Coloring Outside the Lines

Tom Kelley's Coloring Outside the Lines chapter of the Art of Innovation struck a bit of a nerve this past week. I've been working with a client who doesn't sit still long enough to formulate a "plan of attack," but rather tries this and tries that and takes up a significant portion of my time by doing so. This lack of organization and inefficient way of working has a tendency to cause me great frustration. I prefer to break things down into stages and figure one stage out before moving onto the following. I'm learning more and more though, that's not how most small businesses operate. Then I opened up The Art of Innovation and read "Those who try to scientifically measure opportunities sometimes miss the boat." Then I read "The person who toils endlessly at his desk is not likely the person who is going to hatch a great innovation." And THEN... I came across this video with John Cleese discussing creativity and being in "open mode" as opposed to "closed mode." Basically, I've come to the conclusion that I need to stop trying to work in such a linear fashion and not worry about having all the answers before getting to work on the problem. Relax. Be a little imperfect. See where it leads you. :)

Chapter 13 gave a great warning about feature creep and featuritis when designing products and services. "Where there's featuritis - or fat - opportunity is nearby." We all want to design a product or service that everybody will love, but Tom Kelley warns that "Refining products is not a popularity contest. You have to take risks and you will alienate some people." I thought about that and realized that even the ubiquitous iPhone doesn't enamor everybody. While making sure there is a market for your new product is important, it isn't necessary to please everybody and to add and add and add in an attempt to gain more popularity among users. What really struck me as I researched The Designer Fund and many designer founders, is that most of them created a product that was solving a relatively simple problem, and a product that had one core use. Of course that doesn't mean that the development of the product or the launch of the company was simple by any means, but to all of us ordinary users, it's easy to look at an app or service and say - that's so simple, why didn't I think of that?!

For my own research, I've spent the week brainstorming on what type of cooperation I may require from a restaurant. What things do I need to know from them? What changes might I want them to try? What can we do together to make their restaurant THE destination restaurant for gluten intolerant diners in Morgantown?