Individual Experiment Topics
DLLM
mgmt_3405_individual_experiments_-_first_packet_rev.docx
Fast prototyping is the process of quickly mocking up the future state of a system such as website or application, and validating it with a broader team of users, stakeholders, developers and designers. By doing it quickly and generates feedback iteratively, it can improve the final design and reduce the need for changes during development. A good rapid prototyping are revising quickly based on feedback and using the appropriate prototyping approach. Meanwhile, it helps teams experiment with multiple approaches and ideas, also it ensures that everyone shares a common understanding, and it reduces risk and avoids missed requirements, leading to a better design faster. [Sven Lennartz, Vitaly Friedman, Thomas Burkert (2011). Professional Web Design, Vol. 2. Smashing Magzine. pp 246. ISBN: 978-3-943075-09-0]
Problem Statement
Our organization specializes in Mobile Application (Apps) Development for our clients. The types of apps that we develop range from games, utilities to special-domains. We need to cover most mainstream mobile device platforms, including iOS (Apple), Android (Google and variants); also we need to cover different form-factors, such as smartphones and tablets. To bring our client’s mobile app from original concept to final product, we work with them in iterations. Clients provide initial ideas/requirements, and we generate initial design for them to evaluate and they respond with adjustment to their earlier ideas/requirements. This process needs to be repeated many times until a final acceptable design emerges. Within this process our designs must be working apps for our clients to test their ideas with their users.
This situation created a dilemma for us. Native mobile app development for a single platform is slow and expensive, multiply this with multiple platforms and form-factors, the cost for a multiple-iteration process is prohibitive. Yet more iteration with clients would yield a much refined and superior product.
So we need a “Fast Prototyping” approach to deal with this issue, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to survive because the development cost would render our business unsustainable. We should find a way to follow our clients’ ideas to do fast prototyping quickly, iteratively and cheaply.
We adopted an obscure technology called “PhoneGap” which utilized Web technologies to create web apps that can run on mobile devices (both iOS and Android).
Leap of Faith
Can we build & expand?
From the beginning “PhoneGap” is very buggy and only supports limited feature in most mobile platforms. Can we build web-based mobile apps to satisfy our clients’ requirements? Can this method be expanded to all of our product categories? Game apps would be a great challenge for us because web technology is renowned in the lack of advanced game features.
Can we win?
We took a big leap of faith in adopting this approach. We assumed our developers would pick up web technologies much faster than platform technologies. We pray that weak device features from the offerings of the likes of “PhoneGap” would not hinder or cripple our fast prototype builds leading to our clients’ dissatisfaction.
Experiments
We carried out utilizing web technologies to do fast prototyping for our clients’ mobile apps in a controlled approach:
1. To mitigate the risk of Web Technologies and PhoneGap’s weak feature support for mobile devices and performance lagging, we only use PhoneGap for utility and special-domain mobile app prototyping, not games.
2. Would an inferior but faster web prototype increase the iteration speed or hinder it? To find out, we set up two teams with similar expertise in general software development skills. One group made use of Web Technologies and PhoneGap to do fast prototyping and the other group used traditional approach to work with clients, such as static graphical mockups as well as (much slower) prototyping using platform technologies.
Results
1. The timid and meticulous approach in adopting web technologies (with PhoneGap) to do fast prototyping, avoiding some fields such as games, proves to be a very sound and solid method in getting the job done. Eventually web technology caught up in features and performance and PhoneGaps matured, resulting in fast prototyping using web apps in all our product categories, including games.
2. The crude versions of mobile web app prototypes gave clients a great tool in rectifying the deficiencies of their initial ideas and making it much faster in getting to the final version that clients satisfy with. In the end, all of our developers adopted using mobile web app fast prototyping in their jobs.
Conclusion
The solution we got has both technical and managerial implications. It not only improved the way that we how to make fast prototype, it also supplants the old method that how we develop mobile apps. The realization is profound in that we need to prepare enough to adapt to the fast changing market.
