Misconstrued Disruptions

I am an engineer. I love technology. I love learning about technology. I work with people that share the same characteristics. I am in a small business that develops technology. Like all small businesses, we sit around and dream of the day one of our ideas topples a giant of the industry. Fame, fortune, glory, and the privilege of having our server get slashdotted one day. The term 'disruptive technology' even made it into our mission statement.

I just started reading a book titled 'The Innovator's Solution" by Clayton Christensen. In the early chapters the concepts of Sustaining Innovations, Low-end Disruptions, and New-market Disruptions are laid out.

As a bunch of tech happy geeks, we typically chase the bleeding edge, whiz bang technologies that we are convinced will change the world. It seems to us engineers that this is what you want to do, right? All the successful companies are playing in this high end of the technology market, so to get in the game this is where you need to be, with the best damn widget the world has ever seen, right? Not so fast...

In Christensen's book, these types of technologies are often classified as sustaining innovations. They are technologies that the market incumbents must constantly be improving to gain differentiation over the competition at the high end of the market. He makes some very compelling arguments that this is not where an entrant attacks should they wish to succeed (beyond lottery ticket probabilities) and that the incumbent will usually win if attacked head on with innovations of this type.

Then comes the Low-end Disruptions. This is where the entrant is usually successful. Finding customers that are overserved by the incumbent and providing a solution that is just good enough at a lower price point. Of course the entrant needs to have a business model that allows acceptable profitability at this lower price point, but that is much easier for the entrant to do than the incumbent, who's revenue machine is dependent on the big sexy market and can't afford even thinner margins on its low end products. Christensen states that the incumbent is likely to retreat when attacked at the low-end, giving a nice little market to the entrant. Over time the entrant leverages the wins move up-market, slowly chiseling most at all of the (original) incumbent's market. The entrant eventually becoming the incumbent and is then subject to attack on their low end.

New-market Disruptions exist with either a product that is just so new and wonderful that people buy something they didn't know they couldn't live without. However, it also includes technologies that take advantage of non-consumption. Providing a product alternative in a market where a demographic is untapped due to lack of appeal. A sometimes small change in the technology or business model opens to the door to more consumers.

As an engineer, it certainly gives me a lot to think about my motivations and strategies for development. Turns out true disruptions don't come off the bleeding edge and sometimes just need good old common sense and improvement on an existing market. Seems somewhat obvious after you read it, but I guess not being blind to the obvious is what makes disruption work.

Inadvertent Agreement

I have participated in more than a couple contentious meeting recently. Most of these have been technical in nature. The high concentration of feather ruffling has heightened my sensitivity to some issues that can wreck the effectiveness of the meeting. You would think that all-out disagreement would be the worst possible scenario but I am starting to think this is not the case. In the situation where no-one agrees, the conversation continues. Everyone wants to get the last word and as long as there is strong disagreement, the issue does not go away. While this may seem sub-optimal, it has the benefit spawning further discussion.

One would think the best possible outcome would be for everyone to agree. If everyone does in fact agree then this is true. But the problem is, particularly in convoluted technical discussions, that consensus has a nasty little cousin that causes tons of problems: inadvertent agreement.

Inadvertent agreement happens when someone gets so entrenched in their perception of the discussion that they filter out a different interpretation that is often masked by poor semantics. I am starting to believe that inadvertent agreement is far more damaging to an engineering team that disagreement. The false sense of confidence results in a termination of the discussion, an unresolved issue, and the team potentially splintering on different development paths.

This problem is most prevalent in early development stages when brainstorming an architecture on a blank piece of paper. As the session progresses the paper becomes cluttered with many different streams of thought. A good brainstorming session is one of my favorite parts of design and engineering, but I need to make sure that when everyone starts to agree, they agree on why they agree.

Beginner Brain

I was listening to one of the TED lectures the other day and a fellow mentioned the term Beginner Brain. In the context of his talk, it was describing the marvel of looking at every new design through the eyes of a child. As designers, we are often blinded by convention and can not see the wonderful solutions that our subconscious has been trained to filter out automatically.

I have noticed that the novice brings refreshing insight to very expert loaded conversations. Often the experts do not see the obvious. It is analogous to 'from the mouths of babes'.

I also find this somewhat intriguing from the standpoint of analyzing my own interests and passions. I frequently jump from one hobby to the next, diving deeply into new topic areas with intense passion. I am beginning to wonder if I am addicted to beginner brain since I often become bored with something once I start to become proficient. I'm ok with that, although I think it drives my wife nuts...

The powerful apology

It is no suprise that a simple apology can often calm a tense and heated situation. A problem we have now is that many times a person or corporate entity will not apologize because because of the litigious nature of our society. This is a shame since many, but not all, situations only warrant a simple, harmless, but valuable apology. Just a thought here, but if an open apology was not admissible in court as evidence of guilt, maybe we would apologize to the wronged more often, and sue less.