Opportunity’s Unexpected Turns

Posted by: Erich Joachimsthaler

I am currently reading a wonderful book by Michael S. Malone, The Future Arrived Yesterday that just was published. The book describes a new form of corporation, the protean corporation. It is a good read. Michael S. Malone predicted the concept of The Virtual Corporation at least two decades ago.

His book got me to his blog on: pajamasmedia.com/edgelings. He writes about opportunity’s unexpected turns. His basic point is: New opportunities and, to use a word in vogue today, “breakthrough innovations” are often sold on falsehoods.

He cites transcontinental railroad that was hyped to lead to trade with Japan and the microchip that was hyped to be leading to applications like: automatic toilet flushers, cow milking machines, airport marijuana sniffers, electronic games and blood analyzers.

Some of these “envisioned” applications actually never occurred but others, quite unexpected ones, did. The transcontinental railroad helped to populate the western United States beyond the more courageous pioneers, the microchip created the PC, cellphone, iPod and video games players.

Michael S. Malone then goes on and talks about the Web2.0, MySpace and Facebook who saw their initial success as platforms for people to connect socially. He suggests that these applications transform before our very eyes to their own pseudo-nation states. Complete with voluntary citizens, laws, and degrees of sovereignty. Hence, it is not too far fetched to suggest if MySpace were a country, it would be ranked the fifth largest in the world, somewhere between Indonesia and Brazil. Iran shows today that Twitter (and video counterparts like YouTube and Qik) is becoming the new wire service, replacing newspapers and television that pushes the control and power of governments and companies to the people.

I think Michael S. Malone has a good point here. There are some applications that get people excited about the opportunity - that sells technology. The idea of airport marijuana sniffers thought up by Regis McKenna, Intel’s PR guy, helped Intel management to move away from memory chips. The real lesson though is that in the case of many innovations or breakthrough ideas, the opportunities for business to make money are really hidden in plain sight. They may be there, right in front of them, but they can’t see them. So, if that is the case for those wonderful successes, how come every company I visit proudly presents to me their new or old innovation funnel, the stage gate process? Isn’t it so that despite an optimized stage-gate process, despite open innovation, and the innovation overdrive and hype we have seen over the last few years, the real applications – and hence opportunities – that create the riches for companies, we really don’t know and can’t anticipate.