Bing Li Disruptive Innovation MGMT 3405
Fast Prototyping MGMT 3504
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Definition – Disruptive Innovation
Disruptive Innovation, as indicated by Dan Yu and Chang Chieh Hang, in their paper “A Reflective Review of Disruptive Innovation Theory” – is a powerful means of broadening and developing new markets and providing new functionality, which, in turn, may disrupt existing market linkages.
Problem Statement
As the World’s Capital of Tech Startups, Silicon Valley is obsessed with Disruptive Innovation. Certainly, Disruptive Innovation comes in many forms, also with different ramifications and results. I will analyze three examples of Silicon Valley Disruptive Innovation, to cross over many different aspects of this phenomenon, as to supplement Dan Yu and Chang Chieh Hang’s paper:
1. Did Airbnb disrupt the hotel business? For high-end markets, compare to luxury hotels, Airbnb can supply lavish personal properties in wildly exotic locations. No matter how luxury hotels are, there are always disadvantages on the variety of exotic locations they can build upon. On the other hand – compare to low-end hotels, Airbnb unlocks the temporary dwelling and vacation home rental market.
2. Did Uber disrupt the Taxi business? Uber is a ride-sharing service that’s upended the taxi business in the cities where it has launched. Uber is building positive public sentiment with great service and discounts, all propelled by word-of-mouth and social media. Uber’s secret power comes from its convenient smartphone app, providing lower cost and interesting experiences with any driver. Uber disrupts the taxi business so much that many cities are considering enacting new ordinace to restrict Uber’s expansion, to the dismay of free-market proponents.
3. Did Netflix disrupt the Network TV business? Netflix has the potential but it needs more disruptive innovation to reach that goal, although this day may never come to Netflix—Netflix’s challenges: bidding war with Networks for good content; Net Neutrality makes it hostage to cable company’s extortion.
Leap of Faith
Can it be built?
At first people were very skeptical toward Airbnb’s business model/premise, but Airbnb tried to build the market from a small group of hardcore - “share economy warriors”. And despite some controversy, the growth of the network suggests that it is disrupting the casual accommodation market in a way the hotel industry probably never expected. Even though bed-and-breakfast operations and corporate or vacation rentals have existed for some time, the sheer scale of Airbnb changes the game.
Uber’s Leap of Faith hinges on challenges from their biggest competitor – the incumbent city taxi industry. Uber has only existed for less than 10 years; the resistance is very real, and there are many cities to fight with.
For Netflix –there is a big issue: will Net Neutrality rule-change put Netflix in danger?
Can they win?
Airbnb created an entirely new market, which has more advantages over the existed big and stable hotel market. They would co-existed and supplement each other for the foreseeable future.
Uber directly threatens the existing city taxi business and people’s habits would eventually drive the traditional taxi business out of the market place.
Netflix is thriving – the success of “House of Cards” and Kevin Spacey proved that – yet with content owners withdrew their titles from Netflix and ISPs charge Netflix premium to just maintain a passible streaming experience for Netflix viewers reveal some weakness.
Experiments
1. What if Airbnb opens up its own hotel chains?
It will be like MacDonald’s own direct operated restaurants vs. their franchise restaurants – Airbnb will not adopt this strategy until their member growth hit a plateau – and this strategy might be preferable or even necessary in international markets outside of North America and Europe.
2. Uber meets Google Self-driving Car, what’s next?
On one hand, Uber would face big challenges from the incumbent taxi business although now more and more people begin to adopt this prevalent and new transportation tool. On the other hand, cities would take corresponding measures to stop Uber expansion. But the future is unstoppable and software is already eating the world (Marc Andreessen). The taxi industry needs to get out of the way of change, but the smarter thing to do would be to adopt Uber’s approach, or even improve on it. That’s what competition is all about. [Dwight Silverman (July 21, 2014). “How Uber is disrupting the taxi business: It’s simply great”. Techblog. ]
3. What does it take for Netflix to overrun TV networks?
Nowadays, many people choose to watch their favorite shows on iPad or smartphone instead of TV because it’s just convenient, so they “cut cords” and ditch their cable service altogether. Meanwhile, content rights owners would take action to curb or limit Netflix’s library offerings, but Netflix hedged their position with their own original shows. People’s viewing habits are already changing and although the traditional TV networks will still exist for a very long time, Netflix might well be the ultimate winner of this fight.
