I Love My iPad Mini

So There is No Reason Why I Won't Like My iPad. Just Add A Camera.

by Idris Mootee

Some are comparing the iPad to Netbooks, but it is not a fair comparison. I don't like Netbooks myself. I used to have a Sony one 14 years ago. It was a very powerful mini notebook with a built-in camera (a first at that time). It costs me $2,300 when I purchased that from a now bankrupt computer store chain in San Jose. It was a good one except keyboard was too small and battery life short. According to the guy at a local Best Buy store, 8 out of 10 Netbooks sold are returned. I am sure that's not the case in Asia. I think many people have the wrong expectations, and are not aware of the limitations of Netbooks.

There was one kid working at Best Buy who asked me if I like the iPod Touch Jumbo, he was referring to iPad. I said I like the iPad mini (iPod Touch) that I have now, so I think I will like the iPad. The only disappointment for me is the lack of a camera, because I think if I carry that all the time and being able to use Skype is great plus. It doesn't add much to the cost. The camera needs to be in the front obviously. It is still a little heavy; adding 1.5 lbs to my Louis Vuitton briefcase is pushing it. No video output is a negative; the other Lenovo Ideapad I bought has an HDMI output. The Lenovo tablet is a pretty good one with robust design for business use. Even with many criticisms, iPad will be an isntant success. I guarantee you the iPad is not another Newton.

iPad preorders are pouring in. Investor Village's AAPL Sanity board (subscription needed) noted that iPad pre-orders dropped from an estimated 25,000 per hour on Friday, the first day of availability, to around 1,000 per hour over the weekend. For the three-day period, the cumulative total was estimated at 152,000. That's pretty good.

I think the iPad will open up opportunities for print media and help shape portable media experiences. I can't read magazines from my Blackberry of iPhone, but with the iPad, it is a different story. The iPad platform has more than enough screen real estate and resolution to build interesting media sharing and communication experiences. Of course we have choices of other manufacturers - Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, Lenovo, and almost everyone else, are all working iPad-like devices - in addition to those who have products in the market (such as Amazon).

Microsoft's Courier is an interesting one, currently in "late prototype" stage of development. At least they are not making the tablet mistake, the dual 7-inch screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. There is a camera at the back too (sorry Apple). Currently, Microsoft is working on the user experience and showing design concepts to outside agencies. Microsoft's tablet heritage is digital ink-oriented, and this interface, while unlike anything we've seen before, clearly draws from that, its work with the Surface touch computer and even the Zune HD.

Sony is doing some catch-up although they are stuck with their paradigm of competitive advanatage. The Wall Street Journal reports that Sony is working on a device that's described as being part Netbook, part e-reader and part PlayStation Portable. Sources within the electronic giant also report that Sony is working on a "PlayStation Phone," which would be capable of downloading and playing PlayStation games. Sony needs help.


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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Escaping the Internet Commodity Trap

by Rowan Gibson

The Internet is like a black hole that relentlessly sucks in, digitizes and democratizes content of every kind. While that may be generally good news for consumers (hey, look at all the great stuff we can now get for free), it has turned out to be unbelievably bad news for the content providers. Ask anyone in the print media business, or the music business, or the movie business. For at least the last decade, industries that primarily produce content have been struggling hard to find a viable new financial model in a world where internet users (particularly the young generation) don't expect to pay for anything they read, listen to, or watch. As one popular mantra puts it: "Content is no longer king". The fact is, content distribution is now king. Power has shifted to the content aggregators - think Google, YouTube, Digg.com or iTunes - and to new media platforms like Amazon's Kindle reader or the Apple iPad. So how exactly are content providers supposed to make money in an era of rampant digital commoditization? The only option they have left is to innovate like never before; to reinvent their industry business models before they become obsolete.

I remember talking to Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine, back in 1995 about the future of the Web. He told me he viewed the Internet as a "planetary-sized copying machine" and added that "trying to stop copying on the Net is impossible." Indeed, within a week of my latest book "Innovation to the Core" being published in Chinese, there were at least two websites in China offering a digital version of the book for illegal download. Consumers clearly win - why buy the physical book when you can get the digital file for free? But in terms of book sales and royalties, the author (i.e. me!) and the publishers lose out entirely.

