The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Was it Dave Peters you were speaking to? Say hello if it was.

You’re right, too many people are all too happy to let go of the past to hungrily embrace the brave new World. I think it’s because humanity is driven by a need for continual discovery and excitement which results in us sometimes blindly ignoring the very obvious warning signs. We do it time and time again, from the Goldrush to the .com to Enron and you’d think we’d learn but I guess greed is the mother of motivation.

That said, I do embrace innovation and evolution, it is how we develop, I just think it should not be done at the expence of things that have continually proved to be effective. It’s about blending, not ignoring.

Talking of blending, I seem to remember you presenting a very similar view to Apple about 8 years ago? With this in mind, I have to ask whether this is evolution of your thought process or simply stagnation? 🙂

I think the iPod is the perfect example of what you mean here Rob.

For me, I had thousands of songs on my computer that were useless to me whenever I left the room. The same with nearly everyone i knew at highschool. MP3 players were around, but they weren’t practical. Apple, like you said, understood the needs of consumers and created the product for us. Later models weren’t focused on trying to cram more and more technology inside, rather they focused on evolving the features they already had, stretching them to make them better, more usable.

Apple were smart in not wasting time over technologising (did i just invent a word?) something that was successful because it was already simple. They kept making what they had “better” at what it did, rather than make it into something that might threaten or confuse its users.

In relation, I think this is where Sony might have shot itself in the foot with the PS3; trying to give us too much of something we aren’t comfortable with. But then that is the risk I spose…

What the ipod did was be the first to make good use of portable hard disk drives, but for an existing product type.

It was half first, half third. The key was that on the ipod you could store your whole collection, not just a couple of albums.

It was Marcus who talked about Wii and you’re right, it’s a really good example of ‘Third Mover’ – something that must be pissing off and confusing my friends at SONY. But I shouldn’t say that should I? Ha.

I’m a bit surprised that Niko hasn’t yet jumped in with this book I can’t remember right now on how copying well might as well be a more viable strategy for our times.

What I found interesting, and I also don’t find that source anymore, was this saying that disruption in itself doesn’t have a benefit.

This (http://blog.asmartbear.com/not-disruptive.html) came to mind reading this and I think it summarizes it pretty well:
1. It’s hard to explain the benefits of disruption.
2. It’s hard to sell disruption, because people don’t want to be disrupted.
3. Most technology we now consider “disruptive” wasn’t conceived that way.
4. The disruptors often don’t make the money.
5. Simple, modest goals are most likely to succeed, and most likely to make us happy.

I don’t know why it is that incremental improvements or a new take on a tried solution (or a trend, as you, for me surprisingly called it) got a bad reputation. More often than not, the things that made the great successes special (iPod, iPhone, WII, …) were the little tweaks, the tinkering with UX/UI.

Are there many ‘objective’ disruptions that also lead to ‘objective’ and lasting benefits for the brand who did it? (Dyson comes to mind, …)

Thanks for bringing that to my mind Andy. That’s what happens when you click on a link in Rob’s posts, end up reading it, and the comments and then comment, without looking at the date. Stupid.