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Luck

When Napoleon was asked what kind of general he preferred, he said, “Just give me a lucky general”.

406px-Jacques_Louis_David_-_Bonaparte_franchissant_le_Grand_Saint-Bernard,_20_mai_1800_-_Google_Art_Project

While I am not a big believer in luck per se, this blog makes many references to luck. It is understood that invention is all about the unexpected occurrence. Having the insight to recognize these events and to run and seize opportunity could be considered making your own luck.

In “The Black Swan” Taleb argues that the inventor in Manhattan has a huge advantage over the inventor living on a mountain top. The Manhattan inventor gets invited to cocktail parties. At cocktail parties he meets investors, and investors are what you need to be a successful inventor.

The Theory and Practice of Good Enough

One of my favorite and often used aphorisms is, “Perfection is the enemy of good.”

Very often the essence of a promising development is obscured by added features or over-refining of an idea.

This concept is usually attributed to Voltaire. Business leaders have nuanced it: Edward de Castro, one of the founders of Data General, said, “Not everything worth doing is worth doing well”.

This philosophy was wonderfully chronicled in Tracy Kidder’s “The Soul of a New Machine”.

The_soul_of_a_new_machine_--_book_cover

Case in point: the concept of the “minimum viable product” practiced thirty five years before the term.

Get the product in front of the customer now!

Good Books (Part 2)

About fifteen years ago I was chatting with Michael Porter author of the classic —Competitive Strategy at a field hockey game where our daughters were playing. I could not resist asking him if he had read Clay Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma, and if so, what he thought about it. He said (with a big grin), besides his own books most business books were not worth the paper they were printed on. He went on however to praise Christensen’s work.
innovatorsdilemmaThe Innovator’s Dilemma is about how unexpected technologies come along and beat the daylights out of existing business. Often these technologies appear crude, imperfect and unlikely to be transformative. Technologies that are barely “good enough”. Examples might be the cell phone or the personal computer. No one recognized the impact of these inventions. No one saw them coming — ask AT&T, Data General and DEC.

Highly recommended addition to your reading list, but keep in mind that it is a bit dated. It is the beginning of the stream of thought which is now represented by Anti-Fragile.

Porter’s Competitive Strategy is also recommended — but it is focused on business strategy.

Good Books (Part 1)

There are very few decent business books in general, and a rare one indeed relevant to product development. If I read one business-related book every few years it is remarkable. Time would be better spent re-reading Shakespeare, history or the Bible. Think about it: If Don Quixote is still in print after hundreds of years, might this be a more valuable read than Who Moved My Cheese?

One important contemporary book is Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Anti-Fragile.  This is the upgrade to his prior work, The Black Swan.

While some might argue that this is a book about finance, it has much broader impact.

antifragile

The book has over five hundred pages, almost all of which have to be read to understand the entire tome.

One cannot easily summarize it in a paragraph – but here goes:

Major events, while in retrospect obvious, cannot be predicted. Examples might be 9/11, the invention of the micro-computer, and the Great Depression. No matter how carefully one plans, these kinds of events are missed. We need to understand that these unpredictable events (Black Swans) happen, and we need to be prepared for the unexpected.

So why is this important for product development? Readers of this blog have probably noted references to luck or chance. A Black Swan does not have to be something bad. It can well be an unexpected good event.  Anti-Fragile is how to be robust in a world where we cannot predict the future.

Taking advantage of unexpected outcomes is at the core of invention.