I don't think so. I can almost hear Jeff's voice...
"Don't make your problem the customer's problem!"
There are often many technical solutions to create a particular customer experience. Jeff never accepts false dichotomies. If the particular technical solution being considered fails to produce a delightful customer experience then you better start thinking about other solutions. Many of the projects on which I worked turned out much better when Jeff challenged us break out of our little technical boxes and consider alternate solutions that preserved the customer experience.
I can sense that my answer will be frustrating to some who don't like being told that they aren't thinking big enough / creatively enough / bold enough / outside the box enough. Believe me, I felt that way too when working on Jeff projects. I left his office in frustration many times only to realize several hours or days later that I would have been better served by focusing on creative problem solving instead of trying to convince Jeff that X was not possible.
I have immense respect for Jeff. I also have increased respect for Sergy because he appears to be asking the right types of questions at Google.
> at Amazon the drone program would start with .. the customer experience ... and you'd work backwards to the technology solution. At Google the technology precedes the customer experience.
This seems to happen frequently with some of the largest tech companies. I'm reminded of how Apple was developing a tablet computer, what would eventually become the iPad, far before anyone was thinking about multi-touch interfaces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad#History). They spent almost 10 years in R&D before they were able to put something out there, and even longer before they could actually ship the iPad. It's a good thing they wasted all that money, because it ended up paying off.
I think Google, Amazon and even Microsoft are hedging similar bets against the limits of technology. After all, what's impossible today may be trivial tomorrow.
> far before anyone was thinking about multi-touch interfaces
CERN built capacitive multi-touch displays in the 70s. Mitsubishi, Bell, Microsoft, IBM and a bunch of other companies were involved in the R&D from there.
What Apple are good at is integrating and commercializing at the exact point where the economies of scale are viable, adding a layer of accessibility for users (eg. inventing the gestures, but not the touch technology itself).
The anecdote about how Apple tried to launch the iPad before the iPhone is proof that they didn't catch-on to how the core touch tech scaled (every inch of touch surface would increase production cost non-linearly) until much later.
Well, I think starting with the experience first gives you a clear indication if this is worthwhile or not. Once you decide if it is worthwhile then you can go back to the technology and determine if it is feasible.
