The Perils Of Extrapolation: Who Knows What The Next Disruptive Innovation Will Be
from the be-quick-to-adapt dept
There are all sorts of "lessons" that you hear concerning entrepreneurship, but the one that has always struck me as being the most reasonable and valuable is:Be adaptablePeople who haven't built a company think that it's "the plan" or "the idea" that matters. That's almost never the case. Look at nearly every successful startup, and their business has little (if anything) to do with their initial plan. Google was going to sell search appliances as the core of its business. YouTube was supposed to be a dating service. Things change -- and the only thing that matters is how well your company adapts and executes. That's why it's silly to be too protective of a plan or idea or to focus on things like patents or NDAs. Most of that doesn't matter. Separately, projecting out more than a year may be a fun exercise, but is generally meaningless.
Clay Shirky had a great Twitter message this past weekend that puts that point into perspective nicely:
Why I ignore all "5 year plans": 5 years ago, YouTube and Twitter didn't exist, and Facebook was only for college kidsIf you go back and look at plans or predictions from 2005, of where web content would be in 2010, it's unlikely that "micromessaging" like Twitter or online video like YouTube was considered quite as central. Certainly some folks thought video was on the cusp back then, but they expected it to come from professional offerings like BrightCove, rather than a user-generated setup like YouTube. It's always difficult to predict which innovation is actually going to hit -- and plenty of companies, especially in the media space, have had to change and adjust their strategies due to things like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook -- just like how a decade ago, companies quickly started adjusting their strategy to deal with Google. Five years from now, plenty of startups will be adjusting their strategy for some other service as well... And the only way you can do that is by being adaptable.
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Filed Under: adapting, five year plans, innovation, predictions
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Intel intended to sell chips to calculator manufacturers.
Apple started as a computer company. Yep, they were actually highly successful in selling shiny computers that sat on your desk.
And believe it or not, Sony once made high quality and useful consumer electronics that people actually wanted to buy. I still think their current model of pissing on customers will fail in the long run, but, maybe they'll prove me wrong one day.
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Yeah, I used to really like their products. I scorn them now.
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your "rule" only works in industries where a startup can easily rock the boat. walmart, home depot, at&t, comcast, and most of the rest of the fortune 500 can ignore your rule.
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Also, since his article is littered with words and phrases like "entrepreneurship", "built a company", and "startup", it seems clear that he's not focused on how the Fortune 500 run their already-established businesses. But even then, Fortune 500 companies are wise to adapt to new technologies like this, so that they appear as agile and adaptable in this world where perception shapes reality. For example, can you imagine if Fortune 500 companies didn't advertise on the web these days? A decade ago, they may not have, but they adapted.
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startups are not fortune 500 companies. that is why they are called startups. they are just starting up.
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The New AT&T is dominated by the wireless business, which barely existed back in 1995. AT&T was basically re-bought by its own baby-bell spin-offs and a wireless operator. The former "Crown Jewels", the cash-cow long-distance business, is now dead.
Perhaps it's not a 5 year cycle in brick and mortar business, but how many local hardware companies, fishing shops, lumber yards, and smaller wireless operators have been killed/displaced/obviated/absorbed by Home Depot, Walmart, and the new AT&T?
Those companies themselves looked very different 10 years ago. Home Depot is now in tough financial times and is struggling to adapt to a weaker housing market, AT&T has entered cable-like TV service, but that very market is being threatened by Internet delivered content. Walmart is threatening AT&T with a cheap cellular service.
Walmart has benefited from the recession, but must adapt its strategy as a result: http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2009/jun/24/play-for-keeps-wal-mart-is-redesigning-most-stores/bu siness/
If you think those big firms don't need to adapt, then you just aren't paying attention.
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A better example is Flickr starting as a massively multiplayer game until they realized that the photo-sharing was way more fun than their game.
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Once again, Mr Shirky is doing what all guru types do best, attempting to take what just happened and say "see, I told you!"
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Decentralisation
For example the "next big thing" will be talked about in facebook and on Twitter.
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@Ima Fish: Sony do still make good consumer electronics (the Bravia is a sweet piece of hardware). It's just unfortunate that the hardware guys get tarred with the bad feelings provoked by the loud mouths on the "content" side.
