Discussion of why we reject the “solution in search of a problem” (SISP) approach [An Opinion Piece]
Although there are exceptions, a majority of current digital technology projects use the SISP approach. They are extremely popular and varied, and often capture the public attention in national and world media. Declaring that the SISP approach is one of our key anti-values is contrary to majority opinion and experience. Explaining our position, therefore, deserves careful (somewhat lengthy) description.
It is unusual to declare SISP as an anti-value
In our experience, a majority of digital technologies groups are pursuing novelty as white-space for commercial territorialism (a “land-grab” perspective). And they seek to generate and monetize intense public attention, rather than to create new objective utility. The “solution in search of a problem” (SISP) approach is the norm. [Many (not us) assert that any novel “technology” can be characterized as kind of valuable territory to be owned. SISP, then, has been described as the technology equivalent of a high-risk real estate speculation scheme. The focus is on monetizing ownership of a technology as a territory by rapidly buying and selling shares of its ownership, rather than monetizing the technology’s objective utility (if any).]
We have chosen a focus of creating progress on important objective problems, and we postulate that AI-based digital technologies have the potential to be useful. We reject the SISP approach because the odds of it delivering something objectively useful are extremely low. However, we do acknowledge that the SISP approach (whether practiced by technology startups, technology incubators, or organizational in-house laboratories, etc.) can deliver various other kinds of subjective socially-important values. Pursuing these is kinds of subject values is not worthless, it is just not our focus.
Chaos is an unavoidable symptom an emerging new domain of work
Compared to other more established domains of work, digital technology is still in its relative infancy. As a contrasting example, the technology of plumbing with pipes has been a work domain for more than 6,000 years. Although the technologies for plumbing with pipes continue to improve and evolve, the methods and public excitement over it have stabilized and standardized. People in general understand plumbing with pipes and accept it as a highly useful trade. Investment decisions about whether to participate in a new emerging plumbing pipe technology are generally founded on reality-grounded estimates of the innovation’s superior relative utility and economic advantages compared to existing inventory.
In contrast, the work domain of digital technology (esp. AI) is still emerging as something completely new. People are generally curious and drawn to novelty. As public attention grows in significance, it attracts aggressive high-risk speculative investors, and they strategically drive public discussion into a large irrational dynamic public spectacle. The methods for monetizing hype are established and reliable, and the SISP approach is a proven method to drive speculative monetization.
Extreme-risk activities may have strategically-valuable side-effects
In our experience, most technology startups (including the about 40% that are spun off from parent organizations) are formed knowingly and strategically as SISPs, with prior awareness that the probability of discovering and monetizing some to-be-determined objective utility of a novel technology are extremely low (perhaps less than 5%). Besides the low potential for technological utility, however, there are multiple other kinds of high-likelihood, high-value benefits at the core of why most technology startups operate. These other benefits that justify the effort include: short-term high-level investment income (with soft investor expectations); strong tax advantages for all investors (including owners); attention of the public media spotlight; positive impact on public perception of technical prowess (of the founders and investors); and the opportunity for profit from speculative buying and selling (see “Greater Fool Theory”). So, although perhaps 19-out-of-20 technology startups are doomed from the start to utterly fail at generating any successful or useful product, everyone involved: does it with foreknowledge of likely failure; enjoys the attention; and benefits personally.
Public messaging, however, typically has an unfortunate duality. Messages from technology startups are typically not about the valuable side-effects for participants. But, instead about the investment opportunity in technology as a territory, and its supposedly high-probability yet-to-be-determined practical utility. While the true aim (unspoken) is about the participants enjoying the valuable side-effects. Governments also encourage this activity through tax incentives, because they also benefit from the positive impact on public perception too. Additionally, if the novel SISP technology being promoted also has some believable socially-relevant narrative (like generating jobs), then public perception impact can be especially high.
[To those readers who participate in SISP projects, we hope you are not offended. We acknowledge the multiple different types of value that SISP projects deliver. Our intention here is to highlight and contrast between the SISP approach (that most people are familiar with), and what Trefoil Inc. does that is different.]
