Month / March 2007

by Roger Dennis

Start with the problem, not with a solution

From the latest McKinsey quarterly (subscription only sorry) comes a great quote during an interview with Intuit’s Bill Campbell. He’s an innovation evangelist, and this quote sums up why :

We hired some product managers with bank experience. One day, one of them comes to a meeting that included me and banking engineers and says “I want these features.” And I replied, “If you ever tell an engineer what features you want, I’m going to throw you out on the street. You’re going to tell the engineers what problem the consumer has. And then the engineers are going to provide you with a way better solution than you’ll ever get by telling them to put some dopey features in there.

He must be a fan of Anthony Ulwick…

Out of interest, he also talks about supporting the lunatic fringe in an organisation by keeping research and development budgets high. In using this phrase he makes the same reference as Gene Frantz at TI about the lunatic fringe

by Roger Dennis

New computer interfaces

Occasionally a new paradigm comes along which totally challenges the way your view your interactions with a computer. Jeff Han achieved this at the TED conference last year, and now, along comes a new development from Microsoft Research.

Someone has given it the name ‘surface computing’ but that doesn’t really do it justice. You have to watch this video to understand it.

Highly recommended.

(via the Guardian Online)

by Roger Dennis

This is NOT innovation

The overuse of the word ‘innovation’ is still annoying me. So much so that I’m going to start the thread – “This is NOT innovation.”

Contestant one – step right up.

This is NOT innovation

I’m happy to be informed why the ‘i’ word has been added to this product (if you cannot see it, it’s just above the large Garnier brandname on a white background).

by Roger Dennis

India is going to kick the world’s arse

Three days into running a Technology Futures workshop in Bangalore, and there’s a sliver of a gap to blog an off-topic observation. It’s a very succinct one too.

In a few short years India is going to kick the world’s arse.

Two stories :

1. On the plane I got talking to a senior exec at Accenture. He talked about the growth of the company, and his comments were so startling I had to ask him to repeat them. He said that in the last five years Accenture India has gone from 200 to 28,000 employees. They’re still adding 1200 per month (at this point it’s ok to re-read that last bit, and yes, you did read the correct numbers).

Take one little motorbike, add two people, add one colour laser printer....

2. We needed to buy a laser printer for our mobile office. We went to a computer shop we picked at random. They did not have the model we wanted in stock, but, to our amazement, offered to deliver it, along with a credit card machine for us to pay. They also gave us a delivery window of ninety minutes. As we left the shop I thought we’d never see them again.

Ninety minutes later the hotel calls to say our delivery has arrived. Problem was, the damn thing was faulty. Cue a phone call to the shop, who says they will send someone out in thirty minutes. We start the clock, and sure enough, thirty minutes later a guy arrives. Granted, he was not a technician but he knew a knackered printer when he saw one.

Cue another phone conversation with the shop where I stress we really need a working model today. They in turn call the distributor and three hours later we have a brand new replacement printer. I made a comment to the delivery guys (who delivered a colour laser printer on the back of a 50cc motorbike) about how much I appreciated their effort. His reply?

“We have to provide good service.”

Look out world.