Seeing What's Next
When an innovation is launched, it can change an entire industry and the firms operating therein in a potentially disruptive way. This book argues that it is possible to predict which companies will win and which will lose in a specific situation, and provides a practical framework for doing so.
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What Hacker News says
- I'd say also read "Seeing What's Next", the third book in the disruption series. There he deals with a lot of stuff like structuring your business to take advantage of Asymmetric Motivation and Asymmetric Skills as shield and sword of your business, as well as building an orthogonal Value Network to the existing solutions to avoid co-option by incumbents (or not doing so accidentally, if you are aiming to be acquired).
- Yes. I don't have many specific complaints with Google Search. However, as companies get larger they often look "upward" at upper management and investors instead of looking "downward" at their customers. What I mean by this is they are often more concerned with pleasing their bosses, meeting revenue goals for investors, and generally not rocking the boat. This presents a great opportunity for small companies to disrupt the market.
You should definitely read "Seeing What's Next" by Clayton Christensen to get a better idea of where the weaknesses can be found in companies that dominate the market. A focus on semantic search certainly sounds like it could be a good area for a new entrant to gain some ground. Good luck!
- Seeing What's Next (Using the Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change) -- Clayton Christensen (Author)
- To paraphrase Clayton Christensen's "The law of conservation of attractive profits":
"When attractive profits disappear at one stage in the value chain because a product becomes modular and commoditized, the opportunity to earn attractive profits with proprietary products will usually emerge at an adjacent stage. That is, the location in the value chain where attractive profits can be earned shifts in a predictable way over time."
Companies make attractive money when they solve the hardest problems.
Read his book, "Seeing What's Next"
Also: http://eser.org/oil-and-gas/The_law_of_conservation_of_attra...
Just because it's true that many internet businesses have become modular, commoditized, and marginally profitable, does not mean that there is a shortage of difficult and highly valuable problems to solve.
The companies the author listed are "component manufacturers". Future profits will be created by combining those components in creative ways to solve new problems.
Quoting Economist Paul Romer: “Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable." see: http://eser.org/oil-and-gas/Eser_Corporation%27s_Business_Ph...
- >> The reason for that is well explained in The Innovator's Dilemma.
Side note/question: I know there's three books in that "series": Innovator's Dilemma, Innovator's Solution, and Seeing What's Next. For someone who has not read any of them, what's the correct order? Are all three required, or is there overlap between the contents?
- Innovator's Dilemma is much more academic and research-filled, Innovator's Solution is more "here's what you do with it." I'd recommend Innovator's Solution first as it's a somewhat lighter introduction. (I haven't read Seeing What's Next, so can't comment there.)
