Innovation is good, but what is it? Not technology, according to Niklas Zennstrom. The Skype co-founder shares his thoughts on innovation with BBC News:
Innovation “tends to originate from a simple idea that can be easily explained to anyone who isn’t interested in how you make the technology work but more importantly, interested in what it does.
“If I was to single out where the next big idea is going to come from… it will be driven by what consumers want… Those that have been the most successful are the ones which are fun and easy to use.”
It’s one thing to make something simple. But you also have to make something that people want. It must improve my life. If you take away too many layers, you’ve made something simplistic that nobody can use.
Innovation isn’t technology. Innovation is finding new ways to be useful.
via Good Experience.
“Driven by what consumers want”, sure, but innovators cannot wait for consumers to tell them what to make–it’s proven that regular joes can’t make reliable decisions on really innovative things… the old “if they had focus grouped the iPod it would have sucked” adage applies here.
Agreed! The iPod was driven by consumers wanting an easy way to listen to and organize their music. You don’t have to focus group it, but you do have to step outside of how it works and think about what it does. (And as usual, I’m talking mainly about websites).