Outdated distinction: user vs company

Once upon a time, the customers and users of the products we built were vague, amorphous beings. Although most in R&D suspected they were out there, they were no real, tangible personas. This led to many decisions being made based on technological capabilities and, sometimes, spurious ideas of what customers and users might appreciate. At … Read more

Outdated distinction: customer support vs R&D

Most companies I work with are focused on R&D. As product development is viewed as the wellspring of all new products and, by extension, revenue, the function is often protected from external influences by putting gatekeepers in between the customer, suppliers and other ‘distractors’ and the folks in R&D. Generally, the thinking seems to be … Read more

Outdated distinction: purpose vs companies

Why do you get out of bed in the morning? What are you looking to accomplish? How do you decide where to best spend your limited time and energy? Some of us are purely driven by the whip, meaning that others have decided where they need to be at what time to be doing what … Read more

Outdated distinction: systems engineering vs software engineering

Complex software-intensive systems typically consist of mechanical, electronic and software components. To ensure that all the parts come together in an integrated system that delivers the intended functionality to the customers, we need people to keep it all together. These are often referred to as systems engineers or system architects. Systems engineers frequently have a … Read more

Outdated distinction: product management vs R&D

In my experience, companies tend to fall into two categories when it comes to technology. Either they’re extremely market and customer-focused and view R&D as a necessary evil required to get the products we need to have anything to sell. Or they’re technology-focused and have the implicit belief that as long as we put bleeding-edge … Read more

10 outdated distinctions

Although many feel that digitalization is, by now, old news and that we should look forward, I feel that we’ve barely started to scratch the surface of what software, data and, more recently especially, artificial intelligence will bring to industry and society. Our ability to automate tasks that earlier needed to be done by humans … Read more

Techno-optimism: space colonization

According to archeologists, Earth met with a major asteroid around 65 million years ago. That asteroid and the effects of its impact on our planet killed off the dinosaurs, the only descendants of these magnificent animals being the birds. The asteroid brought about an extensive winter due to the amount of material thrown into the … Read more

From Agile to RADICAL: Conclusion

One of the most important challenges for humans is to deal with change. Our natural inclination is to keep things the same. This has worked incredibly well for most of human history where your life would have been quite similar to that of your parents and grandparents. Even if there were wars, famines and infectious … Read more