My colleague Ryan Jacoby writes about it a lot – http://www.ryanjacoby.com/

Definitely check out Eric Ries’ blog, this is his chief topic (though he doesn’t refer to deign thinking that much, the theory is definitely in the mix) – http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/

You might also check out Roger Martin’s two latest books, they go into a lot of theory and examples that live in this area.

enjoy.

I like your metaphor of a film director. That personality hold many tensions and directions in their head as they create a movie, and they have a point of view about where things should go. Unfortunately though, I think the idea of a ‘final shot’ when releasing a product can only increase the anxiety, and it’s sort of a false choice. (Things can always evolve.)

I think this is when the customer can be a crucial guide (and traditional business maxims can be your friend). When you can’t decide if you’re looking at the final iteration, take it to the people. See if what you have is compelling, exciting, and different enough to matter. You’ll have to temper what you hear with your point of view, but your customer will always be your strongest indication of success.

thanks.

I would submit that there is a great deal of anxiety around knowing how to identify when you’re done prototyping/designing, and thus having the confidence to know when you’re staring at the final solution. It’s that same confidence that lets a talented film director know that they got *it*, and they can move on to the next shot. And perhaps that’s also why there are so few talented directors.

Deciding among predefined options has a perhaps unfair advantage in explicitly also providing a specific, measurable goal that someone can achieve. A design-based approach requires leadership, regardless of the hierarchy, and that fact can easily push people back towards deciding over designing. So how can this best be overcome inside an established hierarchy?

It could be specific enough to get to market, but open enough to invite some serendipity through a developer network, maybe on Android?

i could imagine
- GPS in your car
- networked baby monitor
- reduced-function home phone

what else?…seems like a rich area.

That would make an even longer year for Garmin & TomTom.

The idea of a surging trend vs a slowly building trend should inform on how twitter does its own ‘trending topics’ selection right now, and could be the basis of another service that analyses trends. I can imagine twitter is only looking at the surge in topics at this moment, vs the long tail trend which has a lot of chatter over a longer period of time.

Another measure would be to look at the entropy of tweets. A measure of the amount of original tweets vs re-tweets. Iran probably has higher entropy than MJ – an indicator of a higher level of conversation.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%28information_theory%29)

But as you point out, the top down approach (strategy/objective) must be paired with a bottom up analysis (tactics/execution).

Questions like the following must be answered:

How many units must be sold to achieve the target at what price?

What does that mean in terms of leads or web traffic etc?

What is needed to generate those leads/traffic?

How much will that cost?

What common characteristics define those leads? i.e. who is the initial target audience?

What barriers are there to buying (or selling) our product to the target audience?

Etc. Answering bottom up questions like these put a dose of reality into those large market assumption.

The bottom up thinking will quickly support or collapse the top down assumptions.

Here’s my observation about why people do this. I think there are 2-3 big reasons (that have some overlap). 1) Not as many peopla as we want to have actual curiosity and drive to solve problems. Intellectual lazinesss/lack of time is a huge factor. 2) Many people in positions to be doing the plan either lack skin in the game (as you point out), or more commonly (in my experience) they lack actual experience to even understand the depth of their ignorance. It’s a “they don’t know what they don’t know” issue. 3) Corporate culture sets this up as well. Many execs WANT the exiting plan to look good and figure that they’ll “figure out the details later”

Good post and thanks for the knowing smile