CPH127

I had high hopes for Giles Slade’s Made to Break after reading a positive review of it that promised more than the doom and gloom critique of mass manufacturing by adding interesting back-stories of the development of a range of every day objects. Unfortunately, Made to Break didn’t live up to this billing. It never really does get beyond the doom and gloom, mixes it with a heavy does of conspiratorial paranoia, and applies this formula to every product it looks at. Even more unfortunate, Slade missed a chance to do a much-needed update to the time-worn critique to highlight the real issues we are facing today.

The author’s fascination (horror actually) with planned obsolescence (designing products to intentionally fail prematurely or fall out of style on schedule) follows in a long trail of critiques of the concept. Let me say that there’s little I find likeable about the idea of planned obsolesence - it’s a cynical, underhanded method of getting people to buy more products, more often. I’ll take Slade’s word that it was practiced as widely as he describes in the first half of the twentieth century. And let’s also agree that the early generations of industrial designers - Slade calls out Brooks Stevens for particular scorn for his invention and promotion of planned obsolescence - were instrumental in facilitating it.

At the same time there were also designers who truly tried to create long-lived, durable products that would have a timeless style. Charles and Ray Eames and Dieter Rams come to mind.

Scheduled style obsolescence was honed to perfection by the stylists of Detroit, led by Harley Earl at GM. But to imply this mentality is in place today, unchanged, is completely false in my experience. Never in all my years of practicing have I had a client tell me they want a product to fail after a certain number of months - without exception mechanisms are designed to last as long as we can make them (often designing under a number of constraints such as size, cost, material usage, etc. which perhaps gives the impression they are designed to fail after a certain time). I’ve never had a client say "Make this look good, but not too good. Leave some in reserve for next year so we can get people to buy it all over again." Everyone wants to make the best damn product they can at the time. Hyper competition won’t allow anything less.

Like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney fighting a Cold war in a terrorist world long after the Iron Curtain has come down, Slade persists in a world view that is decades out of date. That world simply doesn’t exist anymore.

(Slade doesn’t help his case by riddling the book with
small factual errors that add up to a sense that he didn’t do his homework. In the
chapter on the development of computer UI’s I lost count of the number
of basic errors: Alan Kay’s Smalltalk is referred to as a networking
method when in fact it was a programming method; the history of Jobs,
Raskin, the Mac and the Lisa is quite contorted; Raskin named the
Macintosh after his favorite eating apple, not because it grew around
Cupertino.)

But a subtler point lost on Slade is that it doesn’t exist because it doesn’t need to. Another world has replaced it, that of voluntary obsolescence, which serves the economic purpose even better. Like the transition of Cold war to ad hoc terrorism, this shift is also one from top-down authoritarianism to decentralized action. The approach of planned obsolescence has so pervaded and framed our consumption mentality that we (as consumers) don’t need to have products go out of style on a planned basis or have them fail on schedule for us to be more than happy to replace fully functioning products with new ones. This fact has saved Apple’s bacon and made them the darling of Wall Street again.

Three major forces are driving this.

1. Style: People are more aesthetically sophisticated and demanding than they used to be, and want more frequent sating of style fixes. When the first design shows were put together for the Museum of Modern Art in NY, the curators had to cast far and wide to put together enough well-designed products to make it worthwhile. Today an afternoon in Target would do the trick (well, perhaps a stop in Moss [LINK] wouldn’t go amiss).
2. Technological progress: Technology is obviously evolving rapidly, furiously, unpredictably, and at the same time becoming networked together in webs of products, services and software that were undreamed of in the 1950’s. This leads to dependencies of performance within the systems that drives updates (ie, updates to replace products that are fine in isolation but obsolete within the network)
3. Competition: The business world is far more competitive and complex than it was 75 years ago with many more players, and those players are more sophisticated. It is this hyper competition that is a major cause of ever more rapid product releases, particularly in the tech sectors, the antithesis of the conspiratorial tone that Slade relies upon.

Slade talks about style and technological obsolescence but doesn’t connect them together into a modern framework, instead adopting the old-guard "save the poor public from being duped by the big bad corporation" trope.

I don’t believe people are simple, unthinking "consumers" of all things provided. They (we) are thoughtful, discriminating, unpredictable, fickle, rational and emotional beings. If we were easy to push product to year after year, companies’ lives would be a heck of a lot easier. But we don’t just take what they give. Long gone are the days when companies could push the new tail fins and have the culture unanimously cry "And they are good!". Decisions now are more localized and individualized, thus less prone to predictability and more prone to churn.

Voluntary obsolescence has greatly sped up consumption from what it was under the days of planned obsolescence. This has led to a degree of ecological destruction (with much more coming from the wastestream yet to be made) that should be of major concern. Whereas the older critique of planned obsolescence was more of a moral crusade - prevent the helpless public from being duped out of its money! - the attention now needs to be on the ecological price we, our children, and our grandchildren will be paying for our current freedom to obsolete our posessions.

