Steve Jobs was a notorious perfectionist. Apple engineers and designers went through hundreds of revisions on every prototype that made it into his hands. But Jobs’ maniacal obsession paid off. No gadget on the market is as instantly recognizable nor as coveted as the latest iteration of an Apple product. The company’s dedication to sleek design and intuitive, user-friendly technology has made each iPad, iPhone and Macbook launch an enormous success.
And how did Jobs and Apple do it? The company follows a set of simple but strict rules to ensure that every product meets Jobs’ standards for clean and flawless design. First, design must complement and improve the product’s usability, never detract from it. And of course, Apple’s sleek and uncomplicated aesthetic must be reflected by every component of the product, no matter how small.
Apple’s design philosophy sounds simple, but putting it into practice is more difficult. Check out Online MBA’s latest video to see Apple’s philosophy boiled down into five principles that any designer or brandmaker can leverage in their own work.
A GUEST POST from my friends at OnlineMBA.com
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Recently Apple announced its intention to acquire Authentec, a biometric authentication company. Apple was in a real hurry to complete the acquisition and it makes you wonder whether Authentec’s fingerprint authentication technology will make it into the home button of the iPhone 5 and possibly the iPad Mini in the coming months.
If Apple were to integrate the Authentec technology into the home button on the iPhone 5, the iPad Mini, and eventually the iPad 4, then it would not only create a handy way to make the devices easily personalized for multiple users of the same device (or just a simple password-free login for a single user), but purportedly the technology also has the ability to recognize multiple fingers (allowing for the home button to potentially achieve multiple functions), and to serve as authentication for mobile payments (most likely via NFC – Near Field Communications).
That would mean that Apple would add a lot of new functionality with the integration of this tiny piece of hardware, several software updates, and another tiny piece of hardware for NFC. But more importantly, these tiny pieces of hardware and software could make the computing experience more personal, and more naturally personalized as you move around the environment into different applications.
I know it is only a replacement for what could or can be done with a password, but I would love to be able to have apps like Netflix personalized based on whose finger was used.
This could become a great example of flexible design and innovating for the future present if they launch the iPhone 5 with these technologies. That would show that they started the design process with this as only a possibility but decided AFTER the technology looked ready to actually integrate it into the shipping product, and remained flexible enough to integrate the component near the end of the design process – something that is very hard to do, but very powerful.
Are all of these potential innovations ranging from the minor (login) to the transformative (speeding up mobile payment adoption) likely to make the cut for the iPhone 5?
I guess we will wait and see what happens on September 12th.
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I believe that when it comes to innovation, veracity is more important than velocity. Let’s look at the definition of the word veracity from our friends over at Merriam-Webster:
Veracity
1: devotion to the truth : truthfulness
2: power of conveying or perceiving truth
In my opinion it is more valuable to spend time on identifying the right customer insight and the right way to communicate with customers about the solution which you create to serve the insight, than it is to spend the same amount of time inventing faster or launching faster.
In fact your innovation velocity can exceed your innovation veracity as shown in this article.
And many a company has fallen foul of going too fast and thinking an invention will become an innovation when they are ready to launch it, including Microsoft with the Windows Tablet and Apple with the Newton, only to find that customers were not ready to adopt it as an innovation until years later.
Velocity is definitely important, but more isn’t necessarily better. Many times the competitor with a lesser innovation velocity but greater innovation veracity has ended up winning. Look at Apple and the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, etc.
It’s also more important to look for the barriers to adoption than it is to look for the barriers to creation. Innovation is all about value and this is why it is so important to pay just as much attention to value access and value translation, as you do to value creation, because it takes doing all three really well with a solution with real innovation veracity to find innovation success.
Fail to identify a solution with real innovation veracity and you are likely to miss potential elements of optimal value creation, you will likely struggle to make its value accessible, and there is a greater likelihood that you will fail to properly translate the value of the solution for your customers.
