Innovation Paralysis and The Shiny Object Syndrome

Innovation Paralysis

It shouldn’t be a surprise to all of us here what has been happening in our industry in regards to innovation and the paralysis wrought into itself.

Why this innovation paralysis? For starters, companies get too big and complacent. Companies reach number one and then, it is a matter of holding on and milking the cash-cow to the last drop. Getting too big is not the problem actually, as I have seen this in smaller companies as well; holding on to the cash cow it until you suck the life of it, and even continue to maintain it after it has had its heyday, on life support. 😉

The most blatant and recent example of this paralysis, and I have seen plenty, is that of Nokia. Finland’s mighty mobile company, which at one point was producing 1 million phones every three days. MBA Schools had “case studies” on how Nokia’s assembly line and production lines were to be studied in order to build successful and profitable assembly lines. And today, we find ourselves pondering the future state of this one and formidable mobile handset maker Nokia. Am not saying that they are doomed and will fold in a few days, but it is the paradox of holding on to the cash-cow which produces innovation paralysis, near slightness and my favorite, the Emperor with No clothes Syndrome.

My personal experience with Nokia was that of hubris. They were Nokia, and you never asked how high, you just jumped.

That was a few years ago, circa 2005. We are half way through 2011 and seven “computer years” is not a lot considering the process of manufacturing new devices, etc, and look at Apple, reshaping the world of mobile, a company that was not and was not known to have become a mobile company. Apple, true innovators at heart, knowing, and knowing from experience, that you have to “sacrifice” ( a softer word than killing ) your first borne.

Apple killed the Apple ][ line in order to make way for the Macintosh. Lesson learned. Macintosh is cannibalizing its sales of its laptop, desktops with the iPad/iPhone. They learned their lesson early. They experienced it first hand. We all remember clearly when Apple was ready to go out of business. Can you imagine what this mobile world would look like if companies like Nokia, Microsoft, RIM would not have been shaken up. Android from Google was a competitor to RIM, what would this world look like. I can only imagine an OS like Windows 95 running on a Series 60 from Nokia and with the worst interface ever.

But what irks me the most is what his happening lately. Innovation paralysis is happening not just because the companies find a cash-cow and decide to milk it and CEOs walk around naked, but because of the pure and simplest form of stifling innovation due to of the patent wars. If I could draw who is suing who on a piece of paper, it would look like one giant doodle. Arrows pointing everywhere and no clear winner.

Patents are a mere form of innovation paralysis. Lodsys suing independent developers, Apple suing Google and Samsung, Microsoft suing HTC, Oracle suing Google and HP, HTC suing who?. Kodak suing Apple. Kodak up for sale. Buy Kodak so we can get the patents and lets sue the pants of everyone we can. Patent troll companies suing X, and Y and Z. Am not an expert on patents, nor do I want to be one,  I am not allowed to read patents, or get near any piece of paper that describes a patent, but when there is this over abuse of power, it stifles innovation, and the ones who end up paying the price are the independent developers and users, aka your trusting loyal customers.

And honestly, I have not seen this blatant suing over patents in my history in the computer industry dating back to 1984. Some of the most “shocking” cases of yesteryear were those of when an executive jumped to a competing company and “took” trade secrets or employees with her. Nobody talks about monopolies anymore. Now days is not even “what’s in your patent portfolio? lets cross license” rather, “You are violating my patent. Pay up.”

The Shiny Object Syndrome

A few weeks back I introduced our Advanced Technologies Group inside of Ansca. See http://atg.anscamobile.com

I received a lot of feedback and big thumbs up for starting a new group focused entirely in researching advancements in the field of computer graphics, mobile, UI, programming principles and others. It is a group that can focus on new initiatives without disturbing the core of our Corona SDK team. It is, as I wrote “to be able to deliver forward thinking technologies that can ultimately either become products themselves or implement as features into our current or future products.”

So what does this have to do with the shiny object syndrome? A lot. Companies large or small think that being the best is by the number of features the product has vs the competition. Its true. I see our competitors trying to add features to their products because the marketing department thinks that winning is by having 10 more features than a competitor. The problem is, those ten so-called features are not essential to the success of its customers nor the success of the product. And worst, the features set is limited due in large part because the only thing against software development is time. Time is our only enemy. Getting there first is what matters says the marketing team. Really, how many search engines were there before Google?

I have seen products large and small suffer from “feature-ritis” and I know first hand what the syndrome can do to the product. It becomes a nightmare to maintain and to support. And when it comes to backwards compatibility, good luck. It can sink your product faster than the Titanic.

So what do features have to do with the shiny object syndrome? Exactly that. Two fold. One, this “shiny object syndrome” becomes the “must have” [insert your favorite new mobile/computer jargon] feature, completely disrupting the flow of the company’s product and engineering team, and two, the feature is half-ass implemented (crippled) because you only need enough of the feature (and not enough time) to be able to “check” it off on the feature list comparison matrix.

Strangely enough, we all suffer from feature-ritis, but there is a difference between the feature list of the MVF requested by the users, vs the MVF requested by marketing. (Most Valuable Features in case you didn’t recognize the TLA).

I come from a world of monolithic applications with 18 months cycles and with a code base over ten years old to mobile products where the lifecycle is in mere months. (Nokia was notorious for shipping new devices every so many months apart). In mobile, 18 months matters, companies have been bought (motorola) and companies throw away entire business units (Palm/webOS). And I have first hand experience on both sides of the fence (Illustrator/FlashLite).

And this is where our ATG comes into play. A new group chartered with the freedom to explore the Shiny Objects of our industry without disturbing our core Corona SDK engineering team.

One thing that all of you must understand, innovation/ideas/exploration/disruption and challenge is encouraged in my company, so everyone is free to participate to introduce ideas, etc., not just ATG, so I don’t want you to think that only ATG is pegged with coming up with new ideas. We will switch people around if we can and time permits, but the impetus behind this new group is to foster innovation, break out of the paralysis, and avoid the trap of the shiny object syndrome.

It is, after all, what I always believe in, in the entrepreneurial spirit in us, which drives us and enables us to innovate and forge ahead into uncharted territories.

And we are not afraid to change, to adapt and to disrupt. And we will continue to out-innovate, out pace and displace our competitors.

Carlos