HP's Ecosystem and its bearing on Enterprise/Software Architecture

I was listening to a podcast by Businessweek that interviewed Sam Lucente, who is the Vice-President of Design at Hewlett Packard. He talked about the concept of universal design, also referred to as HP's Ecosystem.

In the conversation that ensued, he talked about 3 approaches. The first, Design to Simplify that allows to drive reusable design elements. The second, Design to Differentiate that relates to how to differentiate oneself in the marketplace. The last, Design to Innovate that helps create new markets and new business models. In terms of articulating contributions to the bottom line of the company, Design to Simplify had a direct impact whereas Design to Innovate was the most difficult to articulate.

In my view, these approaches are equally applicable to the realms of Enterprise/Software Architecture. Not only that, these approaches appear to be evolutionary, in the order as described above. For companies that are still exploring the value of having an architecture practice, the most attractive value proposition would be to use architecture as a means to create reusable elements.

The next steps in the evolution of an architecture practice would be where it helps a company to Differentiate and to Innovate.