Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Value creation through the dip

Following up on my post yesterday regarding the phases that hype, technology and value-creation go through, I thought it might be useful to dust off the questions I typically use to determine if a new innovation is a fad or if it has a chance to survive long-term. This seems to align to Fred Wilson's take on adoption of new innovations.

1. Can I explain the benefit of the technology (or vision) in 1-2 sentences, or do I need to ramble through some story?

2. If I can explain it in 1-2 sentences, do semi-technical or non-technical people understand it, or at least ask good questions to clarify?

3. If this technology was open-sourced, as opposed to being controlled by a single company (or a small number of companies), are there enough interesting aspects to get communities of developers to engage with it?

4. If it’s not happening already, what is going to be the “ah ha” moment when people will actually start valuing it enough to pay for it, or at least associating valid business models with it? If this is consumer-oriented, why would they include it in their life?

5. If it went away tomorrow, would anyone really miss it within 3-6 months?
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