One of my favorite design methodologies is lateral thinking with weathered technology.

(Note: it's often mistranslated as withered technology)

The idea is you use only technologies that have become commodity, standardized, robust, boring.

Technologies you can take for granted with very little risk.

Multiple providers; low cost.

The innovation comes not from the components, but from how the components are duct-taped together into novel combinations.

The only risk in the system comes from the duct tape for the combination, which is small and cheap.

This allows you to try many different combinations quickly and with low risk.

Often you can find game-changing combinations out of totally ordinary components: a kind of alchemy.