Thought of the Day

"To get more reliability (business approach), you sacrifice validity (design approach). And vice-versa."
— Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Business, Univerity of Toronto

Source: Strategy '07 conference blog

Comments

[Andy Didyk]

David,

My Wordpress trackback doesn't appear to be working, so I'll post the link to my response here:

http://www.andydidyk.com/2007/05/18/the-business-of-bad-design/

I'm a bit concerned with the lack of context for his comment, so I hope I'm not misunderstanding his intent. Any clarification that you could offer would be great. Thanks.

[DA]

Hi Andy,

I read your post and I do think this may be a case of not having the context. The essance of Roger's message was that designers speak the language of validation while business speaks the language of reliability. This causes friction and miscommunication though there are shared goals. He stresses that each camp needs to learn the language of the other and get closer to a 50/50 mix of reliability + validity. His point being that this balance leads to both good design and business.

Does this help?

[Andy Didyk]

David,

This does help immensely. I think what tripped me up is that by framing the statement as, "if you use X, you sacrifice Y, and vice-versa", it implies that the 50/50 mix is a weak compromise rather than a sum greater than its parts. Thanks for your time...I'll clarify my post.