Friday, November 23, 2012

Friction


Today I was talking to my friend about a product idea that requires users to take a very simple action to derive value from it. She thought that the product might have an issue with stickiness if it requires users to take an explicit action on regular basis. The reason that Mint works so well is because user is not required to take any action or change his normal routine in any manner. It pulls the necessary data from the bank servers.

The discussion reminded me of something I read in an innovation strategy book about continuous vs. discontinuous innovation. Even a small friction in value delivery can reduce the adoption and stickiness of the product. Users are less likely to adopt to discontinuous innovation, unless the value they derive from the effort to learn or perform an extra action is higher than the effort.



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