Did you know that FOMO has been around since the 16th century?
Back in 1525, Erasmus, among many others, opined that due to the printing press, that there were just too many books to read — that one could never read all of the books out there in one’s lifetime.
We’re going to talk a little bit about something that recently been covered in the news right around the time of the election and want to talk about it as it may be an interesting opportunity for those of you out there who are looking for some new type of startup opportunity to really dig into. I am not sure how much of a problem this is (IMHO, it seems to depend a lot on which side of the “aisle” you are on) but let’s talk about it anyway and see if we can deconstruct some opportunities in this space.
You know how they say that the moment that you publish a book, it’s outdated? Well, for innovation, that’s doubly true. While my book, Innovation Mastery, The Definitive Guide to Running the Ultimate Innovation Program has only been out for a few months, I realized that we had moved beyond innovation into a completely new space.
Read the first post in the series Innovation is War between the Doits and the ShouldWes. The following is also a chapter from my upcoming book, So Where’s My Flying Car?.
A long while back I was diagnosed with high cholesterol and put on Statins. My employer’s insurance company covered the cost of the drugs so I just paid my little $5 copay and got my meds and took them as usual. I then lost my job in a little corporate reshuffle and had to start paying for my own health care. Well, imagine my surprise when I went to refill my prescription and the pharmacist said “That’ll be $700” I thought “Huh?” – These have been out for years, taken by many – how can it be that I’m still paying this much – is it really true that the drug companies are greedy bastards just out to pillage their customers? No – drug company profits were in line with the horrific costs of bringing a drug to market:
Science fiction and comic books are rife with stories of the “more than human” human – either biologically enhanced through stimulants, genetic manipulation and/or mechanical augmentation. I still recall some book I read a while back that posited that in the future if you needed an extra arm to help you to get your job done, you could get one grafted on – either a real, flesh and blood one or a mechanical one. Of course, either one would listen to your brain and direct itself accordingly – by the time this was possible, we’d already have the ability to control these things by reading brainwaves. I remember that novel had scenes of three armed chefs making sushi or something like that, and an engineer who was ten times more efficient and productive at building things since he had one extra arm grafted to his right side.
Extend Your Runway With These Money Saving Tips
The toughest thing to manage if you ask me as a startup founder is money. You might think that you have enough, even if you try to run lean, but every now and then as you drive forward relentlessly to get your startup off the ground, you think “wouldn’t it be nice if we had someone do this” or “wouldn’t the office be nicer if we had free lunch”. Plus, with all of the dire warning that the bubble we are in might just be about to burst, its probably a good idea to try and stretch out your cash as much as you can.
I was asked the other day about how I invent – how I generate new ideas. Well, among other things I read a ton – and not just in the areas in which I’m looking to invent in, but all sorts of things – everything from business to tech to cultural to social. Even hit up the fiction and especially the science fiction sections on Amazon – if you were to look at my Kindle I’m sure you’d think it was an eclectic mess – or that I’m a serious case of multiple personality disorder. Same goes for paper books – sometimes I need the tactile look and feel of a real book – especially in my pre-sleep, no screen time. I usually have about 3-7 books going at one time, sometimes reading one for a bit, sometimes rotating through a few.
We live in an awesome time, don’t we? As little as 5 years ago, we barely had the tools, frameworks, and platforms that we have today in order to build a startup to do almost anything.
Do you know what the most interesting thing to me is about the on-demand, sharing economy? It’s not because of the crazy valuations (even though they are crazy), it’s because I personally feel that one aspect of those businesses touched a chord, deep inside humanity. The desire to help each other.
Remember this as one of one of Microsoft’s many slogans? – I think this was when Bill was launching Windows 95, with a whole host of new, cool stuff. Radical, dude.
Yes, it was a whole new interface – with the menu bar at the bottom. Yes, it would require retraining. Yes, it was “plug and play” when you plugged something in, it would magically appear on the desktop (Macs had done this for years so Bill was just catching up at the time)