Innovation: the virtuous cycle of efficiency & the vicious cycle of laziness

I feel like over half the ideas I’ve heard have been contrived

After attending multiple Meetup events and startup fairs, conferences, demo days, I realized that roughly half the ideas I’ve heard in San Francisco have been somewhat frivolous. I wonder, why—instead of tackling real systemic problems like education or hunger—are some of the smartest people in the world working on (real pitches):

• A party planning app with data analytics
• A wristband that controls your phone with taps and clicks
• An app that shares your celebrity sightings
• An app that allows you to buy the clothes you see in movies

One obvious reason is that social impact ideas simply can’t command the same financial potential, and profit also drives investors’ actions. As well, per the raging social debate over San Francisco, I do believe that if one spends ever more time in circles that are ever more techie/yuppie, it’s easy to not focus on anything else. But still, surely there are other bigger problems to solve? (Even if it’s not social impact, like payments, as Stripe is often lauded for.)

Personally, I don’t think any amount of social media innovation will solve the problem of connecting with someone. I’m in the camp that tends to believe the more “social” technology, the more distant we actually are. I don’t think we need more apps, I think we need more guts. Any positive change we want to see, we as individual actors have to own. And yet, I feel like we’re distancing ourselves from the act of doing “it” by ever increasing layers.

(Update: am working on a freelance consulting project at Medallia to help them navigate the organizational/people implications of growing to a big company from a small start-up. The founders talk expressly about converting Gen Y from a handout to ownership culture.)

For example, I just thought of this contrived example:

• The app that allows you to log number of reps for each exercise.
• The wearable that automatically counts reps for a specific exercise.
• The wearable that is smart enough to know what exercise you’re doing and counts reps.
• The app that integrates exercise, food, work data into one dashboard.
• The app that tells you how/what to do and eat to meet your fitness (and life?) goals.
• The app that uploads the information into your mind so you’re on auto-pilot.

For me, this represents the vicious cycle of “laziness innovation” where the end goal is some kind of Surrogate or Minority Report world. But I just want to live in the real world—making mistakes and being imperfect but enjoying the journey.

For others, this represents a virtuous cycle of “efficiency innovation.” Build more stuff to free up time to build more stuff that frees even more time. (Have you ever read those contrived studies where if you spend one minute less pooping every time you pooped you would gain two years of life? Soon… there will be an app for that.*) People want to run to Wall-E as fast as possible. And though I disagree with this mindset, I respect others’ right to embrace it.

(Another framing? Consider sustaining vs. disruptive innovation.)

Yet I also wonder, are some people just being swept up in chasing “efficiency innovation” because it’s driven by the latest technology and appears more “cool”? After all, we’re always somewhat biased toward the “cool.” At a recent startup conference, one venture that was undeniably hip (it was integrated into Google Glass and really astounding in its recognition technology) took first in the crowd-voted funding competition. Yet only 10% of the audience, in a live poll, said they’d use it.

Perhaps the cognitive dissonance of consumers once again rears its ugly head. Only in this case, it’s providing adding false fire toward a desire to build cool/ beautiful at the expense of useful. I’m just waiting to see how these ventures pan out.

Update: Related reading — Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem.

*I do not know if this is actually true… I’m being sarcastic

This blarticle was written in the context of building a product that helps people borrow occasional-use items (e.g., sleeping bags, electric drills) from their friends & neighbors. Check out the prototype here.