The Architecture of Innovation →
In the past couple of months I followed various conversations about replicating Silicon Valley. It seems that many countries and regions have failed in their attempts to replicate Silicon Valley’s high-tech industrial growth.
Image credits: Zee Anna!
Mickey McManus, president and chief executive officer of MAYA Design Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania shares a couple of insights that can be useful to understand why is it hard to replicate anything in general.
“I don’t hear many people in the business community talking about architecture in the broadest sense of the word. It’s as if we have decided to re-invent the rules about what makes up a house, every time we try to build a shelter. Architecture has the potential to frame our problems in a way that gives us a blueprint to a vast array of solutions. It is everything you can define about a system, without knowing the underlying machinery that will make it work, or the interface we will use to get value. In our work we often find that an existing system has been built as a monolithic solution that jumbles the raw plumbing of the system with the business process and the way customers interact.
Unfortunately this leads to a brittle solution that can’t evolve with new delivery platforms, new underlying systems, or new business realities. Yet if we base our thinking on deep architectural patterns rather than stunts and one-off tricks, if we invest in architectural thinking early on, we have a much better chance of beating the “fast followers.” They often compete by mimicking the successful strategies of others. Apple has long been a poster child for repeatable innovation and creativity. I would strongly suggest that one of their secret weapons is architectural thinking. By using architecture they have deep innovation pockets and can be agile. Imitators become superficial and brittle, or only copy what they can see and then wonder why their products and services haven’t become wildly successful.” Read the full article.
What’s your perspective on innovation?
