innovation playground Idris Mootee

10 Big Reasons Why Most Innovative Products / Services Fail? How Many Of Them Are Avoidable?

Why innovative new products fail? Because marketers believe they know the industry, the product market and the customer and their needs.  And after going through cycles of input gathering and any orginal innovative ideas were ultimately turned into something that a lot like their existing products with minor improvisation. Sounds familiar?

Too many firms “innovate” with very few real insight about the market, their customers, or customers’ aspirations, needs or wants. Rather than go out and understand what customers need and expect, they rely on anecdotal evidence and market research, or simply perform some "ethngographic" study performed by traditional marekting research companies. "ethnographic" field work performed withour an anthropologist is like goging to bungee jump without an instructor.  This is a ley failure point of the first order, like jogging on the rooftop blindly down a path that ends off the building.

What leads some innovative products and servies to succeed and others to fail? The answer to this question encompasses a number of different factors. In some cases, the product cannot deliver the promised performance, capability or attract sufficient interest.

Even if potential can be demonstrated early on, it may take a substantial amount of time to reach the projected adoption figures. Or the product’s innovative feature is being replicated by an existing product as an added function and there is no need for a stand alone new product. Or the economics of the new product is not attractive enough and cannot hit a critical mass. Insight into the minds of the early adopters can greatly reduce the risks of failure, which is generally due to one or more of the following reasons:

1. The innovative new products are not shown in the right user context thus creating a misunderstanding of the applications
2. The new technologies behind the innovative product are not linked to an exciting and worthwhile market opportunity or are too niche
3. The innovative new products are not positioned within any product category and also fail to open up a completely new category
4. There is insufficient knowledge and resources for marketers to drive consumer adoption
5. The core functions of the innovative new products cannot support themselves as stand alone products and only work as features.
6. The promised performance of the innovative new product does not materialize and does not provide enough customer value
7. The innovative new products were distributed through the wrong channel and compromise the value propositions
8. The innovative new products perform only a small function and can be included by others in other products as an additional feature thus diminishing the demand
9. The expectation of consumers adopting the new products is over estimated
10. Products are pushed to a skeptical customer group and fail to neutralize the perceived risks associated with the new product.

The innovative new products require an ecosystem of support which did not exist or were not built fast enough. Determining the suitability of market research for innovative new products or services is a challenge. Insights are not only needed in the early phase of ideas gathering, it is equally critical at the pilot stage. Many traditional market research methods are inherently more tactically focused (orientation on the customers of today) and lead to the development of small improvements in existing products and the big ideas eventually diluted. Read more of this in the next big INSIGHT issue of M/I/S/C available in bookstores in 28 countries.

Random Thoughts On Muggles, Magic And Design Thinking.

For those of you who are not familiar with Muggles, they are people who are incapable of magic, and who are usually unaware of the wizarding world. Design Thinking is sort of like wizardries, it takes certain type of people with the certain type of training, Hogwarts or Harvard.

When Muggles think Design Thinking, they see nothing new there and they believe it has been around for a long time, it basically means they still don’t get it and may never will. They hardly see the real challenge, it is simply not to invent a better mouse traps. We care capable of doing more and being more innovative. The power of our imagaination is what it is.

"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."  ~J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 1999, spoken by the character Albus Dumbledore

Design Thinkin is alot more than lateral thinking and creativity de Bono style or ad agency style brainstorming. Design Thinking fills the gap created by management theories and business schools which analytical thinking and data-driven decision making override intuition where empathy is never part of the equation.

Companies have been battered by system level economic failure, extreme uncertainties, and the failure of traditional forms of strategic making, leadership styles and management model. These wounds have left businesses gazing hopefully towards Design Thinking. Design Thinking is bringing a refreshed, revitalized, and rejuvenated approach to management and strategic thinking- however, design thinking is far from a cure-all. It takes a certain type of people who are comfortable with different thinking styles. I’ve read so much poorly written papers about design thinking and many of them don’t even grab the basic principles and its true transformational power.

Often people talk narrowly about design and prototyping, but Design Thinking is not just bringing the power of empathetic creative problem-solving to bear on a human needs, it is an organization culture, a mindset, a framework and a toolkit to solve complex wicked problems that we created. It provides a balance between the needs to create customer value, shareholder return and social value. Design Thinking is strategic.

Everyone comes to me hoping to join Idea Couture claims they are creative, they have great ideas and can turn ideas into great products and create new markets. Go deeper and I ask the how… there comes the sound of silence. Great Idea, great products, great business is a tagline, not a strategy. Design Thinking can be applied to fill the gaps of traditional strategic thinking. The increasingly complex needs of the business need a new toolkit and Design Thinking is exactly what is needed. It helps to uncover new needs, creatively redefine value, reconfiguration of value-chain activities, develop compelling brand narratives and create markets that are yet to exist. When my friend Roger Martin advocates Design Thinking, he is not talking about ethnography or prototyping; he is talking about a whole new management paradigm.

