Well, I liked it... though I got the feeling I had read this before. Then I saw it was from a year ago and garnered almost no attention here back then.
Are we not talking about this because it's not relevant, or because everyone here is so invested in this disruption movement?
TL;DR: Read Nassim Nicolas Taleb, he has a lot to say on the likelihood and impact of highly improbably events (Black Swans)... like the successful of highly innovative products. Everything I say next is a rambling couching of the ideas of this article into his framework with the hope that someone else will engage with it.
Personally, I think the key point is here:
"Companies that were quick to release a new product but not skilled at tinkering have tended to flame out."
Which reminds me of the NNT's barbell approach to mitigating Black Swan's. Invest the majority of your energy conservatively in safe, non-risky ventures and then spread the rest of your energy across high-risk ventures (tinkering) with extremely high (or unlimited) potential upsides.
New technology has allowed the creation of many more Black Swans for businesses through innovation and they can be positive or negative depending on whether you are the disrupting company or the one being disrupted by this new innovation Black Swan.
Established companies that don't tinker, don't expose themselves to positive innovation Black Swans... while startups that ignore all established wisdom gambling on a single Black Swan innovation expose themselves to the reality that 9/10 innovations don't actually result in Black Swan level disruption.
For those that don't know what I'm talking about, I definitely recommend Nassim Nicolas Taleb's The Black Swan and Antifragile:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8153457
Are we not talking about this because it's not relevant, or because everyone here is so invested in this disruption movement?
TL;DR: Read Nassim Nicolas Taleb, he has a lot to say on the likelihood and impact of highly improbably events (Black Swans)... like the successful of highly innovative products. Everything I say next is a rambling couching of the ideas of this article into his framework with the hope that someone else will engage with it.
Personally, I think the key point is here:
"Companies that were quick to release a new product but not skilled at tinkering have tended to flame out."
Which reminds me of the NNT's barbell approach to mitigating Black Swan's. Invest the majority of your energy conservatively in safe, non-risky ventures and then spread the rest of your energy across high-risk ventures (tinkering) with extremely high (or unlimited) potential upsides.
New technology has allowed the creation of many more Black Swans for businesses through innovation and they can be positive or negative depending on whether you are the disrupting company or the one being disrupted by this new innovation Black Swan.
Established companies that don't tinker, don't expose themselves to positive innovation Black Swans... while startups that ignore all established wisdom gambling on a single Black Swan innovation expose themselves to the reality that 9/10 innovations don't actually result in Black Swan level disruption.
For those that don't know what I'm talking about, I definitely recommend Nassim Nicolas Taleb's The Black Swan and Antifragile:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-Fragility-eb...
http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incer...
</rambling>