the convenience of innovation

The Convenience of Innovation

The How of Who Cares

Why shouldn’t we assume that User-Centric Innovation would be the most valuable thing that a business can do?

It fits perfectly with the two major strategic assumptions of the day: that innovation is necessary to competitive survival, and that the value of what is produced must be defined by the consumer that is the user.

There are lots of ways to argue it or dismiss it, depending on your mood. But in every case: • you have to point out who (or what) the User is; • and you have to define why something is an Innovation.

Then of course you have to explain why the innovation is said to “deliver value” to the user, which is really just stating why the user would rather take it than leave it.

One way to discuss Why is to point out things that Users Like kind of a Lot, when they can get it.

FAST CHEAP PRETTY

SIMPLE

RELEVANT

AVAILABLE

Special

AbundantHandy

Correct

Easy

satisfying Supply withLOW RISKto potential Usability

satisfying Demand with HIGH BENEFIT to actual Experience

Attractive

EfficientSmart

ReliableUser Concerns: Trade-offs.

Measures:Quantitative

User Concerns: Options. Measures: QualitativeUniversal Objectives of Technology Automation

Typical usage “experiences” created with automation

Distinctive impacts on the Supply and Demand of capability are a signature of technology’s value.

The balance of impacts generates well-known experiences that drive user acceptance and user desire for whatever the technology is.

©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research

Most people pursue goals on basically similar terms, notably including a desire for Need, Precision and Comfort that help justify the decision to continue pursuit.

Enjoying doing something important the right way is an excellent use case for any product or other kind of “solution”...

As a solution, Technology can greatly enhance the opportunity and ability to “pursue”. Technology provides automation.

Automation helps relieve the three most prominent hindrances to a pursuit: • available time, • excessive complexity, • and laborious effort.

In short, automation makes pursuit convenient.

A pretty good use of automation is to generate convenience where convenience didn’t, and maybe even couldn’t, exist before. Reason: convenience is powerfully decisive to pursuit. And pursuit is powerfully decisive to technology adoption.

Technology innovations:the automation of ConvenienceAutomation makes pursuit convenient.

Innovations are often a “breakthrough” to convenience in situations where convenience had been conspicuously lacking.

Automation through technology makes innovation more probable.

The mindset of ConvenienceGoal orientation is the basic supporting factor of product adoption.

Convenience is the “coming together” – literally the correspondence – of the desired aspects of the future state and the preferred aspects of the current state.

Correspondences occur on different levels for different reasons. Personal, Group, and Market levels each have their own distinctive mindset constituting Convenience.


“User” Perspective

“Fitness” Driver

Target Expectation

Enablement Criterion

ValueTiming

“Value” Indicator

Target Experience

Market(aspiration)

imagination ambition proven whenever proof-of-concept

validation

Group(confirmation)

convention proposal practical presumed trend agreement

Personal(recognition)

intention impact relevant immediate event affect

CONVENIENCE is a condition: a correspondence realized between the desired and the actual. INCONVENIENCE describes an obtained current state (experience) that will not correspondingly enable that targeted immediate future (expectation). Unlike Necessity (the type of outcome) and Requirement (the outcome enabler), Convenience is a characteristic of enablement itself.

Value indicators signal a relationship of experience to expectations. The value indicators are “selling points” assessed against the characteristic driver (mindset) of the personal, group or market perspective. In that assessment, they represent convenience as the presence of a personal influence (affect), group persuasion (agreement), or market opportunity (validation).


How Convenience is a key value of InnovationIn order to say that something is “new”, it must be unprecedented in the context where it is observed. By definition, that means a change has occurred. The importance of a change can be merely that things are “different” but it can be specifically that things are “better”.

Convenience is a particular and powerful form of better. To propagate, the innovation may have created desired convenience; but if not, it must otherwise still be convenient.

Perspective Adoption Driver (“Fitness”)

Correspondence (“Awareness”)

Value Indicator

Market (aspiration) Imagination Feasible options proof-of-concept

Group (confirmation) convention Significant practices trend

Personal (recognition) intention Viable situations event

INNOVATION includes Convenience when an experience of the innovation confirms a new idea about what fits well in the perspective of the person, group or market. In effect, an innovation raises awareness in the user perspective.