The approach of conducting extreme-risk activities solely for their side-effects is very common
Perhaps an analogy to car racing can help explain… NASCAR is a fun, exciting, highly-popular, public entertainment spectacle, that commands the attention of millions of people (ref., National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC; the France family). Everyone involved benefits, regardless of the fact that the drivers never accomplish any meaningful transportation. We also applaud NASCAR as a public entertainment spectacle and brand promotion activity, and praise their honesty in messaging. Everyone accepts that no meaningful transportation will get done.
Technology startups as public entertainment spectacles and brand promotion events, are successful for those participating. But the duplicity in messaging is troublesome for the general public’s attempts to track and understand actual reality. Most public media organizations allow their channels to be used for business-oriented advertising hype as if it were objective news, without alerting their audience of the intentional distortion. Some may argue that technology startups are not responsible for their use of public media channels for disguised advertising. However, there are multiple successful examples, like NASCAR, that do not do that.
[To those readers who have strong opinions about NASCAR, this website does not express an opinion. We only mention it as a highly-popular example of a public entertainment spectacle which is not duplicitous about the fact that its drivers accomplish no actual transportation.]
We focus our work on creating objective utility for safety-critical work problems, not because public entertainment spectacles are bad, but because objective progress is an underserved need. We postulate that there are important objective problems that need attention, outside of entertainment, and they bring opportunity for high-value high-potential solutions.
[Note, the question of selection and use of formal structured processes is relevant here. In our experience, the highly-advertised and popular formal process, Agile Process, is a great fit for an approach of SISP as public entertainment spectacle. SISP must eagerly pursue the highly-dynamic and whimsically-changing public interests in entertainment. Agile helps enable a project to continually pivot as necessary to chase something that quickly changes values. [Further discussion about the use of formal processes for innovation efforts]]
Technology territorialism is mostly fiction
Additionally, the assertion that a novel “technology” is a territory to be owned, has logical trouble. Comparing technology startups to high-risk real estate speculations is somewhat useful for explaining SISP, but even this characterization does not go far enough to describe the level of risk.
In a fictional real estate speculation example, although some investors will be deceived about the level of risk, others understand the risks, and choose to invest anyway. In addition to the socially-valuable side-effects, there is also a non-zero probably for some TBD high-value objective aspect of the real estate. The difference between this kind of real estate project, and a SISP technology spinoff, is the disparity in degree of probability that the territory may have objective value. For real estate, in general, there is a finite amount of potentially-valuable surface area of the Earth. Perhaps about 12% to 15% of the total land surface of the earth has a reasonable potential value for some human use (only about 3% to 4% if ocean surface area is included). And, although the currently unused portion of this “12% to 15%” is rapidly shrinking because of on-going development to keep up with exponential world population growth, there is still some left. So, although unlikely, every new real estate speculation project has a real non-zero mathematical probability of including some real piece of this remaining unused valuable property.
An analogy of technology as a territory, however, has a key difference. Technology, when viewed as a territory, is not a finite space like the Earth. The word “technology” just refers to a way of doing something, with no implication of utility. And, there are often a nearly infinite number of different ways of doing something (nearly all of which are relative nonsense). Reality is a stable thing that actually exists, and scientists just try to create every-more-useful ways to describe it. If creation of a novel technology is not grounded in relative utility, it may be complete fiction.
A purposefully-ludicrous fictional example can illustrate. Suppose someone invented a novel way for people to eat that uses trained wasps to carry food from the person’s plate to their mouth. Although crazy and revolting, this example fully qualifies as a “technology” — even though it has no objective utility. We could further envision launching a new technology startup based on this idea that begins generating spun messages, and pursuing investors. It likely would immediately: gain the public media spotlight; successfully capture the public attention (and probably investments – not because of its organic value, but for the side-effects of participating in the public entertainment spectacle).
