Software Innovation
Sunday, 3 February 2008
Bob Warfield writes on software innovation:
Startups need to be 180 degrees out of phase with what big companies are doing. When big companies are innovating, startups should be commoditizing. When big companies are commoditizing, small companies should be innovating
Andy Kessler would probably disagree.
In his essay “How We Got There”, wrote on how the commoditization of a technology in clothes-making (following expiry of a patent) leads to the next logical innovation point.1
In 1785, Edmund Cartwright sought to fix this problem [of hand-run looms] by applying mechanical power to hand looms. But first he had to wait for Arkwright’s patent on cotton spinning to expire. He knew that cotton mills would then be built, which would turn out an abundance of thread and yarn. Cartwright thought about starting his own cotton mill but figured, smartly, that everyone and his brother would start one of those. Instead, he wanted to leverage the abundance of yarn, not help create it. So he began working on a Power Loom. He was only two hundred years ahead of his time in innovative business thinking.
[1] More on it here