Conclusion
The most important takeaway we can deduct from studying these examples is that Disruptive Innovation cannot be planned, but can be nurtured. It is a fragile thing and can perish anytime or anywhere along the way, until the right ingredients help make it strong enough to take over the market from old incumbents.
Disruptive Innovation MGMT 3405
· From “How Open Source Software Works: Free User to User Assistance”, Karim R Lakhani defined “Open Source” as the following: in production and development, open source as a development model promotes a universal access via a free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone. (Lakhani, K. R., & von Hippel, E. (2003). How Open Source Software Works: Free User to User Assistance. Research Policy, 32, 923–943)
Problem Statement
Our organization is developing a Plug-in HDMI device for people to stream content from their mobile devices to their big screen TVs. So our device is a direct competitor with similar offerings from Google and Amazon. Since our organization is a startup company, we obviously lack the financial strength and technology might that Google and Amazon have. So what do we do?
It turns out that people really like to tweak their hardware devices. Linksys (now a division of Cisco Systems) open-sourced their WRT54G series router to support third party firmware and that product became very popular and even influenced many competing products from its competitors. This open-sourced third party firmware added a lot of useful and advanced features usually only seen on much high-end and expensive router models. People are crazy about this router. The great success ensued for this product and Linksys would never be able to achieve this feat without the open source strategy.
Google also did a similar thing with open-sourcing their Android mobile operating system to manufacturers and developers. Android is perhaps the most successful open source initiative in history (another one is Linux – but Android has already surpassed Linux in terms of installation base and Android is also built on top of Linux). This strategy propelled Android to be the No.1 mobile OS, meanwhile leaving Apple’s iOS in a second place based on market share (iOS, however, is still the most profitable mobile OS, the result of Apple’s opposite all-closed walled-garden strategy)
Back to our own product – we would like to adopt a similar open source strategy for our device. For our kind of product to succeed, third party app support is crucial. Without a comprehensive list of supporting apps, our device will never stand a chance at market acceptance. Google has opened the SDK (Software Development Kit) for their device so third party app developers could support the Google device. We would open our SDK as well. Certainly we know we don’t have the same industry influence as Google and our app offerings will never catch up to Google’s if we merely offer what Google had already offered. So we need to implement a much more compelling open source campaign.
And our strategy would be “Total War Open Source” – we would stop at nothing – we would open our SDK and open-source all of our software code, firmware code. Furthermore, we would open-source our hardware – with “X-ray transparency” – including hardware schematics and enclosure designs.
What would this open source strategy entail?
Leap of Faith
Can we win this way? Open source hardware (and the software come with it) is still rare since hardware development would incur hard non-marginal cost and it is a leap of faith to throw all that in the open. On the other hand, the user/developer’s enthusiasm generated by open source hardware is often genuine and overwhelming. Most of the time, this watershed market response is enough to carry an obscure hardware platform to the mainstream. I think the risk can be mitigated by the market outcome of open source.
Is it worth doing? Hardware development is much more risky than software. Software can improve very cheaply but hardware could not. Also there is a much shorter window for a hardware product to woo the market; once that window is closed (nowadays hardware becomes obsolete very fast) all the cost is lost. With this kind of risk and the potential benefit from an open source campaign, I would say it is well worth doing (the open source campaign).
Experiments
The experiment is quite straightforward – to be implemented in two phases:
1. A Kick-starter campaign to offer the first fully open-source plug-in HDMI device, pricing the device almost half of that of Google’s.
2. A follow-on developer summit in Silicon Valley to rally developers into developing apps for our device.
Result
The outcome is a roaring success:
1. Our Kick-starter campaign becomes the No.1 in the hardware category for 2014. Almost a half-million dollar commitment from backers eager to get hands on our device.
2. Because of the successful Kick-starter campaign, once hard to approach suitors lined up to offer supporting apps on our device. Now most of the major apps supporting the Google device would also support ours.
Conclusion
It is no doubt that mass consumer-facing product should adopt open source.