That's why the book publishing industry is feverishly exploring a variety of new business models. One option is to sell eBooks direct to customers, cutting out middlemen like distributors and retailers, and building a community around the books and authors. Since eBooks have a relatively low price tag, the hope is that consumers will be willing to pay for the genuine article (a la iTunes) rather than download an illegal copy, especially if it comes with social-media-enabled tools that help them discuss and share the book with others. Another option is to make the eBook itself a richer multimedia experience (with audio, video, hyperlinks and so forth) rather than just a text-based medium. Instead of embedding all of these media in a single digital file (which would still be relatively easy to copy and distribute illegally), publishers could give consumers a code when they purchase the book that offers exclusive access to a dynamic, integrated online application environment.

A similar challenge faces today's music business. Over the last decade, music labels, retailers, and the artists themselves have seen their revenues fall off a cliff in an era when teenagers can - and do - get all the music they want for free. Last year, 95% of music downloads were still from illegal file-sharing sites. And although Apple is now the world's biggest music retailer, its iTunes store has never been a massive revenue producer. Instead, it simply serves as a provider of low-cost content for the iPod, helping to drive sales of Apple's premium-priced music player. So far, the latest trend - cloud-based, streaming music sites like Spotify, Rhapsody and Pandora - has not been very helpful to the music industry either. Until now, these sites have employed a free-to-users, ad-supported model which doesn't generate much money for the labels or the artists. As an example, it's estimated that a million plays of Lady Gaga's popular song "Poker Face" on Spotify only earned her a paltry $167.

Frankly, I'm not too worried about the artists because most of them make their money these days on concert revenue and merchandising, not on the sale of recordings. And since people go to live concerts to hear artists performing songs they already know, it's actually in the artists' interests to have their music distributed as widely as possible, even if it's for free, in order to generate a lot of fans. Yet what about the music labels? How can they possibly compete against free downloads? Only by finding innovative new ways to add value. That's what MusicDNA is all about. It's a new digital file format that contains not just music but additional content such as lyrics, images and interesting info like interviews, tour schedules, or updates to the artists' social network pages. Anyone who downloads the file illegally would miss out on all these extras. So MusicDNA offers hope that the industry can open up new revenue streams. It may also point the way forward for Hollywood studios as they look for ways to battle illegal movie downloads.

Another victim of the Internet commodity trap has been the traditional news media industry. According to a new survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, more Americans now get their news from the Internet than from newspapers, and three-fourths say they primarily learn of news via updates on social media sites like Twitter. So as readers (closely followed by advertisers) make a mass exodus from print to digital media, 'The Press' as we know it seems to be going the way of the dinosaur. In the face of mounting bankruptcies, mass layoffs and plunging advertising sales, some publishers have already thrown in the towel. As an example, McGraw-Hill recently signaled their despair by selling off BusinessWeek at the bargain basement price of less than $5 million.

So is there any hope for this ailing industry? Some think it might still be possible to go back to the old 'paid content' model. Rupert Murdoch, illustrious media mogul of News Corporation, has been making headlines over the last year with his plans to erect a pay wall around his media. And, if it works, others will almost certainly follow. An analogy could be the advent of cable TV in the 1960s and 1970s. At first, very few believed that anyone would be willing to actually pay for TV shows and movies after spending decades watching them for free. But today the average household in North America pays about $50 a month for Pay-TV, so why shouldn't the same principle work for the Internet? There is also new hope on the horizon in the form of emerging digital media platforms like Kindle and Apple iPad, that promise to bring fresh revenues to the news industry by charging readers to access publications in an exciting new way.

Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, has co-founded a company called Journalism Online to help newspapers find new payment models. These range from micropayments - where readers pay for individual stories - to "freemium" models like the one used by the Financial Times, where readers can view 10 free pages every 30 days.

One of Rupert Murdoch's properties, The Wall Street Journal already charges readers US$119 a year for an online subscription. The WSJ is also experimenting with a new kind of media mix that takes it beyond the written word. Last September, its Digital Group rolled out News Hub, a twice-daily video news series. In January The Wall Street Journal Network delivered a record 5.5 million streams, with about a million or so views being generated by News Hub. This February the group launched Digits, a video series focused on technology which streams live each weekday, and plans are now in the works for several other original live series.

As whole industries see their traditional business models sucked into the Internet commodity trap, their only hope of escape has become radical innovation. For content providers of every stripe, success and survival in the future will be based on the ability to fundamentally rethink, re-imagine and reinvent themselves by innovating around who they serve, what they provide, how they provide it, how they make money, and how they differentiate from the rest. Stewart Brand's maxim may have famously stated that "information wants to be free", which is at the heart of utopian Internet democracy, but the cold reality is that every business has to make money. That means that whether you produce books, newspapers, magazines, music, movies or TV shows, somebody somewhere has to pay somehow. Figuring out who that could be - and how the financial model would work - is one the greatest business battles of our age.


