Endeavour Partners - Blog

Let me begin with a confession: as a passionate advocate of usability in consumer electronics, I am a long-time TiVo fan, so much so that its availability has dictated my choice of video content service. First DirecTV, then Comcast when they made available the Series 3 integrated with the cable service (although the CableCard installation was a nightmare of epic proportions…).

Over the last several days there were, however, four related news items, some of which seem tinged with irony:

• today, its judgement against EchoStar and DishTV for $200 million was upheld – unsurprisingly EchoStar plans to appeal – vindicating the value of the key innovation that TiVo provides
• a couple of days ago, TiVo announced its Series 4  devices: demonstrating the importance of ‘over the top’ video, its new UI integrates this seamlessly into the overall user experience

TiVo Premiere

• a few days earlier, Clicker, a service that in some ways appears inspired by TiVo, aiming to bring a TiVo-like experience to web TV garnered $11m in funding

Clicker

• the explosion in diversity of content and the growth of time-shifting and now place-shifting is forcing cable providers towards switched video, which in turn threatens TiVo’s whole technical architecture because of its inability to communicate upstream

So, what does this mean? Does TiVo win the IP battle and lose the platform war? Do the innovators it inspired arise to eclipse it? Whither linear TV and OTT content?

(Parenthetically, the new UI is Flash-based, but then TiVo does control the hardware platform)

Serendipity: today I was talking with one of my MIT thesis students about what will become the next ’stethoscope’ for doctors. GE believes that it should be its compact ultrasound Vscan should be the next stethoscope, as Engadget reported recently:

the not-quite-flip phone tricorder Vscan, which all kidding aside is one of the smallest functional ultrasound machines we’ve seen. The goal is for doctors to have better access to specialist tools, reducing the number of referrals and improving diagnoses, etc. — and we’re sure selling an absolute ton of these is probably on the to-do list as well

Perhaps the smartphone, which is in the process of eating the consumer electronics industry is, however, also going to eat at least the low end of the medical devices industry:

Smartphones could be the most important diagnostic tool of this century as part of a revolution in digital wireless medical devices, according to Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist working at The Scripps Research Institute, speaking at the TedMed conference last year. In a video released earlier this week, Topol shows off patches communicating with his smartphone to continuously monitor his vital signs.

[ted id=772]

My colleague Moe Kelley makes an incredibly important point in his recent post about the importance of aesthetics.

Yesterday I was teaching the E Ink case study in my New Technology Ventures program at London Business School. It involved a fascinating and lively discussion, about what were the key parameters that characterized the available technologies, and re-emphasized just how important the aesthetic of books is.

I love books. I have a house full of books. My wife worries about the load on the ceilings. There are stacks of them in our bedroom. And in lots of other places in the house. I have a clinical Amazon.com habit, going back more than 10 years to 10 September 1999 (my sister’s birthday), during which I have bought hundreds of books.

Nevertheless, the class almost unanimously recognized and embraced the elegance of the industrial design of the Kindle DX that I used to demonstrate what E Ink does. It’s a different aesthetic, but compelling nonetheless.

Kindle DX

Although technology (hard factors) matter, even in high-tech we must never lose sight of the importance of soft factors, such as aesthetics.

One of the most interesting and insightful pieces of thesis work that I supervised at MIT involved a systematic exploration of the relationship between these hard factors (functions, performance) and soft factors (ease of use, aesthetics), and how their relative importance to customers evolves over the life cycle of a particular product type.

Getting this balance wrong the other way can, however, also be disastrous; much of Motorola’s current parlous position flows from it being seduced by the soft factors success of the RAZR:

Motorola RAZR V3

It provides the user with a total sensory experience – from the innovative metallic finishes and use of materials to a truly revolutionary, chemically etched keypad created from a single sheet of nickel-plated copper alloy. The Motorola RAZR V3 is the ultimate, beautiful slim-phone.

Take time out to enjoy the feel, touch and finish of the model RAZR V3. The metal materials and finishes
create a smooth, easy-to-use phone that has real visual impact. The spun metal finish of the keypad is designed to gently reflect the light, whilst a blue electro-luminescence panel defines each character and key, creating an unmistakable RAZR V3 signature.

As a result, it lost sight of how technology was evolving, and was extremely late in responding to the transition to the app phone.