• meme-peddler: someone who is constantly trying to coin new nonsensical terms and is alway up on the lastest buzz
• brandmeme: a corporate brand message masquerading as meme; intellectual product placement so to speak
• buzzhound: buys all of the meme-peddler’s latest wares, and is always anxious to uncritically show-off his newest purchases
• hype-o-condriac: someone with a strong over-sensitively to all forms of hype due to over-exposure
• hype-o-allergenic: an antidote to brandmemes and other forms of unwarranted hype

So I just ate my very first Krispy Kreme today. I’ve never had one before, and I thought I should do it soon before the company goes completely under.

Results: it was completely, absolutely, truly awful. It had the sort of unpleasant high-pitched faux sweetness you usually get from an excess of saccharin. It was so sweet it was almost bitter. It left my ears ringing. And the dough was a triumph of blandness. It was the flavor equivelent of Garfield or Dave Matthews. It was decidedly soft and squishy, but i wouldn’t call it fresh. It was fresh in the same way WonderBread is fresh.

I’m glad I had the experience of (partially) eating a Krispy Kreme donut, but I will never, ever intentionally do it again.

This is the first part of what I think will be a 5 part series to build a crude theory of innovation. Ironically, there is nothing terribly novel about any of the individual ideas in I’m presenting here—and perhaps I’m even misusing the word innovation. I do hope however that my integration of these ideas will be at least insightful. Regardless of true novelty there is always value in just putting thoughts into word.

So here is the overall flow I’m planning:

Part 1: Definitions
Part 2: iNPD model
Innovation Matrix – Categories of Innovation
Part 4: Innovation Matrix – Areas of Innovation (01/05)
Part 5: Innovation Matrix – Overall
Part 6: Process

My working definition of innovation refers to a capitalization on new business opportunities through new products, services, processes or experiences (collectively referred to simply as product hereafter). New ideas that cannot be tied to business opportunities may be wonderfully creative, but ultimately inert in terms of capitalization, and so fail my working definition.

Opportunities are situations that afford both a chance to create value for someone or something at a profit in some new or unique way, and a chance to achieve and maintain a position of competitive advantage.

Now here is where things get a little controversial. I believe that people and organizations are more strongly averse to pain than they are attracted to pleasure. This negative motivation means that one will most consistently provide higher value by helping to alleviate pain. This is of course a philosophical position I cannot (yet) prove with empirical evidence.

I’m defining pain to refer to a problem that 1) costs a subject time, money and/or attention, 2) the subject experiencing the problem accurately recognizes it, and 3) the problem is sufficiently acute to warrant spending time, money, and/or attention to alleviate it.

Pain then boils down to cost, in terms of time, money and attention (and in the case of consumers, perhaps personal ego as well). If the cost to alleviate the pain is less than the cost of living with it, we have ourselves a business opportunity ripe for a great new innovation to capitalize on. Please forgive the Fischer-Price economics—I’m just trying to lay some very basic definitions.

Costs drive Pain > Pain drives Opportunity > Opportunity drives Innovation
Under this interpretation, necessity really is the mother of invention.

With consumers it appears most (if not all) pains are costs related to at least one of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (or another needs hierarchy like Clayton Alderfer’s ERG). Henry spends a lot of money on diet books because he feels that his weight is costing him more in terms of belongingness than the books cost financially. Buying these books is his way to solve the pain of not belonging to his perception of a certain group.

These definitions raise further questions, such as:

• Other than pain what else can give rise to business opportunities?
• Should focusing on pain differ between consumers and businesses (what pain does the iPod solve? and is that why people are snapping them up?)
• Are there pains other than time/money/attention/ego costs that give rise to business opportunities?
• Does something like Maslow seem appropriate for classifying pains?
• Could it provide some insight into pains in order to drive innovative solutions, or is it just too academic?
• Is there a similar needs hierarchy for business customers, or does Maslow apply to businesses too?

There’s an increasing trend I’ve been noticing out here on the net: a growing army of jabbering zombies regurgitating the same slavish uncritical adoration of Google. This level of uncritically always makes me a bit uneasy. Finally I’ve come across a refreshingly different take on Google. Perhaps the great Google might end up being more like the Great Oz. I especially like:

On the Network, The power of people will kick the backside out of algorithms. While computer sciencey solutions are almost always gameable, communities are equally almost always resilient, adaptive, and intelligent.