Everything is designed—from behavior, systems, organizations to public policies. Design is universal. The dirty secrets of why how big corporations destroy shareholder value are actually no secrets. Everyone from the board of directors to the frontline employees knows 'why' a company is 'stuck.' Because their structures and management systems are so rigid and can’t adapt to changing market shifts or respond to any disruptions; their over focus on core competencies and optimization that prevent them to see beyond the core and; fail to see and anticipate the future and even if they see it they fail to act on it. This is where Design Thinking comes into play.

Everyone understands the need to make money and everyone hope they can do magic. And everyday many moguls are trying to create magic with cute packaging and fancy taglines and hoping to make a lot of money, off course it won’t work. The real magic lies in understanding deep human desire and unmet needs and anticipate emerging behavior, not every company truly understands how to do it. They teach those at the Ministry of Design Thinking.

There's Gotta Be Easier And Cooler Ways To Transfer Files Between Devices. A Lot Of People Are Working On It.

When people talk about innovation generally people are quick to refer to something completely new. The question is how many new ideas are really new? Or recanation of old ideas or new applications of old ideas? Or just new ways to package old ideas? It is not uncommon that multiple companies or people are working on the same new idea but no one knows each other are working on the same thing?

So many people are working on innovative ways to send and receive files over a wireless network which is done through Bluetooth or infrared or whatever. Some engineers are playing with the idea of using the optical spectrum that offers better security and higher transfer rates. Engineers from Pennsylvania State University have now succeeded in moving data outside the usual line of sight restrictions at speeds of over one gigabit per second, more than double the max speed available today.

The engineers have developed a system where a high-powered laser diode transmits data by converting electricity into infrared light, which then bounces off any walls and surfaces before being received by an avalanche photo diode, where it's converted back into electricity and translated into usable data. Using it in a room with no windows will ensure that any transmitted signals do not escape and cannot be intercepted or less interferences. Not sure how many rooms are completely closed with no windows.

One creative application could be the "wireless projection of HD television. Currently, two high definition broadcasts exceed the bandwidth of any radio system, but with a 1.6 gigabit per second gigabit system, two HD channels could be broadcast," according to Professor of Electrical Engineering Mohshen Kavehrad.

At Idea Couture we’ve been playing with the idea for more than 18 months exploring new ways to transfer files between devices using simple touch gestures. We called it “Touch-and-Send”. Obviously there must have been dozens of start-ups or labs working on solving file transfer problems or creative ways to do that using similar approach. Currently there is no simple way to move things, plugging into the USB is still the simplest way and requires no set up. 

But a new research project at MIT called Sparsh is also working to fix the file transfer problem. Sparsh (Hindi word for "touch") is a virtual cloud-based clipboard where any data, like a phone number or photograph, can temporarily live until it's "pasted" to another device. It is kind of like the mailroom.

To make it work, both devices need to be Sparsh-enabled and the person touches data on a device, such as a picture or a music file can be sent through the cloud and receive by another device. Right now, Sparsh is at a concept satge at MIT's Media Research Lab. Very exciting idea indeed.

Expect to see many more innovations enabled by the cloud. The sky is the limit.

"Build to Fail" And "Fail To Build" Can Have Different Meanings. To Fail Is Part Of To Build. To Fail Is To Hep To Build To Last. I Hope I'm Not Confusing You.

In London this week, fully packed with meetings. Staying at St. Marins Lane and it is one of my favourite hotels in London. Both for style and location even I am not the saturday night crowd that hangs out in the cocktail lounge. I am getting a lot of work done writing and editing for the next issue of M/I/S/C. Deadline is a few days away.

We love to read successful innovation and design stories of how a cool idea turns into great success story. The reality is most cute or good ideas don’t make it to the executive’s desk and even for those who did, most products and services launched to the market ended up failed. What good is innovation if the failure rate is so high and how we wonder how it would impact our credibility or career future? Is it a good thing after all? Do we know why we fail? Most don’t have any idea.

How do we anticipating failing as part of design thinking? How fast should be fail? How soon should we fail? What’s the right mindset? “Dream to Fail” or “Fail to Dream?” Or should be thinking about how to “Build to Fail” or “Fail to Last?” What is right approach to embrace a culture of failure? Fail often and fail faster is a bad idea, I know how easy it is for people to say, “oh you should fail more and fail often”. That means you’re no good in innovation management or don’t understand how to manage innovation risks.

Business schools do not celebrate failure and design schools spend too little time understand how not to fail. If you've failed too much and too often then it doesn’t reflect well on you. And if you’ve never failed, it means you never tried anything innovative. And if you tell me your innovation success rate is 70% or 80%, you don’t know what innovation is all about.That's part of the reason I wanted to publish M/I/S/C Magazine.

So what design thinking has to do with failing forward? Design thinking is about helping business managers (with no design training) to understand “play” and "exploring white space." We should question the practice of segregating design thinking solely for use by so-called “design professionals.” What’s the social bases of separating design and business?

There are semantic gaps, conceptual blocks, and social and definition barriers between design and business. What are the first stops teaching business managers the concepts of design thinking? And what’s design thinking? Most common description includes application of ethnographic research, strategic foresight, sense-making, multidisciplinary teams, strategic framming, visual mapping, strategic prototyping and iteration and form-giving. So how can entire organizations benefit from design thinking in their everyday jobs?