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RE: Change...wasn't it 5 and 10 years? Paul Saffo?
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Twitter? Facebook? Who the hell are they?
YouTube is a little better, since it actually provide somewhat useful service, but again, not profitable, which meaning it's not really a business.
Any _really_ disruptive innovation takes 10+ years to make a difference. Look at CCD vs. film cameras. Look at flash memory vs. magnetic disks. Look at MP3 vs. tapes.
Any half-decent ASIC takes about a year to develop + another year to bring to production.
Always funny to read people who call stupidity like twitter "disruptive technology". Calling it "technology" is insult for people who actually know what the word means.
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Re: Twitter? Facebook? Who the hell are they?
After sifting through your sickening level of pretentiousness,
I see that you have a good point. It's not a technology so much as it is a simple idea implemented with existing technology.
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Aren't all things?
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Some things are new. It's called "scientific breakthrough". Transistor is not "simple idea" implemented with vacuum tube (existing technology).
Software (as a concept) is new idea, or technology. But not any particular program.
Sorry to break it on you, but algorithm (no matter how smart) is not a technology. It is mathematical expression. Ferma theorem is not a technology either.
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Aren't all things?
Not at all, although I can understand how even rocket science might appear "simple" on the surface to those with no knowledge of it.
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Re: Re: Twitter? Facebook? Who the hell are they?
Not every new thing you have is "technology". There's lot of words in English language to describe things.
Calling (no matter how complicated) python script a "technology" just show how clueless writer is.
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Re: Re: Twitter? Facebook? Who the hell are they?
That's what most great ideas/businesses/products/services are.
Not to denigrate technology, but it is much less important than Yosi makes it out to be. Working with startups in Silicon Valley, I've seen far too many cases of great technology that simply lack that "simple idea" of how they will actually be used by people.
Technology needs a good implementation idea. Good implementation ideas need good technology.
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One of my favorite examples: "pet rocks".
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Re: Twitter? Facebook? Who the hell are they?
YouTube is a little better, since it actually provide somewhat useful service, but again, not profitable, which meaning it's not really a business.
You are missing the point here. The point was that things often turn out to be useful for something other than the original intention - so trying to stick to that original intention may be a bad plan.
The Buddha wanted to found a religeon for India but was actually successful (against expectations) in Japan.
John Harrison wanted to make a marine clock that would be accurate. He expected that bigger would mean more accurate. Then he made a watch to tranfer the "time" from the hold of the ship to the deck. He then found the wathc was better than his big clock.
There are loads of examples of this in history. Don't knock the idea just because the examples given don't fit a particular (rather narrow) idea of what constitutes "success".
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Re: Twitter? Facebook? Who the hell are they?
YouTube is a little better, since it actually provide somewhat useful service, but again, not profitable, which meaning it's not really a business.
i agree. if you aren't making money on day 1 then you should kill yourself. all of you small startups need to get a life.
Any _really_ disruptive innovation takes 10+ years to make a difference. Look at CCD vs. film cameras. Look at flash memory vs. magnetic disks. Look at MP3 vs. tapes.
couldn't agree more. innovation can only be had in hardware, and never with software, and on the web? PUH-leaze. web pages are toys. real men program in assembly on bare metal.
Any half-decent ASIC takes about a year to develop + another year to bring to production.
i know, right? that's like 2 years. which anyone with an ounce of sense knows is waaay more than that 5 year nonsense in the original post.
Always funny to read people who call stupidity like twitter "disruptive technology". Calling it "technology" is insult for people who actually know what the word means.
amen brother. ever notice how they all seem to stand around on your lawn too?
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Re: Twitter? Facebook? Who the hell are they?
And yet still disruptive for media-based startups. But why let that interfere?
Any _really_ disruptive innovation takes 10+ years to make a difference. Look at CCD vs. film cameras. Look at flash memory vs. magnetic disks. Look at MP3 vs. tapes.
Heh. Keep believing that. I wish you the best of luck as a late adopter. Sure, some technologies take a while, but there is plenty of disruptive innovation that happens faster than 10 years (Google?).
