated, future-oriented, enterprise-wide program aimed at moving to an improved future and achieve stretch goals.

In the multitude of voices and noises, strategic and organizational paradoxes, CEOs and their executive team need to learn to navigate, transition and lead their organizations into a new future. Companies that failed to transform their organizations because they put too much emphasis on tools and technology and not enough on foresights, mental mindsets and leadership behaviors. Their leaders failed to develop the shared visions, values and beliefs that serve as foundation for dynamic culture and to engage all employees to co-create the new culture and to provide opportunities for them to initiate and participate in a shared destiny.

They need to start by identifying the specific beliefs and practices that need to be changed, challenge them to create new “experiences” that form those new belief. Convincing someone to change is hard and trying to convince and mobilize a large organization to change is an almost impossible task. But it is still possible. You just need to know where to start and where to push and pull.

There are many reasons why transformation efforts failed, because they over emphasis on the business processes redesign and not enough attention on the underlying human behavior. Strategic transformation is not just about helping people to rethink and reflect on the past and the present; it is also a way to prepare people for future unknowns.

The heart of any transformation lies in finding and embedding the “purpose” of the business and what they individually must do to accomplish that purpose, how to build trust, create networks and innovate. In the course of Idea Couture six years journey of helping large companies to transform, we determined that to create a new level of performance or jump back into a growth mode, a few things matter most. Most transformation will include building a culture of purposeful innovation and high performance. They consist of the following core components: mental mindsets, purpose and meanings, innovation practices, co-creation and measureable results.

When mental mindsets are anchored on a perspective of the future and the executives, board of directors, managers and employees are all aligned, they generate managerial actions that, in turn, lead to superior business performance. An exciting future state and here executives can leverage this to create the cultural momentum that is critical to ongoing innovation success. This cultural capital can help companies to deal with the ambiguities of technological disruptions and external market uncertainties and to direct their energy to adapt to fast changing competitive conditions. Facing increasing complexity applying a single-dimensional focus is absolutely fatal. And any attempt to emulate a successful strategy of your largest competitor is also fatal.

Transformation leaders understand the importance of using “strategic foresights” to help their companies maintain relevancy to the future and it is an ongoing attempt rather than a one-off exercise. Transformation leaders also understand the need to invest a disproportionate amount of time in bringing the organization together and function as one, not as departments or business units that ended-up sub-optimizing the business performance.

Executives in lower-performing organizations complain that they don't have time for the "soft stuff" and needed all the attention for a real business strategy. Yes we need a strategy on where and how we compete and what part of the value chain we can leverage and how to leverage from the economics of scale and scope. Executives are sometimes confused about managing conflicting strategies and they think they have to make difficult trade-offs. It is 100% possible to manage two conflicting strategies without keeping them apart. But to do so first required to develop a strong culture of trust and the ability to accommodate a new management mindset. That's why trasnformation is needed.