Innovation Management
Last updated
Last updated
The intranet’s transformative journey began with the emergence of affordable personal computers, early browsers like Mosaic and Netscape Navigator, and accessible intranet service providers. Early milestones included the rise of search engines such as Yahoo (1994) and Google (1998), which laid the foundation for today’s ubiquitous mesh of online services, representing a multi-billion-dollar industry that has revolutionized daily life.
For example, Amazon’s early evolution showcases rapid adaptation. From its rudimentary website in 1995 to its modern, user-centric interface in 2024, Amazon illustrates the power of iterative improvement and customer-focused design.
Behind the success of modern Internet companies lies a powerful toolbox of methodologies: design thinking, lean startup, and agile development. Together, these three frameworks—design thinking, lean startup, and agile—offer a holistic approach to innovation by combining user-centric problem solving, rapid iteration, and flexible, adaptive workflows. They have driven transformative success in the intranet and smartphone industries and hold valuable lessons for SDVs.
Design thinking is a human-centered, iterative problem-solving approach that focuses on understanding user needs, challenging assumptions, and exploring innovative solutions. Combining empathy, creativity, and rationality, this approach redefines problems to develop practical, user-centric outcomes. By prioritizing the user, design thinking has driven the creation of more meaningful and impactful products.
The lean startup methodology emphasizes rapid experimentation, validated learning, and iterative development to minimize waste and maximize value. At its core is the build, measure, learn cycle, which guides businesses to test ideas quickly, gather feedback, and adapt.
A concrete example is Amazon’s iterative testing approach:
A customer feedback dialog box was tested in three variations, each featuring small changes like different fonts or icons.
These variations were deployed to thousands of users, with the feedback informing which version to scale up.
This method allowed Amazon to continuously optimize its offerings, improve customer experience, and maximize revenue.
A central concept of lean startup is the minimum viable product (MVP), enabling early customer feedback and iterative improvement. From an SDV perspective, this raises the question: What is the MVP of a car?
Agile development has been a cornerstone of software innovation for the past two decades. Built on the foundation of the Agile Manifesto, agile emphasizes:
Individuals and interactions over rigid processes.
Working software over comprehensive documentation.
Customer collaboration over contract negotiations.
Responding to change over following fixed plans.
Scrum: Organizes work into iterative cycles called sprints, emphasizing collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Kanban: Visual workflow management that limits work in progress, optimizes flow, and focuses on delivering value efficiently.
When combined, design thinking, lean startup, and agile form a powerful foundation for innovation. Though not always an exact science, this synergy has driven the success of many intranet-based businesses.
We have explored best practices from the internet industry, including design thinking, lean startup, and agile, and the big question is: how much of this can be applied to the automotive industry, particularly in the development of Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs)?
Automotive development requires understanding which features demand a first-time right approach and which can adopt an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) strategy:
First-Time Right Features: Safety-critical components like airbags and driving-related systems require rigorous processes to ensure failure-free operation from the outset.
MVP Features: Vehicle experience-related features, such as personalized settings or infotainment systems, can be iteratively and experimentally improved over time.
The key is determining the appropriate approach for each feature or feature component.
While agility is desirable, several factors necessitate a more rigid, planning-oriented process in many areas of automotive development:
Safety-Critical Features:
High safety demands prevent catastrophic failures and require rigorous validation.
Cross-Organizational Alignment:
Large organizations and multi-stakeholder collaborations (OEMs, suppliers, regulators) require stable requirements and extensive planning.
Hardware and Mechanical Parts:
Fixed specifications and long lead times necessitate detailed planning and stability.
Fixed-Price Development Contracts:
For software components or AI-enabled functions, fixed-price contracts mandate predefined deliverables and timelines.
Manufacturing Setup:
Long lead times and the need for planning stability make agile practices challenging in manufacturing contexts.
Regulatory Compliance:
Despite emerging practices like continuous homologation, regulatory requirements often demand detailed documentation and stable processes.
These challenges explain why the automotive industry continues to rely on planning-oriented approaches like the V-model, often combined with agile practices for specific areas.
To address these challenges and enable faster, more customer-centric development, the digital-first paradigm is emerging as a transformative approach. It consists of two key elements:
Shift North:
Moving functionality out of deeply embedded areas and above the hardware abstraction layer.
Enables faster, more agile development by decoupling software from hardware constraints.
Shift Left:
Emphasizes early-stage prototyping, simulation, and virtualization.
Facilitates upstream testing and validation to catch issues early, reducing downstream costs and risks.
These strategies help balance the need for safety and stability with the agility required to innovate in the rapidly evolving world of SDVs.
Further exploration of the digital-first paradigm, including shift left and shift north, will be covered in the following sections.
