I asked him what he had written. He couldn't answer me. This struck me as very odd (I was young). Of all the things in the world to do, writing has to have the lowest cost of entry. Just pick up a piece of paper and start writing. Of course, getting published is another matter altogether, but you would think writing something - anything- and submitting it for publishing would be the first step to being a writer.
Back to the article - I think they gloss over the utility of a concept a little too much. Certainly for car manufacturers, the example cited, launching concept cars is a very good way of gauging reaction to a certain style or type of vehicle. It's also a very long bow to string to say that GM is bankrupt because it spent time designing concepts while the Japanese spent time improving their cars. The Japanese love wacky concepts as much as the next place, and have created many concept cars with no thought as to production. It's an important way of introducing (and de-sensitising) the public to a new design language before it reaches a production model. And there are many cars which have been built as concepts and unveiled to the public, only for the public to demand it be built by placing down real money. There's plenty of examples where frustrated designers have used a secret concept car to ambush their management by conducting a very public focus group.
And onto software - launching simple prototypes and concepts is a very good way of testing the market for an idea.
So yes, real artists ship, but they also dabble as well. Smart dabbling is the right way to go. Perhaps if Apple had launched a concept Newton it mightn't have been such a monumental flop.
Concepts as a "product" are just a useful marketing opportunity on the back of your research. Everything else that went into the research, and all the learnings that come out of it, flow into your future products, even if its years down the track.
The two examples they provided don't hold water either. Nokia and Microsoft produce concepts: yes. They both have significant research departments, it's to be expected. It completely discounts their market share (historical or current) and the sheer volume of released products.
Any business that grows to a point will start doing concept work and research. It's the same as any creative or product process - sometimes you have to bang through a whole lot of useless concepts before you have worked through enough ideas to understand which parts of which end point work as a whole.
Concepts are basically like any other form of failure - they're the pile of learnings that help you get closer in the next iteration.
> A commercial company’s ability to innovate is inversely proportional to its proclivity to publicly release conceptual products.
This is nonsense since conceptual products are innovative by definition.
What the author maybe is trying to say is that working on concept products isn't a good idea in the business sense. But the examples he gives are all companies that have been wildly successful: GM, Microsoft and Nokia. While those companies' performance declined, there might be dozens of different reasons for that.
> This is nonsense since conceptual products are innovative by definition.
but they're not real products. The product of a company like microsoft is the products they produce and sell.
If the response to the iPod Touch wasn't as positive as it was, the iPhone may have never been released, or would've been delayed until a few more iterations of the iPod Touch product line.
I'm fairly new to commenting on HN, is it bad form to delete my comment to avoid the downvotes? EDIT: just realised that I don't even have that option anymore.
Pure fanboyism. Nothing like OSX? Windows isn't like OSX? It's a gui system for running programs on your personal computer. Nothing like the TiVo, iPod, iPhone? Well... they see themselves more as a software company. Apple doesn't have a product that can even remotely compete with MS Office - like it or hate it, it is MS's 'killer app'. Transform calcified markets? MS IS the calcified market! They had so much of the market there was nowhere for them to go but down. Captured the imagination of people? People being led by the nose to say "ooh, shiny glass and brushed metal" are showing the same level of imagination as the people playing in the MS-corned PC games market.
"Real artists ship, dabblers create concept products" Nonsense from the outset. Unless, of course, you think that a painter of masterpieces should never have once produced a preliminary sketch.
> "One of the latest Microsoft concept products is Surface" That's no longer the case. The surface is going to be a real product that you will be able to buy this year. Cost ~2K. I think this was announced at the CES this year.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/microsoft-shows-off-next-...