A Lament for New Software
Jessie Scanlon of Business Week speaks with former Alias chief scientist Bill Buxton on his new book, Sketching User Experience.
While companies were very good at what Buxton calls "N+1" development, or pumping out improved versions of existing products, most were quite bad at developing the new products that are essential for sustainable long-term growth.
In the CAD business, "developing new products" is known as copying what everyone else is doing. CAD vendors see growth in PLM! Maintenance contacts! Stealing customers! Acquisitions!
Entire article is here: Why Products Fail.
Well, I have one complaint: he's still focusing on the "shrink-wrap" software market. Most software development is in-house, and it has a very different set of concerns and problems.
There's much more to software development than Apple, Adobe, Alias, and Microsoft.
Posted by: Tony in SV | May 22, 2007 at 14:49
Joy's Law of Innovation, stated by Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy, can be summarized as "innovation happens elsewhere." It is why open systems and open standards are so important. As applications become stable and stale, it is the innovation that happens elsewhere that can give it new life.
Posted by: Randall Newton | May 18, 2007 at 14:54
Buxton is largely right.
Too bad.
Posted by: Evan Yares | May 18, 2007 at 14:49