Building better products: Are the best products created without a specification?

Following established best practices, having a detailed specification is necessary to build and design a new product or service. Theoretically, the specification is written in a form so that it can easily be handed over to “implementers” who will deliver the specified product. Realistically it never quite works out like that.

Creating a specification is a cumbersome process and takes a lot of iterations between multiple parties. Once everybody has agreed on the specification the implementation teams has a clearly defined goal and starts to work. It turns out that in this step the attitude of the implementation team changes and too often follows the economic minimalist principle.

The economic minimization principle

The implementation team has a clear economic incentive: deliver outcomes according to the specification and do this with the minimum effort. If you have a committed team they might put in the extra effort to under-promise and over-deliver, but there is no direct economic incentive to deliver more than what has been specified.

This way of cooperation is the preferred approach for most development and outsourcing projects. Nevertheless I was wondering if this approach is really suitable if we are aiming for breakthrough products and services. Are the situations when it is good that we let go of a strict specification? How do we need to change our design processes to create breakthrough products that not just meet but actually exceed a pre-defined specification?

The economic maximization principle

Working without a clear specification forces a development team to follow the economic maximum principle: Given set of resources aim to achieve the maximum outcome and deliver as much functionality as possible. This way you can focus on actually implementing the necessary requirements instead of negotiating the scope of the requirements that need to be implemented.

Obviously such an approach needs to incorporate agile principles and a leadership approach that is allows a team of highly motivated and talented individuals to perform at their best. Nevertheless one challenge remains: How can you ensure what the team should ultimately developed?

A product vision can compensate the absence of a specification

In the absence of a specification it is still necessary to define the direction the team should follow to implement a new product or service. Therefore the communication of the product vision becomes an increasingly important task with the product managers goal being that they ensure that the team has completely grasped the product vision.

Limits of this approach: When specifications are necessary

Obviously there are limits to this approach. If you are working on medical products or life-critical software applications, if you are replacing a legacy financial trading platform or if you are planning to outsource a multi-million dollar project it is necessary – also from a legal perspective – to ensure that there exists a document that describes the scope of the product. Nobody wants to be surprised by unexpected software bugs in the autopilot during mid-flight.

But I get the impression that if you are working on a breakthrough product or on a new innovation with a team that is able and winning to push the boundaries of what is possible, then I guess the results might be better, if you just drop any specification you might have and instead focus on a strong vision that allows the team to deliver on this dimension.

What is your experience with this approach? Will substituting a product specification with a clear product vision lead to better breakthrough innovations?

Guest post: Innovative organizations: playing to win vs. playing not to lose

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Sushi Suzuki, concept developer for Panasonic in Germany. Previously, he founded d.thinking Ponts ParisTech while teaching design innovation at École des Ponts ParisTech he was  the Executive Director of the ME310 program at Stanford University.

Over the last few years, I’ve had the pleasure of hosting many design thinking workshops and short courses in various contexts around the world. The format and content for the workshops and short courses are similar (1~3 days, team project based), but there is one large contextual difference in that participants in workshops are not graded while students in short courses are.

I am a firm believer in learning by doing, and as such, in my workshops and courses, participants and students work on various innovation challenges to practice their observation, synthesis, and ideation skills. Recently, I’ve come to the realization that the project results from the workshops tended to be more wild, creative, and challenging while project results from the courses tended to be more conservative, incremental, and at times pedestrian. While it’s difficult to judge results from such a short project, I find the results from the workshops to be more interesting and innovative even if unrefined and seemingly unrealistic. If I was trying to achieve some breakthrough innovation, the workshop results would be a much better starting point in my opinion. It’s easier to make a wild idea more realistic than to make a conservative idea more innovative.

Playing to win vs. playing not to lose

Ichiro, the Japanese baseball player, once commented that in the US, players played to win while in Japan, players played not to lose. I think the same dynamic is in effect here. Students in courses are afraid to be wrong (even if there aren’t any right or wrongs in my courses) and as such, they present more conservative ideas out of fear that the wilder ideas may seem unrealistic. Workshop participants on the other hand are freer from repercussions and as a result, they can be more imaginative and challenging.

Extending this out to the real world, there are some implications that need to be considered in trying to design innovative organizations and executing innovation initiatives. If people have the fear of failure because their wellbeing is closely linked to the results of the project or initiative, it will undoubtedly force them to be more conservative most likely leading to uninteresting results. Some companies have taken note of this and have tried to minimize the fear of failure from their employees. W. L. Gore and Associates has been known to celebrate project cancellations to send a message that because something didn’t work out, it’s not necessarily a failure.

While such initiatives are commendable, there can be difficulties in implementing something like this where the fear of failure is not only part of the corporate culture, it’s part of the national culture such as in my home country of Japan or my adopted country Germany.

An alternative approach to disconnecting fear from failure could be to take the innovation challenges beyond the corporate walls to outside institutions whose responsibilities and dependencies are inherently limited. I believe that one of the many advantages of design and innovation consultancies is that their success is partially disconnected from their clients’. While successful projects could mean more business in the future, failures won’t damage the consultant or consultancy in the same way an employee or manager could be damaged. That with more procedural freedom is a great recipe for innovative work.

Another place to take innovation initiatives is academia. While there are many projects unfit for students due to the technological complexity or confidentiality issues, as long as the students’ grades aren’t too directly linked to client satisfaction, they can be a lot more flexible and imaginative than hand-cuffed employees.

I’m not advocating the complete abandonment of accountability and responsibility, but there are times when such things could be obstructions in trying to accomplish innovative work. Like with everything else in the company, organization structure, work processes, and motivation schemes need to be designed to fit the task at hand.

