Benefits of ‘always in beta’
Cory Bergman October 8th, 2007
Creating new products in an old-fashioned media universe is all about reaching consensus, minimizing risk and hitting prescribed goals. But a new model has emerged. “The Web 2.0 movement–powered by start-ups such as Twitter, Malhalo and even YouTube, has proven that innovation often happens in iterations. Build, launch, tweak, measure, repeat. Digital experiences seem to be ‘always in beta’–learning and evolving along the way,” writes Tim Leberecht on News.com. “Many new products never make it beyond trial stage, and the trial and error beta-approach that helps Google and other alpha innovators to out-fail and thereby out-innovate the competition, is as much an attribute of successful organizations as it is a sign of our time.”
I love that line: “out-fail and thereby out-innovate the competition.”
1 Comment Add your own
1. Bonnie Aumann | October 10th, 2007 at 7:58 am
Especially in Agile Development, you find just this sort of thinking. You get leaders in the field like Martin Fowler saying, “Don’t spend a lot of time aiming. Just fire…In this age of Web 2.0 (TM)… there is this culture of just give the product to the customer. Then see how they use it. Ship the product, then gather the requirements. The opposite of the traditional process. Fire, aim, fire, aim. As long as the bullets are cheap.”
In media and software, tracer bullets seem more effective than developing the perfect scope.
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