{"id":2569,"date":"2018-07-18T08:00:05","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T08:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devbloglavaprotocols.nityo.in\/every-great-innovator-is-a-designer-6-insights-from-a-conversation-with-tim-oreilly\/"},"modified":"2018-07-18T08:00:05","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T08:00:05","slug":"every-great-innovator-is-a-designer-6-insights-from-a-conversation-with-tim-oreilly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lavaprotocols.com\/the-cloud-blog\/every-great-innovator-is-a-designer-6-insights-from-a-conversation-with-tim-oreilly\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Great Innovator is a Designer: 6 Insights from A Conversation with Tim O\u2019Reilly"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Teddy Zmrhal,\u00a0Senior Managing Director, Strategic Innovation \u2013 Global Head of Transformation, Ignite, Salesforce\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Tim O\u2019Reilly has been a leading Silicon Valley innovator for over three decades. He began his career as a technical writer in 1977, then soon after founded O\u2019Reilly Media in 1983. A student of Classics and Linguistics, he\u2019s known as one of Silicon Valley\u2019s leading intellectuals, famous for coining the phrase \u201cWeb 2.0\u201d and championing the open source movement.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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I got to sit down with O\u2019Reilly to discuss design and innovation<\/a> \u2013\u00a0as well as<\/i>\u00a0his latest book:\u00a0WTF? What\u2019s the Future and Why It\u2019s Up to Us?<\/a><\/i>\u00a0The conversation highlights, edited for clarity and brevity, follow:<\/p>\n

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Commodity vs. Value<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

O\u2019Reilly believes there\u2019s a tension between commodity and value. \u201cWhen one thing becomes a commodity, something else becomes valuable.\u201d Using the food industry as an example, he pointed out how labels like \u201clocal\u201d or \u201corganic\u201d can layer meaning \u2013\u00a0and\u00a0<\/i>value \u2013 onto goods typically perceived just as commodities.<\/p>\n

He then underscored Apple\u2019s ability to sell products for \u201cwhat they mean\u201d instead of \u201cwhat they do,\u201d to which he ascribes the root cause of a massive paradigm shift in the tech industry. For him, designing for value is a critical part of the innovation process: \u201chow you differentiate [your product or brand] is a design idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ubiquity of Computing<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Given his decade-long knowledge of the Silicon Valley computing industry, I was curious to get his thoughts on where we are now\u00a0as well as\u00a0<\/i>where we are going in the future. \u201cThe arc towards ubiquity\u201d in computing and our increased connectivity to one \u201cubiquitous, global brain\u201d are very much top of mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe future will include further integration of humans and machines. People are going to build new brain capacities that can interface with new devices.\u201d He believes that this will have huge implications for the near-term evolution of the human race.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s Up to Us<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

O\u2019Reilly argues that designing great products and experiences has always been important, but what\u2019s changed over the years is the broader cultural\u00a0awareness of its importance due to the kinds of problems our society must solve. <\/i><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/i>Every great innovator is a designer. You\u2019re redesigning what\u2019s possible.\u201d A technological optimist at heart \u2013 but also a realist who understands the challenges and complexity of technological design \u2013 O\u2019Reilly believes that the conversations swirling around right now about the possibility of AI replacing human jobs is fundamentally one that comes down to design issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we want to have a different world, we\u2019ve got to ask for and design a different one. We have an awful lot of fatalism in our technological and economic thinking. There are all kinds of design choices to be made [by us].\u201d<\/p>\n

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Designing Marketplaces<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

The places we frequent often \u2013 Amazon, Facebook, and Google, for example \u2013 may seem like open and democratic marketplaces. However, they are governed by algorithms and other business-driven biases that virtually dictate what we see, how we see it, and how we react to it.<\/p>\n

Think about your everyday experience at the supermarket. When given a choice between multiple cashier lines to choose from, more often than not we\u2019ll choose the shortest line by default. For O\u2019Reilly, this is the famous Adam Smith concept of the \u201cinvisible hand\u201d at work wherein the dynamics of the free market\u00a0plus\u00a0<\/i>the rise of new organisational systems together have the power to alter our perceptions as well as our concept of reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really not just product design or marketing design; it\u2019s really about the design of algorithms \u2013 the design of the values that we\u2019re encoding into these big data systems that we\u2019re building \u2013 that are really going to shape the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Designing for Trust<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Trust is a core value of Salesforce. Lately, we\u2019ve been talking a lot about the tension between growth and trust\u00a0as well as<\/i>\u00a0how important designing for trust is to digital transformation. Can we be more transparent about the underpinnings of our technological systems to better understand what drives editorial bias?<\/p>\n

O\u2019Reilly believes that trust is really about whether or not any given transaction is worthwhile for the consumer. If you give away your data, do you get something of equal or greater value in return?<\/p>\n

Sometimes consumers are happy to share their information because they know doing so will lead to a worthwhile reward. Even so, the relationship between businesses and their customers continues to be increasingly complex and ever-evolving (i.e. GDPR). This makes designing for trust even more important than ever.<\/p>\n

Businesses must be proactive and transparent in everything they do to earn consumer trust today.<\/p>\n

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Centralised vs. Decentralised<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Blockchain, the distributed ledger technology behind the rise of cryptocurrencies, has also reignited the conversation around \u201ccentralised\u201d vs. \u201cdecentralised\u201d technologies. Will a small, privileged few control this powerful technology? Or will it be shared by all who use it?<\/p>\n

O\u2019Reilly admits that there is a lot of enthusiasm for \u201ctotal decentralisation\u201d today. Earlier technologies like the PC, the Internet, blogging platforms, and peer-to-peer computing systems were all hailed as beacons of decentralisation. (That is, until somebody figured out how to re-centralise all those systems and processes.)<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have decentralization technologies, which create new kinds of opportunities. People who are quick to exploit those opportunities tend to become market leaders, and then they gradually close down the opportunity [associated with those technologies] and recentralise. Then, the process starts all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Article<\/a> first appeared on the Salesforce Blog.<\/p>\n

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Lava is an<\/span><\/i> authorised Salesforce Partner<\/span><\/i><\/a> in Malaysia and has more than a decade of experience in cloud solutions which includes marketing automation, CRM implementation, change management, and consultation. We pride ourselves in not just being a CRM partner but in also understanding the needs of our customers and taking their business to the next level.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n