Most (but not all) business sectors are driven by the need to innovate.
Yet consumers and business are fickle.
We want innovative tech devices, but get annoyed when our media streamer isn’t as reliable as our CD player.
We want ground breaking features in our new cars, then get annoyed when the electronic seat memory positions can’t be overridden manually.
We like the fact that Standards exist in our software interfaces (File, Edit, View) so that we can easily find our way around most new applications, but get angry when new standards are introduced.
When Microsoft released their Ribbon interface in Office 2007, everyone hated it.
We complained that we couldn’t find the features we relied on, and we hated that we had to learn something new.
Prior to that, we hated that the Windows look and feel hadn’t significantly changed since Windows 95.
Essentially we wanted the new version to look different but be fundamentally identical.
It was brave of Microsoft to introduce a dramatic new change, but they knew that the decision wouldn’t cost them any customers.
Can the small to medium sized software company afford to be as innovative?
