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I don't recall Kevin blogging about startups. It was a movie. Honestly, this title seems a little over the top. As for the advice... It's good but there is a w

I don't recall Kevin blogging about startups. It was a movie. Honestly, this title seems a little over the top. As for the advice... It's good but there is a world of difference between testing something you've built and asking people if they'd want something you haven't built. In "The Innovator's Dilemma," the case of excavators is used as a case study. If you had asked construction managers whether they wanted hydraulic excavators instead of cable excavators, they would have laughed you out of the industry. The hydraulic excavators of the day were flakey and much smaller than the cable excavators. Nobody who was using excavators would want one. The point was that hydraulic excavators ended up creating entirely new markets. Likewise, my own personal example is the GUI. I remember when this was just a research fancy at Xerox. I used a Xerox Star at Humber College in Toronto. Great stuff, but priced in the stratosphere. If you'd asked anyone whether they needed a mouse and bitmapped screen to replace their CP/M word processor, you would have been laughed out onto the sidewalk. Yet look at what we have today. Some things should be shown, and even then you might have to keep plugging until a light goes on and some entirely new market (like desktop publishing) springs up to use your innovation.

BearOfNH 17y ago
Of course it wasn't really Kevin Costner. It was Ray Kinsella, the character he played in Field of Dreams. Oddly enough, "Ray Kinsella is full of shit" is a title I would have clicked on sooner, even though I didn't know who he was.
jfi 17y ago
I think testing / getting feedback on your vision is vitally important. You aren't going to get buy in from all (or any), but it will give you more of a sense about your venture's risk profile. You can then better evaluate if you want / can continue your time and effort investment. I'm running on a dime and a dream quite often so this exercise is very important. I'd argue that your examples (which are very, very good ones) demonstrate market participants that could take on a much riskier venture than many would be capable of undertaking. My point is to not blindly push forward (a mistake I have made many a time, and one that I've seen others around me committing as well), but to size up what you are venturing into whenever possible. I'm completely fine with attempting to turn the tides of an industry or make a new one, but I want to know if that is the fight I'm gearing up for ahead of time if possible. Thank you for your insights!
- raganwald 17y ago
  I agree with your caution. Again with my example, if you look at Xerox, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and a plethora of companies that have tried to make money selling PC hardware, you see that although the mouse and GUI have obviously "won," actually making money from them has been a challenge.
liquidben 17y ago
So the trick is to give people what they need, which is not necessarily what they ask for. That doesn't necessarily defy the article's thesis, since it might be possible to phrase questions artfully enough to diagnose needs vs wants, but that might be tricky and take great effort. And of course, there really was no reason to disparage the auteur behind Waterworld aside from being linkbait. ;)

BearOfNH 17y ago

Of course it wasn't really Kevin Costner. It was Ray Kinsella, the character he played in Field of Dreams. Oddly enough, "Ray Kinsella is full of shit" is a title I would have clicked on sooner, even though I didn't know who he was.

jfi 17y ago

I think testing / getting feedback on your vision is vitally important. You aren't going to get buy in from all (or any), but it will give you more of a sense about your venture's risk profile. You can then better evaluate if you want / can continue your time and effort investment. I'm running on a dime and a dream quite often so this exercise is very important. I'd argue that your examples (which are very, very good ones) demonstrate market participants that could take on a much riskier venture than many would be capable of undertaking. My point is to not blindly push forward (a mistake I have made many a time, and one that I've seen others around me committing as well), but to size up what you are venturing into whenever possible. I'm completely fine with attempting to turn the tides of an industry or make a new one, but I want to know if that is the fight I'm gearing up for ahead of time if possible. Thank you for your insights!

raganwald 17y ago
I agree with your caution. Again with my example, if you look at Xerox, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and a plethora of companies that have tried to make money selling PC hardware, you see that although the mouse and GUI have obviously "won," actually making money from them has been a challenge.

liquidben 17y ago

So the trick is to give people what they need, which is not necessarily what they ask for. That doesn't necessarily defy the article's thesis, since it might be possible to phrase questions artfully enough to diagnose needs vs wants, but that might be tricky and take great effort. And of course, there really was no reason to disparage the auteur behind Waterworld aside from being linkbait. ;)