Yuyin and I enjoyed the long weekend by heading down to Taichung for a friend’s wedding. It was awesome to meet some of her university buddies, and they let me know they liked me by proceeding to get me nice and drunk. In 100% recovery mode, we headed out to Gaomei wetlands on the coast; a protected area of marshlands and salt flats.
While some of the local guys were not entirely convinced – “what are they actually protecting, here?” – I had a happy time looking out the flat lands and thinking of home, and The Fens. A nice day out, even with a dickie stomach and funny head.
I have never in my life shot a proper gun before. Air rifles, yes. But never anything of the sort that could do anything more than kill a pigeon.
It was therefore with some trepidation that I joined the guys for a team off-site, shooting an assortment of guns at one of the local ranges. Interestingly, my trepidation was matched by the guys originally from New York, Boston and Chicago; basically anywhere without straight lines on their border maps. America really is two places, and our team is split neatly down the middle by who packs heat, and who chooses not to.
While I suggested this event, I actually expected someone to come up with a better plan. Turning up, I and my boss both looked more than slightly concerned by the other guys unloading cases of weaponry from their cars / trucks. Several levels of insight were unpeeled by our team members, as guys I would never has pinned as NRA members pulled out huge rifles and packs of pistols. Truly amazing, and a look into a different culture.
Stepping into the gun shop itself, we definitely left Austin city limits. The guys behind the desk eyed us as we made our way to the rental counter, and grudgingly agreed to my suggestion of being allowed to take photos of the team. Nothing unfriendly; but I guess when both parties could take out a small town with their weaponry, you are likely to look at people twice.
After being being pointed towards one of the pistols and walked through the finer points of loading, I was invited to disarm the safety, aim, and fire. Somewhat like the first moment you hit your first surf wave, it’s all so familiar, but at the same time terrifyingly alien. Squeeze the trigger, grip as hard as you dare, try to predict how hard it is going to kick … and … BANG. Just like that, I shot my first bullet.
Guns work in ways that you can’t immediately appreciate in a movie. Semi-automatic pistols have collections of moving parts that can easily (and did) cut your finger as they explode backwards. Revolvers require an amazing amount of travel before they finally fire. The amazing elk rifle that one of the guys brought could easily bruise your shoulder if held incorrectly. The plethora off different bullets, accessories, optics, holsters and storage boxes was to peer into an abyss of expense. And the vintage rifles that some of the people were firing were really rather magnificent to behold.
After all that, two groups of people met to shoot some bits of paper; those without guns, and those with. While I still don’t agree with the gun laws in place in America, and I don’t understand why someone would want to own a device that is specifically bought to maim or kill another human, I came away humbled, pleased that I had the opportunity to learn something about my other team members, and hell, had one heck of an enjoyable time blasting away.
Before.
Insert movie quote here.
The first of several victims. I was actually quite impressed with myself; by the end I was able to group my shots together surprisingly well.
Sunday was, naturally, Superbowl. The Pittsburgh Steelers played against the Greenbay Packers, in a northern-states head-to-head. This was my first Superbowl, so I was pretty excited to join in with the junk food, half-time adverts and shouting at an inert black box. I had effectively no idea what was happening the entire time, asked countless silly questions, and was probably more intrigued by some of the strange advertising; which was, I must say, a let-down.
Still, it was lots of fun to be there with committed Packers fans, and a bunch of work friends. You can’t but help be swept up in the sheer enthusiasm and pomp of the thing.
Team Latitude enjoy an afternoon of sport (on the sofa)
Insanely excited kids, air pumping and whooping at about age four.
West of Austin is Texas Hill Country; an area of rugged hills that reaches as far as the suburbs, and provides access to some pretty splendid hiking and biking. One of the tourist honeypots of the area is Enchanted Rock, an enormous granite rock dome, rising 130m above the surrounding area. We thought it would be a grand day out for the Bogners, Lattos and, well, Biddle. Perhaps due to the ‘snowpocalypse’ of the previous week, there were fewer people venturing out – and this combined with the fantastic weather and cool air, made for a great day.
ENCHANTED ROCK. YEAH!
It was steep!
Skylar has different ideas on the route. “Should we stop him?’
Les Bogneurs
The girls were on fine form!
Rugged, yet thoughtful. The designer’s designer.
Flyin’ high!
Which way?
Whoa!
Eric gives me the thousand-yard Texas stare. The children’s clothing draped round his neck finishes the look.
GOOD TIMES
Practising for when he needs to work at Dell.
Peekaboo!
Different shades of cuteness.
Yay!
The adventurer sets off once again
Pistols at dawn.
Granite
After, we headed to the truly bizarre Trois Estate … home of a faux-real Texan Mexican ranch church grotto cap-gun museum wine bar. All slightly unhinged, but lots of fun.
Accessories.
Doors leading somwhere
Silly moos.
Silly cow.
