[Sigia-l] Dedicated to those...

[Ziya Oz]

prady:

> These are some great examples of firms which thrives on
> Metrics/Benchmarking/ROI/Innovation by doing it right

To be sure.

But the focus here, I assume, is design. More specifically "measurability"
of design as a factor of its success. On that score, while Wal-Mart, Dell or
Best Buy to use your examples, may be paragons of supply chain management
metrics, they have abysmally failed on innovation and design.

As a pertinent example, each of their digital music adventures, introduced
with much fanfare, spectacularly bombed. They weren't just the occasional
business mishaps, they were really MBA school case studies of how NOT to
design products/services. And not because they haven't used
"Metrics/Benchmarking/ROI" as they would in managing the other aspects of
their business operations, but because they, again, confused bean counting
with Design. And when they applied accounting metrics, it became obvious
even to them that they failed miserably and essentially left the market.

If MBAs, bean counters, and other assorted people in white coats with slide
rules could successfully design products/services, we would today be talking
about the Best Buy Music Store and not the iTunes Music Store or the Dell DJ
Ditty and not the iPod. The Dell CEO would not be answering when Fortune
asked "Could Dell ever come up with a PlayStation or an iPod on its own?"
with "We could. But I don't think that's our strategy." And, consequently,
DELL's marketcap would not be $16 billion LOWER than AAPL's today. And
Wal-Mart wouldn't be threatening major studios and labels with retaliation
if they provided content to Apple's movie download service.

So there's the "sales guy" mentality (as Steve Jobs would say) and there's
Design. There's *reliance* on metrics and there's Design. And so on.

----
Ziya

Usability >  Simplify the Solution
Design >  Simplify the Problem