With some exceptions, both design industry and business community is lacking an understanding of design thinking and its potential role in business strategies and decisions making. Design thinking is a mind-set, common languages, a practice, a set of tools as well as a framework to generate more and better solutions or options. It is where D-School meets B-School.

It is not creative brainstorming; in fact it is quite the opposite of that. Design thinking is a systematic way to identify and frame issues; develop multiple solution options; test them with rapid prototypes; and iterate on them. To prototyping is to strategize.

Art Is Like Viagra For Science. Art And Science Complement Each Other In All Forms Of Sense-Making. The Magic Formula For Innovation.

“If you’ve never been lost you’ll never end up getting anywhere new”. That was a great opening line when Dan Widen tried to sum up his observations on day one of the event. It was the first time I met him in person and I must say I really like him. Not only of his achievement but his personal style of reflections. Also met with his colleague John Jay, also a great guy and honestly I was a little surprised to see them at the event, a nice surprise. I was expecting to meet with only scientists, artists and policy makers.

The STEM to STEAM workshop was hosted by RISD and funded by the National Science Foundation, the idea is to bring together thought leaders to come together to develop strategies for enhancing STEM education through the integration of Art and Design thinking. "STEM to STEAM pedagogy integrates a broad range of learning methods and learning ecologies from the empirical studies in the science lab, constructive critique in the design studio and creative discoveries in informal learning settings," according to Dr. Pamela L. Jennings, Program Director, Computer and Information Science and Engineering, National Science Foundation. "Creativity and rigor are rewarded and STEM learning in formal and informal settings is transformed from 'we have to learn' to 'we want to learn'."

On my flight home, I was thinking, what is the difference between an artist and a scientist? Or the artistic process and scientific progress? This was the closing discussion we’re having on the second day of STEAM. It is never easy to have scientists and artists (I don’t know which group I belong to, I am a management scientist and an artist) sitting together to talk about the integration of art and science. There is no question that there were differences in opinions in terms of what’s the definition of an artist?

The commonalities seems to be that both requires extreme curiosity, certain expertise, experimentation and ability to deal with unknowns, and using various methods of inquiries etc. And the key differences the science progress requires validation and repeatability (other wise it is not a science experiment). On the other hand art can often be done as a one off. Art is more process oriented and science has more consideration for the outcome or goal-oriented (there are also a lot of science research that I don’t know what they’re trying to achieve). The process (may be process is not the right word) of art requires artists to deploy observational skill which allows them to see beyond the surface, recognize what the eye sees and interpreting them as they see it, and constantly experimenting with organizing colors, textures, patterns, shapes, space and form.

Artist is best in asking question and sometimes these questions seem to be irrelevant they are trying to make a point. And when art is applied in science, it is becoming part of the scientific process, it is a powerful subjective aid in enriching the objective world of scientific evidence. But when science is applied in art, suddenly it has become the “rapid prototyping of truth.” Instead of algebra equations and statistical charts or applying Multivariate Statistical Process Control when several related variables are of interest are collectively known, we can make a powerful piece of visual that brings all the data together added with a subjective richness to help viewers to see things otherwise they may not see. Art is like Viagra for science (or even for scientists) to help them to keep up with the crazy world out there.

Another interesting idea is for several decades, investigations into consciousness has always been a muddy area in the scientific community. Artists and designers have always believed that art can impact our phenomenological experience of the world - via our central nervous system - through artistic stimuli, which thrill, question and captivate, for centuries. The sensations from art, whether it comes from an art installation, a painting or a digital simulation can help us to experience the immediacy of the things happing (whether it is 50 years ago or now around us) and provide a truly phenomenological experience of our world. And thereby open a T1 connection into our consciousness.

I know a scientist/artist that uses her knowledge gained in biology to explore relationships between cellular form and function and she was showing people amazing visuals of how the double helix structure is telling us what makes us who we are – an example of science meets arts. When art infuses into science opens up possibilities for artists that have the scientific knowhow to use scientific knowledge to create works of art.

I must say I very much enjoyed the event and I had the opportunity to meet with lots of scientists and artists and a lot of great discussions about the value of crossing over. Art and science provide a complementary way of making sense of the every increasing complex challenge around us, it allows data to have emotion and help us to see (and sense) the past and future. A healthy dose of subjective enlightment can give scientific knowledge a richness and depth beyond that which our senses can perceive. They complement each other in sense-making which is really the comprehension of meanings, and projection of our future. And science cannot do it alone without art.

With The Tablets And E-Readers Race, Wonder How Many Of Those Will End Up In The Landfills Before They Were Actually Being Used.

This week in San Francisco is action packed. New people starting, more furniture coming, a few projects in final stages and magazines. Scott and I were doing some street bodystorming between meetings (photo above).

Since I wrote about tablet last year at the CES, it is still the main battlefield this year as everyone is not only jumping into it, but most have no clue of how to play or win this war. Yes iPad is now the common enemy and this one is not easy to beat, you have to beat them on hardware, software, human factors, interface, and most of all the Apple brand and integration with iTunes and iMac.

