Don’t Worry be Crappy
photo credit: shashiBellamkonda
This creative blog headline is courtesy of venture capitalist and former Apple computer evangelist Guy Kawasaki. Don’t worry, be crappy is axiom number 5 out of 11 axioms Guy created to help explain the Art of Innovation. It reads like this;
An innovator doesn’t worry about shipping an innovative product with elements of crappiness if it’s truly innovative. The first permutation of a innovation is seldom perfect–Macintosh, for example, didn’t have software (thanks to me), a hard disk (it wouldn’t matter with no software anyway), slots, and color. If a company waits–for example, the engineers convince management to add more features–until everything is perfect, it will never ship, and the market will pass it by.
Guy’s controversial marketing axiom gets rightfully questioned and criticized but I have to tell you on the whole I think Guy is on target.
In the real world where companies with limited resources struggle to survive in the capitalistic jungle of our free market system, being first to market innovation is risky but necessary business. Market leaders must lead even when they are not sure where their market is headed and the research and development at their immediate disposal is imperfect at best.
As a former sales representative in the Medical Device Industry I have promoted and in-serviced my share of innovative medical device products not ready for prime-time. These medical products were purposefully introduced into hospitals with less than a perfect understanding of all the negative ramifications produced by day-to-day product usage. The health care industry is not a good place to be testing product innovation but believe me it happens all the time.
Beta programs never work out all the bugs real world pressure finally exposes. A case-in-point are the endless stream of service packs Microsoft releases to the public after ‘alfa’ and ‘beta’ testing new operating systems for years.
These medical devices did however blaze a trail of innovation for other companies to follow and created mountains of real-world feedback that quickly spread throughout our medical device industry. Viewed as a whole the positive outcomes produced by the innovative medical devices my company released far outweighed the negative.
Creating original and innovative online content is very similar to releasing new products into the marketplace . Content crappiness can easily leak onto the page generating immediate negative feedback from perfectionist readers not in a position to see the innovative ground the writer is attempting break.
Having the stomach to “Don’t Worry be Crappy” and publish new innovative content produced under time constraints is not for everyone. But that’s why truly innovative content sticks out like a sore thumb when you finally do run across it.
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[...] although I believe “Don’t Worry be Crappy” is a legitimate attitude when releasing new innovative content, it is not an attitude I want to [...]