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With consumer demand in mind. Don't you agree that if an invention didn't see the light of day, doesn't that mean there wasn't a market for it in the first plac

With consumer demand in mind. Don't you agree that if an invention didn't see the light of day, doesn't that mean there wasn't a market for it in the first place? Then why does it matters if that invention wasn't put in market, if consumers didn't want it in the first place? Remember we're not trying to give benefits for inventors for no reason. We're trying to give consumers something they want. We're not trying to throw money at inventors to invent random stuff no one cares about. We're trying to create cool new things for consumers. If there is no consumer demand for an invention, why would consumers care if the invention didn't make it to market?

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
Consumer demand doesn't necessarily equate to success or profit for the inventor. Say you're a one man start up and you invent something really cool in your garage. You start marketing it, get a bit of leverage and sell a few. It's going great, you've got some orders, get some money from an investor, you've got a proper workshop and are growing nicely. Then Samsung or Apple see what you're doing and think it looks cool. They get their factories up to speed and throw a few million dollars into marketing (that you don't have needless to say) and before you know it they're selling millions. Everyone wants it, consumer demand is off the chart and no-one cares a jot about you in your workshop any more because Apple and Samsung can make the thing cheaper and get it to consumers faster. So, it made it to market, there's plenty of demand and yet where's the incentive for you to do anything when you have your next great idea other than go and get drunk in a ditch because you've got no desire to get screwed over again? Yes the consumer benefits from cheaper devices but they also benefit from great people having great ideas and being incentivised to do something with them because they know they could get a reward. And that's before we get into talking about how we do want to encourage failure because if we try 1000 long shots, even if 90% of them fail, we'll have more great stuff than if we try 100 things and half of them work out. research risks benefit the consumer in the long term.
uxp 14y ago
I don't agree with that at all. In theory if a product never sees the light of day, one can assume it is a bad product, but that's still a textbook example of a converse fallacy. I am a man with 10 fingers, thus all men have 10 fingers. There is a reason "Shut up and take my money" is a meme. Look at the LightTable project that has been shown here on HN a few times over the past few months[1]. Take a look at the current state of popular IDEs. There are hundreds of common patterns shared between every one of them. Chris Granger comes around and shows a new idea and new paradigm for software engineering and everyone goes wild, a Kickstarter campaign starts up, and he gets to work on trying to get a product out the door that thousands of people want. For the sake of argument, lets say he fails to produce the product (personal issues come up and he has to quit, or whatever). Does that automatically make the project a bad product? Thousands of people still want to use it, over 7,000 people have already put money down in support of it. Are those people just idiots when it comes to choosing a hot new product and can't tell a doomed project from a good idea? Consumer demand does not equal market success. There are hundreds of examples I could give of product features I've personally implemented for my work that have been thrown away because some stakeholder didn't see the value at the time it was shown, and on occasion that same feature gets requested later in the product's lifecycle. [1] http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/04/12/light-table---a-new-ide-concept/ http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/04/12/light-table---a-new-...
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  I didn't say demand will always inevitably lead to new products on the market. I said that if there's no demand for an invention, then the consumers won't care that it didn't go to market.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago

Consumer demand doesn't necessarily equate to success or profit for the inventor. Say you're a one man start up and you invent something really cool in your garage. You start marketing it, get a bit of leverage and sell a few. It's going great, you've got some orders, get some money from an investor, you've got a proper workshop and are growing nicely. Then Samsung or Apple see what you're doing and think it looks cool. They get their factories up to speed and throw a few million dollars into marketing (that you don't have needless to say) and before you know it they're selling millions. Everyone wants it, consumer demand is off the chart and no-one cares a jot about you in your workshop any more because Apple and Samsung can make the thing cheaper and get it to consumers faster. So, it made it to market, there's plenty of demand and yet where's the incentive for you to do anything when you have your next great idea other than go and get drunk in a ditch because you've got no desire to get screwed over again? Yes the consumer benefits from cheaper devices but they also benefit from great people having great ideas and being incentivised to do something with them because they know they could get a reward. And that's before we get into talking about how we do want to encourage failure because if we try 1000 long shots, even if 90% of them fail, we'll have more great stuff than if we try 100 things and half of them work out. research risks benefit the consumer in the long term.

uxp 14y ago

I don't agree with that at all. In theory if a product never sees the light of day, one can assume it is a bad product, but that's still a textbook example of a converse fallacy. I am a man with 10 fingers, thus all men have 10 fingers. There is a reason "Shut up and take my money" is a meme. Look at the LightTable project that has been shown here on HN a few times over the past few months[1]. Take a look at the current state of popular IDEs. There are hundreds of common patterns shared between every one of them. Chris Granger comes around and shows a new idea and new paradigm for software engineering and everyone goes wild, a Kickstarter campaign starts up, and he gets to work on trying to get a product out the door that thousands of people want. For the sake of argument, lets say he fails to produce the product (personal issues come up and he has to quit, or whatever). Does that automatically make the project a bad product? Thousands of people still want to use it, over 7,000 people have already put money down in support of it. Are those people just idiots when it comes to choosing a hot new product and can't tell a doomed project from a good idea? Consumer demand does not equal market success. There are hundreds of examples I could give of product features I've personally implemented for my work that have been thrown away because some stakeholder didn't see the value at the time it was shown, and on occasion that same feature gets requested later in the product's lifecycle. [1] http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/04/12/light-table---a-new-ide-concept/ http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/04/12/light-table---a-new-...

vibrunazo 14y ago
I didn't say demand will always inevitably lead to new products on the market. I said that if there's no demand for an invention, then the consumers won't care that it didn't go to market.