Innovation is happening at the Edge

Or why we need anti-fragile systems

In Nassim Taleb’s 2012 book he introduces the concept of anti-fragility. Simply put, if something is fragile we should bet that it will fail; and when designing systems we should aim for anti-fragile systems.

What is an anti-fragile system

A simple real life example is Netflix’s architecture. If search is not working on iPhone it probably is still working on desktop. If one particular video is not streaming all others are probably working just fine. But more radically, if Amazon’s East coast data centres go down, Netflix will run off the West coast.

For Netflix to fail, all independent sub-systems need to be made to fail in an coordinated way. It is designed in such a way that systemic failure will never be accidental.

But why is this necessary?

Continuing with Netflix’s example: when Netflix released Bright last December it had no way of knowing how many people would all watch it at the same time. Sure, it had historical data, but it could never have run the traditional (archaic) load test to validate that their infrastructure can hold up. You cannot simulate 11 million viewers with their specific idiosyncratic ways of watching something; instead you have to build an infrastructure that can support it.

Innovation at the Edge

Netflix built an architecture that handles load like a rock star handles alcohol. But it was not able to do that inside a lab. The 11 million people just don’t fit. It needed to take risks and turn their entire business into a lab. The innovation happens at the edge — Netflix looks for the tiniest failure in its systems, reviews them, learns from them, and innovates. We as consumer, as paying lab rats, maybe momentarily annoyed, but hey, it’s beats rewinding. All future innovations will involve consumers who without knowing have found themselves in a lab.

The future is Design Thinking

Design Thinking is often considered an empathy led approach. But it works well with the anti-fragile model and innovation at the edge concept. It is by understanding the consumer — either through conversations or by analyzing the data stream their usage is producing — innovation will happen. Science analyzed the thing in itself but what we have now is that nothing exists in isolation. We need to understand the relationship — and to understand the relationship we need to touch the end user before we can design a product.

By designing systems that consider relationships we design systems that anticipate change, embrace risk, and recognize their own limits: in short anti-fragile systems. A Design Thinking led process leads to anti-fragile systems that in turn allow innovation at the edge to happen.