Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology
Just imagine having “a Nintendo in your hand” in 1989.
Hey there! It was a regular Monday at work for me today.
Due to some personal reasons, I couldn’t write, edit and send this out yesterday.
It’s currently 6.45 pm on a lazy Monday. All the festivities seem to be lost in time.
Hopefully, this is the one and only “Monday Edition” of my weekly newsletter.
Thank you so much for reading.🤝
The invention of the first portable gaming device, Nintendo’s Game Boy, not only had an incredible impact on the tech/gaming culture but also taught us how to make millions by thinking simple. This is the story of how to achieve cutting-edge innovation without cutting-edge technology.
A Historic Landmark
Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology led to one of the most successful products of the 20th century: The Game Boy.
What made it successful?
On an evening in the late 1970s, Gunpei Yokoi (an absolute legend, btw) observed a businessman on the train playing with a calculator, just pressing the buttons out of pure boredom. Yokoi, an engineer, had an idea: What if people could kill their time with a portable device that was both a watch and a gaming device?
Unfortunately, Nintendo didn’t have the budget to push the tech frontier at that time. So they innovated, conceptually. As long as the gameplay was appealing, Yokoi believed that players didn’t care about technical details like colours or screen resolutions. Compared to others, the Game Boy was durable and affordable, which removed barriers to entry for customers.
People would play for hours because it used AA batteries that were cheap and easy to find. As of today, The Game Boy has sold more than 118.7 million units.
Iterative products might be hardest in execution, but lateral products tend to be hardest in conception. — Adam G
Gunpei also helped to create many products, including a D-Pad — the four-way directional controller that has become ubiquitous in the gaming industry.
The grassroots of LTWWT
It’s seductive to take a single aspect of a company and view that company’s whole history through that lens. (Although, it’s usually wrong)
Essentially this concept talks about using matured technology which is cheap and well understood in a radical fashion to make a new product. In doing so you do not risk having failures in the hardware that can doom a product’s launch. You also minimize the tradeoffs you have to make when developing a product. These two areas were key in GameBoy’s advantage over competitors as the GameBoy very rarely broke or had issues and managed to still be the best selling portable gaming platform despite having a non-colour panel in favour of long battery life.
This thinking is still relevant in the modern-day and is an interesting area of discussion.
In his book Range, David Epstein has a whole chapter dedicated to this philosophy.
We see it everywhere
Apple is always criticized for being a slow adopter in technology, yet it still holds the highest market share. Apple often tends to use established technology in new ways.
Back in 2001, Apple noticed that small hard-disks were becoming available in larger numbers, and at cheaper prices. Using these cheaply available disks in a new way — inside an MP3 player, instead of a laptop — allowed Apple to introduce a new kind of product. The industry analysts didn’t realize what Apple had done, discounting the iPod for its mediocre specs.
In spite of the mediocre specs, iPod was very successful, I’d say. Cutting edge innovation triumphed cutting edge technology.
The history is full of examples involving lateral thinking:
#1 Writing
While the majority internet is writing about Politics, Netflix, Music, Stock Markets and Celebrities Lifestyle, you can write about things that are undervalued and unknown to the commoners. This is where the greatest writers of the community are born.
You can cherry-pick these ideas out of an old-classic book, thought-provoking speeches on Youtube, reading literature, collection of classic films on Criterion or even reading quality blogs/newsletters.
There is magic everywhere if we’re willing to look, learn, and experiment.
#2 Popsicle
Frank Epperson (age 11 in 1905) left a stirring stick in his cup of soda outside on a very cold day, it froze, and the next day he realized that he had what he then called an “Epsicle.” We now call it a popsicle.
#3 Penicillin
Alexander Fleming contaminated a Staphylococcus culture plate and discovered it produced a substance that killed a number of disease-causing bacteria. For a while, he called it “mold juice,” and the name was later changed to penicillin.
What do I think?
“Lateral thinking with withered technology” might actually be an ideal philosophy for building easy-to-access, performant, resilient, and original experiences for a wide audience of users on the Web.
It’s a route of inventing new products not by using the latest technology available but by applying and combining existing technology in new ways and contexts. A cross-pollination of ideas and tech.
It’s a route that puts the user experience on the front seat.
Endnote: Find your 10
Inspired by my favourite writer on the internet:
If you’re in your 20s, find your 10 club.
Your 10 Club is a group of 10 people you want to work with later in life.
They should be kind, ambitious, and generous.
Travel together, meet their families and attend their weddings.
Until next “Sunday”,
Darshil
👋 The End
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If you want to read something very interesting, here you go:
The best Pfizer/Moderna vaccine memes. (BuzzFeed News) (it’s beyond brilliant)
Morning Brew: The best Newsletter out there (Every morning, 5 min, get the gist of everything that’s happening in the world, and oh, the writers are superb)
P.S: Did you like reading this? Mind sharing it? :)