The aspect of acknowledged “newness” provides either:• Improvement, enhancement, optimization of the status quo, or…• Preferred displacement of the status quo by a fundamentally different premise

The specific details of the adoption Drivers may also update, when either of those changes occurs. Whether they do or not, if ongoing experience of the innovation then proves to be inconsistent with the Drivers, the innovation may not survive as part or whole of the next “normal”. This makes enablers of correspondence critical to the adoption of the innovation. Insufficient enablers leave things in an Inconvenient state that fosters adoption failure.


Notable riddles assessed regarding ConvenienceWhy does hype, then disillusionment, accompany desirable innovations?

Why is there often a need for a given innovation to change its target (“pivot”)?

Why is being the first provider of an innovation often less successful than a later provider?

invention

provision

niche

misses

primitives

hype

The Challenge of Expected Value

Perspective Fitness Target Created awareness Adoption sponsor

Market (aspiration) imagination Feasible options Supplier

Group (confirmation) convention Significant practices Manager

Personal (recognition) intention Viable situations Operator

The presumed value type of an innovation can originate from the personal, group or market perspective. But the awareness that ultimately most drives its adoption may occur in a perspective other than the original one, sponsored by a certain point of view.

Each perspective acknowledges its own distinctive enablers of correspondence critical to the adoption of the innovation. Obtained current experience must reflect immediate expectations.

Insufficient enablers leave things in an Inconvenient state that fosters adoption failure. Three types of situations that represent an innovation’s failure of Convenience are:• Market-level: over-promised (requiring restraint and deflation of hype)• Group level: mis-aligned (requiring re-direction to an appropriate target)• Personal level: under-delivered (requiring redesigned support of intent)


Perspective “Fitness” Adoption sponsor

Innovation scenario

Experience Expectation Value Indicator

Market(aspiration)

imagination supplier Game changer validation ambition proof-of-concept

Group(confirmation)

convention manager Play changer agreement proposal trend

Personal(recognition)

intention operator Role changer affect impact event

Management Trend: The “hype cycle” traces the innovation through a sequence of imagination, then intention, then convention. Per each related perspective, actual experiences cause adjusted expectations of the innovation, for better or worse. Managers ultimately decide if adoption is worth the effort to them.

Market Concept: when an intro path of intention, then convention, then imagination fails to produce an outcome that displaces the importance of retaining the status quo, an innovation may need to be re-targeted. Suppliers ultimately decide if it is worth the effort to them and how.

User-centricity: when an intro path of convention, then imagination, then intention occurs, an innovation may become highly visible to consumers but largely dependent on the personalization that it enables across their number and diversity. Operators ultimately decide if adoption is worth the effort to them. If managers can’t do change management, for users, then (other) suppliers must pre-empt that problem with superior designs.

Aiming For Convenience – regardless of where an innovation primarily originates, it takes a run through multiple perspectives on whether immediate expectations and current experience are well-enough aligned.


A Recap: Desire versus FulfillmentConvenience is a qualifier aside from the conditions of Need (specified outcome type) or Requirement(specified outcome enabler).

We know that imagination, convention, and intention are all flavors of desire. Desire is a form of excitement that motivates acceptance. Disappointment is a powerful barrier to acceptance. Personal self-recognition, group confirmation, and market aspiration are all flavors of “identity” that (a.) project desire as immediate expectations while (b.) looking for reinforcement of expectations by current experience, with (c.) the risk of disappointment.

Inconvenience is the condition in which that reinforcement is not (or will not be) occurring with the given means. Inconvenience leads to rejection; convenience leads to attraction.

Innovations tightly aligned to Needs and Requirements still fail…

We’ve seen it more than a little. If we always knew Why they did, it might not be as hard to predict whether another future innovation was going to succeed.

PROPOSED: Given two innovations with apparently equal relevance to Needs and Requirements, the one that is more convenient will likely win out over the other.

the convenience of innovation

Marketing