Software Thinking is the new core competency
At Amazon, developers push new code to the site every 11.6 seconds. And on average, 60% of all code is written after a product launches.
And airlines no longer sell a seat on an airplane, but every piece of interaction you have along the way.
The definition of product is changing.
So why does corporate innovation often fail to create meaningful products?
At Substantial, we help people make choices about how they go about building digital products in a rapidly changing landscape. After several hundreds of projects (like creating an online records system for the nonprofit Partners for Our Children, or an awesome power-up for Trello), we’ve seen a market shifting in favor of companies capable of rapidly adapting.
And we believe that thinking like a software company is now a core competency for businesses.
In advance of the 2019 Leadership Vanguard Innovation Summit in Seattle, Substantial founder Paul Rush hosted a talk and workshop on Software Thinking for industry leaders from organizations like Shell, Mastercard, Unilever, and the International Red Cross.
Here’s a snapshot of the talk.
Why the changing world?
Though far fewer technological breakthroughs have occurred since 1970 than since 1920, the world feels like it’s changing faster than ever.
Two kinds of disruptors are at play: cultural disruptors like smartphones, social media, ecommerce, ridesharing, and streaming are radically altering how we think and behave in our lives, while business disruptors like data science, cloud services, virtualization, and a host of automation technologies are changing the the fundamental nature of business.
The result is combinatorial disruption with a kaleidoscopic effect. And combinatorial disruptors make attracting customers a moving target.
Companies at the top of the market (like Amazon, Apple, and Google) know that these disruptors require rapid innovation cycles, and that adaptability is a new core competence for businesses.
Uber, for example, isn’t really a tech company — it’s a logistics company. Its platform is a compound of a dozen different services, like:
- Google Maps for mapping
- Messaging from Twilio
- SendGrid for Email
- BrainTree for payments
…and many more. So how do these companies think?
Adaptability and Software Thinking
In 2011, Marc Andreessen famously wrote: “In short, software is eating the world.” And in 2018, eight out of ten companies at the top of the market were software companies.
We experience the software world more and more rapidly — it’s changing where our food comes from, how we get around, how and where we work. Software is present everywhere. And because experiences have become productized, so are products.
How do software companies operate differently than traditional businesses? We call it Software Thinking.
Software Thinking practices include:
- Build sophisticated but inexpensive prototypes, and test early and often
- Get real user feedback
- Measure everything and use only what matters
- Ship early (then, ship earlier than that)
- Your product is never finished — everything is updatable
- Think of everything as a product
Software Thinking allows individuals and organizations to thrive in a landscape of continual and combinatory disruptive change.
A magic ingredient to rapid innovation: sprints
One way to rapidly embrace Software Thinking: sprints. 5 days, a dedicated team, and a roadmap to design, prototype and test a big idea.
Established by Google Ventures as a way to solve complex problems quickly, sprints are a time-tested and highly effective method of answering business questions like: we have an idea — is it good? We have a lot of ideas — which one do we work on? We have a business problem — how can we rapidly gain traction on a solution? Sprints compress the time it takes to launch a minimum viable product, and they offer early metrics on prototypes before you make expensive commitments.
At Substantial, we apply the principles of Software Thinking to design sprints for idea validation, business opportunity, and product design. And we can help our clients embrace our methodology, too.
Is your team ready to learn more about Software Thinking or conduct a sprint? Get in touch: newbusiness@substantial.com.
