But startups don’t work this way and the entire reason for working in a team is that you share the work and hopefully create synergetic effects (1+1=3!) in the process.

And the truth is that even as for non-technologist like myself (I am a geek though) designing products is not so hard.

I had a discussion with an industrial designer (my all time fav. people to hang around with) concerning the term ‘a perfect product.’ Her field understands the term as a product that functions perfectly, I choose to add “for the customer” to that definition.

The start of product design is always to ask: “so is this cool for people?“, meaning will they like it, do they need it, will they pay for it? I don’t think all question can be answered from the start, except the one of “is this cool?”

A very big part of entrepreneurship is sales, and as they say: you have to believe in what you sell. Easier when you already have a product, I’d love to sell Apple computers for a living, but when the product doesn’t exist, you have one of two choices: one, you design the product yourself, starting with “is it cool?”; two, you trust that your CTO can design something cool.

That’s not a problem, except for one thing: is cool something we decide or the market decides? It is of course the latter and one bullet point in an entrepreneur’s job description missing from that of the CTO’s is keeping a close eye on the market.

Therefore, product design is absolutely something entrepreneurs cannot delegate! And on that short note, I’ll leave it.

All my entrepreneurship diary posts can be followed under the tag ‘Vincent’s eDiary.’ I don’t write about what we do as a company on purpose, but you can always ask in the comments or via the email address on the right. Picture courtesy of The Esoteric Church (of all places!).

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The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. E’ship diary part 7: Gut Instinct vs. Calculation, or On Managing Uncertainty
2. E’ship diary part 5: project management and vision development in the face of ambiguity, technology and market risks
3. E’ship diary part 3: Why I don’t like the term ‘entrepreneurship’
4. E’Ship Diary Part 8 – On the Marathon of Starting a Business
5. An e’diary part 2: what are the responsibilities of an entrepreneur

Before I go on, a little quiz. Which of these do you consider a smart product?

• The one-buttoned iPod? Is the iPhone a smarter product than the iPod? Why?
• The financial derivative, which was designed by many smart rocket-scientists?
• A bicycle gear-system that changes automatically, according to elevation-angle and intensity?

Think about these before you go on. Essentially, what a smart product means to me, is one that is able to interact with smart* human beings (*: by definition, ALL human beings). I would also say that a smart product adapts to the context of the user and does not force the user to adapt to it (though that, for the moment, is very wishful thinking).

An iPod, while on the surface a stupid device with a single button, is smart enough to just do the job we need it to do. It also has as a smart back-end that allows for a wide variety of content to be streamed through your device. An iPhone does the same job, except that it does more and it allows for two-way interaction: smart. A financial derivative may be smart by design but, from my understanding, it is a type of smartness that is incompatible with what humans consider smart, i.e. what makes sense to them. It does not speak our language, hence we should probably kill it (I fear the day that aliens come to our planet). The argument that it is designed for a different type of person, the financial genius, doesn’t apply either, considering the current crisis. The auto-gear system for bicycles, which I made up, but probably exists, is smart because it uses environmental intelligence to make our life easier. But in order to be able to do that, it must not make mistakes or else it becomes a very stupid device—there is a subtle line between smart and stupid, when speaking of technology… or biking.

Serge Rijsdijk has a much more complex definition of smart products, namely that they fit one or more of following seven dimensions:

1. The ability to co-operate: by which he means co-operating with other devices. He has an interesting quote from Nicoll (1999) who thinks that “the age of discrete products may be ending.” An example of this is a PDA that co-operates with a printer (or more modern: a camera that co-operates with a printer)
2. Adaptability: by which he means the ability to learn and improve the match between its functioning and its environment, e.g. my example of auto-changing gears or a thermostat that collects data about room and outer temperature and uses that to fulfil its user’s wishes.
3. Autonomy: meaning that the device can operate without interference from the user, e.g. some of those autonomous lawnmowers and vacuum-cleaners we keep hearing about.
4. Human-like interaction: as the term states, interacting with humans in a fashion that feels natural to them (I use a more broad description than the author). An example given is car-navigation, though I don’t exactly consider that a successful smart product yet—at least, the nagging voice telling you to “turn right” is not necessarily a characteristic of smartness, if you ask me.
5. Multi-functionality: i.e. a single product fulfilling multiple functions, such as a modern mobile phone. The fact that the iPhone has been so destructive to incumbents in this market would suggest that here too the definition of successful smartness need not necessarily always fit.
6. Personality: meaning the product’s ability to show the properties of credible personality. Examples given include the Furby, the AIBO, and (don’t laugh) Microsoft’s paperclip-assistant. My only experience with personable non-organics would be in the films: King Kong, Transformers, and Wall-E, all of which induced an emotional response in me. The AIBO was fun to play with at Sony, but, back then, not even close to the level of a dog. Still, I was sad to hear it has been discontinued. And I’ve killed many a virtual pet or plant (including that stupid paperclip), I’m not very sad to say.
7. Finally, Reactivity: i.e. the ability of a device to react to its environment in a “stimulus / response manner.” An example given is the Philips Hydraprotect hairdryer, which lowers the temperature of the air when the humidity of the hair decreases.

His thesis is focussed on the one issue that smart innovation is all about: how consumers react to smart products. I hope this post has made you think about it! More on this fascinating topic as I get to it.

Vincent

The opinions expressed within this blog are those of the authors alone. ©2011 Tech IT Easy. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. iPhone's app strategy and its implications for other smart phones
2. Thoughts on pricing (yourself, products, and services)
3. What would an Always-On Device look like? Do we even want it?
4. Do good products sell themselves?
5. Thoughts on the (iTablet) iPad – connectivity, apps, multitasking, integrating with Macs