innovation playground Idris Mootee

The iPhone Is A "Creative Destruction". So Is An iPad. So What Do We Mean By "Creative Destruction"?

Earlier this month Michael Tompert, a San Francisco digital imaging artist, violently destroyed some brand-new Apple products for the sake of art and the results are a collection high resolution prints with a statement "our relationship with fetish, fashion, freedom, and bondage.

The collection of giant prints including one called "Targeting" that shows a 3G iPhone that's been shot with a Heckler & Koch handgun. I guess we can call it “creative destruction.” What’s “creative destruction?” It is of communist origin --a term originally derived from Marxist economic theory which refers to the linked processes of the accumulation and annihilation of wealth under capitalism. These processes were first described in The Communist Manifesto and were expanded in Marx's Grundrisse "Volume IV" (1863) of Das Kapital.

It is about economic innovation, the way in how capitalist economic development arises out of the destruction of some prior economic order. Only since the 50s the "creative destruction" has become more readily identified with economist Joseph Schumpeter who popularized it as a theory of economic innovation and progress. The idea is company needs radical innovation (radical new proposition and business design) and even the most exceptional, enduring corporations cannot continue to beat the capital markets indefinitely – there is no built-to-last. In order to continue to maintain excellence and remain competitive, they must adopt the dynamic strategies of discontinuity and creative destruction. In a simple word-innovation.

Foster and Kaplan (McKinsey) in the late 80s examined more than 1,000 companies in 15 industries and discovered that even the best-run and most widely admired companies are unable to sustain market-beating levels of performance for more than 10 to 15 years. This was in the 80s’, with today’s technological progress, we are talking about 5-8 years.

Their research suggested that: "Corporations are built on the assumption of continuity; their focus is on operations. Capital markets are built on the assumption of discontinuity; their focus is on creation and destruction. The data present a clear warning: Unless companies open up their decision-making processes, relax conventional notions of control, and change at the pace and scale of the market, their performances will be drawn into an entropic slide to mediocrity."

Every company should engineer its own “creative destruction” while they have the resource based to do so and have the luxury to examine and explore new organization design and new mental models. At Idea Couture we use strategic foresights and scenario development to show clients the future of "creative destructions" that could happen to their industries. They are so real and executives can actually feel the future. May be an idea is to take a framed copy of their vision and mission statement, shot it with a Heckler & Koch handgun and hang a giant high resolution print in the board room to remind them. More business for Michael Tompert and his digital print shop.

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.

There Is Texting For Business, Texting For Emergency, Texting For Health, Texting For Love And Texting For Seduction. We Have Yet To Understand The Effects Of Excessive Texting Impacting Our Communications And Realtionships.

San Francisco weather is perfect this week, yes unusual for late Sept. Exhasuted but a lot of things get done. Will be spending a lot of time here.

I realize I am texting more these days as it is faster and easier. Texting is one of our everyday activities, for the younger generation, it is the primary method to stay connect with friends. I have seen a couple texting each other even when they are in the in same house. And some text while they drive, eat and even in an intimate situation. Imagine that?

It is also becoming a common tool for business as customer services. Airline texts me update on flight status and that makes sense, as it is time sensitive. One significant strength of text messaging is its ability to remain unintrusive, particular we are in meetings or on conference calls.

A company called StartTalking is making texting easer by allowing you translate talk to text. You just talk to it, and have it send what you say as a text. Likewise, when someone sends you a message, it will read it out. Is that a good idea? Are we turning text into phone calls? The thing is free of charge and once installed on your Android phone (and available soon for the iPhone and BlackBerry), it works quietly in the background and listens for voice prompts in order to activate.

The two prompts that are coming in this first iteration of the product are "computer" and "operator," though in future versions you'll be able to program in whatever word you want. It's as simple as saying "operator: text message for (insert name of the name of the receiver)." It confirms you want to send a message to that person, and then you just begin speaking. When you're done talking, it runs that speech through conversion, and plays it back for you.  Works like a voice mail. But other than when I am driving, it is defeating the purpose of texting. People do it most in classes and meetings when they can't talk.

Texting is actually an interesting behavior that is affecting many aspect of our life. There is texting for customer service, texting for emergency, texting for socail causes, texting for security and testing for seduction. It is now ubiquitous in our society. Think about the future of seduction and flirting, texting will be a perfect medium. Just add location based capability and a people matching algorithm.

I can see a bestseller book titled “100 Proven Techniques - Texting to Attract And Seduce?” Think about it, all it takes is one single funny text to makes one laugh and remember you. There is a whole new set of techniques in how often, what style, what teaser, when and that becomes your brand. You can't over do it, too much texting is bad. It is sort of like direct marketing, and sometimes you need a call for action. What we are looking at here is to tantalize and tease her/him. Bring out your brand personality and always leave her/him wanting more. Texting is a great seduction tool if you know the right techniques.

It is easy to envision using texting to engage audience in entertainment, particularly terrestrial radio to interact with live programs, a new revenue stream too. Local politicians can use this to drive engagement with constituents since people can use it to send complains to their local councilors as most would not write a letter and make a phone call after the event.

Here is an innovative idea. You can build a business with this overnight. Starting a SMS–based training services. Whether it is for improving your general social skills, seduction skills, customer service skills, negotiation, self-improvement and even language skills etc. Or an SMS-based MBA? Anytime and anywhere. For $10 a month, you can learn new skills anywhere and anytime you want. And each session can be 5 min while you wait for your burger or 30 min while you wait for your flight to take off. I can come up with a list of 50 ideas to offer. May be this our next start-up incubation idea?

