Unpacking Innovation

Petra Wille (0:04)

Hi, folks, this is All Things Product with Petra Wille and Teresa Torres, and we're so happy you're here.

Teresa, we left the folks with a bit of a cliffhanger a few episodes ago, and we promised them that we will be talking about innovation. And today is the day that you and I decided we're going to discuss the topic. What is your current read on innovation? So is innovation the aftermath of great product discovery? Is it the ultimate goal in product development? What are your thoughts?

Teresa Torres (0:43)

Yeah, I think what triggered this is we were talking about your trashcan tracking idea, and we were talking about how to measure discovery. And I think what came up was how innovative our solutions are.

And that bothered me a little bit. I, you know, there's a whole industry around like corporate innovation, and are we innovative enough? And when I hear innovation, what's usually how that word is meant is like, are we coming up with novel ways to serve our customer?

Petra Wille (1:16)

Yes.

Teresa Torres (1:17)

And I think the problem I have with that is that we don't always need novel ways to serve the customer. And I think when we get distracted by novel, we end up with really complex ways that aren't always the best ways to serve the customer.

Petra Wille (1:35)

That's interesting.

So because for me, and maybe it is a definitions problem as so often in our industry, right? To me, innovation can, and maybe that's because of the design schools of Dieter Rams or Brown or then ultimately Apple.

Simplicity can be so much innovation as well, and reducing complexity, leaving things out, minimizing steps, all these kind of things in the history of product development, software and hardware, I think. That is where a lot of innovation came from. So for me, it's always like innovating on behalf of the user, which is a claim that I always use. I have no clue from whom I inherited it back in the days. But I still love this innovate on behalf of the user claim when talking to a team and when working with the team. And that always has to do with really looking at, can we reduce something? Can we make it easier and simpler for me as well? And that is innovative in itself, to some extent.

Teresa Torres (2:50)

Yeah, this is where this word is tricky for me. And I'm going to use a very concrete example.

Let's just take logging in. We're seeing a lot of innovation around logging in right now. And historically, not necessarily good ones, but some good ones, right?

Petra Wille (3:06)

Yes, some.

Teresa Torres (3:07)

Historically, I would have said, this is not an area where you need to innovate.

Like you don't need to reinvent the login process. We're all familiar with how it works. And this is probably not where you should spend your time. The problem with that is that Slack came along and introduced Magic Links, and that was, in that specific moment in time, a really nice innovation.

Petra Wille (3:30)

Yeah, and that's often what causes innovation is, right? Pressure from a competitor's side, or, and I think that that is another reason why logins have been changing so much, they were just not safe enough anymore.

Teresa Torres (3:43)

So technology, okay, but that's a different issue, like, I want to, like, I agree, logins, I feel like gives us a really nice timeline for innovation. So for a long time, we had this very strong pattern of you go to a website, there's a username, username, password, you fill it in, you hit enter, you get logged in. Yeah. Then there was like friction, and I actually think that friction was entered because companies had to support single sign-on, and so they couldn't ask for a username. Sessions first. They had to ask for a username first, and then decide if that username required single sign-on, and then direct you to the right place. So now what used to be a one-step process is now a two-step process and we're adding a little more friction. I think at the time that Slack introduced the magic link, it was like, look, whether you're single sign-on or not, you can enter your e-mail, and the second step can just be click a link and we'll get you logged in. And that felt like a magic link. It was very innovative. But then what happened is a lot of us, not all of us, and certainly not most of us outside of tech, but some of us started using tools like 1Password.

And magic links are super annoying if you use 1Password. Indeed. Because I don't do anything to log in anymore. The login screen pops up, 1Password populates it, it's the button for me, and I'm logged in. But if there's a magic link, now I have to go to my e-mail and I have to click the link. And so like this, I think this is a really good example of like, for most people, we have a really strong pattern, you probably don't need to innovate.