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This is so right on. I've always expressed it as There are two types of innovation: Aspirational and Reactionary _Aspirational Innovation_ - Where you, as

by cek 15y ago

This is so right on. I've always expressed it as There are two types of innovation: Aspirational and Reactionary _Aspirational Innovation_ - Where you, as the creator, aspire to provide something to customers they don't currently have or can't do. You believe there's a great new thing customers can have/do that they currently don't have/do. It solves a problem that customers don't know they have (yet). _Reactionary Innovation_ - Where your product addresses existing customer pain. It solves a problem that customers have today. It makes pain go away for the customers. Both types of innovation are hard. I have built products along both lines. Windows Media Center was Aspirational ("People want to record and watch TV on their PCs"). The challenge here was convincing the market that this is what they wanted. Windows Home Server was Reactionary ("Multiple PC's in the home are painful to manage"). The challenge here was convincing the market that the product actually made the pain go away.

Hisoka 15y ago
I may be arguing semantics but isn't the first a type of the second? It's STILL solving a problem people have today. It just is a problem that consumers don't recognize very clearly for some reason.. maybe because they framed an existing problem the wrong way (ie. they think problem X is a financial problem when it was really a psychological problem.) Twitter for instance solves the problem of not having our social/attention needs met. It's a problem that too's abstract for people to complain about, but it's there.
- sokoloff 15y ago
  If you squint hard enough, sure. But that's not the point of dividing the space along these lines. Think of gunpowder, the steam and then internal combusion engines, electric distribution and lightbulbs, the automobile, heavier than air flight at all, helicopters. Sure, each of those solved actual pain that people had (otherwise they'd have not caught on as successful products). But the difference is that products in the first category solve problems that customers aren't complaining about, often because there's no frame of reference to allow them to complain about it. Their bow and arrows, oxen, gas lights, carriages, ships and hot air balloons are working just fine, maybe they just need a small tweak or two. (I even put TiVo/ReplayTV into the first category, even though we had VCRs at the time.)

by cek 15y ago

Hisoka 15y ago

I may be arguing semantics but isn't the first a type of the second? It's STILL solving a problem people have today. It just is a problem that consumers don't recognize very clearly for some reason.. maybe because they framed an existing problem the wrong way (ie. they think problem X is a financial problem when it was really a psychological problem.) Twitter for instance solves the problem of not having our social/attention needs met. It's a problem that too's abstract for people to complain about, but it's there.

sokoloff 15y ago
If you squint hard enough, sure. But that's not the point of dividing the space along these lines. Think of gunpowder, the steam and then internal combusion engines, electric distribution and lightbulbs, the automobile, heavier than air flight at all, helicopters. Sure, each of those solved actual pain that people had (otherwise they'd have not caught on as successful products). But the difference is that products in the first category solve problems that customers aren't complaining about, often because there's no frame of reference to allow them to complain about it. Their bow and arrows, oxen, gas lights, carriages, ships and hot air balloons are working just fine, maybe they just need a small tweak or two. (I even put TiVo/ReplayTV into the first category, even though we had VCRs at the time.)