In my previous blogs, I covered the Performance Zone and the Productivity Zone within Geoffrey Moore’s framework. In this blog post, I am covering the Incubation Zone and how it impacts the UX strategy within that zone.
Incubation Zone
The Incubation Zone has the longest time horizon (3-5 years), and for a company to invest in such a distant future, it needs to be a disruptive innovation with a significant potential impact. The goal is to create the “next big thing”, not just innovation in technology or in the business model. This effort, if successful, should result in a “new company” with a significant revenue stream coming out of it (10+% of total revenue).
The recommendation is to manage each initiative as an independent operation unit and manage them separately. In the same way as a start-up requires funding from venture capitalist, each operating unit requires funding from the company (the company appoints a venture board). This mean the initiatives here live the uncertain life of start-ups, they might run out of funds, be shut down, spun-off, etc.
If the company is in growth mode, the initiatives can flourish in this start-up like model (as long as they seem promising), and the goal is to become successful enough so that the company will pick it up as a new line of business. If it fails, it might get a second chance, but not a third.
If the company is primarily trying to protect their market shares, these initiatives are instead needed to help the rest of the company and fight off potential threats. This means that these initiatives have to integrate their technologies into the existing business, even if it means the end of that initiative as a star-up.
UX professionals working for initiatives in the Incubation Zone will be working in a start-up like mentality even if it is a well-established company. This results in wearing multiple hats, and at times, maybe even perform non-UX work.
If the company is focused on growth, the initiatives can continue operating as a start-up, which means running at the speed of light. The UX strategy most appropriate would therefore be Lean UX and other processes that work well in an extremely agile environment.
Alternatively, if the company primarily wants to protect their market shares, the technology of the “start-ups” needs to be integrated to the existing business (initiatives in the Performance Zone). If these initiatives already are staffed with a generalist, they might need to layoff the UX employees working in the “start-up”.
Next blog post will cover the Transformation Zone
© David Juhlin and www.davidjuhlin.com, 2017