There are hundreds and hundreds of tiny industries that technology seems to have forgotten (I work in one of them). There is a forklift dealership that I pass on my way to lunch every few days, what type of computing infrastructure do you think they have? What type of information do you think they give to their customers?
I bet there is a lot of carbon-copy paper, and filing cabinets involved. If they're really advanced, I bet there's an old IBM baby mainframe sitting in a closet somewhere with some twinax terminals connected to it.
Here's a company that's throwing really really expensive "I need this" (a forklift isn't a luxury) equipment around. I'd bet you that they've got money to spend on tech, they just don't know how.
Howabout office automation? Do you know how many times I get pitched by "office solutions specialists" who have no idea what they're doing, or talking about? There is definitely some space for somebody who Knows What They're Doing™ to get my money.
Do you know how terrible inventory management systems are? Pardon the language, but fucking horrible.
I think a lot of tech people forget that there a whole world out there that barely even knows that silicon valley exists. There are thousands and thousands of small business that will pay large dollars for things, and for these people (who are usually stuck in the technological late-80s/early-90s), being "disruptive" is what most programmers think is normal.
You'll have to pick a niche, understand it, build something, and then sell it. I think it's unlikely that a forklift dealer would want to pay the cost of a one-off custom system. I once was talking with such a business, their technology was antique and they knew they needed to modernize but viewed my $80,000 quote for custom software as too expensive. I considered pitching them on the idea of building it and then licensing it to them, as long as I could keep the rights to license it to other similar businesses. At the time I decided not to pursue it at all, but that may be an approach to take with small businesses that can't afford to pay outright for custom software or systems.
Basically, all the small business applications can be app-ized and run from a cloud connected iPad.
Where I said:
HNers:
I think that Square is an exceptional business enabled by a novel piece of hardware, their headphone jack card reader.
It would seem - then, that the card reader and payment service could actually be seen as a platform play.
Platforms are technologies that are useful themselves - but enable far reaching, broader use cases in ways, that at times, can be unforeseen.
Square could enable a range of cottage industries by providing other applications built on their solution.
We have the ability for mobile payments, as it were, and thus we should see a need for dead-simple mobile business management apps; inventory, supply chain, vendor management, invoicing, product lists etc.
This leads me to believe that Square is a platform that through its deployment applications can be built upon it that will change the way commerce can happen on the individual level.
Further - it would seem that there is also a great opportunity for sales distribution here as well. A product distributor could reach out to and enable a mobile sales force providing all these applications to their sales force in the field on a single device - as the merchants sell product, it can be tracked in real time and supplies replenished.
This could work very well in connected, yet less-developed countries such as rural Philippines, China and other parts of Asia.
Couple this with prepaid charge cards -- and the ability to LOAD cards in the longer term, and there are some significant opportunities that can be built using square alone.
I find this a welcome change from the "ideas are worthless, execution is everything" cult posts.
They are of course right on the money when the idea is "I wan't to build a WOW community" but that is at least in my view a very narrow definition of what ideas are all about.
I'd like to think of it this way: execution is the active searching of the problem space until you find a local maxima. The idea is only the starting point.
Sure, you can get lucky and find an idea that is already on a local maxima - but you wouldn't know that without verifying.
Simply thinking "what if you sold socks that didn't match?" is far from enough to prove that it's a good idea. If you gave it just five minutes you would probably come up with a hundred similar seemingly weird ideas.
Some examples:
What if TVs were not boxes but bubble-shaped?
What if cars bounced like rubber balls? Would that make them safer?
What if pants had four legs? Of different lengths.
What if shoes were glued together?
What if I had an internet connected computer in my sight of vision constantly? (This will happen, we all know that.)
What if books never ended?
What if people could grow all their food, including meat, at home, in a box like a micro oven?
I can go on like this forever. How do I know which ideas are the good ones?
By testing them in the real world - searching the problem space for a local maxima - that's the only way. And that takes execution and effort.
"Execution is everything" is not tautological. It's not saying "execution is necessary" — it's saying that how you execute makes an order of magnitude greater difference than what idea you pick. Good execution will save all but the worst ideas, but an amazing idea will still fail if not executed well.
For example, Apple's Newton PDA: Great idea — it caught on like wildfire when Palm did the same thing a few years later. But it flopped when Apple did it, because Apple's execution was flawed.
Excellent point. Great execution on a limited or "me-too" idea can still result in a good outcome. But great execution on a disruptive idea can lead to a much larger success.
How about a restaurant for three-somes full of tables for 3 and spring rolls that divide equally?
A clothing brand that only sells one color/type of jeans, one t-shirt and one button down. Instead of launching new collections every season, launch one new product. Like a belt. It would stand out.
or a restaurant for solo diners? wifi, space for a laptop on the table, and strictly one person per table, so you don't feel uncomfortable sitting all alone - everyone else would be in the same boat...
What does a table for three look like? A triangle doesn't have very much room for food. Not trying to shoot you down, just trying to keep the ideas going.
It's a table for 4 up against a wall, on which one could hang menus, condiments, flat-screen TV, etc. More space...
Or have a rectangular table for 6 with a low divider down the middle, so that it doesn't feel intrusive to join it (nor exclusionary to talk only amongst each 3).
An enjoyable read, and a worthwhile exercise for any business even if it has no intention of launching a disruptive business model (at the very least, they're thinking like the potential competition).
Worth remembering too - just because there's a gap in the market, doesn't mean there's a market in the gap. Cliches like 'scratch your own itch', 'do market research before product build', 'release early, release often' etc also have a place when disrupting.
This is really good article, probably one of the best I've seen come out of Mashable. The exercise of determining what are the clichés of any industry seems something you'd want to tackle with a group - maybe a good geek-out exercise for entrepreneur meetups?
The book by the article's author (Disrupt) is quite good too. It takes he points in the article and expands on them, giving you concrete exercises to work through to generate new ideas. While I don't think you can systematize innovation, I do think there are certain things you can do to come up with interesting business ideas.
If you're like me and find developing applications easy but have a very hard time deciding what to create, I'd recommend reading Disrupt.
'So, what was the problem that the solution addressed? Well, there wasn’t any problem, and that’s exactly the point. '
Actually, there was a problem. Customers loose socks, leaving mismatched, or socks get holes, leaving only one, etc. etc. etc.
They recognized a problem. They just came up with a creative way of dealing with the problem which was to re-frame it as not being a problem at all.
The impressive thing is that you can disrupt a market through nothing but marketing. You don't have to create a new product, find a new market, etc. etc. It is possible to create a viable business through nothing but marketing.
There are hundreds and hundreds of tiny industries that technology seems to have forgotten (I work in one of them). There is a forklift dealership that I pass on my way to lunch every few days, what type of computing infrastructure do you think they have? What type of information do you think they give to their customers?
I bet there is a lot of carbon-copy paper, and filing cabinets involved. If they're really advanced, I bet there's an old IBM baby mainframe sitting in a closet somewhere with some twinax terminals connected to it.
Here's a company that's throwing really really expensive "I need this" (a forklift isn't a luxury) equipment around. I'd bet you that they've got money to spend on tech, they just don't know how.
Howabout office automation? Do you know how many times I get pitched by "office solutions specialists" who have no idea what they're doing, or talking about? There is definitely some space for somebody who Knows What They're Doing™ to get my money.
Do you know how terrible inventory management systems are? Pardon the language, but fucking horrible.
I think a lot of tech people forget that there a whole world out there that barely even knows that silicon valley exists. There are thousands and thousands of small business that will pay large dollars for things, and for these people (who are usually stuck in the technological late-80s/early-90s), being "disruptive" is what most programmers think is normal.