Related Articles - "Content is No Longer King" - Part 1 - Part 2 - by Stephen Shapiro


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Rowan Gibson is widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on enterprise innovation. He is co-author of the bestseller "Innovation to the Core" and a much in-demand public speaker around the globe. On Twitter he is @RowanGibson.

Setting Expectations for White Space - Apple iPad

by Adam Hartung

It's easy to misunderstand White Space. About twenty years ago Apple launched the Newton. The company sold about 375,000 of the first commercial PDAs, but Apple's leadership thought the market wasn't really there - and decided instead to focus on growing Mac sales. Obviously, as Palm and other PDA makers demonstrated, there was a tremendous market for PDAs. Apple misread the feedback from White Space.

Look now at the recent iPad launch. Silicon Alley Insider headlined "Now That They've Seen Apple's iPad, Most People Don't Want One." The headline keys on the fact that after the launch the number of people who said they were not interested to buy doubled (26% to 52%). Wrong fact to grab onto.


Instead, look at the fact that the number who said they would buy one tripled, from 3% to 9%. This is incredible, and should excite Apple's management as well as employees, suppliers and shareholders.

Most people will see a new, innovative product and say "why would I want that? I already have this other thing and it works great." And that is what marketers should expect. Most people are just trying to 'Defend & Extend' what they regularly do, and thus all the want is a product that helps them do their thing a little easier, faster, better and cheaper. They want minor improvements - variations and derivatives of what they already have. Improvements that are immediate, without them doing anything new or different.

All new deeply innovative products start with customers who are under-served or unserved. And this is why it is so important they be launched in White Space. White Space teams aren't intended to develop the big, mass market of known customers looking for something new. White Space is about doing new things that bring in new customers, give new solutions that attract real growth. And White Space teams have to learn how the market is evolving, how they fit into the market shift and how their solution will advance the market in order to sell more.

For the iPad, the 3% to 9% shift in likely buyers is huge because it shows that the iPad is an offering that appeals to people who are not today well served by their existing PC, laptop, netbook, mobile phone, kindle or mix of these solutions. 9% of respondents are saying that they see the iPad and they see a solution for what they want to get done. And if 9% of potential buyers see this option, that is HUGE. By White Space standards, often there are only .5% or 1% or 2% of people who initially see how the new product fulfills their under-served needs.

Set expectations right for White Space. White Space is not for launching variation 4 of an existing product - targeted at existing customers. That's what the marketing and sales department can do fine, thank you very much. White Space is the team that finds the 3% (or in Apple's case 9%) of users that see value in this solution, then works with them to implement the product/solution in order to make sure it fulfills the market need and is priced to sell effectively while providing a profit to the company.

Apple understands this, you can be assured. Look at how successfully the Apple White Space teams found the underserved users that jumped all over the iPod and iTunes, the iTouch and then the iPhone. They got the product positioned and selling in a hurry. And now that Apple has that skill, the company is going to apply it to the iPad. If you understand this chart correctly, you understand that it bodes very, very good things for Apple.

And it tells you the importance of having White Space teams, setting their expectations correctly, and managing them for the kind of results that can turn your organization into the next Apple. It took Apple 10 years to reach this skill level. It did not happen overnight. Or with one product introduction. And it will take your organization a few years to build this skill. So, what are you waiting on?


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Adam Hartung, author of "Create Marketplace Disruption", is a Faculty and Board member of the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, Managing Partner of Spark Partners, and writes for "Forbes" and the "Journal for Innovation Science."

2010 - Beginning of a Touch and Gesture Future?

by Idris Mootee

With the proliferation of multi-touch technologies and innovations, we face an exciting new future of physical interactivity that will be like doing tai-chi.

Will multi-touch become the mainstream interactive experience on small devices? The holy grail of touch interactivity is bringing together the simplicity of hand gestures with deep navigation. Will multitouch create a new user language much as we learn how to type? Imagine when multi-touch is deployed in home appliances such as washing machines and microwave ovens? Gestural commands can be much less obvious to users than those written on buttons and menus and can create a whole new set of challenges. It means more challenge for human factors people.

It is interesting to envision how a broad-based, mass-scale utilization of the technology beyond the iPhone/iTouch/iPad/iDesk. I want to see a digital desk where there are no computers, the surface is the computer and my smartphone connects to the cloud. And I want the desk to look like a Herman Miller Sense desk. I want to have a built-in Skype conference call widget and... oh yes, Facebook on my desk. I guess we need to retrain ourselves to use this, as we need to create a set of hand gestures standards in order to be productive with our digital desk.