About Sushi Suzuki

Innovating with improvised user behavior

Chris Dixon, co-founder and CEO of recently acquired Hunch, reminds us about the potential of improvised user behavior to create new products and services.

For a long time, there were niche communities of “lo-fi” camera enthusiasts: people who shared photos taken on old cameras that had interesting ways of filtering shots. The iPhone app Hipstamatic popularized lo-fi filters, selling over 1M copies. Because Hipstamatic lacked sharing features, many users took pictures with Hipstamatic and then shared them using other apps. Then came Instagram, which combined lo-fi filters and easy sharing. Instagram has been downloaded 15M times and has apparently crossed over to mainstream users.

Instagram built a product devoted to a job that users were previously performing improvisationally using multiple products. This is a common pattern for popular software and services. Before Twitter, people shared interesting links through email or “link round-up” blog posts. Tumblr’s short-form blogging/re-blogging was inspired by an “unintended” use of long-form blogging platforms like WordPress. Before Foursquare, power socializers sent out mass text messages with their locations (in fact, Foursquare’s predecessor Dodgeball did exactly that).

This idea has been discussed in-depth by Eric van Hippel who developed the so-called lead user method (PDF)  to identify opportunities for new products and services.

The creative process is complex, that’s why innovation is so hard.

Innovation is hard. Just look at Research in Motion (the makers of BlackBerry) or Nokia who have been praised as the leaders and innovators in their field and who are struggling to come up with products and services to compete in the changing mobile landscape.

I stumbled upon this infographic, which does not contain any concrete information but instead gives an artistic, visual impression of the creative process. There are two ways to react to this graphic and I think they can teach us a lot how we see innovation.

Reaction 1: Embracing the chaos for more creativity

If your first reaction to this image is to agree with this visual representation of the creative process and that it is a complex, unstructured process that may or may not lead to innovations you probably have experienced these moments when somebody, somehow has a breakthrough moment where everybody just knew that this idea will lead to a breakthrough.

It is very hard to plan for these moments and the fundamental truth remains: You can’t force humans to think faster or creatively. You just have to manage to create a process that allows these ideas to emerge. Nevertheless a complete lack of structure without any constraints will never lead to any results either.

Reaction 2: Structuring the chaos for more creativity

If you look at that image and say “What’s that? Just some painting – this needs to get structured!” you have probably experienced the benefits of structuring and clearly defining processes to achieve the best results. Academic research has shown correctly that structuring processes has lead to better quality, predictability and ultimately efficiency and efficacy.

Removing these processes will not necessarily lead to an improvement because planning for “Heureka” moments of inspiration and insights is impossible because they have to come from within the individuals that are engaged in this process and cannot be forced upon them.

Is there a solution?

So the ultimate question is: Is there a solution to this challenge of structuring the chaos while at the same time embracing the necessary freedom to let chaos emerge? The answer is: There are solutions, but there is not one single recipe that could be applied in a recipe-like style. From my personal experience it depends just so much on the corporate culture and I am thinking of using this image in the future to get a better grasp how companies see the creativity and innovation challenge by asking them: If you look at this picture, would you rather embrace the chaos or structure the chaos to develop breakthrough innovations.

Dive into the Swiss/European Innovation Scene at Lift Conference in Geneva

Lift conference is one of the annual highlights in Europe’s technology and innovation conference scene. I have attended Lift the first time in 2007 and it is still the best conference experience I have ever had. Contrary to many other conferences where attendees are busy with pitching their business, the creators of Lift have established an event that enables serendipity to form new connections and share ideas.

Creating a remarkable conference experience

Lift is a success story in itself that started as a small event organized by friends in 2006 and which has grown to around 1000 participants in 2011. For the 7th time this year, Lift conference is the meeting place for innovators and creative leaders from Switzerland and all over Europe. What stayed the same is the friendly, familiar atmosphere that makes connecting with people, sharing ideas and discussing plans so easy. One element to ensure this atmosphere is the onboarding session as well as the workshops during the conference.

Another example of the uniqueness of the conference: The annual Fondue-night where all participants meet for Swiss cheese fondue and drinks and as mentioned before – the perfect chance to dive deeper into conversations started earlier.

This years speakers include among others, David Rowan, editor-in-chief of Wired UK, Sean Park the founder of BankSimple, Nick Heller who will talk about how Google innovates and Hojun Song who is working at the open source satellite initiative. The full program can be found on the Lift website.

A great conference starts with the journey to get there

In order to make it even easier to get there, Zurich-based customer experience consultancy Stimmt AG and Lift organized a dedicated coach on the Zurich – Geneva train line that allows conference participants from German-speaking Switzerland or attendees arriving at Zurich Airport to get there more easy. The aptly-named train called Röstigraben Express is scheduled Zurich to Geneva on Wednesday, Feb. 22. «Traveling to and arriving at a conference often is an awkward experience» resumes Glenn Oberholzer «You travel alone, don’t know how to get to the venue, need to stand in line to check-in, have to find your friends. Let’s do this better at Lift12». And so Stimmt and Lift organize a coach on the regular train that will offer complementary breakfast, pre-check-in and most of all allow Lifters to connect even before they get to Geneva.

The perfect opportunity to get to know the Swiss innovation and technology scene

This train is not just making it more convenient to get to the conference but it is the perfect mode of transportation if you are planning to visit Lift from abroad. Just take an early morning flight to Zurich and then take a train from Zurich Airport to Zurich mainstation (approx. 10 minutes) where you can switch trains and join the Röstigraben Express on February 22nd at 9:32. There is also a 10% discount if you register with the code RöstigrabenExpress12 and you can find more information on the conference and the Röstigraben Express as well as the possibility to register on their website.