Philosophically its a very compelling position. Indeed algorithms can necessarily only deal in data (dead letters so to speak). Meanwhile human communities share information, knowledge, wisdom and surprisingly little data. Admittedly wiki’s are not exactly communities of people, their content is socially created and cultivated–no algorithms.

This could explain some of my own personal experience. After reading this I realized that I’m using Google less and less frequently, in favour of Wikipedia. If I need to know something, Wikipedia is now the first place I turn. I still use Google to help me find websites, but for information or knowledge Wikipedia is my engine of choice.

PS.
Here is a visualization of the self-correcting/self-healing properties of social information software like wikipedia. I found this by following a link from peterme.com’s october 12th posting

A scary but liberating aspect of web 2.0 is that it is going to force designers to start relinquishing control. I like that. The relationship between the designer and the user strikes me as very similar to the relationship between the author and the reader. And it has long been understood in literature that the story belongs to the reader and his or her interpretation of it. Once written the author relinquishes all control.

Although I have absolutely no empirical evidence for this, it seem like some of the most successful authors write with this in mind—they write to relinquish control. Designers on the other hand still seem to be greedy for ever more control. We still obsess over pixel perfection.

Perhaps its time to think of ourselves more as authors, and loosen up our need to control. Perhaps we need to think of creating many potential experiences, and more abstract paths to them. I’ve recently started to try this in my own work. It’s difficult for sure, but I feel that this approach can really open things up in terms of innovation.

Sweet Jane
Remake: Cowboy Junkies
Original: Velvet underground
Might be the best remake ever; took a decent tune and without even knowing how to play their instrument, they turned it into something so sopping with melancholy your CD cries every time you play it

Take me to the River
Remake: Talking Heads
Original: Al Greene
The Reverand is good, really good. But the Talk Heads managed to give it the New Wave something Al Greene’s old R&B just didn’t have. Very rare to see some white guys remake classic R&B better than the original.

Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds
Remake: William Shatner
Original: Beatles
Because its about the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard (after Leonard Nemoy’s The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, complete with late 60s music video).

With a Little Help From My Friends
Remake: Joe Cocker
Original: Beatles
Because you can practically smell the bourbon on his breath, feel every word e grinds out, glory in the delicious 70s-ness of it all. Sit down Ringo.

Twist and Shout
Remake: Beatles
Original: Can’t remember
Because I’ve taken 2 from the Beatles already, and their version makes you wan to dance in the middle of a Chicago parade

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Remake: Propellerheads
Original: Soundtrack, Movie same name
The original was good (played during the ski chase scene), but every time the Propellerheads version comes on i start uncontrollably drinking martini’s, seducing random women I’ve never met before, and shooting at things from the hidden rocket launchers in my Aston Martin. Good thing I don’t listen to this too often.

Mr. Brown
Remake: Styles of Beyond
Original: Bob Marley
Claiming a remake of a Bob Marley tune is better than Bob’s version is asking for trouble, I know. But this is a bit more than just a remake. Good cheesy gansta (so 90s i can’t believe I said it) posing with 40 calibre case of glockoma.

I’m paraphrasing a bit, but here are a few tasty bits from a recent conversation I had with a designer of home appliances.

nugget: In order to elevate design as a discipline within the corporation, you need to demonstrate exactly how design solves the executives’ pains.

my reaction: This isn’t as easy as it sounds. This means more than just a laundrylist of why we designers believe design is important, or even a nice ROI chart. Rather the argument must be in their language, speak from their perspective, and must truly understand their more dire pains and empathize with them. To paraphrase an former business school professor of mine, understand your customer’s real pains and you’ve already made the sale.

nugget: The artifact walk-through

my reaction: Learn about the decision maker process of your managers and executives by taking a recently completed product (or other artifact) and walking through with them their decisions and contributions to making it what it is. This will help make the discussion concrete, and take the microscope of them and put it on the artifact (which should make them feel much less threatened and help them open up).

