It’s not about the things we make..

Master storyteller Malcolm Gladwell tells the tale of the Norden bombsight, a groundbreaking piece of World War II technology with a deeply unexpected result.

This is a superb story for marketers and designers. It is not about the things we make, it how we use the things we make. Sounds similar to SD-Logic (The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing by Stephen Vargo and Robert Lusch) where the premise that products and services only create the opportunity to provide value. Value is created only when the customer uses the product or service.

Helene Cote comments on Malcolm Gladwell: The strange tale of the Norden bombsight

This is not a story about war. This is the story of humankind and the paradox of our lifestyle, as explained by one given example. And Malcolm’s conclusion is simply that we need to change our patterns of thinking, not invent better ‘things’.

We are trying to invent ‘things’ to solve issues & problems we, ourselves, create, in the futile attempt to get rid of the problem, rather that figuring it out….why the problem even exists. As long as we keep asking ourselves the w r o n g questions, we will continue to create ‘things’ that allow us to impose our power, ignorance, vanity and hedonist attitudes upon others, reaping, of course, the repercussions of those actions, only to create more ‘things’ in response to that…the story goes on and that summarizes everything in our history books.

Whether it be a new pill, a butter substitute, or missile launcher, we just keep reinventing the same ‘thing’. Something to allow us to maintain the very lifestyle that is at the root of the problem. But let’s not look at that, let’s invent something new instead.
And in a way, isn’t it about varieties of spaghetti sauce ?”