Innovation is so overrated

If mankind's history can be used to examine how innovations are integrated into society, one could say that human beings have always been pretty much satisfied with what they have at any time period and that the need for new products has been massively overrated ever since the wheel has been invented.

I’ve been giving a lot of thinking about Xerox buying Affiliated Computer and the previous acquisitions, as there’s a significant shift going on from product to service. We live in interesting times.

The reason is quite simple. Nowadays products are so freaking complex that you need an army of technicians, analysts and project managers just to make software work. Even more so, just the task of explaining what a product actually does is now a science in itself, and if you doubt me go check how Microsoft explain what Windows 7 is about.

And the reason for product complexity is not technology evolution per se but rather the inability for any organization to simplify and streamline. Check into any government organization and examine how they operate. They are totally inefficient, each department is a silo, people are not given clear objectives and the whole boat runs amok. It was like this 25 years ago, it is like this now, and it’ll be identical 25 years from now. So if this organization wants to implement a CRM or any kind of middleware, the product must be fundamentally complex to match all the non-sense processes going on in the organization.

How do you implement this? Well well well you call IT consulting companies like CGI. We’ll send you a cargo full of specialists charging hundreds of dollars per day so that you can implement this poorly designed software that you bought from the snake oil salesman. Then after 3 years you’ll realize you bought a fucking lemon and you’ll go back to the fruit market hoping to buy a better lemon.

Does this sound familiar? If you’re older or educated enough to recall how the world worked in the 60’s, it’s pretty much the way information technology was during the golden days of the Mad Men era. Companies bought costly mainframes from IBM, and Big Blue delivered a thousand pounds of transistors on your door along with buses and buses full of pricey consultants. Boxes are cheaper today but we shifted margins on service.

My point is that customers don’t need innovation, they may want it but they certainly don’t need it. Innovation is confusing and involves thinking and changes. Innovation is essential because the economy would stop dead in its track without it. Customers just want the freaking box to work so they can go home at 5, drink wine, watch TV and have sex. Peace of mind is priceless.

The box was bigger and heavier in the 60’s, now it’s smaller. If less is more then how you keeping score, sang Eddie Vedder. Well you keep score by selling people to your customers, the more you can sell the better your financial quarter will be. Innovation is completely irrelevant. Your customer wants expertise on beige boxes, you provide a beige box specialist. If the trend shits to black boxes, you provide someone whose expertise involves darker colors. As a CEO, all you need to know is what colors are in demand. That’s it.

For an industry to be profitable, the product has to amazingly complex but insignificant in the global realm of things.

I’m still awaiting your resumes. Together we can service the world.