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Concerning > 4. The industry has matured. The low-hanging fruit of the mobile/web era has largely been picked, making truly innovative opportunities harder to

Concerning > 4. The industry has matured. The low-hanging fruit of the mobile/web era has largely been picked, making truly innovative opportunities harder to find. I disagree: In my feeling truly innovative opportunities are still rather easy to find. I feel what rather changed is that with VC becoming big and mainstream, investors have become more risk-averse in investing into innovative ideas (that they don't really understand). Perhaps also society has become more conservative, so selling a really innovative product to a customer has become harder.

graemep 2y ago
> Perhaps also society has become more conservative, so selling a really innovative product to a customer has become harder. Customers are more locked into existing products. Network effects, switching costs, familiarity and branding, staff training (for businesses) and learning something new....
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  I'd claim that also before the customers were locked into existing product. What is different is that in former days they were much more willing to get away from this lock-in. The reason for this that I consider to be the most plausible one is that society has become more conservative (i.e. less willing to change things or try out new things).
  - graemep 2y ago
    Lock is has been a problem for a long time, but I think the lock in is stronger. You have dependencies between multiple systems, dependencies between systems, data that is no longer stored locally on machines you control, etc.
- escapecharacter 2y ago
  Strongly agree here that there is platform lock-in; all the large platforms are playing subtle games to make it harder to explore new services outside them. To some people this might look like consumers are more conservative, but really it's just hidden dark patterns keeping them in the big platforms. I really wish the US government was more pro-business competition; they're merely pro-business in terms of ensuring existing winners continue to win. Across the pond, the EU seems to get this with measures like GDPR which make it actually easier to port between platforms.
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > Strongly agree here that there is platform lock-in; all the large platforms are playing subtle games to make it harder to explore new services outside them. > To some people this might look like consumers are more conservative, but really it's just hidden dark patterns keeping them in the big platforms. I personally observe that people have quite different "sensitivities" to this phenomenon. It might be true that such people exist, but at least in my "echo chamber" it's rather exactly the other way: the more dark pattern such people observe, and the more they feel "jailed" by these large platforms, the more they are willing to leave the platform - just out of spite. Thus, at least many people of my "echo chamber" show exactly the opposite behaviour from what you claim and the platforms intend. Thus, I believe the conservatism is a different phenomenon: people become less willing to try out new things because they observed far too often that a new interesting service turned more and more into a dark jail over the years.
  - intalentive 2y ago
    The US government does business with men who say, “Competition is for losers”.
sofixa 2y ago
> In my feeling truly innovative opportunities are still rather easy to find. Such as? Can you name a few?
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > > In my feeling truly innovative opportunities are still rather easy to find. > Such as? Can you name a few? Naming them would need long explanations (and a lot of my thoughts are still in an early phase), but I can give you a rough sketch of one possible way how one can find them (but note that there exists an insane amount of other possible ways to find great innovative opportunities): Simply read sophisticated scientific literature about mathematics and related areas, in particular about insanely deep results that were (possibly) honored with high awards (which gives you a strong evidence that there is indeed something deep to find in these results). Then find cool, exciting applications of these results in an area of your choice. Why does this simple approach work? Answer: the state of the art in mathematics is in many cases simply working with science-fiction technologies from, say, 50 years in the future already today. Honestly, this way I find raw ideas for possibly cool, exciting opportunities basically every few days.

graemep 2y ago

> Perhaps also society has become more conservative, so selling a really innovative product to a customer has become harder. Customers are more locked into existing products. Network effects, switching costs, familiarity and branding, staff training (for businesses) and learning something new....

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
I'd claim that also before the customers were locked into existing product. What is different is that in former days they were much more willing to get away from this lock-in. The reason for this that I consider to be the most plausible one is that society has become more conservative (i.e. less willing to change things or try out new things).
- graemep 2y ago
  Lock is has been a problem for a long time, but I think the lock in is stronger. You have dependencies between multiple systems, dependencies between systems, data that is no longer stored locally on machines you control, etc.
escapecharacter 2y ago
Strongly agree here that there is platform lock-in; all the large platforms are playing subtle games to make it harder to explore new services outside them. To some people this might look like consumers are more conservative, but really it's just hidden dark patterns keeping them in the big platforms. I really wish the US government was more pro-business competition; they're merely pro-business in terms of ensuring existing winners continue to win. Across the pond, the EU seems to get this with measures like GDPR which make it actually easier to port between platforms.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > Strongly agree here that there is platform lock-in; all the large platforms are playing subtle games to make it harder to explore new services outside them. > To some people this might look like consumers are more conservative, but really it's just hidden dark patterns keeping them in the big platforms. I personally observe that people have quite different "sensitivities" to this phenomenon. It might be true that such people exist, but at least in my "echo chamber" it's rather exactly the other way: the more dark pattern such people observe, and the more they feel "jailed" by these large platforms, the more they are willing to leave the platform - just out of spite. Thus, at least many people of my "echo chamber" show exactly the opposite behaviour from what you claim and the platforms intend. Thus, I believe the conservatism is a different phenomenon: people become less willing to try out new things because they observed far too often that a new interesting service turned more and more into a dark jail over the years.
- intalentive 2y ago
  The US government does business with men who say, “Competition is for losers”.

sofixa 2y ago

> In my feeling truly innovative opportunities are still rather easy to find. Such as? Can you name a few?

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> > In my feeling truly innovative opportunities are still rather easy to find. > Such as? Can you name a few? Naming them would need long explanations (and a lot of my thoughts are still in an early phase), but I can give you a rough sketch of one possible way how one can find them (but note that there exists an insane amount of other possible ways to find great innovative opportunities): Simply read sophisticated scientific literature about mathematics and related areas, in particular about insanely deep results that were (possibly) honored with high awards (which gives you a strong evidence that there is indeed something deep to find in these results). Then find cool, exciting applications of these results in an area of your choice. Why does this simple approach work? Answer: the state of the art in mathematics is in many cases simply working with science-fiction technologies from, say, 50 years in the future already today. Honestly, this way I find raw ideas for possibly cool, exciting opportunities basically every few days.