So, taken another way, the search for innovation success is a search for truth. You must therefore unlock the inner truths of your intended customers (think unmet needs or jobs-to-be-done), you must search in areas that your intended customers will feel are true for your brand, and areas that feel true to employees given the company’s mission and values. When your pursuit of innovation centers around truth and when you commit to a focused effort to increase your innovation capability – and to pursue Innovation Excellence – then and only then do you have your best chance at innovation success.
What innovation truths are you searching for?
How much innovation veracity can you create?
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The twittersphere erupted with news of GM’s announcement that it was refusing to pay for 2013 Super Bowl advertisements and $10 Million worth of advertising on Facebook.
Much of the popular press and self-proclaimed social media experts are jumping on the bandwagon and calling GM “idiots” for ending their advertising of Facebook and talking about how GM “doesn’t get” social media. If you listen to the amount of noise out there you would think that there was consensus that GM was wrong in making these moves.
I disagree. GM is making the right move.
Companies need to re-think how they spend money on marketing and advertising to make money in the showroom. Traditional advertising is becoming more expensive all the time and as the saying goes “I know I’m wasting half of the money I spend on advertising, only I don’t know which half.” The key here is that with advertising you pay to blast everyone that sees it with a single message – including people who just bought what you sell and those who will never buy what you sell just to hit the people who are considering a purchase of what you sell. As a result it is expensive and nearly impossible to place the right message with the right people at the time (and only those people). So I am not surprised at all that GM is re-evaluating its advertising spend, possibly investing more (not less) in the future in social media. Done well, you can be more impactful with pull marketing and social media than you can with push marketing and advertising.
So, personally it seems odd to me that so-called social media experts are in favor of a company spending money advertising on social networks. Wouldn’t it be smarter for them to advocate that GM spend money on build an interactive, engagement-driving social media campaign instead of spending money on advertising?
Something like the Chevy Game Time App?
Wait a minute, did the same company that doesn’t “get social media” launch an app built by hometown company – Detroit Labs – before Super Bowl 2012 that rocketed into the Top 10 free apps for the iPhone on Apple’s App Store (a top 10 that included Facebook and Instagram)?
“For all intents and purposes, all of the expectations that we had and that GM had were far exceeded… in a positive way!”
– Henry Balanon, Detroit Labs Co-Founder
Hmmmm…
First let’s be clear. Social networks and social media are two separate things, but people talk about them as is if they were one thing.
A social network is a place where people connect online and interact, whereas social media is content that is created to be shared. But, many so-called social media experts confuse the two, and confuse advertising with social media too. Advertising on a social network is not a social media strategy – it’s still advertising. Identifying the content that you should place on your Facebook page or other digital destination and creating a reason for people to tell others that they should come to that digital destination, well that’s a social media strategy.
Now, I must disclose that I specialize in helping companies creating pull marketing strategies to drive an increase in inbound sales leads by researching the customer purchasing journey online and then helping them attract and engage customers, partners, or employees by placing the right content in the right places at the right time. Part of this is achieved by using my proprietary single content input, multiple content output methodology and yes, that sometimes includes using social media. But social media is a tool not a religion, and it needs to be used only when appropriate.
I think GM made the right call in ceasing to advertise on the Super Bowl and Facebook and here’s why:
Super Bowl advertisements are expensive and for GM much of the cost is allocated against people who will probably NEVER buy a GM car
Facebook advertising is not very prominent or engaging
Their Chevy Game Time App experience should have given GM an idea that next year they can drive huge engagement during the Super Bowl (without advertising)
If GM is so clueless at social media, then why does the Facebook page for Chevrolet look so much better than the Facebook page for Ford or Toyota or Dodge. Honda is the only one I looked at amongst the car companies that had a more social feel at first glance, oh and Honda has the most likes of these companies too – go figure. But the engagement of people on Facebook around these brands is tiny in comparison to BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Harley-Davidson – both in terms of the numbers of likes and the number of people talking about them.
So, yes GM still has things to learn about engaging on social media (and about building better products too), but then so does every company. Social media and pull marketing are two new tools in the toolbox for every CMO, brand manager, and product marketer, but as long as we all continue to instrument for learning, as marketers we will continue to get better at utilizing these new tools to attract, engage, and retain the people who will love our products and services as much as we do.
