Creative Technology Manifesto
We are very lucky at Idean. Twice lucky actually.
We have insanely great design creatives, who can craft design artifacts that respect, nurture and scale brands with a strong focus on human, diversity and sustainability.
No doubt that is a terrific asset, however, in our digital world, design without technology is like a fancy car without an engine. Kind of useless…
And that’s where the second edge of our sword comes in: we also have a great team of creative technologists, who will fulfill the brands’ and designers’ dreams.
But what’s our definition of Creative Technology?
Rather than a purely technical definition, we’re convinced that Creative Technology is a particular mindset of our technical talents, which enables them to look at technology from a different angle, hence fostering creativity and business value.
We, at Idean, wanted to summarize and share our particular way of handling technology in a Creative Technology Manifesto:
- Be ahead of the curve
- Code is an asset
- Devise a stack strategy
- One business architecture
- Desirable, achievable, viable, sustainable
- Creativity boosts performance
- Build talent density
#1 Be ahead of the curve
The technology adoption curve, popularized in 1991 by Geoffrey A. Moore in his famous essay “Crossing the Chasm” is a good framework to assess how well your company leverages emerging technology: Do you mainly adopt mature and mainstream technologies or are you exploring riskier and early-stage innovations?
In this digital, fast-paced world, you need to always be at the forefront of emerging technologies, that means be at least part of the early adopters or even better, part of the innovators pack.
Embracing new and emerging technologies at an early stage will bring numerous opportunities: more efficiency, better ways of collaborating with designers, better visual fidelity… New technologies are definitely a key asset in the success of a project.
This is precisely where our creative technologists come into play and focus their efforts on: they want to help our clients be part of these 2.5% of tech enthusiasts.
#2 Code is an asset
When we build custom code for a client, we take it very seriously.
We know they are investing time, money and business knowledge in code and we deeply care for this asset.
Each line of code is an asset that will encapsulate the unique brand value, differentiating services and business positioning of our client.
We make sure that they will be able to maintain and evolve this asset efficiently but also maintain control over their IP by carefully selecting the best stack, favoring Open Source components.
#3 Devise a stack strategy
Selecting a technology stack is a strategic move. No need to rush on the latest innovation like an impatient digital fashionista, but still make sure you are not too late to jump onto that bandwagon!
Successful stack strategies display several characteristics:
- evolutionary: to stay ahead of the curve, the stack must evolve over time, to harness the latest innovation
- consistency: while regularly evolving, the stack must remain consistent and aligned with the business strategy
- talent friendly: picking up the right stack can make a company more attractive to digital talents and able to retain them more easily. Once again, don’t be a fashionista, but look at the trends. Talented developers are a scarce resource today.
- IP security: as discussed above, custom code intends to encapsulate uniqueness on the digital value chain and it is uttermost important to gain and keep control over the Intellectual Property.
- creativity: the stack must open up new possibilities to create value for the company and its customers at every step of the value chain: carefully designed apps, powerful and scalable back-end services, innovative business models, AI augmentation. All the digital creatives involved must be able to express the best of their talents
- code fluidity: the rise of new stacks (like full JavaScript, from devices to servers) opens new possibilities to smoothly move code for strategic or technical reasons but also for optimizing and motivating the talent pool. This stack’s attribute is of course becoming paramount as IoT and Edge AI are at the verge of massive roll-out and adoption.
#4 One business architecture
In order to maximize creativity and increase the innovation throughput, our Creative Technologists constantly seek the perfect alignment with business stakes.
Software architecture is the cornerstone to achieve this goal, by unifying the vocabulary between business, product, design and technology teams, thereby shaping a shared landscape that will flow much faster business ideas to software released in production.
#5 Desirable, achievable, viable, sustainable
Our creative technology teams are used to work in cross-functional teams, gathering business, product, design, technology and data analytics expertise all together.
They surely master the how (to build a product), but they also care about the what (the product team is aiming at) and remain fully aware of the why (the business wants to achieve this goal), while feeling accountable for our global commitment to sustainability.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
In order to boost the creativity and efficiency of these cross-functional teams, we make sure to set a culture of “Context not Control”, as Netflix phrases it in its seminal “Freedom & Responsibility” memo in each of our projects and teams.
#6 creativity boosts performance
In the digital era, technology has become a critical business enabler and significant investments are required to lead the pack.
The first reaction would be to control the investments in technology like traditional IT costs and procedural industrialization processes.
This usually leads to doubling the productivity, whereas in creative work, the performance boost can be as much as 10 times fold, as Netflix explains in his famous “Netflix Culture” memo.
“In creative work, the best are 10x better than the average, so huge premium on creating effective teams of the best.”
Netflix Culture : Freedom & Responsibility, 2009
To measure this creative technology boost, let’s look at another example and evaluate the daily value creation rate (DVCR) of WhatsApp developers. Taking the acquisition cost by Facebook ($15 Billions) and the time (5 years) it took to its 50 developers to create this wealth, the DVCR reaches a whooping $243 902!
These developers were of course not alone to create this huge valuation, they worked in cross-functional teams, as explained above, but their creative technology mindset was instrumental to succeed.
#7 Build talent density
“Great Workplace is Stunning Colleagues”
Netflix Culture : Freedom & Responsibility, 2009
At Idean, we’re relatively small and intend to remain so: we favor talent density over talent quantity by carefully selecting our new hires.
Our design and technology creatives know each other well, so when they start a project, they act like a well-trained Pro Sport Team: they see the project as a whole, knowing where they can contribute and when, they know the strengths (and weaknesses) of their partners, and even though they give their best, it is a wonderful feeling knowing that should it be needed, they can count on their buddies.
In the end, that will boost the delivery, hence reducing the go-to-market of digital products.
We couldn’t agree more with Netflix Culture’s mantra: “Great workplace is stunning colleagues” (do we dare to add that our offices are nice and that we hold great parties too?)
If you want to share your vision and have a chat with our creative tech experts, feel free to reach us: contact.france@idean.com