As Emily Dickinson wrote “tell all the truth, but tell it slant,” it seems when studying people we need to “ask the
truth, but ask it slant”

The Cleaner – Use to clean all around the house, with bleach for extra cleaning power, and an easy rinse formula. What more could Donna Reed ask for?

The Greek – Considered the second greatest warrior after Achilles. I heard he just sucker punched people.

The Town – “Celebrates 50 years Remembering the past… Preparing for the future.” Not much happens in Ajax. Just a lot of remembering and preparing. I guess after 50 years of it most people only remember the preparing.

The Game Show Host – Well, he rhymes with Ajax.

Here’s a little reaction I posted to ok-canel in response to an article on Ajax by Adaptive Path’s Jesse Garrett:

“Ajax” signifies a collection of prior existing, relatively mature, mutually supporting web technologies that many of us have been using for years in roughly the same way Ajax describes. So what is it then? Nothing but a snappy label–with an increasingly heavy dose of hype.

Like Cayce Pollard’s allergy to brands, I have an allergy to hype. It starts in the pit of my stomach with a squishy queasy feeling, and then moves up to choke my throat, and finally lands in my sinus cavity with throbbing pressure on my sensibilities. Ajax is starting to give me some mild queasiness.

Some of you may have noticed that Adaptive Path coined the term “Ajax” and is doing a terrific job of branding it (this well-written article is a fine example). Of course in branding Ajax they also brand themselves as THE go-to company for all your Ajax needs (sort of what Cooper has done with personas). This strikes my cynical side as more of an Adaptive Path marketing initiative than a genuine technology.

This is of course a fairly common criticism, even appearing in wikipedia’s entry on Ajax.

On another note I’d like to take exception to the Oddpost vs Google example. Garrett asks “[w]hat’s the difference between Oddpost and Gmail?” And then goes on to imply that the difference is Ajax, and that Gmail beats Oddpost hands-down because of it.

While I agree whole heartedly with the philosophical reasoning that open systems are ultimately superior to closed systems, I think Garrett presents a false dichotomy. The real differences between Oddpost and Gmail start with the fact that Oddpost was created by two unemployed guys with laptops sitting in a San Francisco coffee shop. While Google is a multi-national behemoth that’s starting to make even Microsoft worry.

Despite the resource constraints, Oddpost developed one of the simplest, most elegant UIs I’ve ever used. Its light-years ahead of Gmail and other webapps. It light-years ahead of most desktop apps. And I was happy to pay a mere $30 a year to have it. Meanwhile, I dread having to even look at Gmail, let alone use it.

Gmail is succeeding where Oddpost failed because of branding, marketing muscle, 2gigs of storage, and a $0 price tag, not because it offers a superior experience (which it does not) and certainly not because Google developers followed a CSS/Javascript/XHTML technological implementation that allows a small handful of rabid Safari fan-boys to read their email.

Garrett concludes saying “the recent Ajax explosion signals a new chapter in the history of Web design.” I suspect that’s a bit melodramatic. The web has seen lots of hype come and go.

Author of “Breakthrough Products”, former IDSA president, and former design professor of mine Craig Vogel shared his thoughts over email on activity and personas in design.

“Experience design and activity design are the same. But knowing a person’s preferences is also important because a functional solution should be complimented with lifestyle attributes.

Norman is a psychologist and not a designer. His focus is on human activity which is fine. I think there is more to products than [just the] action analysis but it is an essential component.”

Sounds like Vogel is saying a study of activity is necessary, but insufficient; where Norman says that a study of activity is not only necessary and sufficient, but other realms of user study (like persons) could ultimately be distracting and therefore result in poorer product designs.

Of course Norman could be showing his phsychology bias here. In the integrated new product development process outlined in “Breakthrough Products” Vogel says that good product design results in products that are useful, usable and desirable. Norman appears to be focused on usable at the expence of both useful and especially desirable. And from a phychological perspective Norman’s may be an entirely appropriate reaction. However, from an iNPD perspective his reaction is a bit narrow.

It is hard to ignore the truth of Normans criticisms, that too often the reality of persona development is that it is improperly done and becomes a resource distraction.