Dinner was at one of the ‘seven’ true Texan barbecues; Coopers. I have to say it was not a patch on the truly carcinogenic Louis Mueller’s … I still dream of the steak brisket I had there.
The weather on this trip to the USA has been pretty insane; sub-zero conditions, chilled winds, freezing roads, and more than a little danger. For anyone from a cold, wet country, you might take temperatures of a mere -6 degrees celsius in your stride. Such lows literally bring Texas to a sliding halt, though. There is zero infrastructure for handling the ice on the roads, people have no idea how to drive in such conditions, and the number and width of roads makes gritting a pain; forget about salt.
Walking out on Friday morning onto South Congress, I was presented with a comical scene of cars sliding around; many failing even to make it up the slope of the bridge to down-town. Indeed, a pick-up truck with a Mexican family in it was totally stuck, unable to move. With the whole family in the front, no weight in the back and no experience in these conditions it wasn’t perhaps a surprise. With a look of horror on the face of the driver, I pointed at the son in the back and we bumped, pushed and cajoled the vehicle up the slope, and he gave me a friendly wave goodbye. Job done. I must admit that I did not, however, help the Mercedes that got itself into the same situation a minute later!
The pursuit of cheaper, faster manufacturing has lead to an enormous shift in the economies of the ‘old’ Industrial nations. After losing basic manufacturing and support roles, the West is now haemorrhaging advanced development and design functions to the manufacturing companies of Asia; in many cases run by Taiwanese business owners. Most of the major technology brands now have significant development operations in the region, and their role will only develop further.
So, is Western design and innovation dead in the water?
Cultural Exports
The West (and Japan) have proven adept at innovating ‘platforms’. Technical platforms include HTML, GSM phone standards and television. ‘Cultural platforms’ are just as important, though; hip-hop, fixed-gear bikes, haute-couture fashion and social networking all started life in the West, and went on to stimulate globally influential industries around them; as evidenced on the streets of Taipei today.
Fixed gear bikes – the idea imported from Europe. The bike made in Taiwan.
Given the amount of technical expertise and knowledge on the ground in Taiwan, you would expect a similar amount of ‘platform’ innovation to be flourishing. For one reason or another, it isn’t. This innovation requires an empowered workforce, willingness to start small (rather than ramping-up to volume production), great marketing teams, access to sales channels, and amongst a multitude of other economic and cultural factors, the willingness to play – you ain’t going to invent the first MP3 player without first loving music, and you aren’t going to assemble the first mountain bike without ‘wasting’ a whole bunch of time with your friends in the hills.
But there is innovation here; just not in the ways we think about it. For example, the iPhone ‘platform’, while masterminded in California, was enabled by a dozens of Taiwanese technology vendors over many decades, and the gradual honing, optimisation and refinement of the component parts and assemblies was essential in its birth and development. It is this ‘incremental innovation’ competency that companies in the West are exporting to Asia.
Now, ‘Platform innovation’ and ‘incremental innovation’ are geographically decoupling, eliminating the ‘water-cooler’ conversations between marketeers, designers and engineers that so often lead to leaps of development.
Learning how to work with these guys in China will be increasingly important.
The Last of the Machinists
Consider the ‘old guard’ design houses in America and Europe; IDEO, Frog, Seymour Powell and the rest. The senior leadership of these organisations likely gained tacit hardware knowledge in an economic environment built on manufacturing and engineering expertise; it’s even possible that their own parents worked in technical or factory roles. But what happens to innovative industries when the keepers of this tacit knowledge retire? For economies that pride themselves on ‘innovation’ and design services – the UK and USA included – I believe the consequences are severe.
It’s part of the reason why, seven years ago, I decided to move to Taiwan.
Dual-Stream Innovation
Decoupling of ‘platform’ and ‘incremental’ innovation, difficulty in stimulating the ‘water-cooler effect’, and erosion of tacit knowledge, means many innovation-focused companies will struggle to do business in the way they used to.
Apple and a few others have been able to leverage a split innovation model; offloading the burden of innovating the countless component parts that individually might not contribute much to a product, but together form a synergetic whole; and retaining core competencies of layout, computer processors and mechanical aspects such as part tooling. By doing this, they are able to ride the wave of ‘incremental innovation’ provided by the immense volumes of an entire industry, push suppliers in a very targeted way, and make the platform leaps when they are ready. The result; a product like the iPad delievered to a pretty low cost for the consumer; and still a healthy margin.
Tooling in China. Supplier in Taiwan. Computer company in the USA. And a customer somewhere else entirely. Complicated!
But what about companies smaller than the Fortune 500 behemoths? For the UK at least, we need to become far more willing to invest time and effort in Asia, forge partnerships, work out what incremental improvements we can outsource, and what platforms to retain. The resultant development model is not the same as the one we learnt in university, and it is not the same as innovation process touted by the big innovation companies in the 90s. It’s a messier, more complex, interlinked model, spanning companies and international boundaries.
Western design and innovation is not dead, but it will need to become braver, more flexible and more cosmopolitan.
