Marketing | Kevin Flores

Innovate or be Disrupted

I’ve never shopped around for thermostats, nor do I know anyone else who has. However it sure seems that if there was previously a “must-have” thermostat out there, it would have made news before Nest Labs launched their product, the Nest Learning Thermostat, a few months ago.

If you didn’t know, the Co-Founders of Nest Labs previously worked at Apple on the iPod and iPhone. They’ve stated that their experience has shown that every detail matters – physical design, user interface, usability, packaging and marketing.

Their product is elegant, functional and has a purpose to help people save money.

Over a week ago, I read that Honeywell International is suing Nest Labs for infringement of seven thermostat tech patents. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

Now, of course, I think companies have a right to defend their patents. But all of the infringement lawsuits going on between big companies are just sad (Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Google… the list goes on). It’s a patent arms race to see who can stockpile the most.

The situation between Honeywell and Nest Labs is slightly different. Honeywell International has been around since 1906 and Nest Labs is a startup. It’s probably very difficult to consider oneself an “inventor” these days, but that is kind of what startups are.

Invention today is often tackling new problems or re-inventing the products and industries that are stagnant. That is what Nest Labs has done. They identified a stale product and completely re-defined it. Except for the most discerning, I suspect homeowners could care less about thermostats, or in the least only think about how distracting they look on their walls.

Although the latest Honeywell model does have some modern technology, it just doesn’t have the elegance of the Nest Thermostat. Honeywell had plenty of time to innovate, but didn’t. They didn’t design from a fresh perspective, only an incremental one.

Nest Labs has provided an option to have an eye-catching piece of gadgetry that supports an “eco-friendy” lifestyle and just might save some cash on the energy bill. Even with the question of “Did we need a new thermostat?” the Nest Learning Thermostat is the type of product that the gadget-minded wants to have.

Similarly, the Apple iPod wasn’t the first portable digital music player when it was released in 2001. I had previously owned a Diamond Rio PMP300 MP3 player around 1998. It was a piece of plastic junk that held about 12 MP3s. It and every other portable music player was left behind after the iPod launch. Everyone just wanted one, including me, even if it had less features.

The catchy term in Silicon Valley for re-invention is “disruption“. Startups often aim to disrupt a product or service that is tired. Bonus points if the objective is to do one thing and do it well.

What Nest Labs has done should be seen as an inspiration – not just for independent inventors, but all companies and industries that are complacent with their products and services, those that take no risks. This is your wake up call to innovate.

Nest Lab’s position that Honeywell’s lawsuit is simply a strategy to stifle competition comes as no surprise and I hope that they prevail. I know I’ve been jonesing for their product since its introduction — now I just have to order one.

Update 04.12.12: Nice! Nest Labs Hires Apple’s Former Patent Chief for Honeywell Lawsuit.

Edison on the Pivot

“Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.”

- Thomas Alva Edison

Looks like creative people have been thinking about the “pivot” for a long time!

Animatable – A Promising new CSS3 Animation Tool

A first look at Animatable from Andy Clarke on Vimeo.

Animatable is a promising new CSS3 tool to create animations deployable across Webkit browsers on any platform or device – this means web browsers and mobile devices such as Android, BlackBerry and iPhones!

Reaching Generation Z – The Real Tastemakers!

Generation Z = Today’s teenagers. They are the real Tastemakers. Recognize that it is no longer just about brand, but about what one “likes” – and being able to share that sentiment easily. Read Kathy’s Savitt’s insightful post at Mashable.

Guy Kawasaki speaks about his new book “Enchantment”

Guy Kawasaki is a wonderful technology and social media icon to follow. Check out this recent talk he gave on his new book “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions”.

Also check out my blog from Guy’s “Entrepreneur 2.0 Tips for Success” talk from last year.

A Conversation About Great Designers

I happened upon a great dialogue between Google UX Designer Jennifer Bilotta and Hunter Walk, Director of Product Management at Google. Notably, the dialogue took place between Jennifer’s latest blog post “The Role of a Great Designer”, which was posted as a response to Hunter’s earlier blog post “Get more out of your smartest people by asking them to do less”.

Hunter’s blog raised a provocative idea – namely to get your “best” designers to do less, to have them paint the broad strokes, not get bogged down in the details and move on. The driving factor being that you can’t clone a great designer and finding them in the first place is still a challenge.

Bilotta’s post responds to and expands upon Hunter’s ideas. These are a few of the topics she explores:

The flow of ideas is collaborative, not directional
Every possible design iteration doesn’t need to be explored
Context switching is the enemy of quality
The devil’s in the details
Anything that users can see is the responsibility of the designer
Strong team relationships accelerate design innovation

I don’t want to regurgitate her points; I really encourage you to pop over and read her thoughtful post.

I do want to say that my own project responsibility often lies somewhere right in the middle or at least sways back and forth: the need to work with a design team on every last detail to submit to engineering and the need to often times compromise detailed planning in order to keep production moving at a required pace.

With a background in multimedia from back in the day of “Gold Master CD-ROMs” – I appreciated that every design layout, information flow, and technical implementation was thoroughly thought through, tested and re-tested. That was the only way to not sweat approval of several hundred thousand CD-ROMs being pressed for a client’s trade show.

These days, as a Product Manager, I’m trying best to shift my own thinking and that of my teams to accept that everything we do is iterative – we can let some things slide because websites and even apps are being experienced more and more as “living, evolving things”. Just take a look at Twitter, billions of tweets a day and it’s still down 1/2 the time! I have to admit, though, the designer in me often cringes when we can’t get something just perfect before sharing it with the world.

While I agree with nearly everything Bilotta points out, the most notable for me are around the issues of context switching and strong team relationships.

Designers are most often on the hook to come up with “amazing” things. For this, they need to be given breathing room, runway to explore, and time to focus. I find that when think time on any project is disjointed, it severely undercuts ability to hit the mark.

On the flip side, when you have a designer (or designers) that work with engineers very closely, they can often work through details collaboratively much faster than the typical linear flow (PRD -> Design -> Engineering). This is where the concept of iteration really fits.

And, of course, having great designers in the first place is pretty important…

Thanks to Jennifer Bilotta and Hunter Walk for sharing their conversation!

FYI: I spotted the dialogue by way of a Twitter post from Silicon Valley blogger, Louis Gray.

Old Spice Guy – Great Viral Campaign

Well, if you haven’t caught it yet – you are missing out! I know the ladies really go for the Old Spice commercials featuring the very manly actor, Isaiah Mustafa. As if the broadcast commercials weren’t enough, now the Old Spice marketing agency, Wieden + Kennedy, has one-upped themselves. After some brief seeding out on the social web soliciting questions, the Old Spice Guy was posting direct video responses all day yesterday, continuing into today. Of course, their team targeted some of the biggies on Twitter, including celebrities (entertainment and tech), along with some of the popular news blog sites – but they also did a fantastic job fitting in responses to lots of random people, too.