However, unlike real estate that is bounded by the size of the Earth, the territorial size of the new technology can easily be zero? In real estate, the value of a specific real estate property is related to: (1) how useful is it; and (2) what portion of the inventory or available real estate it represents. In contrast, if the creation of novelty is not empirically-grounded in an objective problem, not only do we not know whether it has any utility, but we also do not know whether it represents any significant portion of an actual territory.
For example, although it is possible to estimate the objective utility of the fictional “wasp-based eating-aid” technology to be zero, how could the real size of this technology property be quantified? This technology as territory is a piece of something, but how big is that something? The “wasp-based eating-aid” is not just one of a few possible different ways of facilitating eating. It is instead, one of an infinite number of different novel (absurd) ways of potentially changing eating. And a finite piece of an infinite space is still zero. Or, in other words, owning a finite amount of something infinite is territorially meaningless.
[For those readers who are thinking, “I bet there is a way of monetizing a technology that could train wasps to do some to-be-determined (TBD) non-eating-related task.” We applaud your creativity. And if feasible, could envision this being part of a valid, not-eating-related, innovation brainstorming activity.]
Novelty for its own sake consumes limited resources
Many others do not take our position, but instead argue that the creation of novelty is worthwhile regardless of whether the novelty has any objective utility. They justify the costs associated with creating probably-meaningless novel technologies as a means of facilitating human interaction and promoting brand perception. “People always need something to talk about.” “Whoever delivers to deliver to this need, will be praised and rewarded — regardless of whether the topic of talk has any objective meaning.” This also explains why high-risk real estate speculation schemes are so popular – they are fun to talk about.
From this perspective, it is the frequency of talking among people that matters for making and maintaining human relationships. And, as long as the topic of conversation is not negative in specific ways, it impacts perception of brand potency in a positive way. Therefore, an organization’s technology incubator may create novelty and technology startup spinoffs strategically, with the sole aims of: causing positive impact in brand perception, and facilitating brand-centric talking to support human relationship maintenance. From this perspective, whether a novel technology has any objective utility is irrelevant.
Although we do not participate, we agree that this “novelty for its own sake” perspective does deliver valid kinds of value. However, a key negative side-effect is that the activity of creating “novelty for its own sake” consumes a limited resource that may be needed for something else. Unfortunately, the number of people who are willing, capable, and sufficiently-trained to be able to create novel and meaningful high technology is extremely small. We assert that it is useful to frame these individuals collectively are a rare, limited, and precious world resource. Additionally, this resource is also extremely expensive because of the required years of costly training to prepare each innovator.
We believe a global-scope key question is, “To what degree is reality safe enough that humanity can afford the luxury of expending this unique, expensive, limited resource on pursuit of generating meaningless novel things solely for: (A) populations to have something to talk about as they form and maintain human-human relationships; and (B) improving brand perception for the benefit of corporations?” We believe this is an important trade-off that is best answered relative to an objective measure of humanity’s degree of relative safety. Perhaps, in a relatively safe universe, spending 95% of this limited special resource on social lubrication and commercial branding could be justified, while only 5% is allocated for serious work? What is the current global allocation of this limited resource for “novelty for its own sake” as entertainment spectacle? [Although we do not have a reliable estimate, our experience informs a guess that the current percentage is very high, and is strategically and energetically defended.]
It is possible to “put the horse before the cart,” but it must be done out of public sight
We assert that it is possible to do it all – objective progress, social lubrication, and commercial branding. Novel solutions to objective problems can be developed. And, these innovations can additionally serve as something for people to talk about, and to positively impact the brand perception of organizations that deploys them.
However, inventing something with real objective utility is more vulnerable and unpredictable than the SISP approach allows. Publicly-owned organizations are often constrained by heavy external pressures, and not be able to deal with the higher level of unpredictability associated with problem-centric innovation. The Trefoil Inc. niche, instead, uses a skunkworks-style approach of privacy and confidentiality. For our customers, objective value arrives from us fully-formed and reduced to practice in confidence. And they remain completely free to manage communications and brand impact activities however best, including, the potential to simultaneously pursue SISP projects (separate from us) to support their other social and brand-impact activities.