Asus already has a dual-screen laptop, still in concept stage, but with a touchscreen instead of a keyboard, opting for a virtual keyboard just like the iPhone. This is a step towards the digital desk. The dual panel offers a flexible working space in which users can adapt to suit their prevailing usage scenarios, for example adjusting the size of the virtual touchpad and keyboard. Through hand gestures, handwriting recognition and multi-touch, users are given with a control surface that is both flexible and intuitive.

The touchscreen display market will be growing from US$2.2 billion this year to US$3.4 billion in 2014 according to NanoMarkets, a research firm. The growing demand for touch-screen technologies in mobile and portable computing will create new opportunities for suppliers of conductive coatings, substrates and sensors in addition to the display firms themselves. Mainstream display makers have begun to develop their own "in-pixel" technologies as an alternative to the current industry practice in which third-party suppliers add a touch sensor subsystem on top of an LCD display and then sell to OEMs. Instead of supplying companies such as HP, LG, Samsung, Toshiba and Sony, these mid-size touchscreen OEM manufacturers may end up competing against them. These companies include FlatFrog, RPO, Microsoft, NextWindow, TouchCo and Vissumo.

In the next 24 months we can expect to see the increasing prevalence of physical and gestural interactivity, beyond the Wii and the iPad. One thing for sure is that we're all going to be dealing with the fun as well as the challenge of interacting with and designing devices in different ways. One big challenge is simply due to the lack of transparency into the "commands" or actions available with a given device or environment, we don't see a switch in the air and there is nothing for us to touch.

Looking into the exciting new future of physical and special interactivity, we will need to create idioms and new vocabulary that are as discoverable and useful as possible. We will find out in 10 years time whether these new touch-based interactive paradigms such as gestural interfaces will be making life easier for us or creating a new interactivity divide between those who can use it and whose who gave up on it. Instead of learning to type like my parent's generation, the next generation may be learning how to do the 'tai-chi' of interactive gestures. Human Factors guys now need to learn tai-chi.


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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

How Profitable are the iPad and Kindle?

by Idris Mootee

How much money are Apple and Amazon making from selling the iPad and the Kindle?

Get ready for the iPad to come to an Apple store near you, and for iTunes TV show downloads. Apple will be offering US TV shows for $1 each, as reported by the Financial Times. This coincides with the scheduled release of the iPad sometime in April in an attempt to boost adoption and pull sales through the channel. TV episodes are normally $1.99 for standard-definition and $2.99 for high-definition through iTunes. There was talk before the iPad launch that Apple might at last introduce an iTunes TV show subscription service, but it never happened. I am sure that is still on the table, but there are no further details about when this could come together.

Some wonder how much money Apple can make with the iPad. Obviously the higher end models are usually more profitable for Apple, and the iPad is no exception. I've done some quick and dirty research with OEM suppliers and whipped up some estimates. The high-end iPad model with 3G and 64 GB of storage will retail at $829 and produce a profit of $455 for Apple (and retailers), while the low-end iPad model with 16GB of storage (and no 3G) will retail at $499 and bring a profit of $213. My assumptions for marketing and customer support costs total $15. I have not included in the calculations any volume discounts that Apple might grant to corporate or educational buyers.



I have yet to confirm the components configuration but am using industry's current suppliers' prices. These costs will come down when volume increases, and memory prices fluctuate. The display is the most expensive component, followed by the NAND flash memory. If you drop your iPad, I am guessing the replacement cost would be $250-$270, although the net cost is $76 excluding labor. I've also included a quick comparison with the Kindle DX, which is not an apple-to-apple comparison, and is just there for reference. Kindle doesn't have many of the expensive components that the iPad has, but is an elegantly designed book reader. Remember the basic rule of design? Make sure you do at least one thing really, really good. Kindle makes the downloading experience so easy. Anywhere in the world, your 3G can work to download books in the background.

All cost calculations here are based on our estimates only, not sources from Apple or Amazon and no one has confirmed if these numbers are close or off. I think they are close.

Considering the Kindle DX selling for $489 produces a profit of $297. There are costs for some free content not included in the Kindle DX costs. There will likely be many iPad clones in the market selling in the $180-$250 range. The margin for iPad clones will be as thin as $30-$40, but you can't really compare the iPad with those poor cousins. Let's see what the iPad's net contribution to Apple will be by the end of the year.


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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Fantastically, Brilliantly, Insanely Amazing

by Kevin Roberts

One thing about the January 27th launch of the Apple iPad clashing with President Obama's first State of the Union address was that they both focused on Jobs.

