When I read that statistic, I thought it pretty odd. I mean, are the companies that are around us now all less than ten years old? Are they all part of that tiny 4%, which made it through? At first blush, it sounds wrong. But then, think about all of the failed companies over the…
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The modern world has filled us with stress since we really haven’t evolved far from tribes wandering the savannah. Think about that for a moment – think about the time before smartphones, before the internet, before computers, before human flight, before cars, before locomotives, before the Renaissance, before the dark ages, before the Romans, Greeks,…
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I’ve worked with a number of clients over the years who seem to have a bit of a self-esteem issue. We have very successful ideation sessions, a number of great ideas are generated, but then when it comes to taking the best of the best of these ideas and turning them into reality, they get cold feet. The phrase I hear a lot of is “We’re not like Google, we don’t have unlimited funds to spend on crazy, out-of-the-box moonshots.” It’s lucky for you then, that you don’t need unlimited funds to drive innovative new products and services out of your organization.
Okay, call me a futurist but I am really excited about where augmented reality is headed. As with many things, the imagined applications of it are endless, but first it’s got to get over some initial hurdles. Some hurdles are with the tech, of course, but another is mass adoption. Not to be confused with virtual reality, which is the complete escape of normal reality into a synthetic fantasy world. Augmented reality is when phones or glasses add things to your actual environment like directional cues, information about a business, or pokemon to catch.
Ever wonder why when you have a spare moment, no matter where you are, whether it’s waiting in line, at a stoplight at an intersection, or at the coffee shop, you pull out your phone and check your feed. For our purposes, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Facebook feed, a Twitter feed, a Snapchat feed, or News feed that you are subscribed to.
Let’s talk chatbots.
There have been several interesting articles over the holiday break about how Amazon Echos have been “behaving badly”. One was on a TV talk show triggering ordering things, another was a child in the house ordering dollhouses, without parental approval. There’s a hotel in Las Vegas which is going to install one in every room, thus driving, even more, privacy concerns.
I have to say, the first time I saw someone wearing these I thought to myself, boy, that looks dumb. Of course, I was one of the same guys to say that Google Glass looked dumb. If you think about it, Google Glass and Apple Airpods have a lot in common.
If you think about it, it’s not very hard to come up with great startup ideas, as long as you follow a few simple rules. First of all it important to focus on a need and not a want. Wants can always be put aside when times are tough, where needs are always there. For example, having a beard is a want, while getting a haircut is a need. For example, do you think that Dollar Shave Club would have sold for $1B to Unilever if it was Dollar Beard Cream Club? No, we men need to shave almost every day (well, if we wish to mingle in polite society, plus our significant others may wish us to be hairless more often that not). Once you have that, the next thing you are looking for are incumbents which are providing a poor and/or expensive service. Then you have both a need and an opportunity.
Everywhere you look, people are walking around town, holding up their phones. They walk for a bit, then stop, They swipe up once or twice, then get a happy look on their faces. They walk along a little more, and do the same thing. In some places, people gather randomly to sit and hold up their phones, sometimes turning around, then swiping up, then smiling – or frowning – and smiling again. Nine times out of ten, that guy you just walked past is playing Pokemon Go. You overhear conversations about Zubats and Jigglypuffs and Meowths, You strike up a casual conversations with the server in the restaurant about how he caught over 50 by now, and he recommends going to to mall, its a great “attraction point”