There Should Be Friction in Your Innovation Process

In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook was killing off its credo, move fast and break things.

“We used to have this mantra, ‘Move fast and break things,’” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg during his keynote. “We were willing to tolerate a few bugs to [move fast]. But having to slow down and fix things was slowing us down. ‘Move fast with stable infra[structure]’ isn’t as catchy, but it helps us build better for the people we serve.”

Facebook found, like many companies that, when sustainable growth is the goal, speed is counterproductive. In fact, retrofitting a product in market with feature sets and functionality that it should have had in the first place is expensive, costing far more time and money than originally intended.

The notion of move fast and break things put an emphasis on speed and directly impacted our expectations of innovation moving forward. Innovation became a rapid sprint, favoring efficiencies above all else. Being the first to market was mandatory to success and bugs or incompleteness could be tolerated for a period of time. Design sprints shortened. Project times quickened. As we looked for the fastest way to create the new.

And create the new, we did. Technology, platforms, and brands entered the marketplace at a breakneck pace and forever altered the way we do things. But, as industries spurred forward, companies grappled with new technology and the push to be the first with an almost irrational expectation on speed and growth. A fear of being left behind fueled the thrust of incomplete technologies in market and often sent product teams into a frenzy. Tech unicorns were hailed as the gold standard. Startups turned scale into a fast-paced sprint reminiscent of the dot com era and Fortune 1000s, in true move fast-break things fashion, lurched into innovation spinning up new ideas and reinventing the wheel.

But something is misaligned. 70% digital transformation has failed to realize the intended goals. Of the $1.3 trillion spent last year on digital transformation, it was estimated that $900 billion went to waste. 75% of VC-backed startups fail. 81% of marketers say their companies will compete on the basis of customer experience in two years — most are destined to underdeliver.

The reality is that when the business goal is sustained growth through disruptive innovation, speed can’t be the priority.

Introducing Friction Intentionally

At the end of the day, innovation must move the needle on your business goals. Otherwise, why innovate? But it’s not just the presence of the innovation that moves the needle. Today’s marketplace is in constant evolution, with blurred competitive lines, every industry saturated, and almost no switching costs to today’s consumer. Brands and technologies are now evaluated on experience, not the mere existence. It’s no longer a game of who did it first, it’s a competition of who did it best. A chess game of who can provide the most value, in the most enjoyable way, with the least amount of friction.

“Removing friction creates a distinct competitive advantage with a massive and direct impact on financial performance.” ~ Jeff Rosenblum

Removing friction from the experience creates a unique competitive advantage and flies directly in the face of the move fast and break things mantra.

Ironically, in order to reduce friction in the innovation, we must be willing to introduce a certain amount of friction into the innovation process itself.

1. At least 20% of the innovation budget should go to strategic exploration. Look to examine markets, industries, trends, applications, consumer sentiment and the business strategy behind the innovation. The top-heavy spend in discovery and insights prior to product is where truly disruptive breakthroughs happen. An additional benefit of the extra spend is the investment in a certain amount of reassurance. The focused due-diligence results in sidestepping hurdles and potential missteps in product development. Instead of wasting money on rework, spend can be applied to new levels of innovation, value adds, and strategic pivots in a clearly identified market.
2. Extend the timeline by, on average, 90 days up-front to give room for strategic exploration & discovery. Without this time, innovations are guided by assumptions — what we think we know about people and the problems we are solving. Inevitably, blindspots surface and we miss the disruptive solutions. Truly unforgettable experiences take time. Use this added time to talk to the intended target user, understand their perspectives and challenges, uncover new ways to use the technology, and challenge widely held assumptions. Giving space to push against the known and the assumed allows innovation teams to identify new ways to provide real value, both in the current product and future iterations.
3. Incorporate user testing to match cadence with design sprints. Only 55% of companies actually utilize user testing in their design sprints. Developers spend 50% of their time fixing issues that could have been avoided. It’s not too hard to see the value that a regular cadence of testing brings. Consider this stat from UX Planet: “Fixing a problem in development costs 10 times as much as fixing it in design, and 100 times as much if you’re trying to fix the problem in a product that’s already been released.”

When friction is introduced into the innovation process the result is distinctly different in a market accustomed to speed without value. In exchange for increased budgets and extended timelines, the innovation process gains the space for discovery, the isolation of potential missteps, and reframing of assumptions. The output are solutions and innovations that bring value with a superb experience, creating a sustainable competitive advantage that directly impacts financial performance.