And check out the awesome enthusiasm Steve Jobs and his team have for their new baby in this video!





A lot of hype and hyped-up criticism have accompanied the launch of the iPad. Nothing new there. Apple attracted lots of criticism with the launch of the iPod in 2001 (total sales: 220 million) and the iPhone in 2007 (total sales: 34 million). They centered on a perceived lack of functionality. So it's not surprising to hear gripes that iPad doesn't support HDMI or Flash graphics, or have a built-in camera.

The critics have missed the point. The iPad is not a netbook or scaled-down laptop. In fact, it is only a distant relative to the traditional PC or Mac. Instead, its lineage is the DVD player, the VCR, the television set, the radio, the newspaper, the telephone, the telegraph. It is not a workhorse loaded up with functions and hardware. It is a platform for story-telling, interactive, personal and immediate.

The story of human technology is the relentless advance in the direction of greater utility, connectivity, immediacy, affordability and flexibility. The iPad represents a quantum leap in that direction.

We want to communicate with each other, cheaply and easily. We want information where and when we need it. We want to be entertained and to entertain ourselves. We want to get closer to the people and the things we love. The iPad promises to do that. Technology that fails to serve that purpose is just a gadget, suitable for little more than collecting dust.

There's an interesting blog post in the NY Times predicting that the iPad will become an irresistible toy for children because kids will love the tactile nature of the device (they love to jab at things!), 'painting' software allows for mess-free splatter, it's an ideal distraction for car trips, and the screen offers endless story opportunities. I couldn't agree more, but the author could go even further: They are pretty compelling reasons for adults to get their hands on an iPad, too.

Related Articles:

• Radical Innovation of Meaning


• Apple's Hidden Disruptive Innovation


• Insights to Drive Apple iPad Success


• Will Apple Introduce the Innovation Expected From Google?

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Dear Cable TV Executives,

by Steve McKee

I don't want 300 channels. I only want 18 channels. OK, the average person wants 18 channels. I really only want six. Why can't I have just six?

I know, I know, it's the economics of the industry. But industries change, don't they? I mean, look what has happened to the music industry. I used to have to purchase an entire CD just to get the one or two songs I want, but now I can buy and build my own playlists song by song. It's funny, but I'm sure I spend more on music now than I used to.

You should know I just bought an Apple TV box. That's not your fault - since the Blockbuster Video stores near me closed (and RedBox, while cool, doesn't exactly offer a huge selection) I didn't really have a good option for renting movies. So I thought it was worth a try. Now I can select from a huge selection of movies and TV shows, and when I'm not in a buying mood I can use it to watch YouTube on my HDTV. I'm beginning to think of YouTube as the ultimate TV network - there's so much on-demand entertainment there. (Hmm. You might want to make a note of that.)

Speaking of entertainment, I've held off on getting a Kindle because I knew Apple was coming out with a similar device. I'm excited to get my iPad, not only to check my email and surf the web but to download books. I guess Apple is shaking up the book publishing industry just like it did the music industry. "Saving it" is probably a more accurate description; I'm sure my book purchasing behavior will mirror my new music buying habits. I wonder if they're thinking along the same lines when it comes to TV. I guess time will tell.

So if you don't mind, I'd like to subscribe to individual cable channels. For that matter, I wouldn't mind subscribing to individual programs. I know you won't get as hefty of a monthly fee from me, but I'd be willing to pay more per network than you're getting now. And I suspect other people would be too.

Anyway, it's something to think about. But no pressure. If you don't do it, I'm sure I can find other things to do with my time and money.


Editors Note: I'm with you Steve. I've got limited cable because I don't have much time to watch television. When I really want to watch something specific I can get it online. Cable TV is going to face much the same problem that fixed line phone service faces now (declining subscriber #'s). And, if more and more networks develop their own 'apps' for a variety of mobile or IP platforms (Apple TV, iPhone, Blackberry, iPad FloTV, etc.), it's only going to accelerate.


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Steve McKee is a BusinessWeek.com columnist, marketing consultant, and author of "When Growth Stalls: How it Happens, Why You're Stuck, and What To Do About It." Learn more about him at www.WhenGrowthStalls.com and at http://twitter.com/whengrowthstall.

Will Spiderman be real soon or is it just hype?

by Idris Mootee

Every time there is a new product launch, there is always hype around how innovative the product is. Not all innovative new products deliver on the hype like Apple. Although the Segway was a big engineering achievement, it didn't live up to the hype. Its sophisticated system of dynamic stabilization certainly showcases electronic engineering excellence and did deserve some hype, but not to the level it soared.

