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To play devil's advocate, how much innovation is needed for toothpaste? It works, it's safe, and it's not unpleasant to use. Maybe consumers benefit more from h

To play devil's advocate, how much innovation is needed for toothpaste? It works, it's safe, and it's not unpleasant to use. Maybe consumers benefit more from having cheap commoditised toothpaste than they would from paying extra to stimulate innovation.

JoshTriplett 14y ago
How about the last toothpaste you'd ever have to use: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4213679 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4213679 That's the problem with not innovating: you don't know what you're giving up.
- takluyver 14y ago
  Even if that was possible, which I'm sceptical of (you can already get toothpaste with antibiotics, you still need to use it regularly), I doubt that companies making a comfortable profit margin from non-commoditised toothpaste would be interested in that kind of innovation. They would stand to lose a lot from it. A new company could emerge with it, but they could equally disrupt a commoditised market.
jad 14y ago
> To play devil's advocate, how much innovation is needed for toothpaste? Having the market structured such that innovation is rewarded might not be important in toothpaste, but it's really important in technology. Commoditization can kill innovation in a technology market, which is exactly what happened with PCs once Windows reached monopoly market share.
- davidw 14y ago
  Monopolies != commodities. I suppose there are corner cases where they could be, but they're two rather different things.
  - jad 14y ago
    Right. I was saying that in the PC industry, it was the Windows monopoly that commoditized PC hardware. I wasn't saying that every monopoly necessarily leads to commoditization.
kalid 14y ago
Just a thought -- there's lots of little packaging innovations that, collectively, make commodity products better to use. Ketchup bottles: store upside down, wide mouth Toothpaste: flat tops you can store vertically Toothbrushes: grips, padding, strips, etc. Even slicing bread is a huge innovation [how annoying is it to make a sandwich otherwise?].

JoshTriplett 14y ago

How about the last toothpaste you'd ever have to use: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4213679 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4213679 That's the problem with not innovating: you don't know what you're giving up.

takluyver 14y ago
Even if that was possible, which I'm sceptical of (you can already get toothpaste with antibiotics, you still need to use it regularly), I doubt that companies making a comfortable profit margin from non-commoditised toothpaste would be interested in that kind of innovation. They would stand to lose a lot from it. A new company could emerge with it, but they could equally disrupt a commoditised market.

jad 14y ago

> To play devil's advocate, how much innovation is needed for toothpaste? Having the market structured such that innovation is rewarded might not be important in toothpaste, but it's really important in technology. Commoditization can kill innovation in a technology market, which is exactly what happened with PCs once Windows reached monopoly market share.

davidw 14y ago
Monopolies != commodities. I suppose there are corner cases where they could be, but they're two rather different things.
- jad 14y ago
  Right. I was saying that in the PC industry, it was the Windows monopoly that commoditized PC hardware. I wasn't saying that every monopoly necessarily leads to commoditization.

kalid 14y ago

Just a thought -- there's lots of little packaging innovations that, collectively, make commodity products better to use. Ketchup bottles: store upside down, wide mouth Toothpaste: flat tops you can store vertically Toothbrushes: grips, padding, strips, etc. Even slicing bread is a huge innovation [how annoying is it to make a sandwich otherwise?].