The Kind of Creative Thinking That Fueled WeChat’s Success
WeChat, the messaging app, dominates daily life in China. Researchers conducted an in-depth study of the company, through exclusive interviews with 15 executives, including founder Allen Zhang. They argue that WeChat’s success wasn’t achieved through technological superiority, but through the vision – or grand design – of Zhang. They explore how the grand design approach to innovation – where a new product or service emerges fully-formed in the mind’s eye of the innovator before it is developed and commercialized – can be more effective than design thinking under certain circumstances, most notably when a market is in its early formative stage of development.
WeChat, the messaging app, dominates daily life in China. With more than a billion daily active users, it is the default option for social networking and chat. WeChat users send more than 45 billion messages a day. It is the leader in mobile payments, with more than 800 million users of WeChat Pay. And it provides integrated services for upwardly-mobile Chinese users, by offering taxi, restaurant, movie-booking and retail apps all within its platform.
Many westerners are skeptical about successful Chinese software companies like WeChat: there is a perception that they have succeeded through copycat strategies, and have benefited from Facebook and Google being blocked from operating in the country. But WeChat didn’t get an easy ride: it had to fend off dozens of domestic competitors when it was launched, and it had to keep innovating to stay ahead. Many observers rate WeChat as offering a superior user experience than its western counterparts today, and its innovative features are now being copied by others.
We recently conducted an in-depth study of WeChat, through exclusive interviews with 15 executives, including founder Allen Zhang. What we’ve found that is WeChat isn’t just a Chinese success story – it offers insights to innovators everywhere.
Our research suggests that WeChat’s success wasn’t achieved through technological superiority. It was built on the vision – or grand design – of Allen Zhang, a senior executive at Chinese tech company Tencent, who saw an opportunity in 2010 to create an entirely new product for the mobile era. He personally led the entire development effort of WeChat, taking responsibility for the overall look and feel of the product, as well as overseeing the coding teams.
The grand design logic is markedly different from the now-standard design thinking approach to innovation that was popularized by design firm IDEO in the 1990s. Design thinking has been defined as a non-linear, iterative process which seeks to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. This user-centric perspective has made design thinking hugely popular, but some consultants and academics have argued that it is too structured, too prescriptive, and results in incremental or conservative outputs.
We argue that the grand design approach to innovation – where a new product or service emerges fully-formed in the mind’s eye of the innovator before it is developed and commercialized – can be more effective than design thinking under certain circumstances, most notably when a market is in its early formative stage of development. Think, for example, of Steve Jobs’ classic inventions, such as the iPod and the iPhone, Masaru Ibuka’s Sony Walkman, or Elon Musk’s Hyperloop.
Our study of WeChat revealed four key components of the grand design approach to innovation that other innovators might consider when developing ideas.
1. Creating a work of art, not a commercial product. Design thinking seeks to create practical, user-oriented solutions: it is about pulling together what’s desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. In contrast, the grand design starts with a concept, a vision in the mind’s eye of the creator, and it holds onto that concept for as long as possible. Here is how Allen Zhang described WeChat to us:
Before perceiving WeChat as a commercial product, I’d rather picture it first as an impressive work of art. When I started designing user interactions for Foxmail, I complicated everything. It felt wrong because it no longer looked neat. For WeChat, I now see the necessity of subtraction – making things simpler –and focusing on the product’s aesthetic quality.
As one example, the feature bar at the bottom of the WeChat screen is four icons: Chat, Contacts, Discover, Me. Over the years many people suggested adding to this list, like many other apps, to support users’ behavior. Zhang said no: “I told the team to establish a rule that WeChat shall always have a four-icon bar, and never add anything to it.” Another example is the almost complete absence of advertising. Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, WeChat users see a maximum of two ads per day through the Moments feature.
There is of course a tension between artistic ideals and commercial realities. Comparing WeChat with Facebook, the New York Times says Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook to emulate WeChat by reducing the number of ads, but he hasn’t done so, presumably for fear of reducing Facebook’s profitability. Allen Zhang, in contrast, faces requests to increase the amount of advertising on WeChat because its owner, Tencent, is a publicly-traded company and faces pressure to increase its profitability. Zhang has held his ground up to now, arguing that continued growth is more important than current profitability. As the HR head for WeChat told us, this decision “is a testament to Allen’s ideology sinking into the heart of the team.”
2. Responding selectively to users. At the heart of design thinking is the notion of empathy – the ability to see the world through other people’s eyes, to see what they see, and experience things as they do.
While the grand design approach to innovation doesn’t deny the importance of empathy, it takes a selective approach to how much user views should be heeded, because if one does everything they ask, the result is increased complexity and a loss of coherence.
How does WeChat address the needs of its users? Allen Zhang explained to us that he asks developers to put themselves in the shoes of their least sophisticated users – people who might be technologically illiterate, or trying WeChat for the first time. From his early days in the company, he pushed his team to develop this ‘dumb user’ perspective through what he called the 10/100/1000 principle: product managers were expected to do ten end-user interviews, read 100 user blogs, and collect feedback from 1,000 user experiences every month.
While these insights are important, specific user requests are sometimes deliberately ignored. For example, unlike most social apps in the west, WeChat does not have a “read” notification to tell the sender their message has been opened. Many people requested that function, but Zhang said no. Harvey Zhou, one of the founding team members of WeChat, explained the logic to us: “Allen thinks social interaction should not be forced: if you send me a message, I may not want to respond immediately, and if I know you have received a notification, that pressures me to respond. We are determined not to add this, to respect the individual and to preserve their independence.”