Paul Graham's recent essay about why the Segway failed to change the world is interesting. He focuses mainly on the fact that the Segway basically makes people look dorky - and that a better design might have helped more people find it enticing. But at the end he notes:


"Curiously enough, what got Segway into this problem was that the company was itself a kind of Segway. It was too easy for them; they were too successful raising money. If they'd had to grow the company gradually, by iterating through several versions they sold to real users, they'd have learned pretty quickly that people looked stupid riding them. Instead they had enough to work in secret. They had focus groups aplenty, I'm sure, but they didn't have the people yelling insults out of cars. So they never realized they were zooming confidently down a blind alley."


The Segway Human Transporter (HT) was no question one of the most hyped engineering projects of the last 12 or 30 years. Starting with "managed leaks" to the press, the secret $100 million "Ginger" project that VC John Doerr said "could be bigger than the Internet." I can't think of anything bigger than the Internet. People then were guessing it was some sort of space program.

Apple's new iPad was also very hyped before it launched. It is a great product no question, but essentially the iPad is a big iTouch, or iPhone, doesn't have a camera, doesn't use facial recognition and doesn't have any advanced interactions design or high definition video.

But not all interesting ideas get over-hyped...

Here's a good idea which has the right ingredients for hyping up. A bunch of engineers have invented an adhesive technology has taken its cue from the gravity-defying gecko, but the Cornell team looked elsewhere - to a beetle native to Florida that can stick to a leaf's surface, through wet adhesion, with a force 100 times its own weight. What does this mean? We are talking about the possibility to mass-produce Spiderman capability. Cornell University researchers Paul Steen and Michael Vogel are working on a palm-size liquid-adhesion device that could enable movements just like Spierman's arachno-riffic moves. The design is based on bonding methods observed in the beetle. Their research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation.

The first application may be for the military. It is highly likely that there will be a 'Spiderman' team. Not sure they will adopt the stretchy red and blue tights. The mechanism includes a flat metal plate with micron-size holes and sits atop another piece holding a liquid reservoir. In between is a porous layer. An everyday 9-volt battery pumps tiny droplets of liquid through to the top layer and the surface tension of the exposed drops makes the device grip another surface. Just make sure you don't run out of battery while you're outside 29th floor of a building.

Many science and technology innovations are hyped by the media. Nanoscience and Nanotechnology are hailed as some of the most exciting areas of science with promised to our current and future problems. But translational research in the emerging areas of nanoscience and nanotechnology is sophisticated, complex and expensive and the hype around the technological advance often overstates the applications of nanotechnology. But in this case, Spiderman may soon be real...


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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Radical Innovation of Meaning - Apple iPad

by Hutch Carpenter


"Ultimately, the iPad is a large iPod touch: a great device to draw your inspiration from, but perhaps not the seismic shift in technology that we were expecting."

- Claudine Beaumont, Apple iPad review, The Telegraph


The much anticipated announcement of Apple's iPad tablet was met with a resounding... "ho hum" or worse from much of the technology crowd. The biggest criticisms were its lack of key features (no Adobe Flash, lack of USB ports, where's the camera?, etc.). The Apple iPad as a technology innovation is a disappointment.

But with Apple, and Steve Jobs, that's not really the point now, is it?

Sure, Apple has had plenty of technological innovations along the way. But then, so has its competitors. Yes, Steve Jobs is a showman, but that effect only lasts for MacWorld presentations.

No, what Apple does well is put forth "radical innovations of meaning". That term is from Roberto Verganti, who wrote about the concept in his excellent book "Design-Driven Innovation".

Apple's skills with design-driven innovation are what will make the iPad a success.


Design-Driven Innovation: Innovation of Meaning


"Market? What market! We do not look at market needs. We make proposals to people."

- Ernesto Gismondi, Chairman, Artemide, Design-Driven Innovation


Verganti's books builds the case for a different form of innovation. One in which companies tap the undercurrents of societal changes early, and create products addressing them. As Artemide chairman Gismondi puts it, these products are so different, they are akin to "making a proposal" to a market. They are not linear updates to existing products.

As Julian Bleeker notes in his review of the book, design-driven innovation is not a "follow the trends" approach. "Trends" are what any company can do. Rather, it's deciding that conditions are right to introduce a product that plumbs changes previously unexplored in your industry.

Verganti describes this work as the radical innovation of meaning. Many purchases are based as much on meaning as they are on features. Innovation of features is an ongoing process for companies. But innovation of meaning is a stunted process for many firms.

