Synthetic Sharkskin
I am not usually a fan of campus publications, but I happened across a copy of The Planet, WWU’s eco-friendly printed environmental quarterly magazine, ironically in a wastebin in my office at the Viking Union. I read a ton of electronics, video game, and marketing news sites and blogs, but since starting this class I have taken special interest in environmental and especially environmental technology news.
This quarter’s issue was especially good, but one article stood out to me, and I found it was especially applicable to our clas discussion on biomimicry. Biomimicry is taking inspiration from nature to solve design problems. The book this definition is in even used shark skin as an example, which is exactly the topic of the article in this quarter’s The Planet. “Rough Scales Make Smooth Sails” talks about recent design strides towards the development of shark-like skin for use on watercraft hulls. The thought is that with such a jagged design, marine life cannot attach itself as easily to the hull, helping with the hydrodynamics of the ship.
Ecological design comes into play here in two tiers. First, at a superficial level, this design ultimately helps with fuel consumption, as less biological accumulation on the ship leads to less drag in the water.
Secondly, and most importantly, the development of this synthetic skin will reduce the use of chemical treatments on ship hulls, a contributor to water pollution. While at face value, the amount of pollutant in this treatment may seem insignificant, water pollution can be quite a problem.
As for the larger discussion of biomimicry, it seems that we always see the success stories as examples, what about the failures. Will this shark skin actually prove to be profitable to produce? Anything involving nano or even micro-level engineering is bound to expensive, and are the payoffs enough to merit its mainstream adoption?
In my other class this quarter, Product Innovation, we talk a lot about product adoption cycles, and the concept of “the chasm“, that is, the gap between early adopters and early majority consumers, and one explanation for why 90% of new products fail. This theory states that there are fundamentally different groups of consumers, the visionaries, the early adopters, the early majority (pragmatics), the late majority (conservatives), and the laggards. Each of these groups, especially the two majority groups, rely heavily on referencing between their own group. This proves to be a dilemma for the innovator, because if your product has a strong support from early adopters, this reference means little to the pragmatics, hence the chasm.
Applied to the synthetic sharkskin example, the chasm marketing concept applies nicely. If you are the developer of this new product, the innovators and early adopters are likely to be quite enthusiastic and supportive of your product. These individuals want the newest technology and want to tell everyone about it too. But think about the average boat owner. While this application may reduce costs in the long run, it is probably a large upfront cost to change over. Plus its simply a change from the norm, and change is a tough thing to do in marketing. How do you get the rest of boat owners on board (nautically themed puns, my favorite) to have a noticeable impact on the reduction chemical applications?
One solution is going after small niche groups, such as service boats (ferries, coast guard, etc), or fishing communities and expanding your beachhead from there, analagous to knocking one bowling pin down that then knocking down another, and so on (read Crossing the Chasm for more detail on this). The lesson of this post is: ecological designers and marketing innovators need to work together more often; together they can make some pretty cool stuff.
