The tech world is buzzing with “agile development” and “scratch your own itch.” The thinking goes that if you’re a web developer or web designer, you should build a product for yourself, because you know that customer intimately.

In our flattened, long-tail world — so the thinking goes — you’ll be able to find enough customers just like you, those customers will love your product, and you can build on their esteem in order to build a sustainable business.

It’s a great approach. And it worked well for the first-to-market, early adopters.

But like any niche industry, web developers and web designers have a more narrow, easily-defined set of needs and frustrations than the total market for software. As such, the design & development corner of the software world is becoming saturated with similar products — project management, hourly billing, code management, and contact management applications.

Many of those web-worker-specific needs and frustrations have already been satisfied by great products. But the “scratch your own itch” mantra persists, and instead of creating new products, the web app world is creating flavors of products instead. It’s a lot like salad dressing at the grocery store: smart, useful innovation is avoided in favor of pandering to individual tastes and preferences.

Designers and developers still searching for a business model need to branch out. They need to partner with other industries, get exposed to new ideas and use that alchemy to produce new products. It will demand providing the tools for business owners to scratch their itches.

It will require returning to a traditional business perspective that demands empathy for clients. It’s not as gratifying — and it’s (foolishly) distasteful to some — but it’s a business model that is never going to go away. And it’s better than wasting scarce capital on another over-designed billing application just to make it prettier than the last one.

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