Don't believe me? Pick up https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Chan..., and read the chapter on electric cars. Starting with the first edition back in the 1990s, it correctly stated that 2020 would be about when mass market electric vehicles would start to make economic sense, and the transition would be inevitable a few years after that. Tesla was only slightly early to that party, and now basically every car company has acknowledged that electric is the future.
Despite the fact that mobile phones (ex. Apple) have not been improving since 2017 there is a perception of inevitability in the industry that phones will eat absolutely everything. They figure game addicts will switch to mobile games when their old hardware breaks down and they don't have a choice. (... they'll keep playing the same old games, the main thing you need is a decent game controller for mobile, there has to be an interesting story of why every company other than a big console manufacturer struggles to make game controllers that work -- look at the failures of Logitech, Steam, Google, etc.)
Clayton Christensen wrote this influential book
https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Chan...
which may have been a bit too influential. He made the case that firms in industry after industry went under because they failed to invest in new technology because the new technology was not, at first, good enough to satisfy their legacy customers.
What we see now (Microsoft releasing a tablet OS for PCs in Windows 8, Facebook neglecting a very good monopoly business for dreams of virtual reality, ...) is firms frequently throwing their current customers under the bus in the name of what might be... Because they read that book and don't want to wind up like one of the case studies.
As it is now it is a form of corporate suicide and we are waiting for it to play out and have a B-school professor write a book about it. But when you look at this way many of the things that make no sense in gaming like GAME PASS and the many me too game streaming services are part of the strange spectacle of a game industry that is failing despite still-rising revenues. It's hard, for instance, to picture Nintendo coming out with a real sequel to the Switch for many reasons (e.g. they could make a console 4x as powerful... that costs 4x as much; who needs better platforms when you are just rehashing Diablo for the n-th time and CS:GO is still a leading game?)
It's enough to make me think I should quit playing games, go out for walk or pet a puppy or make some friends! Maybe more people will the way the industry is heading.
https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Chan...
This fallacy the same thing that happened for the word "Disrupt"/"Disruption"/"Disruptive Technology". Even Clay Christensen, the creator of the phrase, says most people misuse the phrase "disruption" when compared to his explanation in the Innovators Dilemma[1]. There are Tons[2] of[3] people[3] complaining that the term is misused. In the end, if you casually tell someone you've got an idea for a Taco Food truck that's going to disrupt the food truck industry, people will know what you mean.
The definition of this word "blockchain" is being misused so much that it is changing faster real eduction can help. I think posts like this are great if you're technical, but as I said above — It doesn't matter what the fallacy is.
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Chan...
[2] - https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/16/the-truth-about-disruption...
[3] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/vukivujasinovic/2017/03/02/its-...
[4] - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption...
https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Chan...
http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Chang...
In terms of the Facebook product one cannot deny the obvious: They touched THE nerve on the internet. World wide. Across languages and cultures.
I don't like the embodiment of the product at all. At the very least it has usability and privacy problems. Yet more people use it successfully than any other web app in the world. So, what do I know? What do experts know?
A similar thing could be said about CraigsList. It's 2014. Every time I use the site I cannot believe what I am looking at. Yet I and lots of other people keep using it. It works.
Facebook has a general lack of elegance (whatever that means). The kind that happens when a product is thrown together and evolved over time. Evolving anything over time means the output "naturally selects" (subverting the theory here) to the environment created by it's users.
They survive because they optimized for what is important to their users. Grandma couldn't care less about UI issues or searchability. She wants to see her grandchildren's pictures and videos. And for that it works very well for a huge percentage of the planet.
At some point it becomes almost impossible to break the mold and clean-up what might be less than ideal. Why would you? It works. Another "Innovator's Dilemma" [1] situation to a large extent.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...
Given enough funding, a team of capable engineers and a solid vision (both of which are present at Tesla and other companies) the expectation of results should be the norm, not the exception. We, as engineers, are trained to solve problems using the scientific process.
