book.chapter Designing Products for Widespread Adoption

Scaling a business successfully requires leveraging design to simplify, standardize, and efficiently integrate different functions. The goal is to build an optimized supply chain that can be flawlessly replicated to maximize sales. Viewing design as merely an afterthought rather than an essential component of strategy from the outset is a critical mistake. Design was once seen purely as an art form, with designers as key members of creative teams. However, design is now constantly used to generate tangible business value by intentionally connecting things to solve problems. Good design solves problems, simplifies tasks, improves usability, and its value comes from how efficiently it helps users address issues, not from awards. Good design reduces complications, while bad design increases them, as achieving simplicity requires more effort. Good design is intentional, not accidental. To produce quality designs, it's important to consider systems that combine both visible and invisible elements. A system provides a structure to produce behaviors, and people use systems to solve problems. Designers connect systems to build valuable solutions, and anyone can learn to connect things to simplify and streamline. These connections apply to concrete things like machines and to abstract things like supply chains, organizational charts, and customer relationships. An example of effective design is Coca-Cola's Minaqua bottled water business in Japan. The water market is difficult to differentiate in, and margins are slim, so careful design optimization is necessary for profitability. By 2010, Minaqua was struggling with low market share, so a cross-functional Coca-Cola Japan team worked to revamp it. They realized that recycling is integral to Japanese consumers and that Japan recycles a significant portion of plastics and aluminum cans. It became clear that Minaqua wasn't connecting with this consumer insight. The team also noted that Tokyo apartments are small, so bins of empty bottles take up valuable space. As a result, Coca-Cola Japan relaunched Minaqua as ILOHAS in a lightweight Flex bottle that uses 40% less plastic. When empty, Flex bottles can be twisted by hand into a thin scrap, reducing the space needed in recycling bins and the amount of waste. Advertising positioned ILOHAS as "water that changes the world through small actions" and introduced a ritual: Choose, Drink, Twist, and Recycle. YouTube videos demonstrated people crushing bottles and repurposing scraps. The lighter bottles also led to reductions in manufacturing, transport, and recycling emissions. Sales increased significantly within months, and the product commanded premium pricing for differentiation. This demonstrates that taking a holistic design approach is key to gaining a competitive advantage. In practice, businesses should ask three questions: Is design aligned with the growth strategy? What is the design process, and does it enable the strategy? Do products reinforce the strategy? The connections between Design, Why, How, and What must drive growth. When the goal is to scale, it's crucial to optimize and flawlessly execute processes to create a supply chain that can expand without limits. Scaling requires eliminating ambiguity, excess, and waste to enable precise replication. Startups often pivot, iterate, and experiment instead of focusing on execution. Scaling depends on standards that provide clear direction through a common language. Standards align everyone to repeat successful patterns. Creating standards involves simplifying to the fewest elements that become common denominators and tools that facilitate consistent execution. The goal is to produce a masterpiece solution that integrates pieces seamlessly. Coca-Cola's impressive growth has been driven by seven key systems: the unchanged secret formula, the Spencerian script logo, the contour bottle shape that deters imitation, the 36-degree serving temperature, the five-cent price for 70 years, catchy slogans and free samples that sparked word-of-mouth, and the franchise model that requires little capital to scale globally while remaining local. In the early twentieth century, leadership with an auto industry background instilled a culture of zealous standardization, guided by extensive manuals and oversight. This approach contributed to Coke's multi-billion dollar success over the years. However, scale alone eventually became insufficient for continued growth due to several modern realities. Today's world presents "wicked problems" - complex, interconnected issues like obesity, factory conditions, e-waste, and water scarcity that impact businesses. Despite the cost, corporations must help address these issues. Additionally, digitalization is steadily disrupting industries as innovators leverage the cloud, making it more important to pay attention to the crowd than to experts. Winning now necessitates creating shared value within communities by solving pressing societal challenges, which attracts talent and government support. Growth today requires flexible design to handle wicked problems, maximize crowd reach, and promote shared value. Failing to connect these dots risks relevance. While scale is critical, without agility, it cannot confer relevance. Companies must reconnect business and social success, making shared value central, not peripheral. Innovation needs growth. Individuals, organizations, and nations require all types of growth to overcome modern challenges. Patterns that create simplicity and consistency, when well-designed, generate happy stakeholders by enabling good execution. Getting the details of these patterns right is fundamental to designing for scale. The future is unmapped as business and society transition. Growth driven by addressing discontent will define the winners. Well-designed things connect and work together as systems. Coca-Cola aims for its packages to solve business problems by supporting strategy across functions, not just to be colorful shapes. When elements connect across the business, design is strategically leveraged to drive growth.