Which general was it that said "You always fight your last war"? Unforuntately Giles Slade is doing just that, and has missed an opportunity at an opportune time to critique the new world of voluntary obsolescence and the ecological damage that it is causing.

I thought I’d infuse this blog with a pre-weekend fun post… it’s been quiet lately…

I thought this was a quite intriguing and clever demonstration of innovation in thinking and product development. A famous London-based tailor has been blogging about his business practice for some time now and now that business is booming and stronger than ever, he has decided to produce LESS suits and asks his customers, most of whom also read his blog, what they thought about the idea. The back and forth conversation in the comments is worth the read and illustrates in a way a “user-centric” approach to business development…

Although not a new topic the principles of design are often taken for granted as being largely aesthetic considerations. This is particularly so for people like myself who are from a 2D background.

It is important however to recognise how such principles extend beyond the visual organisation of design elements into the realm of experience design.

In 1997 NC State University, The Center for Universal Design, developed a set of Universal Design principles compiled by advocates of universal design, [listed in alphabetical
order: Bettye Rose Connell, Mike Jones, Ron Mace, Jim Mueller, Abir
Mullick, Elaine Ostroff, Jon Sanford, Ed Steinfeld, Molly Story, and
Gregg Vanderheiden.]

The seven principles are listed as:

principle one: equitable use
principle two: flexibilty in use
principle three: simple and intuitive
principle four: perceptible information
principle five: tolerance for error
principle six: low physical effort
principle seven: size and space for approach and use

A recent posting at the lovely site UIGarden provides more detail. It’s a great site and I think you will enjoy browsing this and other articles.

I came across this research paper, "Crucial Challenges Facing Contemporary Global Corporate Strategies" by Camila de Sousa Braga and Hélène Bertrand and am posting their posited Model of Global Strategic Thought below.

1. Strategic actions need to be thought through using a rational and deliberative process, based on the corporations global objectives and targets, in order to encourage the collective learning process in complex organizations, but without being excessive to the point of putting the organization’s growth at risk.
2. The figure of strategist represented by the central command should coordinate the formulation, implantation and control of strategies. As organizations contain many potential strategists, the central command should be open to ideas and information from local units. This enables the organization to achieve a fit between external opportunities and internal capabilities, and retro-feed the system, in order to gradually acquire the characteristics of transnational corporations.
3. There should be a concern with content, focus, a sense of direction, integration,context and strategic processes, without however foregoing the quality of the creative process involved in the formulation of strategy;
4. Central command should be able to promote strategic changes, without losing sight of consistency, of the organization’s recourses and competencies, and preventing the organization’s life cycle ruptures from destroying it;
5. Perfect strategic management techniques, including the environmental analysis of competitive, technological, political, economic and social impacts and risk dimensions of capital markets;
6. Develop plans, standards, positions, project, economic feasibility studies, analyze needs of demanding consumers, manage information in complex environments and the entry into new markets, considering organizational strengths and weaknesses, and making the necessary adjustments;
7. Possess a group which is specialized in risk management focused on developing risk and return simulation techniques, in order to seek financial diversification in capital markets and also protect the organizations total value, faced with financial market imbalances and disintegration;
8. Use teams of catalyzers, including expatriates who move around the local units of the global organization, and who have planning expertise to stimulate different types of strategic behavior by encouraging insights, creativity and fresh syntheses, and seek to mediate conflicts and promote organizational integration;
9. Promote the integration of functional areas with networks between firms, with strategic alliances with local partners, with a value chain of key suppliers and key manufacturers and distributors, linked by data, so that together they are able to discover better profitable solutions and enhance their competitive position, as well as monitoring their competitors’ moves.

While the entire model is valuable for deploying and maintaining a transnational’s global strategy, I would like to point out No. 3 and No. 8 as particularly valuable from the perspective of continuous innovation as a globally competitive corporate strategy.

As an economist my self I’ve been schooled in statistics for years. It’s definitely not the strongest site of my character, but still….:-)

Chris Anderson has made a big deal out of describing how there is a market for every thing – at least in the long tail.

I’ve been wondering how that effect’s design and innovation strategies. On the one site companies want to innovate, pushing new products out in the market. On the other site it looks like there is a lot of money to be earned on the “old” portfolio.

How to cope with “product-innovation-portfolio-management”? When do you dare to cut a productline, well knowing that there is a lot of money to be earned in “The Long Tail”?

Wikipedia has a great explanation on “The Long Tail” – you could also visit the weblog of Chris Anderson himself. Or maybe just listen to the recent podcast from Itconversations…

A Fast Company post (I got it from Putting people first) put some additional fuel on my "I´ve-got-an-issue-with-corporate-branding" fire.

