Open the Kimono - “Innovation” has Changed.
“Design is the only thing that differentiates one product from another in the marketplace.” - Norio Ohga, Sony. Tom Peters likes this quote so much - he uses it often and it was the “quote of the day” on his blog yesterday. And yet…and yet…Sony’s profits are shrinking and its stock price is far less than it was five years ago. Sony has long been a tech powerhouse - it created a market with the Walkman - but, its severe addiction to “Not Invented Here” has caused problems. It was late to market with flat-screen TVs and DVD recorders because the existing technologies at the time weren’t up to its standards (even though the customers were clamoring for those “not good enough” technologies.*) Its digital music players didn’t play MP3s (oops).
All this doesn’t mean Sony is inherently stupid or bad - they still make a lot of cool things. However, its problems illustrate the changes in the very nature of innovation. Even Apple is working with other companies in a spirit of what Henry Chesbrough, a business professor at Berkeley has dubbed “open innovation.” It’ll be interesting to see what Howard Stringer, the new Sony CEO - neither an engineer nor Japanese - does with the company.
* As I tell my Clients - sometimes “good enough is really “good enough.” If you wait until it’s perfect, the market has moved on - and Sayonara to your dream.
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May 13th, 2005 at 6:40 pm
This quote of Ohga-san illustrates traps in the language of “last century” - one and only, all or nothing, now or never. I find that as change is happening at such a rapid pace, and the playing fields are being leveled between the corporation and the open source clusters, that it becomes really useful to be more conscious of the language we use to communicate. This quote is silly on it’s face I think - especially given Sony’s technical inventions - which are much more than just a pretty (inter)face! And yes, I understand that design does impact function - but it’s still one thing to make something on paper and altogether another to produce it in 3d reality.
May 19th, 2005 at 4:48 am
add to it “it ain’t gonna happen either”. Several of the businesses I try to sell into are so caught up in maintaining the status quo that they miss or fail to connect the realities of the business to their markets.
May 20th, 2005 at 12:31 am
Yup, agree…tinkering to “perfect” relegates many who “coulda’ been a contender” to the dream boneyard.