> Because the hype will be with the new ... > no one wants a Blackberry even if the newer versions have ... I agree that there is a hype aspect to this, but I don't think it's the whole story. You rightly point out that it's hard to shake off widespread public perception short of reinventing yourself. I think that in many cases the perception is earned. As is often pointed out, there are many aspects of the iPhone that are not original to Apple. Tesla isn't the first company to come out with an electric car. I don't think hype alone is going to have people shelling out tens of thousands of…
It was written some time ago, and was based on a study of spinoffs rather than startups, but The Innovator's Dilemma spoke directly to this point. One of the consistently common and bad mistakes that they found is to over-invest for a market segment. If you give people $100 million for a market segment with growth potential that can only currently support a $20 million company, they will spend it and then must find a way to justify it. Which means that they will be forced to search for a business opportunity that may not exist, rather than being satisfied with the one which clearly…
I agree with the vast majority of your points. Didn't even bother to look at the broken-telephone links. Why bother. What you are talking about sound very much like what's covered in The Innovator's Dilema [0]. I am not entirely sure I understand your position with regards to government. It seems you are suggesting the only way to evolve things is to "exit". I took this as perhaps going to the extent of physically relocating to a country where what you want is either accepted or already there. You gave the example of your parents. As the son of immigrants I too have similar examples.…
Agreed 100% then. What's happening to us and other societies is exactly the innovators dilema. It is beyond obvious that, in the case of the US at least, what has worked well for the last 237 years is coming to an end. The divide you mention in your talk between tech and Washington is hurting not only us but, in my opinion, the rest of the world as well. Frankly it is hard to imagine anything that might compell our society to change quickly enough. In my view the natural consequence of this effect is that any other society smart enough to embrace change could easily position itself to…
Well it's a question of ego. 2 parts: 1. If GM were to - like you say - "work with Tesla", who would be in charge of what to do, when and how? GM would want GM cronies to do that. It would be like Apple after they fired Steve Jobs 2. Even if TSLA would be in the driver's seat (pun intended) who would be working for whom? TSLA is already as big as GM in terms of market cap, and with better future, but in a TSLA-GM JV GM would want to be "da boss". Things are fine the way they are GM, F, FCAU will either die, consolidate or become irrelevant; and the new TSLA-like companies will be the new…
The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen (the book itself is 20 years old but I only read it recently). It’s a fantastic analysis of why successful companies get displaced by disruptive technologies —or, the other way around, why it’s so complicated to innovate in successful companies. The underlying reasons exposed by the book are timeless and universal. As I read the book (which, again, is 20 years old and focuses on the hard drive industry) I recognized all the pitfalls my previous company went through as it was trying to adapt to public Cloud. This book is a powerful lens to look…
Have you read The Innovator's Dilemma and its followup The Innovator's Solution? I'm pretty sure that Kodak was one of the cases discussed. If not, it deserved to be because it was a classic example of the perverse incentives that destroy incumbents. Kodak realized the future. Kodak invented it. But their film business dominated from a revenue perspective. At every point where they had to make a resource allocation decision, the fact that film was the cash cow gave people from that division weight, and nobody in other departments really wanted to kill that sacred cow. When Canon…
It's rather personal what works for you or not. What helped for me was the accessibility of a good 10inch ereader. And strangely another ingredient was a very bad sleeping baby, which only slept in his own bed if I lay next to him on the ground. That period between 19:00 and 20:00 was perfect for me. Trying to read just before trying to go to sleep never worked for me, my brain shuts off completely as soon as I lie and bed with w book after 2200, yet if just stay up I don't sleep before 00:00. Also, it helps to read something by people who can write. For example I never thought I'd read…
This story could be picked straight out of Clayton M. Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma". As of today, these small, cheap computers are in most ways that matter inferior to their monolithic laptop and desktop counterparts. But many large players fear that they will grow in market share and hence start eating their margins. Fujitsu even goes as far as to deliberately stay out of the market. However, the only reason that these smaller machines are less capable is that most processing today happens on the local machine. If web applications grow in the direction that Hacker News hopes,…
Innovator's Dilemma gave me the "super-power" of identifying what kind of businesses will succeed or fail in the tech industry, much earlier than most people (or even big companies' CEO's). I think others who have read it and understood it will feel the same way. I'd also recommend his sequel Innovator's Solution, which also has a few different and good insights in it. Blue Ocean Strategy is also pretty similar to the idea of "disruptive innovation", but in other non-tech industries. These books can also be extremely helpful in identifying if you have a "good business idea" or not, and in…