As an industry, we are not only too concerned with surface beauty, but we are attracted to the worst kind: fleeting beauty. 

On Twitter Baldur Bjarnason tweeted a link to the following excerpt from the New York Times Innovation Report along with the comment "The report, IMO, underlines the uselessness of 'snowfalling' as an innovation strategy": 

I couldn't agree more, and the concept of maximizing impact / replicability is a central to my new book Website Product Management: Keeping focused during change. In this article, let's first look at the problems of concentrating on fleeting beauty and then how to dig out of this approach. 

Before continuing, let me be clear: I certainly appreciate art, design, and new things. I am married to an architect (of thedesign rather than technical persuasion). I am often the first to try new mobile apps. But I think we should be looking for a much deeper and longer lasting beauty on the web. 

Why being enamoured with fleeting beauty is a problem

What do I mean by our attraction to fleeting beauty? Fundamentally, concentrating way too much on what a digitalartifact looks like or works. For example, rather than looking at overall quality of a web presence, we focus on the microsite (see Cheer or jeer? Did that slick new website help?), campaign, or new presentation technique for a particular piece of content. Sure, highly tailored and innovative approaches are fun and exciting to look at. They might even push things forward on a better path. But if just that one artifact (for example, just one article) has that innovation, then we have a variety of problems:  These innovations are disconnected, especially over time. This is perhaps the easiest to overlook when thinking short term. What use is your innovation if it is only a curiosity, not leading to deeper engagement with your organization? If it's just an island of content, what value is it bringing your organization?They lose their luster. If you have content that is evergreen, then a new presentation technique now quickly looked dated three years from now. If you use a common template for all articles for example, then when you change that template then even old content is presented using the same format. The point is that, unless you take down this innovation at some point, this may still be the entry point to your web presence far in the future. Will it present you in favorable light then?They overlook higher-impact opportunities. Instead of implementing a one-off, would there be a way of implementing in such a way that this innovation could be applied to more (or all) of the content and presentations of your content? Or a way where success could be tracked across efforts in order to properly learn from experiments?They miss the "thread". From the reader's perspective, each interaction is part of a broader thread. For instance, perhaps someone is interested in mountaineering. If they come to Snow Fall, does this article offer the opportunity to continue exploration of content on that topic?They take resources away from broader issues. In addition to being in a mindset that overlooks the broader issues, concentrating on one-offs leaves even well-known issues on the back burner due ot the lack of resources.They perpetuate an unsophisticated view of a digital presence. Instead of one time visits, we should be aiming for long term engagement. Instead of thinking about the success of a particular page / article, we should be looking at the sucess of the entire digital presence.How to kick the addiction to short-lived innovationsFundamentally, we need to first admit this problem and then move toward a more mature way of viewing digital presence success. We should look at three aspects when considering any change or innovation (download this one page flowchart):Business first. Exactly how will this serve a business need?Long term. How will this change work (and be managed) over time? Broadly. How can this change be applied broadly (across more of your web presence)?Another way of looking at it is that our websites will constantly change, and so we should always be thinking about our web presences in that way. If you are considering implementing something as an experiment, then truly treat the change as an experiment. Here is an excerpt from Website Product Management on experiments:But a web presence is more than a series of experiments. Here are some specific recommendations to move beyond short term thinking: Always maximize impact. For any change, how could it be leveraged toward higher impact? Even if you don't make the higher-impact change, this question should always be asked. If you are making the same type of change often, then that should be streamlined.Separate out those things that should happen quickly and those that should happen slowly. You need to create a gap in time where you have a chance to carefully consider how (and if) you will respond to any possible change. Of course, some things should happen quickly, like day-to-day publishing. Other patterns may not be immediately obvious. What may seem like a need for more flexbility may be a pattern in disguise. For instance, if you are frequently creating topic pages, then you may need to step back and create an infrastructure for this (rather than just ineffeciently creating them as one-offs). The point is that you should create a regular and ongoing cycle of change, so that all stakeholders understand and expect this rythym that allows for these higher impact changes.Focus on the bones of your site. Launches and one-offs aren't what should be applauded. The platforms and templates to maximize impact are far more important. When evaluating success, evaluate your capability and not just the concrete pages you can count.Stop taking orders. Just like the iPhone is a coherent product, a digital presence must rise above the pushes and pulls of particular stakeholders to deliver a coherent presence. Sometimes organizations should make infrastructure changes that even surprise digital teams.