What beauty - about aesthetics, cars, coffee and computers

In the creative industry, which includes branches such as cinema and theater, fashion and art, it is clear that aesthetics are an important part of innovation - and hence also of competition. But how can one understand the aesthetic emphasis on products and services in technology-based industries?

"Traditionally, in technological industries, design has been relegated to the corner," explains Dr. Miki Eisenman from the School of Business Administration at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "We simply do not have a benchmark for design in economic competition between technology companies. They usually talk about speed, efficiency, and of course the price of the product."

With the help of a research grant from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Eisenman, together with Prof. Tal Simmons from Erasmus University, are conducting historical research on three case studies of design as an influential factor in non-aesthetic industries: automobiles, coffee and computers.

"In the automotive industry we recognize a dynamic that we call 'strategic aesthetic innovation', since a significant part of the innovation in the industry is done according to design parameters," explains Dr. Eisenman. "Historically, a few years after the invention of the car, Henry Ford came up with the clever idea of ​​the assembly line: instead of producing many types of cars, Ford sold the same car to a lot of people - and thus he bought himself a large market share among the middle and even lower class, who suddenly could afford to buy a car for themselves. Thanks to the efficiency of the mass production line, it was almost impossible to compete with Ford in the price category. Alfred Sloan of General Motors understood the car differently. He understood that it is a fashion accessory, like a bag or a hat, and that people see what car you drive and in this way assess your socio-economic status. Sloan introduced a dynamic of fashion into the industry, which enables a quick change of cars - and thus we reached a situation where the strategic difference between two cars is purely design. After all, the automobile industry has been perfected to such an extent that all cars are good, without significant technological differences.

Joshua Griffith

Sloan managed to keep the mass production lines by changing only the shell - the wings, the paint - without touching the expensive technological base. Why is it strategic? Because Sloan has created lots of similar categories of cars, so the consumer will always feel like they can jump to the next category. GM increased its market share, and more importantly for our research question - the identification of a car as a status symbol was so successful that to this day all other car manufacturers, including Ford, compete according to this dynamic - and it is enough to look at the road."

A look at the cafe - research, design and photography: Guy On

The second industry that Dr. Eisenman and her colleague tested is the elite coffee industry. Here they identified "high-impact innovation", as they say. "In the gourmet coffee industry, the design factor grew from a seed planted by an entrepreneur named Howard Schultz. Schultz identified a market in the US for a European coffee shop, in the sense of a 'third space' - a place to chat, take a short break, and even work - that would be based on surface coffee in terms of beans and roasting. Schultz was an operational genius. He had no interest in aesthetics, but he understood that he would have to educate the customers to consume premium coffee that cost much more than coffee bought at the stand for 50 cents. That's why he offered a total experience, which will be very different from the familiar one: whoever enters a Starbucks branch immediately recognizes it as a Starbucks branch - from the smell of the coffee, through the sound of the grinding to the language itself, which compels the customer to order a 'granda latte' for example. Since it is very easy to imitate the competitors in the coffee industry, Schultz opened branches throughout the USA, with the branch arriving as a 'kit': the branches look the same, the machines are in the same place, the design line is uniform, the design language is uniform. The seminal success of Starbucks determined the boundaries of the sector in the new market, and everyone who entered this market had to position themselves in relation to Starbucks. That is why it is a very influential innovation: Schulz set the rules of the game."

Dr. Eisenman's third test case is perhaps the most famous case of design innovation in the computer industry - the case of Apple. What is the question? Why should design be part of the competition in technological industries?

"The market dynamics we identified in the case of Apple is that of 'evangelical aesthetic innovation', meaning aesthetic innovation that results from the market's interaction with 'debaters', mainly critics and journalists who stand between the producer and the consumer. Unlike the automotive industry, we believe that in the computer industry there is no strategic justification for investing in design innovation, since personal computers were mainly used indoors. But the company's design language was personally important to Steve Jobs, and he was a celebrity CEO. We tend to attribute more personal control over the company's results to famous CEOs, because it's easier for journalists to tell the company's story that way - without getting into complex operational questions. The CEO's actions attract a great deal of media attention, and this is how a dynamic of 'evangelical aesthetic innovation' is created - which is perceived by everyone as significant, without reference in numbers. The truth is that Apple was a negligible company, with a small market segment, when Jobs returned to its CEO. In the end, the operating system was the deciding factor in buying personal computers, not Jobs' design, and Apple became what it is today thanks to pure technological innovation - the iPhone. But the glorification of Jobs' decisions by the journalists meant that both the needs and the competitors follow the idea that design is important to the industry, without examining this question from an operational or strategic point of view. The myth of Jobs continues to influence the industry."

He realized that he would have to educate the customers to consume premium coffee that costs much more than coffee you buy at a stand for 50 cents. Therefore he offered a total experience

Dr. Mickey Eisenman

Life itself:

"I am very interested in France and French culture," says Dr. Eisenman, "I think the French have an innate aesthetic sense."

For the article on the Voice of Science website

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• Prof. Oded Ravefi from Uni' Tel Aviv won 2.5 million dollars for free research
• Meta-beauty or why beauty is not dead
• Save the coffee