8 ms·

I do not see cut-throat competition (I wish since that would lead to innovation). I see only monopolies.

tomrod 7y ago
Monopolies are the entities that can afford R&D, dynamically, outside of government. Citizen science is cool, but doesn't extend outside of incremental value add domains. Fusion and more will almost certainly be from monopolies or monopolistic competitors.
- defterGoose 7y ago
  No. Groundbreaking innovations like that have and will continue to come from basic research; the type that's really only done at universities.
  - giovannibonetti 7y ago
    So, say, the iPhone was not a groundbreaking innovation since it didn't come from an university?
    - rjyoungling 7y ago
      I think the point they were making is that universities often create big breakthroughs and then companies put it together in a way such that it has commercial value. At least that's how I interpreted that comment. But Xerox PARC immediately came to mind, which was a breeding ground of innovation.
    - chongli 7y ago
      The iPhone is not a groundbreaking innovation, it's a product. Like many modern products, it is extremely complicated with thousands of different components. Did Apple invent all of those components from scratch? No. Did Apple invent the key components that made the iPhone different from its competitors at the time? No. The capacitive touch screen was invented by Bent Stumpe at CERN [1]. The software technology that arguably made the iPhone possible, multi-touch, was developed by U of T, Bell Labs, and CMU. Steve Jobs visited CMU in 1985, though that obviously didn't translate into much back then. The actual multi-touch software that went into the iPhone was developed by FingerWorks founders John Elias and Wayne Westerman at the University of Delaware [2]. Apple bought FingerWorks and incorporated the technology into the iPhone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch#History [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks
      - agumonkey 7y ago
        I think it's too strict of a definition. Assembling a tons of known knowledge into something that wipes a market (and zero history in it..) is not a normal event either. Maybe it's innovation at the consumerism layer.
  - grenoire 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure fellow commenters can expand the list, but Bell (private) and CERN (public) are neither universities nor exceptions.
    - defterGoose 7y ago
      Where do you think all the researchers at CERN come from?
oceanghost 7y ago
What product can you invent that won't be counterfited by the Chinese, then sold alongside your product on Amazon?
- rjyoungling 7y ago
  Exactly. The more commoditized you are, the harder it is to escape the competition.
  - oceanghost 7y ago
    I completely agree, but even then, there is the issue of quality. I had a product idea recently, researched it, and found a couple Chinese type products that did what my idea would do on paper... One was priced at 6$, another, $15.99. The problem is, they'll all set your house on fire. No isolation, bad circuit design, globs solder everywhere, not rated for the right amperage. A proper design would probably cost $75 for the consumer.
    - rjyoungling 7y ago
      Then you'd have to find out (should you be interested) if the consumer cares about that. People assumed consumers wanted a cheap vacuum. (That's not an unreasonable assumption.) Dyson then showed that there are other dimensions consumers are willing to judge a vacuum on than just price alone. One category (out of 4) in Pragmatic Behavioral Psychology (or Dutch School of Marketing) is context changing. By creating a $75 product, consumers have nothing to compare it too and might judge solely on price if they view it as a commodity. Should you use context changing, you can shift the conversation from price to safety by educating them. Perhaps throwing it in the shape of a story about a couple who's house burned down, and why it's so important not to think you can skimp on this stuff. In that context, you're no longer competing on price but on quality because you've messed with the context frame. These are all things that will need to be tested. The only way to know for certain is by talking to users and seeing if you can sell the product.
      - 7y ago
rjyoungling 7y ago
I guess that might depend on the kind of circles one operates in. E.g. if one is in SF, one might get the impression that there's no cut-throat competition, only innovation. But the vast majority of companies aren't of that disruptive kind. They're just normal mom and pop shops, and FBA/Shopify businesses. Pretty much all those monopolies support small business. Think of Google, Facebook, YouTube, Etsy, Yelp, etc. Also, I'd push back on the implication that cut-throat competition leads to innovation. I think that's rarely the case. It absolutely leads to incremental innovation but rarely to disruptive innovation. That is almost always a function of an outsider, who's willing to challenge existing assumptions. (More often than not out of sheer ignorance of the existence of those assumptions. I can't even count the number of founders who've told me something along the lines of 'We didn't know we weren't supposed to do it this way.' Or, 'Had we known it would've been so hard, we'd have never even started.'

