Dan McKinley’s “Choose Boring Technology” is a personal favorite of mine. The article is decidedly an “oldie but goodie” on a Tech Timeline, but it still resonates with me some 8 years after it was originally written. In it, McKinley introduces the notion of innovation tokens - a currency that every company has a limited number to spend - as a simplistic mechanism for illustrating why companies should be selective about where they decide to invest in innovation. Folks with even a passing familiarity of economics may recognize this for what it is: opportunity cost. “The value of the best alternative forgone.”
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, examples abound.
Sales work off of this principle. Maybe knocking 10% off the price of your widget means selling more widgets overall, or selling them more quickly. Maybe charging full price means they don’t sell at all. Maybe you’re selling them at a loss just to recoup costs. Hell, maybe you’re actually paying someone to haul them out of your garage in the hopes that one day you’ll be able to see one square foot of the floor in the damn thing.
Candy Crush, where the best alternative forgone is a rudimentary knowledge of the formula for Pantene.
Buying vs. renting, procrastination, hangovers…
I think you get the gist.
Swinging back to the article, the general idea is this: What didn’t you build/ship because you were busy learning some New Hotness?
…or trying to do something “off the beaten path” with it?
…or finding novel bugs in it?
…or - God forbid - actually building it, and effectively having to go through all of the above?
How are you spending your innovation tokens?