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In reverse order: Thanks for asking about Podaris! Yes, there are a handful of planners using it. We soft-launched a little over a year ago, and since then hav
by nkoren 10y ago
In reverse order:
Thanks for asking about Podaris! Yes, there are a handful of planners using it. We soft-launched a little over a year ago, and since then have been working with a small group of planners from my personal network. They've done some good things with it, and it's gratifying to seen them now spending several hours every day in the software, so we're clearly addressing some kind of need. However up until now it hasn't been ready to be pushed out to the wider industry, so we don't really have a compelling traction story to tell. That push will start later this month, however -- so hopefully that will happen soon!
It's a slow-moving industry, so I'm not expecting Snapchat-like growth curves, but am still quite optimistic.
Re: making a list -- there are some serious attempts to do that, for example McKinsey's work on carbon abatement cost curves: https://everythingischanging.wordpress.com/tag/abatement-cost-curve/ https://everythingischanging.wordpress.com/tag/abatement-cos...
However, such an endeavour can be problematic in that it's much easier to capture incremental innovation as opposed to disruptive innovation, and component innovation rather than systems innovation.
If you look at the cost curve they came up with in 2009, for example, you'll see that "hybrid vehicles" are on the list but "all-electric vehicles" aren't. This is because all-electric vehicles were thought to be a pipe dream, unrealistic without some kind of radical change in the cost and capabilities of batteries.
That change is actually happening, however. Considered in isolation, radically cheaper and better batteries have no environmental impact per se, but their knock-on effects are fantastically impactful. This is how disruptive innovation generally works -- modest low-level innovation which enables the development of radically new capabilities. Capacitive touchscreens enable smartphones; elevators enable skyscrapers, etc. Those low-level innovations are really important, but hard to value in isolation.
Systems innovation is another area that's hard to compartmentalise. You can see "better insulation in houses" on that McKinsey list, but you don't see "build dense multifamily housing in city centres where people can walk to work and shopping", even though the latter is comprehensively more impactful, more than just about any item on their list. There are ways to value the latter, but it requires evaluating a complex scenario that includes not just housing efficiency, but also transportation, public policy, etc. This can only ever be indicative: it will never be as deterministic as saying that "replacing X insulation with Y insulation will save Z amount of energy". Doesn't mean that it's not worth doing, however!
So what I'm saying is: be careful in subdividing things: it's possible to lose track of a lot of value in the process. But better ways of monitoring and evaluation would of course be a good thing! What you really need is a way of doing M&E for complex systems innovations...
...oh, wait, I started another company (https://www.futurescaper.com/ https://www.futurescaper.com/) which does that, among other things. Forgot to put that on the list, since it was a bit meta, but yes, could be valuable. Hasn't changed the world yet, but we're working on it!
- TeMPOraL 10y agoGreat to hear positive news about Podaris! I wish you success, and if you have an interesting testimonial or story, don't forget to post it here :). RE list, thanks for the link, I didn't know about this work. I'll try to dig through it after work today. Thanks for pointing out the issues with subdividing systems innovations and knock-on effects. I guess I've assumed that building a comprehensive list would be easier than it is. Still, something is better than nothing, and even by just looking at the HN discussions, I can see that there are many people with skills who would like to quit doing bullshit jobs, but don't know where to look for impactful work matching their skillsets or interests. This is an area I believe needs improving. In this subthread I asked for ideas to start a rough list. If such a list was to be turned into a kind of reference for people, it would need to be continuously maintained. As you pointed out, you often can't predict which innovations will turn out impactful or not. The landscape constantly changes. But if we can't predict things well in advance, the least we can do is to try and track them and keep revising best guesses about their evolution. I'm trying to understand what your other company does. From what I can tell from the website, you're selling some kind of framework for collecting and collaboratively sorting/annotating documents, and for on-line surveys? Is there any less business-speak overview available somewhere?
- nkoren 10y agoYeah, the messaging around both companies needs to get a lot better. Futurescaper is a tool for collaboratively creating and analysing crowd-sourced systems maps. The purpose of doing this is to better understand the dynamics of a complex problem domain, where many different perspectives are required to get a complete picture. It's not really about annotating documents; more about getting people to tell stories in ways that can be converted into causal graphs, which then can be combined with each other to produce a detailed map of the possibility space, which can then be inform strategic planning. If that makes any sense! Our biggest customer is the United Nations, which uses it for projects like this one: http://www.la.one.un.org/media-center/publications/252-un-survey-on-crowdsourcing-problem-tree-phase-2-analysis http://www.la.one.un.org/media-center/publications/252-un-su... The advantage of doing in this way is that it explicitly encourages the people who interact with it to take more of a systems approach to their thinking, helping to surface hidden root causes and predict unintended consequences or emergent knock-on effects. It's a bit of an odd company, but happened kind of accidentally: just a weekend coding project (to assist a friend's dissertation on crowdsourced scenario planning) which spun badly out of control.