KISS: KEEP INNOVATION SIMPLE, SWEETHEART
One of the underlying maxims of engineering is that of KISS, an acronym
for “Keep It Simple, Stupid” or, as I prefer: “Keep
It Simple Sweetheart”. And if you have ever watched a project evolve
from concept to design to implementation, you will understand the importance
of Kiss. When new ideas are at the drawing board, they are often simple,
elegant concepts. But, as more people become involved, they all want to
add features to the concept. As a result, the design must become increasingly
complex in order so support all the proposed features.
However, many of those proposed features will prove useless. They will
add complexity to the design of the project, they will make the finished
product more expensive to purchase and maintain and they will offer no
real benefits to the end user.
For example, let us imagine your team wants to make a chocolate cake.
You begin to compile the recipe with ingredients like: flour, sugar, eggs,
baker's chocolate, etc, when a team member says: “let's add walnuts.
Chocolate cake with walnuts is yummy!”
And another team member suggests: “why don't we give it a whipped
cream centre? I had a chocolate cake last week with a whipped cream centre
and it was probably the best chocolate cake I've ever had.”
Meanwhile others suggest peanut-butter frosting, adding coconut flakes,
layers of strawberry jam, shredded carrots on the top, making the cake
in the shape of a turkey (to mark the US Thanksgiving holiday which is
coming up), roasting the cake over an open fire, and so on.
Before you know it, the simple chocolate cake you began making is turning
into a culinary disaster which will require a supermarket full of ingredients,
take all day to make and will almost certainly taste terrible.
One way or another, the group needs to keep their cake simple and that
will mean reducing the number of suggested ingredients and devising a
simple, but tasty chocolate cake – probably focusing on quality
ingredients and careful preparation rather than an excess of ingredients
and convoluted preparation.
This is a lesson we should bear in mind when innovating. When looking
at how to improve products or services we are almost inevitably looking
for ways to make those products more complex. I have been using word processors
for more than 20 years, including around a dozen years of Microsoft Word.
In all that time, I have never seen a company roll out a simpler word
processor – even though the number of new features introduced over
the past ten years have been minuscule, offering no real added value,
particularly in view of their added complexity. Indeed, my heart goes
out to people – such as my neighbour - only now learning how to
use MS Word. The number of absolutely useless features they face will
only reinforce their beliefs that computers are overly complex.
In fact, when next brainstorming new product and service features, don't
ask “what new features can we add to product X?” or “What
new services can we offer to our customers?” Rather, ask “How
can we make our product simpler to use?” or “How can we make
our range of services simpler for our clients to understand.”
And it goes without saying that you should always be asking “how
can we make our operations simpler?”, “how can we make our
supply chain simpler?”
Indeed, simpler products and services not only benefit your clients,
who often find simpler goods easier to use effectively, but also benefit
you. If you can simplify product X so it requires fewer parts, you reduce
your manufacturing costs. If your customers can understand your products
better, you reduce your documentation and customer service costs.
In short, don't always innovate to make things more complex, innovate
to simplify. And remember KISS.
Based on an article (by Jeffrey Baumgartner) published in Report103,
22 November 2005 issue
© 2005 Jeffrey Baumgartner
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