To use battery packs as an example, there are probably thousands of engineering teams around the world who could design excellent battery packs that could withstand the rigors of automotive use. Tesla (and others) don't happen to have the only 12 engineers in the world who can do that. The same could be said of motors, electronics, software, suspension systems, chassis systems, etc.
I --and this is just my own bias-- am not impressed by what I consider to have to be the normal result of posing a problem to a capable group of engineers. That is to be expected. If you can't expect that out of engineers there's something seriously flawed with the way we are trained.
Of course, there's a continuum of capabilities out there. There is such a thing as lousy engineers with no imagination and a lack of understanding of reality despite years of schooling. Hiring is important. A company forming a substandard team will produce substandard results.
The patent segue is that there really isn't a lot today that most of us would consider to be true invention. Most everything being patented are implementations, which is a tragedy.
What is hard in the context of an organization, despite money and possibly vision is to execute on a consistent basis, keep focus on a reasonable mission and do so on a timely manner and within a reasonable budget. A good comparison of a polar opposite to a company like Tesla is just about any government-run organization where money is never a problem yet they fail to deliver consistently on even the simplest projects.
Tesla doesn't walk on water, but they have been executing a vision in what appears to be a constant series of flawless moves. They have good people who obviously work well together, they seem to know very well where they are going and, of course, they have the drive and funding to make it happen. Larger car companies could very well have to try to push the same ideas forward while mired with unmotivated and inefficient teams that just can't get anything done at the same time scale. And then there's the organizations themselves getting in their own way, AKA, "The Innovators Dilemma" [1]. There's plenty of history on that last point.
To some extent Tesla doesn't have to be a super organization, they just have to keep to their mission and they will outplay everyone else who is still failing through good management while trying to sell 5.25in drives because that's what their customers tell them they want (a reference to the book).
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...
Part of me has been ignoring a lot of the chatter around the ACA as potential right wing fabricated drama. Too much noise and bilateral bullshit being thrown about these days.
That was until a few days ago, when I would learn our insurance has both more than doubled in cost and is also scheduled for cancellation. Doubled and cancelled. All as a direct result of the ACA. Brilliant! To say this was shocking is an understatement. Our annual cost will go well past $15K.
There's a tragedy of unintended consequences, side effects and direct effects, being played out in the background that hasn't completely come to the surface yet. We certainly can't be the last family to get news of this kind. That means in the coming months it is likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of additional individuals and families are going to receive these dreaded letters. Apparently hundreds of thousands already have. Last week was our turn.
At one point this and other issues will be difficult to ignore. And they will dwarf the IT issues. The website, as much of a disaster as it is, is likely to pale in comparison to all of the other, non IT, issues.
Some of what's happening is related to the incredible disconnect between Washington and technology. All you need to do is listen to some of these folks talk about the website issue to see how little they understand. I heard one senator say something akin to "they just have to re-enter a list of five million codes". In other words, the term "code" to some of these guys means "numbers" and that someone made a data entry error in copying "codes" into the website.
BSS (Balaji Srinivasan) covered some of this in his excellent Startup School talk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A
A talk which, he comments, has been mutated into something far different from what he said by the modern equivalent of the "broken telephone" game.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6619068
I agree very much with his suggestion that an "exit" is required. Not meaning that we ought to pull-up roots and go, but rather that the tech community ought to almost ignore the dinosaurs and go ahead and evolve a society more aligned to modern realities. In his talk he gives examples of various US cities that have been "exited" to some extent through technologies developed in the free market.
To some extent, it's an Innovator's Dilemma kind of a problem.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...
The only way to make step changes is to do it well outside of the organization looking after the status quo, because that's all they know and that's all they can focus on.
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. Can you clarify this point?
There's a huge divide between Washington's understanding of the ever-evolving world of technology and that reality. Watching the various layers of Washington discuss what they perceive to be the issue with the ACA website is proof enough of that.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...
