On the way to perfect computing

I was about to write a post on this topic for a long time. Each time I postponed it for different reasons and almost forgot about it. But now, once I see this excellent post on TechCrunch, let’s talk about it. Here you go!

Just think what makes our tech industry to move further. There are many reasons, you can say. It’s technical evolution. New inventions, etc. But it’s not only about technology. It’s also about people. Few people push it. Those people who have own and unique vision with ability to foresee our future. Once they see it, it’s a matter of time,resources and efforts to convince others.

Personally, I believe that iPod becomes better and better with each version. It gets better design, its functionallity gets better too. That’s why I buy new versions each time. Apple push them to me. And I buy.

Basically, there are many examples. Car producers do the same. That’s a kind of formula. Of course, sometimes they fail and you switch to another vendor.

We need different leaders pushing different ideas. We will select a right one among them. Definitely we need for competition.

But the bottom line is, that’s how it works. Strong leaders drive us, and we follow. Truly, unless you see new iPod Touch, you have no clue how the next successful version should look like. Unless you are professional in this business, working e.g. on Zune .

Applying this subject to our software world, to the ideas of web2.0 development and service deployment. E.g. make users participate in forming of new requirements. Be careful with that. It’s indeed a good idea to make development cycles short and roll out changes to your site and hear to user’s feedback quickly.Quickly respond to market needs. But don’t let users drive your strategy, point directions. You may loose your innovation, all that things that made you different. Indeed, it’s a true art to keep focus on your main direction and still keep old users and discover new ones in enterprise world, where almost everything should be customizable, at least in the next release.

Another thing is a design by committee issue. Look, the overwhelming majority of innovations were created by one and independent company/person/group of people. This is a rich soil for innovations. In this case you have a freedom for changing and driving a product in any direction. You move quickly, you are fast. And finally, you are the first.

Of course, there are areas where you do need committee in order to make the whole engine work. But in this case you fall into slow reviewing cycles, conflicts of interests and so on. That’s why it doesn’t work as supposed in most of cases.

So, it would be great just to have an alchemic formula to keep a balance and follow trade-offs, to make users happy and to make them even happier once you roll out dramatically better new version, that you developed according to your own and unique vision…