Monopolies are the entities that can afford R&D, dynamically, outside of government. Citizen science is cool, but doesn't extend outside of incremental value add domains. Fusion and more will almost certainly be from monopolies or monopolistic competitors.

defterGoose 7y ago
No. Groundbreaking innovations like that have and will continue to come from basic research; the type that's really only done at universities.
- giovannibonetti 7y ago
  So, say, the iPhone was not a groundbreaking innovation since it didn't come from an university?
  - rjyoungling 7y ago
    I think the point they were making is that universities often create big breakthroughs and then companies put it together in a way such that it has commercial value. At least that's how I interpreted that comment. But Xerox PARC immediately came to mind, which was a breeding ground of innovation.
  - chongli 7y ago
    The iPhone is not a groundbreaking innovation, it's a product. Like many modern products, it is extremely complicated with thousands of different components. Did Apple invent all of those components from scratch? No. Did Apple invent the key components that made the iPhone different from its competitors at the time? No. The capacitive touch screen was invented by Bent Stumpe at CERN [1]. The software technology that arguably made the iPhone possible, multi-touch, was developed by U of T, Bell Labs, and CMU. Steve Jobs visited CMU in 1985, though that obviously didn't translate into much back then. The actual multi-touch software that went into the iPhone was developed by FingerWorks founders John Elias and Wayne Westerman at the University of Delaware [2]. Apple bought FingerWorks and incorporated the technology into the iPhone. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch#History [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks
    - agumonkey 7y ago
      I think it's too strict of a definition. Assembling a tons of known knowledge into something that wipes a market (and zero history in it..) is not a normal event either. Maybe it's innovation at the consumerism layer.
- grenoire 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure fellow commenters can expand the list, but Bell (private) and CERN (public) are neither universities nor exceptions.
  - defterGoose 7y ago
    Where do you think all the researchers at CERN come from?

oceanghost 7y ago

What product can you invent that won't be counterfited by the Chinese, then sold alongside your product on Amazon?

rjyoungling 7y ago
Exactly. The more commoditized you are, the harder it is to escape the competition.
- oceanghost 7y ago
  I completely agree, but even then, there is the issue of quality. I had a product idea recently, researched it, and found a couple Chinese type products that did what my idea would do on paper... One was priced at 6$, another, $15.99. The problem is, they'll all set your house on fire. No isolation, bad circuit design, globs solder everywhere, not rated for the right amperage. A proper design would probably cost $75 for the consumer.
  - rjyoungling 7y ago
    Then you'd have to find out (should you be interested) if the consumer cares about that. People assumed consumers wanted a cheap vacuum. (That's not an unreasonable assumption.) Dyson then showed that there are other dimensions consumers are willing to judge a vacuum on than just price alone. One category (out of 4) in Pragmatic Behavioral Psychology (or Dutch School of Marketing) is context changing. By creating a $75 product, consumers have nothing to compare it too and might judge solely on price if they view it as a commodity. Should you use context changing, you can shift the conversation from price to safety by educating them. Perhaps throwing it in the shape of a story about a couple who's house burned down, and why it's so important not to think you can skimp on this stuff. In that context, you're no longer competing on price but on quality because you've messed with the context frame. These are all things that will need to be tested. The only way to know for certain is by talking to users and seeing if you can sell the product.
    - 7y ago

rjyoungling 7y ago

I guess that might depend on the kind of circles one operates in. E.g. if one is in SF, one might get the impression that there's no cut-throat competition, only innovation. But the vast majority of companies aren't of that disruptive kind. They're just normal mom and pop shops, and FBA/Shopify businesses. Pretty much all those monopolies support small business. Think of Google, Facebook, YouTube, Etsy, Yelp, etc. Also, I'd push back on the implication that cut-throat competition leads to innovation. I think that's rarely the case. It absolutely leads to incremental innovation but rarely to disruptive innovation. That is almost always a function of an outsider, who's willing to challenge existing assumptions. (More often than not out of sheer ignorance of the existence of those assumptions. I can't even count the number of founders who've told me something along the lines of 'We didn't know we weren't supposed to do it this way.' Or, 'Had we known it would've been so hard, we'd have never even started.'