So, the other day I was reading an article about architects and carpenters regarding innovation, where the author (John Mitchell), described his experience when dealing with home renovation. Since he outsourced the work, the carpenter often asked him what to do with the space, what were his needs and wishes, which apparently was complicated for him to describe, hence the function of an architect and why we should be always one.

That’s nice, from a consumer and user-centric perspective. We need to put our best effort into decide what we want and how do we want it. But from a business perspective, it’s a disaster!! Right now there’s a huge need for carpenters, plumbers, electricians and handy-man people, where we pay a lot (and I mean a lot) for them to do the “dirty” work for us.

If we extrapolate this to the IT world, we can fairly imagine that being an architect is not the way to go. Everyone wants to be one and can be one. It’s work, sure, but is rather easy to do it. We’re just outsourcing the hard work to someone and managing what we need and want. On the other hand, being a carpenter is where the money (and also work) is, and believe me, the need for those people will grow up and the money we’ll end up spending with them is going to be more than with architects (everyone is one, remember?).

On the civil engineering world, we need more carpenters and not architects. On the IT world, it’s just the same and innovation happens when a lot of people really know how to do stuff and not just have a consumer need.