Example of Innovation. Company has idea in 2012. Ships in 2016. Gets acquired by Adobe in 2022 for $20B

This past two weeks have been catching up with two good ex-Apple friends who I worked with before leaving Apple in 1992. 30 years later two friends are some of the best inspiration for innovative ideas.

An example of one idea was Figma. Never heard of it. Well some of you may now as Adobe acquired the company Sept 15, 2022 for a rumored $20B.

2 years one friend said check out Figma for software user experience design. I had started playing with it and got it, but at the time was not doing user experience in design. And finally 2 months ago was ready for user experience design work. Got curious more about how Figma worked and why it was big.

Dylan Field had the idea for something new in 2012. He was 20 years old. In 2016 he finally shipped. In 2017 he started making money as he changed for the service. Many blew off the approach as no way can it work. Dylan Field the co founder of Figma writes about the outrage.

We didn’t realize that launching Figma was heresy, a generational assault on top-down, siloed models of decision making and a challenge to the identity of many designers. While some immediately understood the potential of building design software in the browser, our vision elicited an immediate and negative reaction from others. Some even told us that if this was the future of design, they were changing careers.

Nice thing is my two friends know Dylan and have share some of his approaches and thinking. And I now have a better understanding of what happened to make Figma successful. The ideas are revolutionary and can be copied.

going to 7x24 Exchange, Oct 23-26, 2022 San Antonio JW Marriott

I have not been to a 7x24 Exchange Conference for three years and I am going to the Fall 2022 conference in San Antonio, Oct 23-26.

This conference will be an opportunity to see what is new and compare it to what has been covered in the past. Some things stay the same which can be good. And seeing what has changed and why can provide insight to the problems solved and future changes.

Gen Z burnout

BBC has an article on Gen Z achieving burnout in only 2 years.

Part of their stress is they have less invested in the work environment

Although all generations might be juggling high volumes of work, Gen Z has the least “workplace capital”

How many of you thing that the youngest are already achieving burnout?

The youngest employees are already feeling pressured and exhausted – even in the earliest stages of their careers.

The past 2 years of Covid have made it extremely hard for the Gen Z.

Gary Starkweather's Laser Printer Invention was a Digital Transformation of an analog copying machine

Dec 26, 2019 Gary Starkweather left us. Reflecting on what Gary has done and how he did had going over various documents written about Gary and watching his YouTube video on inventing the laser printer. Out of all all the inventions that came out of Xerox PARC the laser printer is the one that Xerox as a company benefited from its going to market. Why?

Because Gary was one only one who started with the problem of how to improve a Xerox Copier and realized he could turn it Into a digital printer of originals. Gary used the Xerography copier analog components and he bolted on the laser, optics, and electronics to make a digital transformation. Laser printing digital transformed printing as a new business process.

Digital transformation is used a lot as a term for change and justifying acquisition of new technologies. But few come close to what Gary did. It took 10 years for Gary’s idea of a laser printer to ship. There is much to learn from his efforts and what helps learning is to figure out how to explain what he did.

Example of speeding up training with AR and IOT

StaceyOnIOT has a nice post on how AR and IOT are used to improve the training process during these times of Covid.

The end result is good.

Wileman said that the company hires some 50 new people a year and saves about $1,200 per employee in training costs. So while PBC still has a hiring challenge, it is able to use IoT, robotics, and AR to get new staff trained more quickly and at a lower cost, which makes it less painful when those staff members eventually leave.

And the nice thing is the AR is being used to harvest the knowledge of the experienced.

AR helps scale the expertise held by an older employee or the maker of the machine by turning that expertise into software and sharing it, via heads-up displays, to any new worker.

With Covid AR and VR are all getting more traction.