If Design Leads, Then Relentless Innovation Is the Norm
The main question remaining for VCs and old-line companies alike is whether design can deliver a sustainable edge. There’s reason to think that it can. Unlike a few more features or marginal increases in computing speed, a better user experience can mean everything. When Path, today’s most elegantly designed social networking app, launched in November 2010, it was quirky, textured, and a little bit too complicated. The second version, released a year later, cut the core interactions down to one simple screen and had plenty of lively touches.
Its present valuation, rumored to be about $250 million, has less to do with users than the user experience Path has created.
A reliance on design-driven innovation poses a challenge for the companies that live by it: You can’t easily patent how something looks, or the feel of a user interface. Features, subtleties, and finishes spawn imitators with unprecedented speed. That means that design-led companies must innovate constantly to maintain their edge.
Design isn’t being looked at as a solution to only business problems. Its practitioners are now taking up roles that used to be dominated by not-for-profits and governments, seeking new ways to raise the fortunes of the developing world. In our first Innovation by Design Awards, projects such as the Embrace Infant Warmer, a low-cost incubator, and the BioLite CampStove, a hyper-fuel-efficient cooking device, aim to significantly improve and even save the lives of people in poor countries with little modern infrastructure.
What everything in this issue shares is a motivating ethos that Watson also hinted at during his Wharton speech, just before the quote that everyone knows. "We are convinced," he said, "that good design can materially help make a good product reach its full potential." Replace product with business. Or even person. In every instance, the wisdom rings true.
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