{"id":847,"date":"2012-08-01T14:08:39","date_gmt":"2012-08-01T19:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/?p=847"},"modified":"2012-08-01T14:15:47","modified_gmt":"2012-08-01T19:15:47","slug":"nexus-q-on-the-importance-of-failing-fast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/2012\/08\/01\/nexus-q-on-the-importance-of-failing-fast\/","title":{"rendered":"Nexus Q: On the importance of failing fast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google’s cancellation<\/a> of the Nexus Q launch was a surprise<\/a> to me, even though I expected its introduction to be an utter disaster. The surprise, from my POV, was that even a company like Google, which is known for experimentation and applying natural selection to its software products, would do the same with hardware.<\/p>\n

A useful lesson here is Google’s strategy of introducing new technologies with a small seed, then being completely willing to tank it at any point<\/strong>, regardless of investments or existing userbases. This is the same thing they’ve done with Superbowl TV ads<\/a> (pulled from the most popular ones on YouTube) and TV ads for the\u00a0Nexus 7<\/a>\u00a0— purposefully taking a strategy that allows them to collect the maximum amount of data<\/strong> before deciding how and whether to invest.<\/p>\n

The fear of failure and any resultant effects on corporate images (in addition to lost sunk costs<\/a>) pervades well beyond product launches; my colleague James has written about its potential impact upon sustainability initiatives<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Given that Marissa Mayer was one of those trumpeting<\/a> the “fail fast” mantra at Google and she’s now moved to Yahoo<\/a> as CEO, I wonder if we’ll see Yahoo move to a more Google-like mentality and whether we’ll observe any changes in the opposite direction at Google. Although cultural effects like a “fail fast” philosophy are pervasive and carry significant inertia, culture remains driven from the top down and can fade away over time.<\/p>\n

Failing faster and thus evolving<\/a> toward smarter and\/or cheaper is seen in technology with cloud<\/a>, for example, and is even entering totally foreign regimes like drug discovery. In pharma, we’re seeing a move toward terminating unpromising lines of research at earlier stages using techniques including computer-aided drug design<\/a> and fragment-based drug discovery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Given the new agility accompanying recent developments in technology, everyone should consider how to take advantage of the faster iteration<\/strong> pioneered by open-source software’s “release early, release often” motto.<\/p>\n

\"by-sa\"<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google’s cancellation of the Nexus Q launch was a surprise to me, even though I expected its introduction to be an utter disaster. The surprise, from my POV, was that even a company like Google, which is known for experimentation and applying natural selection to its software products, would do the same with hardware. A<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3,6,19,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adoption","category-cloud","category-marketing","category-open-source"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23Tsn-dF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}