In the area of Strategic Innovation, we are always trying to see what the new thing might be. One simple tool is what I call Lazy Ideality. Ideality means to think about what would be even more “ideal” that the current product design. A simple mental tool for this is to think about being extremely lazy.
For example, what if I’m in the recliner and I want to change channels on my TV and Oh No! the remote is across the room! Or what if I want to send a new blog post but don’t want to have to enter a username and password (whew!). Wouldn’t it be nice to just tell your TV what to do! Wait, but what if you want to watch that video on your phone on your TV? So why can’t I let them work that out? They’re supposed to be smart devices, right? If my phone can’t send a video to my TV and my TV pay it, how smart is that? Not very!
And so it goes. Another way to look at this basic problem of “input” is that it comes down to the communication of your will to a device (or devices). Devices will indeed move more toward conversation, between humans and devices, and among the devices themselves.
So what if you don’t even want to talk?