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The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

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Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#151

Post by Evenjos »

michaelochurch wrote: post #106
te_chris wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This rings true and people always seem to forget that it's much easier to innovate when the cost of living is lower. I'm currently living in Auckland, New Zealand, which by NZ (and world standards I think, though can't cite anything off hand) is quite expensive, but myself and my girlfriend have been contemplating moving to Sydney, Australia, a city which is one of most expensive in the world but where we would both…

This rings true and people always seem to forget that it's much easier to innovate when the cost of living is lower. The problem, or the balance that must be struck, is that it's hard to innovate without being surrounded by other innovative people. You need a city with a critical mass of innovative, talented people and a low cost-of-living. California in the 1970s had that. I don't know what the 2013 analogue is, or…

The problem, or the balance that must be struck, is that it's hard to innovate without being surrounded by other innovative people. You need a city with a critical mass of innovative, talented people and a low cost-of-living.

I agree. Come to Austin, TX!

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#152

Post by pbiggar »

eurleif wrote: post #53
pbiggar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're underselling twitter: its a completely new communication mechanism by which people can communicate short thoughts directly to their followers. It can be used as a better RSS, but that doesn't account for all the other ways it can be used, everything from celebrity gossip, to starting and managing violent revolutions.

Huh? RSS couldn't be used to spread celebrity gossip, or news about a violent revolution?

I could spread celebrity gossip by telegram; that doesn't mean twitter didnt create something innovative.

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#153

Post by 10098 »

pbiggar wrote: post #149
10098 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github? Seriously?! I'm sorry, this just completely blows my mind. I'd understand if you called git innovation (though the real innovation is distributed version control, and it existed before git, git is just a very good implementation), but calling github "innovation" seriously lowers the bar for that concept. I mean, I love github, but come on, they aren't even the first ones to come up with the idea. SourceForge…

If you think that sourceforge and github are equivalent, you are very mistaken.

While they are not equivalent, they serve to achieve similar goals, and it's fair to compare one to the other. Github may be better, but it's not the point. People will be using github to do the same stuff they used to do on SourceForge. Where's the innovation?

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#154

Post by pbiggar »

10098 wrote: post #153
pbiggar wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that sourceforge and github are equivalent, you are very mistaken.

While they are not equivalent , they serve to achieve similar goals, and it's fair to compare one to the other. Github may be better, but it's not the point. People will be using github to do the same stuff they used to do on SourceForge. Where's the innovation?

Sourceforge is to GitHub as Friendster is to Facebook.

Yes, they are kinda the same idea, but GitHub realized that the social element was key, and managed to create a community around open source the way that sourceforge never did (and, I would argue, didn't even know to do).

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#155

Post by BrianEatWorld »

jacoblyles wrote: post #104
pg wrote: post #87

These articles are easy to write (and upvote) but such conclusions are pretty meaningless till you have a definition of what counts as innovation. That's a very interesting question, and yet just about everyone who talks about this topic ducks it and goes instead for the easy score. Maybe we can do better here on HN. What's the right way to measure innovation? E.g. surely the 5 year old's definition (big shiny things…

The appeal of these articles is that they speak our unspoken thoughts. When someone tells you about the snapchat/instagram clone they are building at a startup event, you are socially obligated to smile and say something nice about it. But on the inside you wonder at an economic system that puts people through two decades of training so that they can apply their talents to such activities. Meanwhile, companies doing…

Perhaps thats part of the issue. Next time someone tells you about their Instagram clone, laugh at them. An alternative to government intervention is a cultural shift, a change in what society holds in high regards. If we all start laughing at clones, people might stop making them.

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#156

Post by RougeFemme »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #147
robomartin wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One issue I have not been able to resolve in thinking about the idea of society-funded research has to do with what I'll refer to as "bad" global actors. It is no secret that China shines for its lack of respect for intellectual property. The same is true for their willingness to steal just about anything from anyone and make it their own. If we, as an open society, fund programs costing billions of dollars we would,…

Your comment and the dilemma you present are very interesting. I think part of the problem is that we have reduced everything to a matter of economics and profit. It has become the measure of value for everything, so much so that intelligent, compassionate people can discuss the value of human life in terms of dollars and jobs. So, I think the problem you suggest is the product of a false choice. That is, IMO if we h…

I wouldn't have a major issue with a company profitting from the cure for cancer. On the other hand, I hate to seethe senior management of said company reaping handsome profits while people without the means to pay for it die without it. And I have major issue with sick people's inability to pay when the initial research was either done by or funded by taxpayer dollars. And then apply that same principle to all the middlemen who handle the drug and add little to no value to it, but still profit handsomely. . .but that's for another thread.