The biggest surprise is Motorola, beaten to death in the mobile space and now entering the tablet game in far better than shape that others The Motorola tablet is by far the best tablet, it runs on NVIDIA Tegra 2 and Google's new Android Honeycomb.

Motorola Mobility, the new Motorola spinoff that went live as a separate entity on the NASDAQ. This new company focuses entirely on consumer devices, in partnership with Google and Verizon they just announced the new the Motorola Atrix, a smartphone that doubles as a legitimate PC replacement with both desktop and laptop docks. This company is coming back big time.

The Motorola Xoom tablet and the HTC Thunderbolt were especially impressive in performance and usability. Both are the only two serious threat to iPad, at least until Apple comes up with iPad2 or iPadthin or iPadsports. With the tablet race, Nvidia looks like is becoming the Intel of the next great wave of computing. Where’s Intel? Samsung and LG folks are sleeping and eating in their war rooms thinking about fighting this tablet war. Both are committed and determined to be a key player, but could use a lot of help.

Where’s Sony? The once mighty consumer electronics giant? What’s the coolest thing from Sony? And when’s the last time you heard about a breakthrough product from Sony? When’s the last time you heard about a market-leading product from Sony? They spend too much time trying to win back the TV war by going full throttle on 3D. I know for them, losing the TV war is hurting them deep, as they have always been the kings of TVs, that is until Korea joined the game.

Sony deputy president Kunimasa Suzuki, "We'd really like to take the No. 2 position (in the tablet market) by 2012. At this moment, the timing of (those tablet) announcements versus (their) availability today is a different story. iPad is the king of tablets for sure. Who is going to be (the) second player?" Aiming for the second is not exactly a good strategy. They are missing the boat already.

The not-so-secret thing is most new tablets are still in design stage and most don't come out until September, if it all--take. And by then Apple will be another 12 months ahead of the game.

Unfortunately for those other 500plus e-readers I saw at the CES last year, most of them are so last season. Since the launch of the iPad early last year, it doesn not make sense not to merge the idea of e-books onto tablet devices that also surf the web, play games, play videos, and do a lot more. What I hate to see is that all those ebooks become ewaste in the landfill, let’s figure a way to do something with them.

Expect To See A Next Generation Of Lighter And Tougher IPads, IPhones and iMacs. All Made With Carbon Fiber.

Do you ever wonder why everything I getting lighter and lighter and that include the airplane that you fly in and your car? If you ever get a chance to fly Qantas in an A380, you’ll find the economy class seats are all carbon fiber. It is very commonly used in planes due to lightweight.

Carbon fiber is basically plastic, it refers to plastic reinforced by a graphite textile. It is also know as alternatively as carbon fiber reinforced plastic or carbon fiber composite. Carbon fiber is not cheap, but has a fantastic weight-to-strength ratio and that’s why they are used in high-quality cars, boats, bicycles, and planes, including popular Formula One racecars. A small piece can withstand an impact of many tons and still deform minimally. Carbon fiber composite is currently the best material that the world can produce in appreciable quantities. Introducing carbon nanotubes into the fiber is currently in late research stages, and may offer improved ratios of 10 times or greater – a space age material indeed.

Apple engineer Kevin M. Kenney sees the future of carbon fiber and tablets, they are applying for a patent called simply "Reinforced Device Housing" that describes a way for various weaves to be backed by carbon "spine" to provide greater torsional rigidity -- to keep you from twisting it and cracking an LCD. Imagine the next generation of lightweight iPad, iMac and iPhone. IMac is still have a weight and heat issue. In face, Panasonic started making a ultra lightweight laptop many years back, but not for export. Some needs to overcome the perception that plastic is cheap as this is no ordinary plastic. Sony as early as 2005 launched two new VAIO TX series notebooks both made of carbon fiber making them the strongest and lightest with the least amount of thickness. They were ahead of Apple.

Apple’s patent text is pretty broad and it raises some issue: Embodiments may house any number of electronic components. For example, certain embodiments may be used to form the exterior surface of a mobile telephone, a laptop or notebook computer, a tablet computing device, a desktop computer, a television, a stereo receiver, or practically any other electronic device. Expect to see a generation of lighter and stronger Mac products soon.

For Now Tablet Is Dominated By iPad, And Then There Are Hundreds Of Others Who Want A Piece Of The Action.

Microsoft just posted a really good quarter and has been openly criticized for its lack of strategy in the tablet market and other consumer market. This software giant has failed to innovate in many fronts despite massive resources and strong talent based. The company has also failed to create any buzz on their product launches; you wonder what is not working with this company. It is not lack of money for sure, and not about lack of talent either.

The iPod has only been on the market for half a year, the buzz has quiet down but adoption is high and broad unlike previous products. This is an instant success and looks like no one us close to being a threat. Though Samsung, LG, HTC, Dell, HP and Lenovo, and others are unveiling their own tablets, no on has the advantage of full software and hardware integration. Apple's complete integration of hardware, software, operating system, and applications is a major competitive advantage.

Many think Galaxy is only potential threat to Apple. The Galaxy's screen has about three times the surface area of typical smart phones, including the phone. When it comes to tablet features and performance, here's how the Galaxy measures up to the iPad. The Galaxy is about the size of large paperbacks and don’t expect battery to last more than 8 hrs.