Take a product that has an accepted use, a common set of features, and provide something new that turns the traditional meaning of the product on its head. In the book, he describes multiple examples of this, drawn mostly from Italy, his home country. For example, Alessi, a manufacturer of household items, successfully innovated the meaning of many common items. It introduced a series of playful characters that represented everyday kitchen items:

• Mandarin: citrus squeezer stylized as a Chinese mandarin
  
• Nutty the Cracker: squirrel that cracks nuts

While it may sound trivial as you read this, this product line was an absolute gangbuster in sales. Alessi figured out that people still enjoyed playful experiences, even as adults. No one else was thinking this way in the industry at the time. But now the kitchenware actively pursues emotional design. It was no accident either. Alessi spent time researching changes in societal norms. That we still like to be kids was a change they saw (and one that many of us today take for granted).

Companies that do this well are both influencers and participants in what Verganti describes as the "design discourse". This is an ongoing conversation with thinkers, tinkerers, researchers and companies who target the same evolving changes in societal context. Often, these are people outside your industry who are studying the same changes you are interested in.

It is by accessing these networks where companies can "see" evolutions of societal norms that offer opportunity. These are opportunities not driven by expressed consumer desires, but by shifts in cultural norms. Done well, companies that successfully innovate the meaning of products enjoy significant growth and profits.

Oh, and early on, these innovations of meaning can be slow to gain acceptance by the market. Explains the early iPod and Nintendo Wii reactions.


Apple iPad: What Is Its Radical Innovation of Meaning?


OK, if iPad is innovating meaning even more than it is technology, what meaning might that be? Here's my best guess:

• iPad is tapping into an emerging dynamic of a more interactive, tactile experience with digital technology and information. These interactions make technology less of an interface, and more of an extension of ourselves and our environment.

The tweets above are a couple that show the natural way children engage with technology. Given the iPhone experience, they turn around and want to apply it to other devices. Buttons on devices, our traditional form of interaction, are divorced from the screen. They provide a measure of distance from the digital experience.

Touch, however, represents a new level of intimacy in the digital experience. In technology terms, it's just an alternative form of interface. Touch, mouse, tab, whatever. But touch is a vital human sense, and a core part of experience. It's how we interact with others, how we shop, experience textures and so much more.

In terms of the "design discourse", there are pointers of changes ahead in terms of integrating touch more deeply into our digital engagement.


Digital Wellbeing Labs: Responsive Feedback Behaviors

Designer Alexander Grunsteidl noted the impact of both the iPod and the Wii on our perception of how to interact with technology:

The Wii and iPhone, and before the iPod click wheel, have created a popular introduction to gesture based interfaces, demonstrating responsive feedback behaviours, applying "natural" physical effects like flipping and inertia, similar to the ones we are accustomed to in the real world, to improve usability expectations of an interface.

As new "cultures of use" emerge we are creating opportunities to form a language of gestures, similar to the conventions of "right-clicking" and standardised keyboard shortcuts.

Note the term "culture of use". Not industry trends. Because the dominant form of interaction for computers and video games is still mouse and buttons. And consumers aren't asking for touch.

But there is an underlying change in thinking about how people interact with technology and information.


Architectural Design: Digital Intimacy

University of Nottingham Nottingham UK student Stephen Townsend received a commendation in the recent President's Medal competition in the U.K. His entry, Digital Intimacy, depicts a concept where interaction is built into the architecture.

If you notice the graphic to the right, you will see people reaching out their hands and interacting through touch. Townsend calls it the "kinesthetic interaction space". Kinesthetic refers to a style of learning based on physical activities.

He designed this kinesthetic interaction space as a therapeutic solution for children with special needs. Here's how he describes it:


"The 'Kinesthetic Interaction Space' is conceived as an interactive architectonic intervention aimed at children with autism, providing sensory stimulation to assist with intervention methods and aid interaction with other children through shared kinesthetic experience. The focus of the thesis is on the development of dynamic material systems that could enable new forms of interactive environment. Architecture is conceptualised as an embodied interface and physical space has been fused with digital media in order to stimulate the imagination of inhabitants. K.I.S. is intended to facilitate playful explorations and fluid dialogues between people. The user learns to interact with their environment through an intuitive process, engaging the physical presence of inhabitants and forming spatial narratives."


While Townsend's concept addresses children with autism, the underlying design is consistent with greater digital intimacy overall.


TEDEx Talk: Phones That Touch Us

PhD student Fabian Hemmert presented at a recent TEDx talk. He is working on a concept where phones include physical movements that better connote actions to people using them. In the video below, you'll see him describe how the phone would shift weight in relation to changes in movement on a map.