The Innovator's Dilemma[1] explores this question in detail. The gist is that the processes at big companies are very well suited to certain kinds of innovations, while they preclude other kinds (known as "disruptive innovations"). One example (not the only one) has to do with margins. Big companies tend to assume that their cost structures are more or less fixed, and will tend to pass over products that seem to be lower margin than their current business. For example, home computers seemed to be much less profitable than mainframes, so a lot of manufacturers missed the boat on the personal computer revolution.
It's worth reading the book and learning which ideas are likely to be copied by big companies, vs. which ideas big companies will fail at executing.
[1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...
http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Chang...
http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Chang...
As far as I am concerned, required reading for every entrepreneur, manager and executive today.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...
1. I don't believe it's an accurate statement to say Nokia is dead (if even as a stand-alone company). They have several great things going for them today, it's just hard to see if you're not looking beyond the current quarter or two (which I've found is a common symptom of blindness).
2. I don't believe it's an accurate statement to say they flushed every piece of software they have ever built down the toilet. Firstly, they're still releasing non-WP phones. Secondly, a lot of their skills are in innovating within hardware, which they're very much still doing great stuff with.
3. The takeaway from the article is that if you are a tech company, you shouldn't become a media company (or get into media). Firstly, wouldn't Apple, Google, and Microsoft have never entered the media industry if they would've followed this? Secondly, this takeaway is a great example of the innovators dilemma [1]. The two opposing strategies could just as well lead to failure -- a. Following this "takeaway" advice and being too afraid to join new "value markets" (e.g. innovating within media), and so you just keep on running with what works [3a]; and b. Not following this takeaway advice because you realize you can't stay on top forever with your current strategy, and so you make an attempt to enter new disruptive markets even if it means cannibalizing yourself [3b].
[3a] I think this blanket advice has problems -- media may have been a good thing to get into because the media integration could have caused (or did?) a major disruption in the existing market (I believe this was Nokia's belief and a cause for why they did what they did). Thus not trying new things like this could cause failure as well, as new players enter the market and take their marketshare (e.g. Apple with music and media at its core).
[3b] Though Nokia failed at it.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...
In craigslist's case, he could include a link on the old site that allows users to upgrade to a more modern version, and have the modern site basically consume an api/scrape the old CL till it gained momentum.
Google has always been attempting to enter new markets, but the new attempts amounted to a lot of moderately useful utilities, some questionably useful toys and curiosities, and a lot of misses. Mostly, the attempts seemed like random offshoots -- the products of a company that was supremely dominant in its position, flush with cash, and free to experiment in any way it so chose.
As I mentioned in a previous comment, it's very easy in hindsight to blame Google for having essentially rested on its laurels, squandering its lead and its position. And it's very easy to claim that certain threats (i.e., Facebook) were "always" obvious. They weren't. There were certainly some critical junctures at which Google should have focused its efforts on expansion in one or two directions. But Google was making attempts at expansion -- just not the right ones.
Harvard's Clayton Christensen famously described this situation as "The Innovator's Dilemma." There is a well-documented and almost axiomatic pattern, throughout history, of innovative companies rising to the top and then failing to predict who or what would eventually disrupt them. (If disruption were easily predictable, after all, it wouldn't be disruptive).
http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-B...
It's worth checking out.
Conservatism is a better fit for Microsoft because their users have "Who moved my cheese?" as a motto. Microsoft also mostly gets paid by its users through some circuitous path, Google's ad based model has dangerous conflicts of interests built into it quite fundamentally.
I lately read this Wikipedia article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
and really appreciated its viewpoint but I am wondering if in the long term it is going to be another scenario like
https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Chan...
that is, so far we haven't seen platforms that have decayed suffering from it but there has to be some limit at which customers are so frustrated that the two sided market is broken and my guess is that when that happens a company like Google will go from "bad to nonexistent" in "internet time".