Tried-and-true instead of the new
‘Cutting-edge’, ‘state-of-the-art’, ‘breakthrough’ etc, are terms that get attached to blockbuster products regardless of the market, be it consumer tech, therapeutics, or even scientific publications (products of research). These products come at great cost (capital as well as man-hours) and often involve a piece of new technology or some exotic scientific principle. However, not everything termed “cutting-edge” follow such an approach. Some products take a completely different path, one which actively avoids using new technology in favor of finding ways to give life to the tried-and-true. The perfect example of this approach would be the one taken by Gunpei Yokoi as he went about developing the Game & Watch and Game Boy within Nintendo during the 1980s.
The Game & Watch and the Game Boy were highly successful products, responsible for creating the entire handheld video game console market, but when it came to hardware specs, they weren’t anything special. The LCD screens used in both devices were already very prevalent, mainly in cheap calculators. Rather than a joystick, the preferred controller at the time, Yokoi chose to have 4 buttons in the shape of a cross. And, he used AA batteries rather than something rechargeable which was in vogue. In a period when competitors (sony, atari, etc) were outdoing each other with the latest hardware features like color displays and computing power, Nintendo/Yokoi focused on providing great gameplay with cheap and readily available technology. His product philosophy, in Japanese is “Kareta Gijutsu no Suihei Shikō” or “lateral thinking with seasoned technology”, also known more widely as “lateral thinking with withered technology” (withered is personally not the word I would use). This philosophy is an extension of the idea of lateral thinking, which itself is a term coined in the 1960s for the reimagining of information in new contexts, including the drawing together of seemingly disparate concepts or domains that can give old ideas new uses. At its core, Yokoi’s approach advocated picking a mature/cheap technology (‘withered’) and using it in a new way (‘lateral’) rather than going for the predictable, often iterative, ‘cutting-edge’ next step. Using readily available technology and combining it in unexpected ways was a stroke of genius. Especially because Nintendo did not have the capital to compete with larger competitors at the time on the hardware front. As David Epstein explains in his book Range, Yokoi was sure that once users were playing a game with the gameplay good enough to be fully drawn in, they wouldn’t care at all about technical details like screen resolution or colors. And thus, the seeming disadvantage of using cheap technology turned into a huge advantage: The Game Boy was affordable, durable, portable, and played for hours on AA batteries. And because developers were already familiar with the underlying technology, they could easily build new games for the platform. By using “old” (withered/seasoned) technology, Yokoi removed barriers to entry for both developers and users. With more than 118 million units sold, the Game Boy became the most successful game console of the 20th century.
While it’s fun to admire Yokoi, this philosophy existed well before gameboy and it extends far outside electronics. Couple of the example sof products coming out of this philosophy include,
Mary Kay Ash realized that leather softener applied to saddles and gear could eliminate the wrinkles on her skin, so she decided to add some fragrance to the softener and sell it as cosmetics. This decision ultimately led her to build a cosmetics empire worth several billion dollars.
A scientist at Minnesota’s 3M Corporation, Spencer Silver, accidentally created an adhesive that stuck temporarily but could be easily peeled off. Around the same time 3M scientist, Art Fry, was frustrated because his paper bookmarks kept falling out of his church hymnbook. When the two came together, they invented the Post-it Note, a piece of paper with an adhesive that could be stuck lightly to surfaces, yet easily removed.
What fascinates me personally about these examples are not the products themselves but the product development process that went into them, even if they might have been unintentional. Can there be an idiot’s guide to Yokoi’s philosophy? While I could be wildly wrong, I think the strategy to creating lateral products with withered technology involves three parts,
Asking yourself, “What’s the Fundamental Purpose of the product I am developing”? Focusing on the core ‘why’ behind the product, or problem, forces one to discard all of their accumulated assumptions. And, in turn it will free you to take a new approach. A fantastic example of this might be found in the laternal product “liquid death”. Though I have no idea how the creator came up with the product, I would like to imagine the chain of thought to be something as follows. Step 1: Let’s create a soda company -> Step 2: There is a lot of competition in the market, if we want to differentiate ourselves we need to ask the question, “why do people want to drink soda”? -> Step 3: Soda is for Hydration -> Step 4: Why not make a drink that looks and feels like a sugary soda, but without any carbonation, flavor, or additives -> Step 5: Repackage bottled water in a flashy soda can. Boom!! a new brand with a valuation of $500-600M. Again, while I have no clue if this is how the product was conceived I am nonetheless certain that someone in that team had a chain of thought that was very similar to what I listed here.
Mix-it up!!! Take whatever problem/product you are working on and then throw in a random idea. If sparks don’t fly, drop it and repeat the process until you stumble upon a combination that’s crazy enough to work. While this sounds simple enough, it takes a great amount of discipline to try and actively entertain chaos, and tangential ideas, while keeping product development from going off the rails.
Lastly, try to limit your solutions to using only withered technologies/ideas. Withered might sound like it means obsolete but that isn’t accurate, it's better to interpret it as seasoned or mature. This approach is better because the results produced with bleeding-edge technology rarely result in a product/solution that is proportional to the effort put in. Limiting oneself to withered technologies allows cost savings, forces innovation, saves development time and is unlikely to have any supply issues.
I feel like we could use a bit more (lot more, to be perfectly honest) of Yokoi’s philosophy in startups and academic R&D labs. In their zeal to have an impact, these outfits typically take a new technology or tool and rush to apply it to their chosen product or work. The main problem with such an approach is that it’s painfully hard to get the cutting-edge to work well right out of the gate. There are far too many risks as well as several unknown unknowns which lead to compromises, bloated budgets, and even wholesale cancellation/failure. Also, there is fierce competition, with everyone trying to make their mark, fighting it out in an attempt to create a better mousetrap (or breed cobras). Instead, if one were to take the laterally-withered approach they are not only likely to create good products/solutions, they are also going to have a lot of fun. The process is more creative, the headaches less painful and the result are more likely to delight, draw attention and win in the marketplace.
So, next time you have a problem to solve or a product to design, instead of taking an iterative, predictable, boring approach look at a mature, withered, technology with a fresh perspective and have the courage to use it to create a provocative, lateral solution/product.
References
Range… by David Epstein
Game over… by David Sheff
Originals… by Adam Grant
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to AG and shouldn’t be attributed to any organizations he might be associated with.