Samsung has identified two problems to solve as a competitive weapon to compete against iPad. First is flash. And then the other is face-to-face communication. The Galaxy has two cameras, one facing you and the other facing away, and you can use the Qik app to videoconference with other online members. This is an attractive feature and for sure will be matched quickly.

There are a handful of Qik enabled phones out there, but it still hard to find someone to talk than using Skype. iPad2 might incorporate a camera and FaceTime. Android have more apps, above100, 000 apps but the proportion of high-quality apps that you have to pay for has not gone up significantly. Apple leans way the other way on this, limiting some of its 300,000 apps solely to iPad distribution. And most are willing to apps for the iPad. Mobile usage has become pervasive. Mobile devices (smart phones, tablets and whatever in between) will be experienced dramatic evolution in the next 5 years. It is the new competitive ground and becoming a real category on its own rather than something as complimentary to the PCs.

These tablets or large smart phones are fast becoming mini-computers with nearly 13 million iPads shipped this year and expect to grow 3x next year. These tablets’ bigger screens promise more immersive experiences for marketers. The web will become more app like and the user experiences will converge. I can see tons of innovation opportunities to drive new behavior. It is so easy to view content on iPad and people considered that as less private, and more willing to share. 2-3 users sitting in a coffee shop can easily view the screen. And as a shared device, the iPad invites social interaction and imagine design apps for real life social interactions rather than virtual. A game that can be passed around and played or something that people can use in a retail environment, sort of self-help navigation in mall and view merchandise and promotions etc. I can come up with another ten scenarios.

I am looking forward to see the Blackberry Tablet rumored to cost just under $500. The PlayBook will have a smaller screen than the iPad (7-inch PlayBook versus 9.7-inch iPad), and there won't be a 3G option (it shouldn’t as it should use the BlackBerry connection). The screen resolution will be similar the iPad, but will translate to more pixels per inch. The PlayBook will also have bigger ram than the iPad (1GB PlayBook versus 256MB iPad), and RIM also included in two cameras (5MP back, 3MP front). I think this is useful for BalackBerry users like me and will guaranteed a minimum adoption. Great, now I’ve got one more thing to add to my briefcase.

Another Great Innovation To Prevent Breast Cancer: A Portable Scanner That Works With Your Laptop Or iPad.

Breast cancer touches many people every year, and it is not just women. The National Cancer Institute estimates that 207,090 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in women in the United States alone in 2010, and an additional 1,970 cases in men. Deaths are projected to be 39,840 in women. There are also a lot of misdianosis.

A professor at Manchester University is bringing hope to women worldwide with his new innovation--a portable real-time breast scanner. Using radio frequency technology, the scanner can show either malignant or benign breast tumors on a computer screen in real-time. Scanning in a hospital to detect breast cancer is not a pleasant experience.

The beauty of the device is that it is simple to use, hook up to your laptop and you can see real-time imaging and the scan is even accurate if women are wearing a bra. Imagine making this available in the developing world due to its affordability and portability. The portable scanner is about the size of a lunch box. It is a great idea, although it can use some design.

Unlike mammography, which presses a woman’s breast (that’s a painful experience for most people), the scanner works when a woman places her breast in a cup. While mammography detects density, radio frequency works on dielectric contrasts between diseased and normal breast tissue. As soon as the breast is placed in the cup, any abnormality, including a tumor, shows up in red on the computer screen. That’s because the sensor can detect the difference in tissue contrasts, with malignant tissues having a higher permittivity and conductivity than normal tissue. Introduction of the new portable scanner for breast cancer detection could be a tremendous breakthrough for women, allowing them more accurate, faster, and easier access to screening. Professor Wu submitted his invention to the IET Innovation Awards, and winners will be announced in November.

Another interesting idea is using art to help cure breast cancer. British artist Samira Harris and Samsung hope to do just that with “Everyone is Art,” the first giant collaborative artwork to be made and auctioned for breast cancer. “Everyone is Art” is a re-creation of the face of Botticelli’s famous painting, “The Birth of Venus,” featuring the faces of more than a thousand men and women collected through a website.

What Is The Future Of Mobile Phones? Will There Be A Physical Phone? The Future Is Interesting.

Where is mobile going? It is the hottest space right now to be in and will remain so for another 10 years as it evolves and converges. Not sure what mobile means when most devices will have the wireless networking capability be it 4G or 5G. VOIP will remain a disruption for years to come as it takes over older telco infrastructures now threatening mobile operators that have yet to embrace VoIP and will suffer the consequences. Frost & Sullivan sees a bright future where mobile VoIP will generate $29.57 billion by 2015. iPhone and iPad and the apps that are now allowed to make VoIP calls is a series threat to carriers’ revenue and they will try every way top create barriers including surcharges on VoIP usage over the data networks.

And for the banks, the adoption rate of mobile financial services is surpassing that of other financial service innovations such as online banking and ATMS. So it will soon take over as the main channel with ATM being the second. Come the year 2015, the United States will have a penetration of some 149 million WiFi enabled mobile phones according to a recent study performed by Coda Research, it means the US will account for 66% of all WiFi enabled mobile phone shipments in the year 2015 with a growth rate of 25 percent CAGR between now and 2015. 
 Obviously a big part of that growth will be in the smartphone sector with two thirds of WiFi hotspot connections coming through smartphones in 2015.

