Technology Hypotheses slides |

Technology Hypotheses

Technology Hypotheses

  • Can it be built? (“the api is rich enough to allow this product to be built”)
  • How long will it take? (“the product can be built to release 1 in 3 months”)
  • Will it perform? (“the product will be able to support 10,000 users in the first release”)
  • Should we use Android or iPhone, etc. (“it is safe to ignore the iPhone platform”)
  • What would it cost to manufacture? (“The first 100 units can be manufactured for $10 per”)
  • … etc.

How would you test the hypothesis?

  • Check with some experts to corroborate your hypothesis
  • Show them your design concept
  • Build a prototype/experiment/mvp to validate that assumption specifically

See the difference?

  • Customers will require that we support both iPhone and Android
  • Our architecture can work on iPhone and Android
  • Different questions, requiring different experiments to check

Common Fundamental Architectural and Technology questions

  • Scale: How do we support the required number of users
  • Deployment vehicle: Cloud, Web, Mobile or Device
  • AI/ML: What is possible to build into a product, vs. the lab

What about the ‘secret sauce?’

  • Your app may or may not require some
  • You might consider it your competitive advantage and even patent it
  • Most of your work (80% overall) will not be advanced computer science or new invention
  • For a real commercial product, most of the work will be hard engineering

The Innovators Dilemma

Disruptive Innovation:

  • An innovation that creates a new market by applying a different set of values
  • Ultimately (and unexpectedly) overtakes an existing market (e.g., the lower-priced Ford Model T)

Sustaining Innovation:

  • An innovation that does not affect existing markets.
  • Evolutionary: An innovation that improves a product in an existing market in ways that customers are expecting (e.g., fuel injection)
  • Revolutionary (discontinuous, radical) An innovation that is unexpected, but nevertheless does not affect existing markets (e.g., the automobile)
  • When an innovation in technology changes it in a way that takes it from a specialized, expensive, niche market applicability, to a price and performance point where it can be broadly applied
  • The Innovators Dilemma: Should you embrace or ignore a new technology to address your existing business?

Innovator’s Dilemma Scenario

  • A new technology comes around which solves an existing ‘problem’ in a way that is not advantageous to the existing major users/customers/revenue providers
  • Established players are not in a position to capitalize on them because this is not what their existing customers are demanding. In fact it would be negative.
  • A new player may be able to identify a market in which the new technology’s drawbacks are actually somehow advantages. It goes after that market, all the while perfecting the technology getting it more and more ready for the larger market
  • When the time is right, the new player if they bet right may be able to go after the larger market, but the established player finds itself behind in the new technology and is blown out of the water.

Example from the book (a little dated)

Web based applications MSFT vs. Google

  • Microsoft Office
  • Google Docs
  • What happened in between the two?

New Examples?

References