In a similar way to Steve Jobs, Allen Zhang has also shown an uncanny knack for understanding what users want or need even without them being able to articulate their view. For example, two key features that have helped secure WeChat’s dominant position in off-line payments are Mini Programs and QR code scanners. While they are ubiquitous today, WeChat had to be proactive in getting users to try them out initially.
How does one know which user requests to listen to and which to ignore? There are no easy answers, but two rules of thumb are helpful: think about coherence (is it consistent with the existing design?) and simplicity (can I still do the basics well if I add this feature?).
3. Managing the process through top-down stewardship. Another key feature of design thinking is its emphasis on collaboration – the notion that good ideas emerge through a social process where people build on each other’s suggestions. There is no room for big egos in design thinking.
The grand design approach, in contrast, gives less freedom to the collective and puts more faith in the views of a small number of people (sometimes just one) at the top. It operates through top-down stewardship. It is paternalistic in style: we want you to share your ideas, but we won’t act on many of them, because we know best.
As Allen Zhang told us: “We encourage people who present their own way of thinking – I encourage them to speak out.” But at the same time, it is clear that he makes all the key decisions himself. As his colleagues explained, they submit new features to him for approval, and he decides on the icon, the nickname, and other key aspects of the user experience. Developers are keenly aware that the biggest challenge is how to ‘get past Allen’, and that many seemingly good features are vetoed by him.
WeChat executives explain this process in a couple of ways. First, Zhang is striving for a meritocracy, where the best thinking, in his view, wins out. Second, WeChat has benefitted enormously from having a singular, coherent identity, and this in turn is made possible when there is a single architect with decision-making authority. When a product feature is vetoed by Zhang, it isn’t because it’s a bad idea in its own right; it is because that feature doesn’t fit with his vision for WeChat.
Of course, this top-down approach brings challenges – its harder for new leaders to rise up through the ranks, and it risks stifling fresh thinking. The leader has to work hard to explain why specific ideas are being rejected and to reassure them that their input is still important. And as we discuss below, the leader has to know when to shift to a more inclusive model.
4. Leading with conviction. The style of leadership required for design thinking and grand design also differs. Design thinking favors a coaching style of leadership, hand-holding when necessary but drawing back when a team hits its stride. The grand design logic, in contrast, puts leaders on a pedestal – they embody the design they are pursuing, and they project a strong emotional conviction about why it is right. This leadership may be charismatic and larger-than-life, or more softly spoken and introverted.
Allen Zhang’s conviction is manifested in a number of ways. He obsesses over the details. As he explained to us, “I am the only senior executive I know of, inside and outside our company, who sits in meetings with front line product manager to go through each and every detail.” He is also a perfectionist. “I don’t allow a single flaw in the product” he explained to us. “I set aside the way a company normally does things… otherwise our product cannot be guaranteed to be the best”.
Of course, leaders who adopt design thinking aren’t lacking in conviction – but their conviction is to a process, a way of working, rather than to any particular design.
WeChat illustrates the potential value of the grand design approach to innovation. But it’s clear that grand designs can be risky, because they go beyond the proven needs and wants of users. One well-known cautionary tale is Dean Kamen’s Segway – a brilliant vision of the future of personal transportation that never really got off the ground. Kamen thought he would sell half a million units a year, but actual sales were only 300,000 in total over the first six years.
So when is a grand design appropriate? In simple terms, this approach to innovation is more likely to be successful when user needs are fluid and malleable. Allen Zhang’s grand design for WeChat succeeded because he was able to shape the emerging marketspace.
WeChat was created at the specific point in time, 2009-2010, when social networking on smartphones was taking off, thanks to the rollout of 4G technology. In both North America and China, there was a scramble to colonize this new marketspace, with many competitors offering different visions for how users might take advantage of real-time browsing and photo and video sharing. Harvey Zhou described how WeChat’s approach to innovation in this period differed from before:
When we did QQ Mail, everyone was a user, we experienced it through our perspective, and if something wasn’t good enough we just changed it. Every developer could be part of an optimization process. But when we are trying to create something radical, a bottom-up process would tear it apart. Users need to be given an extremely clear concept with precise information – and that needs a single architect.
Of course, as the smartphone user experience becomes more established and predictable, the need for a grand design recedes, and the value of the traditional design thinking approach becomes greater. WeChat’s leaders are starting to recognize this. Allen Zhang told us that for several of the more incremental features being developed today, such as Top Stories (personalized article recommendations), he is giving teams full authority to make their own design choices.
What should innovators take away from WeChat’s experience? First, you need to understand the key principles underlying your chosen approach for innovation and product development. Design thinking is now so well established that many people don’t question whether it is the right methodology. But it builds on a number of underlying assumptions – for example, empathy with user needs and collaborative development – that aren’t right for all circumstances. By laying out the alternative set of assumptions underlying a grand design logic, you can engage in a more critical and constructive discussion about why you are using your chosen model.
Second, you should be thoughtful about the specific circumstances in which you are operating, and choose your innovation approach on that basis. Design thinking works well in established and mature markets where user needs are properly understood and innovation tends to be incremental, whereas the grand design approach has greater scope to succeed under conditions of high uncertainty, and where user needs are unknown and potentially malleable.
Innovation is the lifeblood of any successful company, but many companies get it wrong – by falling into the trap of me-too incrementalism, or by betting on risky new offerings that miss the mark. A clear understanding of the conditions in which you are operating will help you make better choices about the approach to innovation that you use.
Julian Birkinshaw is Deputy Dean and Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the London Business School. His most recent book is Fast/Forward: Make Your Company Fit for the Future.
Dickie Liang-Hong Ke is a Technology Entrepreneur and Sloan Fellow at London Business School
Enrique de Diego is a Visiting Professor at Universidad de Navarra.
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