In Silicon Valley we like to think about “first principles.”

What does this really mean? Go back and really study how things work without bringing your biases to the table and then come up with new products and services that help you do that task better.

Steve Jobs went further.

When he started the iPhone team he told the first 12 people “do not hire anyone who has ever worked on a phone before.”

Why?

He wanted a fresh look at the industry and he wanted to see how new technology and a new approach could change the game. Elon Musk recently did the same when he and team designed the Cybertruck. They threw out all our beliefs about what a truck should even look like. So many people have been polarized by that design, which shows the power and danger of taking such an approach.

As we see companies like Apple and Meta, er, the company formerly known as Facebook, try to introduce new devices into the home, that will “augment” the home in various ways, it’s useful to study what people are doing in their homes, so you can judge how much usage they will get, and how accepted they might be, or, even, for competitive analysis to see who is strongest at a specific use case in the home.

I’ve been fortunate to have been invited into people’s homes all over the world. Rich, poor, and everything in between. That let me observe what people actually do, (Read more...)