New technologies (like Shadow and MyWeb 2.0) makes it even more easy for communities to share their views on a company and/or it´s products. Technology like this "represent a huge threat to corporations that try to control how their
brands are perceived. After all, if you can leave a comment about
crappy service or shoddy products on a company’s shadow page - out of
the company’s reach but right there for all to see — the power of
information vs. perception shifts firmly in the consumer’s direction."

This is indeed interesting. According to, what I would call the "information/marketing strategy of the industrial age" the corporate brand needs to be controled in such a manner that talking about your actual hands-on experience with the company or the product is considered a threat! This is where the defensive, re-active attributes of corporate branding shows its ugly face, and the irony of it all becomes clear.

I believe that the fact that the company has a corporate branding strategy that has to be controlled is the very same reason the community of customers has something to complain about. To simplify it; If the money that went into the corporate branding budget would have been poured into product and service development, customer service and product/service marketing the case would have been the opposite. Then the customers would have less to complain about and the company would have less to control (which would create a cost-cut as well).

As the power of perception moves in behind the wheel and corporations figure out that the voice of the customers acctually is the most important resource they have if they want to have any hopes of prospering in the future, a new "dialogue/collaboration strategy of the knowledge or conceptual age" is needed. But what would such a role, activity or discipline look like? What would the chief information and/or marketing manager of tomorrow do for a living?

Today and tomorrow I attend the 12th International Product Development Management Conference at Copenhagen Business School. The first day has been quite alright although I’m an outsider as non-scholar around all these Phd.-students and professors.

One key note was one of Denmarks grand old men in design, Jacob Jensen, who did the most living presentation of the day when he talked about his life and cooperation with Bang & Olufsen between 1960-1990. He showed some remarkeble designs that are still brilliant although they were drawn (they really was drawn) some 40 years ago. The transistor radio prototype shown on the picture is from 1962!

Most interesting however, was how Mr Jensen and the key stakeholders from B&O formed a "group" called the idea group. The group consisted - apart from Mr Jensen - of the Chief Financial Officer, the Product Development responsible and the Chief Marketing Officer and they meet once every week!

Imagine the atmosphere, the decision power and the discussions they must have had. It’s just such a simple idea but it shows so much commitment from the company and so much "guts" from the designer. Around that table they could - each week - talk about how current project ran, how the product strategy should look for the future and secure coherency over some cups of coffee.

They results speak for themselves: during the partnership with Mr Jensen B&O rose to become an international brand with a very distinguese design. Ofcourse Mr Jensen was - and still is - a remarkable designer but I’m sure that the organization of the development - the idea group - also played a vital part.

Now the tide has changed and things are not going like they should at B&O, maybe they should try an idea group again. Perhaps they are pursuing this strategy allready?

Erik Roscam Abbing has done a new weblog about "Branding in Innovation". He writes some interesting stuff about linking branding to product innovation.

In the thesis he is writing he try to answer the following question - "How can brand identity and product innovation work in synergy so that new products will fulfil the brand’s promise?"

What do you think, is there a link worth exploring?

I know a few that would claim that branding is a bad excuse for the lack of innovation. I’m my self in doubt on this specific question and would love to have your insights. Any pro’s or con’s?

Design is nowadays more about “meaning”, “identity” and “emotion” rather than “cost”, “prize” and “performance”.

Ever thought of how to link design with emotion?

Volkswagen has it right.

Marc Hedlund at Signal vs. Noise has a take on the idea of adding features to products that help customers form strong emotional connections/attachments with them.

Do you know of any other great examples?

In the spirit of starting on a critical note, I thought I’d share some thoughts with you about innovation in product design.

I am now involved in an international competition to design toys for a well-known (read internationally known american) company looking to innovate in the way toys will cater to future generations. This type of approach, although seemingly noble, is very much about getting inspired by other creative processes (namely in this case educational), licensing, or buying out the competition. R&D is being reduced in these types of established markets because of their ability to be lazy about investing in their own development and think about what they are doing wrong and what perhaps others might be doing right.

I feel that this leads to a lack of realism on what innovation actually means. Good ideas can be bought but at some point a touch of self-analysis can do some good. To stay in touch with what people are looking for, to understand users not in terms of shelf space , age group or budget but also in terms of their experience with the brand or the products they sell. Where do the opportunities lie in that relationship through time? What can be extracted from perhaps looking at how people interact with a product over 10 years?

The ideas that can come out of this type of thinking will defintely have an impact on how innovative a design process in a company can become and avoid the laziness of living off of its buying power and one day find itself unable to keep up with what is really going on.

Just a few thoughts on a subject I will surely come back to.

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