So what is next for mobile? What would the next generation of mobile phones look like? We have been doing a lot of research and prototyping imagining new c=behaviors that drive new design and features. Some of the ideas are so exciting but unfortunately I can’t share that here for obvious reasons.

We have been studying the changing global cultural trends and socio-economic factors, how our lives and communities are changing and how the mobile phone evolves to fit that or drive change to that. 

 Bigger screens or better screen, foldable screens or no screens? Will the ultimate device would be entirely virtual and it follows me, from my sunglasses to my windshield and desktops or bedside alarm clocks? Or something like interactive holographs that pop out like a ghost? Yes augmented reality phones and seeing a video voice mail from someone who has passed away for years?

What about keyboards? Will they disappear with the screen? Or we still want to type? Voice input will make physical keyboards almost entirely redundant but we still want to type if I have to make a prediction. For those of you who like to express themselves with gestures, gesture recognition is another big one. Imagine sending a middle finger virtually? What about eye-focus tracking that will provide virtual full-size keyboards so no more fingers will be needed. So how do we exercise our fingers?

We definitely need to move away from silicon to biological processors, open your phone’s battery compartment you will find a few ants working to produce energy? The computer you inject is more likely to resemble a specialized virus than a tiny silicon chip. This gives you a taste of what Idea Couture’s future mobile experience prototyping playbook looks like. I wish I could share more.

Our Idea Of D.School Meets B.School Is Not That New. There Were Three People Started Advocating It Very Early On: Tom Peters, Patrick Whitney And Bruce Nussbaum. Idea Couture Is Making Them Real.

I was speaking a keynote yesterday at an Innovation Camp. It was great place to share our stories and our journey to make innovation a ‘business’ discipline. I showed the audience the path to innovation is never a logical one. The fuzziness goes beyond the front end and extends into the late stage and innovation involves more than just design, it requires selling, positioning and marketing.

Innovation is more than just product design and even more than business strategy. If you think about it today, we are in such as mess… healthcare, financial, technology, media, geopolitics, sustainability etc…. and think if innovation is about figuring out what those problems mean to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating.

In a few short months, Idea Couture will be celebrating another anniversary year with many happy clients, and some people have been here for three years. We are adding new people every month and some are spreading across different geographies (SF and India are next), it will be harder for everyone to know everyone and no one likes that.

I have been lucky (by design) consistently finding the brightest and most creative people to join the IC family. I will NOT settle for less. My time is too valuable to spend on people who don’t the potential and motivated to become the best. I’ve heard a few times from some my staff that my standard is too high …. both on research, design and strategy. But that’s the way it is and will always be. My job is to ensure we have the most rigor innovation process (from insight gathering to opportunity mapping to design /prototyping) and our outputs supersede the best in the industry. I don’t make compromise.

When Idea Couture was founded, it was based on a few premises 1/ we need both analytical thinking as well as creative thinking to solve wicked problems for our clients 2/ we need to develop a set of robust tools as part of our innovation process 3/ we need to bring user into the process as early and as often as possible, call it participative design.

I never stress enough the importance of combing D-School and B-School thinking (our TM slogan) and believe that they are crucial to innovation management. Today's management concepts that are taught in B-schools are heavily based on "optimization" and "scale economics" and the fact that businesses need to make better use of resources and exercise their power in order to gain competitive advantage. However, this suggestion does not address “size” and can create other problems including legacies and bureaucracy that may hinder imagination and opportunities. I believe that the next generation of design thinkers can effectively use both sides of their brains to produce a winning combination and in turn move knowledge forward.

There are three people (visionary or gurus) who were early advocate of similar thinking beyond just academic debate but in a highly practical sense and probably positively influenced many people in business and design:

Tom Peters, 68-year old management consultant turned author/speaker/guru started more than 10 years ago telling executives the importance of innovation (beyond traditional technological definition) and how companies should “strive for strangeness and he as an early advocate of the "culture of prototyping." One interesting quote from Peter is "The dumbest mistake is viewing design as something you do at the end of the process to 'tidy up' the mess, as opposed to understand it's a 'day one' issue and part of everything.

Patrick Whitney, a 54-year-old Canadian native who is Dean of the IIT (Institute of Design in Chicago), the largest graduate school of design in the US. Whitney is a visionary leading a new movement to modernize and professionalize the discipline of design/innovation that is closer to the real business world. Whitney is turning design into a core methodology of innovation and is integrating the best of business and design thinking, taking away the airy-fairly from idea generation brain-storming. This is a big unfilled gap for many organizations and will continued to be one.

Well the third one is Bruce Nussbaum (ex Business Week innovation and design editor). He is now professor of Innovation and Design at the Parsons School for Design and I am sure most of you know him. He is not a designer or consultant. He is credited with bringing innovation and design to mainstream and an early advocate to suggest designers to take the lead in the transformation. Design has become very much an innovation industry. He is not just talking about the design of one product, but the design of the whole process of innovation in a company. Designers are thinking of themselves more as consultants and moving into what traditionally has been a management consulting function, providing "tutoring" on innovation as well as product design.

