embrace change

Q: What do you think it think it takes to succeed in the sea level of an innovative company?

A: Well, you have to be innovative, which means you have to embrace change. And change is threatening to many people.

I often hear people say they want to be in a company like ours, but they never have been and once they get there the pace of change is very unsettling.

We have taken the Ross Perot approach to evolving the business model. And by that I mean, we try many versions of one thing at the same time and let the market place tell us which thing works best. And then we rapidly iterate on that thing to make it better and better and better and better.

The alternative approach would be to study it ad nauseam, pick one, put the one thing in the marketplace and then slavishly work to improve the one thing. That is not the model we have built the business with.

We pride ourselves on our ability to very rapidly iterate. And to test, test, test, test, test, test, test. And let the marketplace inform us about what works.

Transcribed from "Featured Interview: Barry McCarthy, Chief Financial Officer of Netflix," iinnovate podcast, 13 Jan 2008, iinnovate.blogspot.com/2008/01/mccarthy.html (quote starts at 14:56).

MAYA Design: Papers

MAYA Design: Papers

The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry

The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry: "According to Paul Roth, AT&T's president of marketing, the carrier is exploring new products and services — like mobile banking — that take advantage of the iPhone's capabilities. 'We're thinking about the market differently,' Roth says. In other words, the very development that wireless carriers feared for so long may prove to be exactly what they need."

The best products aren’t the ones with the most features

The best products aren’t the ones with the most features. The best products are those whose features are tightly integrated with the solutions they provide, making them the most usable.

Apple Inc, "Making Design Decisions," Apple Human Interface Guidelines, 9 Jun 2008, p. 28, developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGDesignProcess/chapter_3_section_3.html.

from the user in

"Leopard is magnificent code architected from the user in, rather than from core technology out."

Tom Yager, "Apple OS X Leopard: A beautiful upgrade," InfoWorld, October 17, 2007.

field studies - wider range of behaviors

"But field studies are still invaluable; they show us a wider range of behaviors than we see in the laboratory and let us assess the impact of changing contexts and other ethnographic variables."

Jakob Nielsen, "Intranet Usability Shows Huge Advances," Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, 9 Oct 2007, www.useit.com/alertbox/intranet-usability.html.

Details

Of course, too much detail can undermine credibility, for the same reason: we know there’s only so much a person can remember about a scene or event, so we believe they’re making stuff up when they start overwhelming us with detail. (Plus, we get bored – a very important thing to keep in mind!) In On Writing, Stephen King, whose been known to create a sticky idea or two in his time, puts it like this:

Thin description leaves the reader feeling bewildered and nearsighted. Overdescription buries him or her in details and images. The trick is to find a happy medium. It’s also important to know what to describe and what can be left alone while you get on with your main job, which is telling a story.

Too much detail distracts from the point, which is getting your audience to believe something.

Interview: author and ex-Microsoft manager Scott Berkun - The Jem Report

Interview: author and ex-Microsoft manager Scott Berkun - The Jem Report: "Successful innovation depends on understanding people and their problems more than it does the ability to create technological wonderments."

learn from the periphery

"Every industry and every company needs to learn from the periphery rather than the core. Change always happens at the periphery."

Jessie Scanlon, "Chrysler and the Innovation Basement: What Robert Nardelli needs to do in order to change the Big Three automaker into an innovator," Business Week, 8 Aug 2007, www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/aug2007/id2007088_296221_page_3.htm.

People come back to places that send them away

"People come back to places that send them away."

It's the basic trust proposition of the Internet. People will only trust a service that gives them complete freedom to come and go as they please. Further, they'll want to come back if you send them to cool places. It's why people like Facebook today, and why they'll be tired of it tomorrow, if it only sends you to places within the Facebook silo.

Dave Winer, "Lock-in and the web, day 2," Scripting News, 3 Aug 2007, www.scripting.com/2007/08/03.html.