'I bow my head to these people... If this were on an iPhone, I would be willing to pay what the iPhone currently costs :).'
Why do I seem to appreciate technological innovation more than business innovation...
Allow me to narrate my black and white view point with the understanding that I do ackowledge the existance of a grey area.... maybe I will write another email on the grey...
I also start with the fact that I do appreciate business innovation... but I have seen very little of it... innovation for me is a fundamental change in the way things happen... fundamental... it cannot be an adaptation, improvement, or a pattern-match... it has to be a change at the very basic level.. a quantum leap...
But then this view is also defined by what I consider business to be, whom it should serve, and where the innovation should lie...
Here is what I think a business is.... there are individuals (C)... in society... who need stuff (Cspace)... and there are individuals (S) within society... who can meet (Sspace) that need... everything else is overhead and administrative (O&A)... Business, for me is S meeting the needs of C.. end of story.
I also recognize the importance of the O&A in a complex and tangled world... but that is not business, imo... that is the process of enabling business... now you can easily argue that managing the complexity today and enabling business is also a business... my argument against it is that (a) yes, people who enable business are important and needed... (b) but even so, it is not the fundamental need..
I think after around the creation of the church (the institution, not the religion) and then the East India Company, enabling business has become more and more about explicitly capturing value... and when you are in the 'business' of capturing value, the only person you serve is yourself...
My view of business is a process where society (made up of the Cs and the Ss) is served... that business is only served if there are innovations in Cspace and Sspace and the O&A does their job and lets them meet freely...
So the only current innovations in O&A that I appreciate are the ones that break barriers and eliminate middle men and increase efficiencies.... they allow the pie to grow in size... they take the focus away from value capture to the value creation...
I therefore appreciate eBay's model for letting me as a C meet an S anywhere in the world... I also appreciate them for allowing us to set the price... I am not constrained by the fake 'market-price' of a good or service... I appreciate Google for letting me find information... I LOVE Google for not charging me any money.... I consider them to be the modern-day robbin hood... they take money from the rich and essentially pass the benefit down to me... I love micro-credit for making access to capital easier... given the current state of the world and how business is conducted, I bow to them for breaking through... these are addressing fundamental O&A problems according to me...
Innovations in (Cspace) or (Sspace)... now that is where true business innovation lies imo... is human nature changing so that there is a change in (Cspace)... is the demographic of C changing and how does that affect Cspace... what are the (Sspace)s available to meet that... that is where innovation lies... how do the (S)s recognize the (C)s? THAT is a person connecting with another person and meeting each other's needs... that is where innovation lies.... in business... in my opinion...
Therefore coming back to the case of ABCCo... I really like what the guy is doing... clearly someone has a need he is meeting... what are the components of his innovation..? As an S, he is providing talent, flexibility, and reponsiveness, and the knowledge-base synergies he builds up during his work... now how he optimizes and executes that are all games in Sspace... personally, I am more interested in those strategies... that will increase the size of the pie... this makes me go.. 'Sigh... love'
Whether he shares in the revenue risk or gets his payment upfront is now how should the pie be split... value capture games... in the current situation that is important to deal with... but never sustainable... tomorrow the balance will tilt and your advantage will go... it is a transient game.. I also really do not see an innovation here.. it is at best a pattern-match or an adaptation... but this is a hard-line view, which I recognize... but what to do... I can play this game but this does not make me go 'Sigh... love...'
So... I love Microvision cos they are back to the basics... they met one of my long-pending needs... I bow to them...
Shyam 'TheDolphinWhoHadToLearnTheWayo