As Hemmert notes, humans live in a physical world, one "which tastes good, feels good smells good". He wants to design products that better integrate that experience.


iPad: The Future of Computing

Those three examples I just gave are part of a larger design discourse about the nature of digital engagement in our future. Are we "locked in" to the mouse and keyboard? Or will we continue to evolve the interaction experience?

In Wired, Brian X. Chen sees things similarly:


"If you think about how a computer like this will impact people sociologically, suddenly the iPad is far more than a larger iPod Touch, as many have described it. It's the computer for everyone: an idea Apple has been working toward for years.

That doesn't mean the iPad will be the only computer for everyone and destroy every PC on the market, because that's not even remotely likely. But it will introduce a significant new category."


Bold pronouncement for sure. But entirely consistent with a radical innovation of meaning. Henry Blodget sees an outcome of this drive for digital intimacy: pervasiveness.


They won't live on desks, the way desktops do, and they won't be carried everywhere, the way mobile phones are. They'll just be there, around the house, on tables and counters, the way today's books, magazines, games, and newspapers are, booted up, ready to use.


Keep in mind student Stephen Townsend's kinesthetic interaction space, built into the house. How about an iPad in every room of the house, ready to go? You can see thinking evolving on similar lines here.

I can see people becoming quite attached to their iPads. Their little units of digital intimacy.

Once you see where this is going, it should come as no surprise that Apple may be working on a larger version of its iPad, as a full computer. Steve Jobs is placing his chips on this radical innovation of meaning.

Related Posts:

• Apple's Hidden Disruptive Innovation


• Insights to Drive Apple iPad Success


• Will Apple Introduce the Innovation Expected from Google?

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Hutch Carpenter is the Vice President of Product at Spigit. Spigit integrates social collaboration tools into a SaaS enterprise idea management platform used by global Fortune 2000 firms to drive innovation.

Apple's Hidden Disruptive Innovation

by Braden Kelley

People often think that disruptive innovation happens overnight, but often it happens one step at a time. Before the iPod was an innovation, Apple had to not only launch the device, but also the iTunes Store for music, and the Microsft Windows version of iTunes. Apple also expanded the iTunes Store to include audiobooks, movies, and television, but by then it had already become a mass-adopted disruptive innovation that has changed the music industry forever.

Apple then launched the iPhone and changed the power paradigm in the mobile industry around mobile applications publishing - resulting in the App Store.

Apple is about to do it again, but nobody is writing about it.

In retrospect I believe we will look back and point to January 27, 2010 as the day that Apple changed the power paradigm of mobile data plans and subsidies in the mobile industry.

Up until now, the mobile postpaid market has been defined by mobile phones subsidized in exchange for two-year contracts (at least in the United States), and mobile data plans that also often require a two-year contract. Even when Google announced the Nexus One as an unlocked device, T-Mobile (or any other carrier) is still going to charge you the same monthly cost as someone who bought the subsidized phone. Meanwhile, The carrier partner announced for the iPad, AT&T, has two regular 3G data plans:

1. $35 per month (200MB limit)
   
2. $60 per month (5GB monthly limit)

AT&T sells two 3G data cards - free or $49 - both requiring a two-year contract. But Apple yesterday announced that AT&T will provide 3G service to iPad users WITHOUT a two-year contract (or any contract for that matter). Pay as you go data access that is actually CHEAPER than their regular 3G data plans:

1. $15 per month (250MB limit)
   
2. $30 per month (unlimited)

To my knowledge, this is the first time (at least in the United States) where a carrier has given a cheaper price for service to a customer bringing an unlocked, unsubsidized device onto their network. This is of course how it should be, but still this is a watershed moment. If other carriers adopt this model with the iPad, then eventually some carrier may start to do this with other devices, and it may open the door for a different subsidy to emerge.

If carriers finally start to acknowledge that people who bring unsubsidized devices onto their network should pay less, then it opens the door for someone like Google to start paying people to use their device. Google could leverage their ad-serving platform and Google Checkout to launch a phone that effectively gets cheaper the more and longer you use it, regardless of which carrier you use and whether you're using pre-pay or postpaid (standard monthly service).

This is the innovation that I thought Google would launch with the Nexus One, but they didn't. Can Google now lean on T-Mobile and others more now to offer differentiated pricing for owners of unsubsidized devices?

The data plans offered by AT&T for the Apple iPad may have not seemed very interesting on January 27, 2010. But, I think looking backwards we may very well see this as a defining moment for the mobile industry.

Thank you Apple.


To see what I think of the Apple iPad, please go here.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.