Always funny to read people who call stupidity like twitter "disruptive technology". Calling it "technology" is insult for people who actually know what the word means.
Ok. While you focus on meaningless definitions, people will actually focus on what's happening in the market. Luckily, the market doesn't care what you think "technology" is, but does recognize when something is disruptive.
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Re: Re: Twitter? Facebook? Who the hell are they?
Remember, there ain't no twitter without some twits.
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Yep!
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Re: Yep!
And as for Twitter, just because something is simple doesn't mean it's not important. The wheel is simple, yet was unquestionably a major milestone. As another example, sliced bread is just bread sliced up and put in a bag, and yet it definitely changed people's lives.
You're right that the market will have its say on a particular company's business plans, but which market segment? Perhaps YouTube will never turn a profit by advertising to individual users, but it could still be successful if other businesses pay it to host video. It's so ubiquitous, that for many businesses it just doesn't make sense to reinvent the "web video" wheel. That is value.
And frankly, the whole "this is technology, this isn't technology" argument is very narrow-minded. These days, we can just assume a hardware framework upon which software operates. It makes no sense to say that hardware is technology and software isn't, because the distinction is increasingly meaningless as software pushes across a variety of hardware platforms. Using Twitter, a person can communicate their current activity to a collection of interested readers, via their phone, or their laptop, or their desktop, or whatever. A technology, in this sense, is defined by what it enables the user to do.
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This, my friend, is utter bullshit. You can't call any particular program "technology". In same way you can't call any new car model "technology".
"Car" is technology (as a concept). Software (again, as a concept) - too.
Technology is not defined by what it enables to do - where did you get this nonsense from?
Technology defined by what it is, like many other things.
>> as software pushes across a variety of hardware platforms
I guess you have no idea about none of above. That's OK, ignorance is a bless.
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Dictionary.com
tech·nol·o·gy (těk-nŏl'ə-jē)
n. pl. tech·nol·o·gies
1.
1.
The application of science, especially to industrial or commercial objectives.
2.
The scientific method and material used to achieve a commercial or industrial objective.
2.
Electronic or digital products and systems considered as a group: a store specializing in office technology.
3.
Anthropology The body of knowledge available to a society that is of use in fashioning implements, practicing manual arts and skills, and extracting or collecting materials.
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/technology
>> This, my friend, is utter bullshit. You can't call any particular program "technology". In same way you can't call any new car model "technology".
I wasn't calling a particular program "technology". When I referred to Twitter, I was talking about the concept which their service is based upon: giving a user the ability to broadcast information to a variety of readers. I think this falls neatly into definition #2 of technology, from the MW link above.
>> Technology is not defined by what it enables to do - where did you get this nonsense from?
So, I guess you can tell that I got that "nonsense" from a dictionary? Merriam Webster seems like a reliable source to me.
>> Technology defined by what it is, like many other things.
You shouldn't define something by saying that "it is what it is". Not helpful.
>> I guess you have no idea about none of above. That's OK, ignorance is a bless.
I don't know how you can take "software pushing across a variety of platforms", and draw the conclusion that I'm ignorant. My point was that something like Twitter can be counted as a technology because the particulars of the implementation hardly matter, since both the hardware and software are mutable. Twitter (the corporation) could go out of business tomorrow, but someone else would just take their technological concept and continue on (disregarding legalities). I'm calling their *idea* technology, not a particular Twitter program.
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Perception and adaption, the core attributes of modern innovators
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Then other companies who make devices for Chemotherapy would also sue, saying that the software is putting poor Chemo workers out of jobs.
You know it would be true. Even if it was something as noble as curing cancer. Can't disrupt corporate profits - that's akin to heresy in the religion of money.
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Alternatively, how about the saying I've just made up;
"if it's worth something, it's made money"
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The Dogma of Adaptation
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I'd also toss in the classic Eisenhower quote here: "I have always found that plans are useless, but planning in indispensable."
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Extrapolating
http://xkcd.com/605/
Don't forget to mouse over the image to see the extra message.
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facebook site maintenance
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How to Predict Future Innovations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga-Km7nZMUg
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