I sometimes think that Hibernator has a melancholy who does not match his age, he often falls into some contemplation, keep self-doubting, self-denial. However, this suspicion and denial, often bringing me some inspiration, such as this "common sense and innovation".
Hibernator is doubtful, today we think is an innovative thing, may not exist tomorrow. Thus, he believes that innovation should "cater to existing needs or potential demands", should listen to the call from "common sense". His call to common sense is this definition:
Common sense tells people which innovations are technically viable. Common sense inherits excellent business traditions and rules. This is a long-term accumulation. Common sense conveys market signals and constraints in a market allowed container.
However, for innovation, common sense is often reliable. Conversely, if an innovation is fully in line with common sense, it is likely that it is not an innovation. The Internet itself is an innovative product. Many people believe that the Internet may be the most important inventions in the 20th century. However, in a long time, the Internet is something that lost money. Even when risk investment is large, people still don't know how to make money from the Internet.
There is a typical example is Besos. He opened the bookstore to the Internet, and let Amazon's market value exceed the old newspaper "New York Times" in the past 100 years, and at this time, Amazon is lost daily. In 1999, Besos became a "era" annual ventilation person and attracted great controversy. Everyone knows that Besos is innovating, but few have a few people believe that his innovation really produces commercial interests. Of course, there will be no more people today.
Another example is Google. In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Bulin intended to make a better search engine. At that time, there were many search engines in the market. No family can earn money, so that everyone believes that search engines are just an accessory application of the Internet, it cannot produce value. But today, Google has become an overlord.
There are many similar examples, such as IM software, P2P, Blog, and more.
An innovation even temporarily caught business value, but as long as it allows users to like, and eventually can not leave it, they will be able to find its business value. Just like QQ, when it has tens of millions of stable users, it is no longer worried that it can produce business value.
There is also a situation, an innovation, a small team may hardly give it a larger business value, but once this innovation is included in the business structure of the big company, its value is immediately reflected. For example, Google acquire Blogger, Looksmart acquires FURL, and so on. In this case, the small company is actually innovative for large companies.
Today, we feel del.icio.us, flickr, bloglines, 365key is valuable, not because we know how these innovations will make profits, but because we know, we need these things. Can meet the innovation of our side demand, how can there be no business value?
Of course, innovation is always risky, even if it may bring a lot of business benefits, the innovator may wait for that day. If Yahoo is not because of venture capital support, it is successfully launched, it may not wait for the profit.
In the Internet era, the magic weapon for survival in small companies may only be innovative. If there are no many small companies that don't stop innovation, the value of the Internet may be greatly reduced. If innovative is like Hibernator, you must first be "constrained in a market-allowed container", then this is likely to innovate suffocation.