Keep innovating!
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The conversation sprung out of a tweet I posted that postulated that when people use technology (iPads, smartphones, laptops, etc.) and television as child minders, that they are actually promoting linear thinking in their children at the expense of the lateral thinking that our society so desperately needs. We need strong lateral thinking to compliment the dominant linear thinking out there, so that together they can drive the social innovation the world needs to fix this mess we’ve made.
What do you think?
Technology as child minder, positive or negative effects on the innovative capacity of our children?
One of my proof points is this article from The Washington Post.
Any other proof points out there?
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I came across a queue reduction application for the iPhone and iPod Touch four years ago that was intriguing. At the time it looked like the application wasn’t quite finished or certified for use yet by Apple and Starbucks, but from what I gathered at the time it was meant to work something like this:
User comes in range of a Starbucks WiFi Hotspot
Application recognizes the Starbucks WiFi Hotspot or user initiates application
Application engages the user interface portion of the application
Application makes a connection
Application prompts user to order a Starbucks beverage
Application user interface facilitates the selection and transmission of the drink order (including a list of saved favorites to speed the process)
Application connects to the user’s iTunes account
Application deducts funds from the user’s iTunes account
Application creates a visual barcode with the information necessary to register payment
User places iPhone or iPod Touch with visual barcode under a reader at the pickup counter
User collects their beverage
The visual barcode (semacode) and scanner portion of the system could be made unnecessary (or relegated to backup system status), by instead transmitting a payment confirmation to Starbuck’s on-site systems directly via the WiFi connection. In the backup scenario, the visual barcode would serve as an electronic receipt to show proof of payment in case the systems in the store doesn’t receive the systematic payment immediately.
Imagine the convenience of getting a block or two from your favorite Starbucks, connecting, clicking ‘The Usual’ and proceeding directly to the drink pickup counter instead of waiting in line to order and pay.
Of course there is no reason why companies like McDonald’s or Cinemark couldn’t create similar applications to eliminate some of the queueing from our lives. If people could order this easily with their phones then businesses could reduce staffing or reallocate resources from order taking and payment processing to more value-added activities like preparing food or beverage orders.
Apps like this could be extended to the Web through the introduction of a store number field or store locator mini-application or pulldown at the beginning of the application sequence. This would allow you to order out of range of the in-store WiFi over your cellular network or from your home or office internet connection.
Less time spent waiting in lines?
Oh what a beautiful world.
But, as I looked to refresh this article from 2008 and bring it to the Innovation Excellence readers I checked back and it turned out that the creator, Phil Lu, is a designer and created this as a mockup not as real app. This is a great example of shining your star and engaging in personal innovation. Just look at all of the coverage he got of his design and visioning skills for this prototype back in 2008 when I first wrote this article.
If you missed my previous personal innovation article on shining your star, it is here.
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Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire – A Roadmap to a Sustainable Culture of Ingenuity and Purpose is now available for Amazon Kindle both in the United States and in the United Kingdom.
Enjoy the book on your iPad, Kindle, Nook, iPhone, Android, PC, or Mac before it is widely available. If you buy the electronic version of the book from either Barnes & Noble or Amazon, you can download their readers for almost all of today’s major computing platforms.
The book will be available in hardcover October 5, 2010 from online retailers in the United States, and a week later it will be available in book stores and other electronic retailers outside the United States (UK, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, and more).
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A recent post by Jeffrey Phillips titled 
The twittersphere erupted with news of GM’s announcement that it was refusing to pay for 2013 Super Bowl advertisements and $10 Million worth of advertising on Facebook.
The outcome of a back and forth of a dialog on Twitter with Scramray E. Pinkus generated a lovely quote worth sharing:
I came across a queue reduction application for the iPhone and iPod Touch four years ago that was intriguing. At the time it looked like the application wasn’t quite finished or certified for use yet by Apple and Starbucks, but from what I gathered at the time it was meant to work something like this:
Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire – A Roadmap to a Sustainable Culture of Ingenuity and Purpose is now available for Amazon Kindle both in the