Managing Web Innovation: Product & Design
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At the recently concluded Proto.in Summit, Chintan Mehta from Yahoo! shed some light on the above mentioned topic.
Mistakes that Innovators make:
1) They miss the product vision and user value. So there may be feature overload while the core value may be lost. So there may be products with multiple uses without any core value. One needs clarity of where the product is ‘headed’ and for whom.
True, the trend now is towards feature overload – that’s fine. As long as the product has a core. Consider Facebook, its core focus is the NewsFeed (arguably – in terms of differentiation atleast) and yet it thrives with feature overload.
2) Design in Parallel – Bolt it Later
Design often is at the back of the innovation spectrum where design comes at the end. Engineering thus becomes less effective with such an approach. Design then does not synergize with the core needs. Consider Apple’s Mac Book “Air”which was recently launched. There is no CD/ DVD Drive because people in the US use their VPN’s and NAS’ to transfer and transport data. So changing consumer needs and habits have synergized with design. Not all companies do this too well.
3) Giving up Early
Teams are created, they are made to understand the product vision, consumers are interviewed and finally if the product is not in tune with the market, innovators give up. Products evolve over time. Flickr started off as something else. Facebook too has evolved. Orkut is changing as well.
4) Take too long
Companies are too sceptical – they test, are apprehensive, want market conditions to suit them ec. In the end, innovators may miss the train.
5) Multiple People Driving Innovation – Too many cooks spoil the broth. This may affect the vision of the product at inception. VC’s often look to drive innovation and they can be one of the factors that make you loose vision. That can sometimes be good, often be bad.
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Hi Harshil, I think you got the names confused. This talk was presented by Yahoo! speaker Chintan Mehta not Rajesh Jain.
Thanks Meta Mix - extremely sorry. I have changed the post! Hope you are enjoying WATBlog