Enough Overtheorizing Of Design Thinking. How About Let's Start With Design Thinking 101?

I’ve written extensively and spoken publicly a lot about the myth of design thinking. Honestly I am getting a little tired reading about it myself. How people can over theorized a very simple idea and now the term is becoming another buzzword. What is design thinking? Design thinking is not about design. It is about helping companies and individuals to think differently about strategic options and system impact. Futurists have been around for a long time, but design thinking combines with strategic foresight can help integrate the future(s) into existing strategies, not many organizations do that systematically and on an institutional level.

Design thinking basically incorporates three key elements from various design discipline and most powerful if you combine them with strategic context, this is where D-school meets B-school:

First is observational research or ethnography which is less commonly used in strategy due to obsession of quantitatively data. Ethnography is traditionally a social science research method (beware if an ad agency person that studied 4 weeks in the subject in his/her second year undergrad who is fast to claim that he/she is qualified). The methodology relies heavily on personal experience. At Idea Couture, our ethnographers often work in multidisciplinary teams to perform rapid and intensive study of a single domain, utilizing a blend of historical, observational, and interview methods. The final product? It is a powerful combination of visual (photos) and written narratives that can give shape to new constructs, paradigms and perspectives.

The second one is visual sense-making. This is a black box for many but at Idea Couture, this is where art and science intersects. It is in some ways similar to system thinking (but different) with the main difference being when we apply system dynamics we see how relationships between these drivers interact and produce a system effect. In visual sense-making, it is basically a complex interplay of different elements to help or accelerate cognitive processing. The common thing is both provide a system view.

What is a system? A system is an organized collection of parts that are integrated to achieve a certain goal. A market is made up of many subsystems…namely products, marketing, sales, technology, customer service etc. If one part of the system is altered, it will impact the whole system. Visual sense-making generally does not require much learning, but is useful if apply properly. It can easily become a pointless academic exercise if the strategic context is absence and I see that happening quite often.

The third one is rapid prototyping. This is particularly important to improve speed to market and for markets that are rapidly evolving. The benefit of rapid prototyping includes: 1/ Quickly and costly effectivelydetermine how a concept is supposed to work 2/ Determine what users really want 3/ Use abstractions and sometimes mathematical models to improve a concept quantitatively or qualitatively testing a prototype to predict user behavior 4/Determine whether customer value and business value are aligned (business sense) and if not how big is the gap.

With The Proliferation Of Mulit-Touch Technologies, The Exciting New Future Of Physical Iteractivity Will Be Like Playing Tai-Chi.

Will mutlitouch become the mainstream interactive experience of small devices? The holy grail of touch interactivity is be bring together the simplicity of hand gestures with deep navigation. Will multitouch create a new user language much as we learn how to type? Imagine when multitouch are deployed in home appliances such as washing machine and microwave ovens? Gestural commands can be much less obvious to users than those written on buttons and menus and can create a whole new set of challenges. It means more challenge for human factors people.

It is interesting to envision how a broad based, mass scale utilization of the technology beyond the iPhone/iTouch/iPad/iDesk. I want to see a digital desk where there are no computers, the surface is the computer and my smart phone and connects to the clouds. And I want the desk to look like Herman Miller Sense desk. I want to have a built-in Skype conference call widget and ..oh yes Facebook on my desk. I guess we need to retrain ourselves to use this, as we need to create a set of hand gestures standard in order to be productive with our digital desk.

Asus already has a dual-screen laptop, still in concept stage, but with a touchscreen instead of a keyboard, opting for a virtual 'board just like the iPhone. This is a step towards the digital desk. The dual panel offers a flexible working space in which users can adapt to suit their prevailing usage scenarios, for example adjusting the size of the virtual touchpad and keyboard. Through hand gestures, handwriting recognition and multi-touch, users are given with a control surface that is both flexible and intuitive.

Touchscreen displays are will be growing from US$2.2 billion this year to US$3.4 billion in 2014 according to NanoMarkets, a research firm. The growing demand for touch-screen technologies in mobile and portable computing will create new opportunities for suppliers of conductive coatings, substrates and sensors in addition to the display firms themselves. Mainstream display makers have begun to develop their own "in-pixel" technologies as an alternative to the current industry practice in which third-party suppliers add a touch sensor subsystem on top of an LCD display and then sell to OEMs. These mid-size touch screen OEM manufacturers instead of supplying companies such as HP, LG, Samsung, Toshiba and Sony may end up competing against them. These companies include FlatFrog, RPO, Microsoft, NextWindow, TouchCo and Vissumo.

The next 24 months we can expect to see the increasing prevalence of physical and gestural interactivity, beyond the Wii and the iPad. One thing for sure is that we're all going to be dealing with the fun as well as the challenge of interacting with and designing devices in different ways. One big challenge is simply due to the lack of transparency into the "commands" or actions available with a given device or environment, we don’t see a switch in the air and there are nothing for us to touch.

