http://steveblank.com/2014/01/06/15756/

Steve Blanks blog on continuous deployment is immediately caught my eye because it uses Tesla, a case study we used in class, as an example. In the blog he talks about how companies are beginning to explore outside traditional business models like Waterfall product development into agile continuous development schemes.

Firstly, the concept of Waterfall product development influences consumers to purchase the new and improved goods or services the firms provide. By creating different, new and improved goods such as faster computers, better cards or new phones this creates a revenue stream that is continuous over time. Consumers will replace their existing goods with new goods even sometimes when the old good is still useable but they desire that upgraded new god.

This reflects how it is common for the modern society to discard working and good electronic devices for new ones. We do not need them but want them because they are new, better and trendy. This creates a huge amount of electronic waste and is a very unsustainable way of living. By producing goods after goods and not fully utilizing old goods it causes a major wastage.

By companies like Tesla and Adobe fighting this and having this agile development that looks at improving existing items incrementally makes their products more sustainable. By improving a car quarterly by updates is way more efficient and sustainable than buying a new car every 5 years. In Adobes case providing subscribers to new software allows Adobe to have a steady monthly income instead of annual spikes during the release of new products. This is more sustainable because instead of purchasing new software, you simply upgrade your existing software.

Although this is sustainable and appears to be a great idea, Steve Blank highlights a very crucial point which I agree with. The consumer mentality of wanting new things. It is as he says, irrational, inefficient and illogical.

In conclusion, I hope that this new business concept of continuous development and upgrades kicks off because not only is it way more sustainable but it could save consumers as well as producers a lot of resources. With the way we are striving forward unsustainably in the past decade, we will lead to a resource shortage, so hopefully with time large companies will understand this problem and address it accordingly by modifying their business models and values.