Polished beetle dung might fool some people, but it’s still beetle dung.
“Corporate”:http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essay…
By blurring the lines that traditionally delineate supplier, vendor, and customer, these services have pioneered new value streams that can output new types of offerings, harness new efficiencies, and produce higher levels of continuous innovation. Experience Attributes make Web 2.0 offerings fierce competitors in their respective marketplaces.
vs. “Grunge”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/heckling_ad…
Also, I’m digging the idea of “frictionless commerce” mentioned in the chart. Though I wonder, can this term be replaced by “lubricated commerce”? That would truly be a penetrating buzzword.
I lean toward the latter, even if 37Signals’ blog has taken on an air of pedantry nitpicking lately.
On a business blog, it’s really nice to have a sense of the people behind the posts. However, I don’t need to know every little personal annoyance, such as your experience with “opening a new bank account”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/citibank_ho…, unless you have something new to add. Many of us have already gone through the same experience. We feel your pain. But if your business sets expectations of you as a problem-solver, don’t just post the problems. Post your ideas on solutions.
On the other hand, don’t hide behind words that obscure any meaning at all; I almost think the Adaptive Path article linked above is a parody… its writer is
a senior practitioner for Adaptive Path, the world’s premier user experience consulting company. He has nearly a decade of experience developing new products, services, and user experiences on the Web, handhelds, and beyond…
Beyond what? Premier? What does a Senior Practitioner do? He’s talking about trying to emulate the fast-growth success of the Web 2.0 darlings?
Yeah, here’s the thing… you don’t become a revolutionary, you don’t innovate, you don’t excite your creative passions by emulating.
It all starts from an idea. Throw away the business books. Turn off the computer. Sit down with a pen (or pencil) and paper and explore your passions. Forget about Web 2.0 or even Web 1.0 for that matter. Forget about Ruby on Rails, Django, Turbogears, J2EE. Forget about web standards.
Get rid of every expectation, every limitation, every doubt. Discard all extra input until you’re left with an idea and its possibilities, until you’re so purely connected to the idea that nothing else conceals the rough gem of your idea.
Apply your passion, grind away the dirt until you’ve got a ‘diamond in the rough.’ Then, and only then is it appropriate to start investigating external constraints like profitability, or to consider how you’re going to realize your idea and what existing technology will help drive it.
You can’t cut and polish an idea if you have no real idea or passion to begin with. Polished beetle dung might fool some people, but it’s still beetle dung.