Looking into the exciting new future of physical and special interactivity, we will need to create idioms and new vocabulary that are as discoverable and useful as possible. We will find out in 10 years time whether these new touch-based interactive paradigm such as gestural interfaces will be making life easier for us or creating a new interactivity divide between those who can use it and whose who gave up on it. Instead of learning to type like my parent’s generation, the next one will be learning how to play “tai-chi” of gestures interactions. Human Factors guys now need to learn “tai-chi”.

How Much Money Are Apple And Amazon Making From Selling The iPad And The Kindle?

Getting ready for the iPod coming to an Apple stores near you, iTunes TV show downloads is about to happen. Apple will be offering US TV shows for $1 each, as reported by the Financial Times. This coincides with the scheduled release of the iPad sometime April in an attempt to pull adoption. TV episodes are normally $1.99 for standard-definition and $2.99 for high-definition through iTunes. There was talk before the iPad launch that Apple might at last introduce an iTunes TV show subscription service, but it never happened. I am sure that is still on the table, but there are no further details about when this could come together.

Some wonder how much money can Apple made with the iPad, obviously the higher end model is usually more profitable for Apple. I’ve done some quick and dirty research with OEM suppliers and whipped up some estimate. The high end model 64 GB with 3G retailing at $829 will produce a profit of $455 for Apple (and retailers) while the low end 16GB with no 3G retailing at $499 will bring a profit of $213. Assumption for marketing and customer support cost total $15. I have not included in the calculations for those that are sold with corporate discount.

I have yet to confirm the components configuration but are using industry’s current suppliers' prices. These costs will come down when volume increases. And memory price fluctuates. Display is the most expensive follow by the NAND flash memory. If you drop your iPad, I am guessing the replacement cost or that would be $250-$270 although the net cost is $76 excluding labor. I also include a quick comparison with the Kindle, which is not an apple-to-apple comparison, so it is just there for reference. Kindle doesn’t have many of the expensive components as the iPad but elegantly designed as a book reader. Remember the basic rule of design? Make sure you do at least one thing really really good. Kindle makes the downloading experience so easy, anywhere in the world your 3G is working in the background.

All cost calculations here are based on our estimates only, not sources from Apple of Amazon and no one confirm if these numbers are close or off. I think they are close.

Considering the Kindle DX selling for $489 produces a profit of $297. There are costs for some free content not I’ve not included in the cost. There will be many iPad look like in the market selling at the $180-$250 range, the margin for these will be as thin as $30-$40, but you can’t really compare iPad with those poor cousins. Let’s see what’s iPad net contribution to Apple will be by the end of the year.

Is This The End Of The Smartphone? Soon All Phones Will Be Smart. Welcome To The Age Of The Superphone.

I really like this Stumptown coffee place, this one is in mid-town NYC. It is so much cooler than Starbucks. Don't you love the way the people dress? And the coffee is good. uses organic milk and organic coffee, and is cheaper than those expensive ones. who needs hostile coffee snobs first thing in the morning anyway, even I am in NYC.  I hope they stays cool while they become popular. OK this post is not about coffee, it is about Smartphone.

It is funny people still refer some phones as smart phone and some not. Not only the lines are blurred and the market for phone-only phones are shrinking. I think the market are moving into a new segmentation as user behaviors will determine the emergence of different categories of phone/users. In the meantime, there is the IPhone, Balckberry, Superphone, Designer phone (Rolex phone coming), Andriod phone and just phone.

In the meantime, IDC today reported a record level of smartphone shipments for the fourth quarter of 2009, when vendors shipped 54.4 million devices. That's up 39% from the same quarter a year ago, the company said. The handset company with the largest growth in 2009 was Apple. Apple's unit shipments for the year were 25.1 million, up from 13.8 mil units in 2008. The company's market share rose from 9.1% in 2008 to 14.4% in 2009, an 81.9% year-over-year increase. Blackberry finished in second place with 34.5 mi shipments for 2009, an increase of 46.2% over 2008, and a 19.8% market share.

In the latest mobile competitive game, every company is trying to take a page out of Apple's "we design and control the customer experience" playbook, and many don’t understand this is not a game for everyone. Their needs to be many preconditions and one need to understand the behavioral economics of their consumers. Google has finished working on a phone that they want to control the total customer experience, It is a super phone (either produced by LG or Samsung I think) and competing with HTC?

The coming battle of the superphones will be joined by Sony Ericsson Xperia 10, what they have in common are large screens and plenty of horsepower. The HTC Bravo resembles the Nexus One, except for a few changes. It has a 3.7-inch screen with 800x480 pixel resolution and a 5-megapixel camera. For these phones, battery life is an issue. So bigger screens, higher pixel and higher quality camera, Wi-Fi and what else? At what point it stops being a phone?

Today AT&T said it will start allowing SlingPlayer to work over its 3G network on the iPhone. So you can watch your TV program redirected by SlingPlayer. The inability to use Slingplayer over 3G on the iPhone was one of the big issues with the iPhone and now iPad. Being able to leverage my already expensive cable bill to provide content onto a portable device makes far more sense than additional subscriptions, video purchases, etc. The  Slingbox Solo only costs about $140 and with that I cab watch Flashpoint on my iPhone, may be not, definitely the iPad.