Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Mike is a man with taste and discretion (he has 'Broadband and Me' on his blog roll!) and his posts are always thoughtful and often full of insight.
This is highlighting an article from the Economist's Technology Quarterly.
taking advantage of random events is the most effective strategy for creating successful products. The two worst? Trend following and mental inventions. Need spotting produced twice as many successes as failures, market research generated four times more, and solution spotting (finding a new way to use existing technology) created seven times more successes than failures.
It suggests that the previous post on x law and my comments are ostensibly right. You cannot predict success, although you can give serendipity a hand.
Mike's last point is well made and one I have often heard a number of people mention about such business/technology journals:
Lastly: After 10 years of the economist being online - I'd like to see someone publish how accurate the economist has been at spotting successful technologies - and for that matter, successful studies.
The context in which the criticism was levelled in my experience has been in terms of standard studies tend to compare 5, 10 or 15 companies over 5, 10 or 15 years and that this shows very little because their circumstances cannot be replicated. The suggestion being that 'Complexity' thinking can offer a better approach because you can't really learn from others in that way offered.
I guess that the Ecomomist has been right less than 50% of the time, any further offers?
Posted by Paul Goodison at September 8, 2003 09:15 PM | TrackBack