In a January 2019 post titled Progress or Perfection – Pick One I speculated that Tesla was simply being expedient when it built the Model 3 out of what reverse engineering firm Munro and Associates described as a crazy patchwork of parts and assembly processes. My claim was that if haste makes waste, then in…
Failure is good We get a lot of mixed messages about failure. “Failure is good.” “Fail early so you can avoid failure later on, because failure is bad.” “If you manage to succeed without failing then you have failed because your reach should exceed your grasp.” We are sometimes told to leap because the net…
It’s all about the user Design Thinking is emphatically focused on the end user of the product or service. Sometimes when I present on the subject of Design Thinking someone will point out that products can fail for lots of reasons, not just a failure to appeal to the end user. It can fail because…
Where does the resistance lie? Design Thinking lists three conditions that must be met for a product to succeed: desirability – developing new, desirable products; feasibility – overcoming internal challenges to produce the product; and viability – engaging customers. Design Thinking relies on iteration – what project managers refer to as progressive elaboration – to…
It’s easier to come up with an improvement than an entirely new thing. Most innovation techniques emphasize this and rely on it. They avoid the intimidation of the blank page by riffing on something that already exists. In this post, I explore what would happen if we did the opposite. What would happen if instead…
The post where I talk about walls and Mexico without mentioning you-know-who Earlier this month, my girlfriend I visited San Miguel de Allende in the central highlands of Mexico. The AirBNB we stayed in north of the city centre was lovely, but I will admit some trepidation walking around the neighbourhood it was in. Many…
Spin class is paying to pedal a stationary bike while somebody yells at you Peloton is a company that will sell you a stationary bicycle and yell at you in your home. They recently ran an ad which caused many to bristle. In it, a man gives his wife a Peloton machine for Christmas. Let’s…
I had the honour of being interviewed by Entrepreneur Coach Bob Minhas. We talked about Design Thinking, SCAMPER and what entrepreneurs can learn from Elon Musk, Apple and minibars. Find Bob here: https://www.facebook.com/BobMinhasLife
Never be threatened with unemployment “The world is endless, the universe inexhaustible, and the human brain will never be threatened with unemployment.” Genrich Altshuller That’s why its called luggage It is a common worry among those who seek to invent something new. And yet, sometimes you realize that inventions, even recent ones, are so bloody…
Ignored, denied, and swept under the rug I talk a lot about the need for experimentation. All the management techniques intended to speed products to market involve some form of iteration, feedback and correction. Many suggest we should celebrate failure to counteract the unhealthy assumption that all failure can be avoided with planning, The Boeing…