I'm a Sci-Fi Character
Some times I forget how unusual my life is. My friend and business partner, The Shad0w, creator of BitTornado, and I were recently talking about copyrights, the RIAA, abuses of the legal system and methods for fixing the problem. Mind you I have only seen Shad0w face to face once when we happened to be traveling through the same city at the same time. Anyways we were talking about a way for small down trodden people to do a little legal judo to stop the abusive lawsuits of the RIAA. The solution I came up with was an automated system of filing legal proceedings to tie up the RIAA and cause them to loose a bunch of money attacking unemployed people, grandmothers and 12 year old girls. We could make the whole thing free to access by anyone that needed it and create the legal equivalent of a distributed denial of service attack. Yes, that is the type of stuff we idly chat about.
Anyways, Shad0w said that the idea wasn’t new and that science fiction author Charles Stross invented the concept in his book Accelerando. You can buy the book on Amazon.com or just download a copy because it is published under a Creative Commons license. Shad0w Instant Messaged me a link, I download a copy and start listening to it using a text to speech program then tap the keystrokes to switch to a different computer to continue writing software for one of my clients, again who is in another state and for whom I do all my work remotely.
As I bounce between online chats, software I’m writing on one computer and 25 different browser windows and checking the movie I downloaded because it was out of print and none of the rental places had a copy when I realized this book could have been written about me. This book is suppose to be science fiction and the character is suppose to be fanciful yet I am doing much of what the character in the book is doing. Wow, I didn’t realize my life could be the basis for a science fiction novel. But maybe the “truth is stranger than fiction” adage is true.
I live in a house that I basically got for free by using my credit cards to buy it in a repossession auction and renting out the other two apartments of the triplex. I exist in a virtual world having several Instant Messenger accounts, blogs, websites and a cell phone. My physical mail goes to one of 3 addresses and is forwarded to where I happen to be at the time. I create at least one new business model or invention everyday and file them away because I don’t have time to pursue them. I hang out with models, movie stars and talk with technology luminaries such as Eric S. Raymond and Bruce Schnerier on a daily basis. A lot of this happens because I structured my life so that I didn’t have to be in one particular place at a particular time. If someone invited me to do something I would say yes and do it.
What I have done is escape the limits of time and space. That is very sci-fi.
I don’t exactly recommend my life style for everyone. There are lots of advantages and disadvantages, but that is the nature of beta software. Pick and choose elements that work for you. The big concept to grasp is there are lots of other ways of doing things. Even what you might believe is out of the realm of possibility could be normal for someone else, and for you if you choose.
Action Items:
- Download a podcast of an NPR program and while listening to the show Google for topics mentioned and read about details not covered.
- Try pausing the audio while reading, or rewinding if you miss something, and try just keeping up.
- Make a list of things you have done or could do that benefit the world as a whole and you can’t easily sell.
Predicting the Future
One of the most difficult aspects of the current world is the speed that things are changing. And to top it off the speed of change is increasing. It’s impossible to survive by merely reacting. Simply being faster isn’t enough. If you’re working on tomorrow’s product and you make a mistake you have missed your chance and you go to the back of the line.
You have to be working two steps ahead.
The only way to stay two steps ahead is to know in advance what customers expect. You need to predict the future.
When I worked at Apple we designed something called n-tier distributed client server computing. That’s a very technical term for breaking a task up among any number of levels of computers. That improves performance, reduces cost and increases functionality. The concept wasn’t completely new but no one had done it very well. The reason we wanted to do it was to solve the two out of three problem.
You’ve probably heard the two out of three problem, “you can have it fast, good or cheap, pick two.” Its most often said as a sarcastic joke to an unreasonable request. The two out of three problem is an impossible problem to solve, unless you do something deceptively simple but I’ll leave solving impossible problems for a future post.
What my team at Apple realized is if we made such a system it would be made in a very different way. So we not only designed a system, we created methods for designing those types of systems. As it turned out, only a few years later n-tier distributed client server computing was popularized by someone else and is now called the web. Because Apple had seen ahead to develop methods for building web systems they were able to keep up and eventually re-gain the lead again with products like iPod and iTunes.
So staying two steps ahead requires predicting the future. What we want to predict is what customers will buy in the near future. It’s essential to predict the near future and not something way off in the science fiction future. If you are too far ahead of the market you will waste resources on marketing. Success comes from giving people what they want when they want it.
I’m now working with OutCompete. They created a system for figuring this out. We call what customers will want in the future their Emerging Expectations. How do you predict customers Emerging Expectations?
First understand what drives customers desires. One basic truth of humans is we always want more. We want better, easier, for less cost and with less risk than yesterday.
As it turns out we follow a predictable cyclical pattern starting with new features moving toward lowest price then starting again with new features.
So look at any product and you will find it’s at one of those stages. Lets look at portable music players. You might not remember but transistor radios were the first portable electronic music player. The next improvement was adding the ability to choose your own music. The tape player did that. At first tape players were big but eventually Sony made a pocket sized tape player. Next came digital music on CDs. At first CDs weren’t portable but soon Sony made portable CD players. The first ones skipped a lot but improvements were made and they became more reliable and smaller and then cheaper.
Now there is the Apple iPod. The iPod improved on portable CD players by allowing you to build your own lists of songs to play along with a store to buy individual songs. When iPods first came out they only played music, Apple made incremental improvements offering smaller ones and eventually competitors came in with cheaper products. Now Apple moved to the next level with the Video iPod, introducing a new feature and is moving steadily through the cycle.
Looking back each step in the progression was very logical. Once you become accustomed to analyzing the more, better, cheaper, with less risk cycle future progressions are just as logical.
By knowing what customers want today and what they will want in the future its possible to sketch out a map of each possible step. With the map of all the possible steps you can always stay two steps ahead.
In future posts I’ll talk about:
- how to solve impossible problems
- how to predict future inventions
- how to block competitors future moves
What is Proffitt?
Prophet: a person that speaks the truth. Often about something in the future.
Profit: the benefit received in excess of the amount spent on investing work or materials.
Proffitt, is my family name. Maybe its because of my name or maybe that is why my family has the name. I am always interested in figuring out how things work, getting to the basic truth, and coming up with business ideas. I’ve spent over 20 years developing some of the key technologies and businesses.
My goal with this blog is to share some of what I’ve learned to help people reach their goals.
Predictive Innovation Training
Predictive Innovation: Core Skills Book
RoundSquareTriangle.com