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#157

Post by kentlyons »

pg wrote: post #87

These articles are easy to write (and upvote) but such conclusions are pretty meaningless till you have a definition of what counts as innovation. That's a very interesting question, and yet just about everyone who talks about this topic ducks it and goes instead for the easy score. Maybe we can do better here on HN. What's the right way to measure innovation? E.g. surely the 5 year old's definition (big shiny things…

I like Clay Christensen's model for innovation [1]. He has a top level categorization of sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation.

Sustaining innovations are about making products in existing markets better and are further broken down into continuous innovation and discontinuous or radical innovations. The metrics here are about if the new innovation is improving performance within an existing market and by existing value metrics, and by how much. Continuous innovations are small improvements, radical innovations are large improvements.

Disruptive innovations are also broken down into two categories. There is the low end disruption whereby a product is competing in the same space as existing ones, but comes in from below. These are often cheaper and worse to start with, but then move up market as technology improves. There are many examples here (eg Arm coming in under x86). The other disruptive innovation is the new market innovation. In Christensen's terminology, these products compete against non-competition. There is a need, but no products fullfils that need until the disruption comes along. These products are tricky for several reasons. For one, there is no existing market and therefore traditional market research doesn't work. Instead, the execution plan needs to be focused on learning what the market is and what the customer needs are.

1] The series of books starting with the Innovator's Dilemma are a good read on innovation. The wikipedia article is a pretty good overview as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#158

Post by pg »

jacoblyles wrote: post #104
pg wrote: post #87

These articles are easy to write (and upvote) but such conclusions are pretty meaningless till you have a definition of what counts as innovation. That's a very interesting question, and yet just about everyone who talks about this topic ducks it and goes instead for the easy score. Maybe we can do better here on HN. What's the right way to measure innovation? E.g. surely the 5 year old's definition (big shiny things…

The appeal of these articles is that they speak our unspoken thoughts. When someone tells you about the snapchat/instagram clone they are building at a startup event, you are socially obligated to smile and say something nice about it. But on the inside you wonder at an economic system that puts people through two decades of training so that they can apply their talents to such activities. Meanwhile, companies doing…

The appeal of these articles is that they speak our unspoken thoughts.

That is exactly the problem. Nothing is less the product of systematic analysis than what you call an "unspoken thought." "Speak our unspoken thoughts" is a nicer way of saying "appeal to our unexamined prejudices."

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#159

Post by mattgreenrocks »

timr wrote: post #80
erichocean wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thiel [...] believes the US has moved from an optimistic-deterministic viewpoint to an optimistic-stochastic viewpoint. The optimistic-deterministic viewpoint is the opposite of the "lean startup" movement and the MVP approach, which is an almost completely pure expression of the optimistic-stochastic viewpoint, i.e.: We're *optimistic* that innovation is possible, but we also believe we can't know in advance, so we'…

The problem with "deterministic optimism" (other than the obvious silliness of attributing one mindset to the entire US ), is that it doesn't change the nature of reality. You can invest more in certain areas and yield a return on that investment, but you can't reliably call your shots. Life doesn't work that way. Nearly all of the fruits of government research have been as a result of "stochastic" investment (i.e. n…

Where is the research? I want to work in it, but every company in this 'hot' industry is too enamored with cranking out disposable apps.

Re: The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation

#160

Post by bearmf »

michaelochurch wrote: post #106
te_chris wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This rings true and people always seem to forget that it's much easier to innovate when the cost of living is lower. I'm currently living in Auckland, New Zealand, which by NZ (and world standards I think, though can't cite anything off hand) is quite expensive, but myself and my girlfriend have been contemplating moving to Sydney, Australia, a city which is one of most expensive in the world but where we would both…

This rings true and people always seem to forget that it's much easier to innovate when the cost of living is lower. The problem, or the balance that must be struck, is that it's hard to innovate without being surrounded by other innovative people. You need a city with a critical mass of innovative, talented people and a low cost-of-living. California in the 1970s had that. I don't know what the 2013 analogue is, or…

A real estate market separated into 60% government-owned cheap housing and 40% privately owned expensive housing strangely reminds me of NYC with its rent control/stabilization policies. Most of the current problems will not go away with government owning buildings instead of landlords. If the prevailing rate is low enough, a black rental market will soon form for government-owned units in desirable locations.

What I agree with is that somebody must build new housing. If private developers cannot/would not do it, then its a market failure and government should step in.

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