Shipulski On Design

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You solved a big problem in a meaningful way; you made a big improvement in something important; you brought new thinking to an old paradigm; you created something from nothing. Unfortunately, the easy part is over. Your work created the new baseline, the new starting point, the new thing that must be made obsolete.  So […]

Doing what you did last works well, right up until it doesn’t. When you put 100% effort into doing what you did last time and get 80% of the output of last time, it’s time to do something different next time. If it worked last time, but the environment or competition has changed, chances are […]

I think the word “disruption” doesn’t help us do the right work. Instead, I use “innovation.” But that word has also lost much of its usefulness. There are different flavors of innovation and the flavor that maps to disruption is the flavor that makes things obsolete. This flavor of new work doesn’t improve things, it […]

If you know what to do, do it.  But if you always know what to do, do something else.  There’s no excitement in turning the crank every-day-all-day, and there’s no personal growth.  You may be getting glowing reviews now, but when your process is documented and becomes standard work, you’ll become one of the trivial […]

When the mainstream products become tired, there’s incentive to replace it, but while sales are good there’s no compelling reason to obsolete your best work.  Things that matter start from things that no longer matter. The gestation period for a novel idea to transition to viable technology then to a winning product and the processes […]

Even after playing lots of tricks to reduce its energy consumption, our brains still consume a large portion of the calories we eat.  Like today’s smartphones it’s computing power is too big for it’s battery so its algorithms conserve every chance they get.  One of its go-to conservation strategies is to make mental models.  The […]

Innovation, as a word, has become too big for its own good, and, as a word, is almost useless. Sure, it can be used to enable magical reinvention of business models and revolutionary products and technologies, but it can also be used to rationalize the rehash work we were going to do anyway. The words […]

With projects, there is no partial credit.  They’re done or they’re not. Solve the toughest problems first.  When do you want to learn the problem is not solvable? Sometimes slower is faster. Problems aren’t problems until you realize you have them.  Before that, they’re problematic. If you can’t put it on one page, you don’t […]

Defend – Protect your success in its current state.  In short, do what you did last time and do no harm. Extend – Modify and adapt your success. In short, sell similar offerings to similar customers. Transcend – Obsolete your best work before someone else does. All three elements can be important to a company’s […]

If you could get another good job at the drop of a hat, how would you work differently?  Would you speak your mind or bite your tongue? If you didn’t care about getting a promotion, would you succumb to groupthink or dissent? If your ego didn’t get in the way, would you stop following the […]

Continuous Improvement – Do what you did last time, just three percent better, so none of your people can try new things. Discontinuous Improvement – Make a radical step-change in performance at the expense of continuously improving it.   Continuous Improvement – Do what you did last time so you can say “no” to projects […]