Brand Talk on Love, Sex And Emotion. Marketers Love Drinking Their Kool-Aid.

Can a company/brand create such powerful emotive connections to make customers love them? Your advertising agency will be quick to say yes. I am not sure. I can imagine a few scenarios that it happens but is is very uncommon. Marketers like to convince themselves that you can buy ‘love’ and that’s the ultimate goal for great marketing. What's that book name "Lovemark"?  That's an example of advertisers drinking their own Kool-Aid. Yes, many customers can have a level of enthusiasm because we provide them with a great customer experience, is that love? That’s what I want to write about.

Neurologists suggest that the early stages of love are governed by parts of the brain that are used for goal-seeking and reward, and resembles obsessive-compulsive disorder. Such as the first time you look at an Apple iPhone, a Harley Street Bob, a Hermes Kelley, a Mercedes SL AMG and a Patek Philippe Calatrava.

Here's how our brain works, at the early stage of a romantic relationship sparks activity in dopamine-rich brain regions normally associated with motivation and reward. The intensity is proportion to the activity. Advertising doesn’t make them love your brand; they attract their attention and interest.

The part of our brain associated with emotion, the insular cortex and parts of the anterior cingulate cortex, are not activated until the more mature phases of a relationship. In the context of brand marketing, the emotive connections require consistence good customer experiences including the love and hate. Love happens as a result when the sum total of the interactions that a customer has with a company's products, people, and interfaces reach certain threshold. Starting from the moment when customers purchase a product to the moment when they unwrap the box and sharing their joy with their friends on Facebook.

Here's a myth. Love is not emotion, it is a strategic capability to gain happiness. And love by itself has no object. It is some invisible and unexplainable energy of consciousness sometimes we are not even aware of it. It is beyond form, yet inclusive of form. Love is a capability that can be developed, nurtured and learned. We develop this capability when we were very young. Over the years, we develop the ability to love and care for the other person(s) and sometimes even objects.
Emotion is a different animal. It is feelings (or reactions from our brain activity) that aroused as a result of stimuli. When you see something, you want to touch it, feel it and probably own it. Many people marry for the sake of convenience or benefits. The same way we are loyal to certain brands for the same reasons. Either because there is a lack of choice of simply the product category is of low involvement.

Sex, love and emotion are three different things. In an ideal world, they intersect at certain junction. Sex is not the single manifestation of love (although it can be one of them), regular purchase and consumption of a brand is not a manifestation of love for the same reason. Some people are always under the misconception that the manifestation of love is sex; the manifestation of loyalty is purchase frequency. Yes, it may be. But mostly not.

Take away for you for the weekend, emotion often gets us into trouble but we must recognize them as part of being human and accept them into our consciousness, where they need to be cared for and managed. And that cab be learned.

Have a great weekend and please share your thoughts.

Interaction Design Has An Important Role To Play In Our Future, It Has The Power To Transform Cultures.

There is two articles on IC today, one on Inc. magazine and the other in Globe and Mail. We're getting some good press coverage and we need to continue to make our story heard. In the meantime, we continue onto my journey of building global capabilities. Interaction design (IxD) will be a core focus, and I don't mean just web or mobile interactions. IxD will be one of the most important strategic capability for companies to build meaningful engagement and sustainable differentiation as part of their enterprise level experience strategy.

How would interaction design change in the next 10 years? It is a relatively new area of practice, beyond traditional GUI design or web interface design. Interaction design go beyond just the clicks and links and is becoming an indispensable aspect business design, product design and service design. Interaction design is traditionally define as the study of devices with which a user can interact, in particular computer users or screen related. The practice typically centers on "embedding information technology into the ambient social complexities of the physical world. I think the word 'device' will eventually become irrelevant. I think IxD is about to take on a larger mission -- empowering communities and transforming cultures.

Here's my point of view, traditional industrial design focuses on a product’s form and function, but interaction design requires very different perspectives and approaches for increasingly complex business and design problems. Think media industry, it is transforming itself from a traditional broadcast medium to an interactive one and this change will accelerate faster and faster extending their ubiquity and interactivity to devices, objects and spaces. Rapid technological development is introducing new types of functionality, for example to sense, feel, control, monitor, connect, search, respond and transact for different types of applications.

I am talking about the circle of influence with interaction design. How does interaction design transforms culture; it begins when a small networks of people simply start sharing ideas, feelings, hopes and frustrations etc. and that is when culture emerges. Their behavioral patterns, mindsets, emotional responses as well as aesthetics, rules, norms, and values that are being shared influence culture and as a result produce certain artifacts.

These 'virtual artifacts', through people’s interacting with them, influence cultures and facilitate emergence of new culture. Interactions then become transformative social mechanisms whereby these ‘virtual artifacts’ are made accessible or shareable through networks of communities further facilitating more connecting and sensing, their creations are further linked to specific interactional, locational, cultural and economic context.

The ‘virtuality of our everyday life’ as a result of the interactions powers up new creation and distribution of culture never before in the modern history of mankind. This is where the real disruption is for marketers and media producers. It is hard to distinguish one’s role at the complex juncture of creation/production and consumption in our everyday activities. Interactions of our everyday life take on new meanings. Interaction designer have bigger jobs to do.

My favorite French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) gave us the tools to understand the media society and counteract the total assimilation into capitalist overproduction. Truls Lie finds a previously unpublished interview he made when Baudrillard visited Oslo in 2000. "Disappearing", says Baudrillard, "should be an art form, a seductive way of leaving the world. I believe that part of disappearing is to disappear before you run dry...." An idea for all interaction designers, make sure you include a 'disappear' function in all your designs.