While traveling in Asia my tummy and eyes may have eaten too well.

In a small shop in Nishi-Nippori, Tokyo I was treated with the most delicious soba noodles I have ever tasted. As we were leaving, I noted the solid wooden tabletop with cracks that had been mended with large reinforcing pieces of a completely different kind of wood. Perhaps due to the deliciousness of the soba I hadn’t noticed the striking differences as visually posed, but as I departed it was what screamed out.

Defects are normally stamped out in a six-sigma world. If it ain’t perfect, throw it out. Perhaps as you get older, you are more tolerant of how the world presents its failure-s around you. And maybe it is then you can begin to see the beauty of that which could be dismissed as invalid or otherwise handicapped, to emerge as entirely more relevant than if it were 100.000% perfect.

Much has been said about Moore’s Technology Adoption Curve and the difficulty of getting consumers to “cross the chasm” to achieve success in the marketplace. Today I was wondering whether the simplest solution to help consumers make the jump across the chasm is to just focus on ensuring that your product embodies simplicity. This may seem like a simplistic answer, but it does help to explain why products with simple operation, simple concept, simple marketing message do manage to succeed.

Perhaps the more question is what happens after the early and late majority adopts the product? Consumers bore of the simplicity of the device and desire more. Complexity is sprinkled over the product to enhance the emotion-al attachment to spice up the relationship. Does simplicity pull them in initially for the first date, and then complexity reels them in further to make for a steamy relationship?

Some stay wed to their devices/objects forever; others go looking for a new fling. differences is a good thing.