[cap-talk] Some good advice for disruptive technologies

[David Barbour]

There is no analog.

There is a significant qualitative difference between platform
technologies (such as electrical grids, telephony systems, roadways
and railways, operating systems, HTML, programming languages) and
individual consumer technologies (such as Chop-o-Matic, specific
applications).

You won't sell capabilities alone. You need a killer application,
which just happens to expose capabilities to the user in some manner
that encourages an education on the subject. My own thoughts are along
the lines of a new class of webservices and browsers (or a good
NPRuntime plugin) that are easily integrated, mashed up, extended via
use of capabilities.

On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 6:47 PM, Karp, Alan H <alan.karp at hp.com> wrote:
> One of my Christmas gifts was "What the Dog Saw," a collection of essays by Malcolm Gladwell.  The first one is about Ron Popiel of Pocket Fisherman fame.  (When someone questioned its utility, Popiel replied, "It's not for using.  It's for giving.")
>
> In the discussion of the Chop-O-Matic, Gladwell writes
>
> "Like most great innovations, it was disruptive.  And how do you persuade people to disrupt their lives?  ... You have to explain the invention to customers - not once or twice but three or four times, with a different twist each time.  You have to show them exactly how it works and why it works, and make them follow your hands as you chop liver with it, and then tell them exactly how it fits into their routine, and, finally, sell them on the paradoxical fact that, revolutionary as the gadget is, it's not all that hard to use."
>
> Except for the part about chopping liver, that sounds like good advice for selling capabilities.  So, what's the analog of chopping liver?
>
> ________________________
> Alan Karp
> Principal Scientist
> Virus Safe Computing Initiative
> Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
> 1501 Page Mill Road
> Palo Alto, CA 94304
> (650) 857-3967, fax (650) 857-7029
> http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alan_Karp
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> cap-talk mailing list
> cap-talk at mail.eros-os.org
> http://www.eros-os.org/mailman/listinfo/cap-talk
>