This document provides advice for starting a new business and discusses whether an individual has a chance of success. It outlines three types of innovation - genesis, product-to-product, and utility-to-utility - and notes that the sweet spot for startups is taking established products and making them utilities by reducing costs. It also warns of the "wall of inertia" that large companies face and encourages open source approaches and building an ecosystem to overcome inertia. The document concludes that an individual does have a chance of success, especially with certain types of innovations, if they are aware of these strategies and approaches.

1. My own business - do I have a chance?
Krzysztof Daniel

2. ex IBMer
ex Red Hatter
work @ Currency One
I like games
About me
"Go board part" by Dilaudid - Own work; modified from Image:Go_board.jpg, which was made by
user:donarreiskoffer. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

3. So, why are you here?
Xkcd.com, CC-BY-NC

4. Fast forward...

5. Fast forward...

6. But...

7. But...

8. A word of warning

9. So, let’s continue

10. Absolutely no customer has a
need to make you profitable.
First of all – user needs

11. Activities
Practices
Knowledge
Data
Secondly - components

12. Let’s talk about ideas

13. ●printing
Let’s talk about ideas

14. ●printing
●digital camera
Let’s talk about ideas

15. ●printing
●digital camera
●mobile phone touch interface
Let’s talk about ideas

16. ●printing
●digital camera
●mobile phone touch interface
●cloud
Let’s talk about ideas

17. ●printing
●digital camera
●mobile phone touch interface
●cloud
●electricity
Let’s talk about ideas

18. One problem with the future

19. One problem with the future

20. A bit of theory

21. The diffusion curve

22. The diffusion curve

23. The diffusion curve
http://www.lef.csc.com/publications/911

24. Let’s cheat
f(time)
g(time)

25. Let’s cheat

26. Let’s define:
Let’s cheat!

27. Let’s define:
●Ubiquity - how ubiquitous a thing is.
Let’s cheat!

28. Let’s define:
●Ubiquity - how ubiquitous a thing is.
●Certainty - how well understood a thing
is.
Let’s cheat!

29. Let’s define:
●Ubiquity - how ubiquitous a thing is.
●Certainty - how well understood a thing is.
Let’s cheat!
Ubiquity
Certainty

30. Time removed.
http://blog.gardeviance.org/2014/03/on-mapping-and-evolution-axis.html

31. Evolution vs Product
http://blog.gardeviance.org/2014_11_01_archive.html

32. Evolution curve - idealized

33. The Evolution Axis
Genesis UtilityCustom Built Product(+rental)

34. Weak signals
http://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/evolution-diffusion-hype-cycle-and.html

35. Profits

36. a.k.a. Wonder - I wonder what it can do.
●New
●Novel
●Unknown
●Uncertain
●Rare
●Changing
●Chaotic
Genesis

37. Nobody did that before!
Are you sure?
Are you ready to fail fast?
Genesis-like idea

38. Microsoft Bob
http://news.yahoo.com/directly-fail-worst-tech-product-132527744.html

39. ●bottled water for pets
Thirsty dog

40. crispy beef
tangy fish
Thirsty dog

41. 15th century
And some successes, too

42. The Internet - 1969
Some other successes

43. Do I have a chance?

44. You will die before you make
any money out of it.*
Do I have a chance?
*or at least get very old, as the evolution speed accelerates

45. The Evolution Axis
Genesis UtilityCustom Built Product(+rental)

46. ●Measured
●Stable
●Predictable
●Cost of doing business
●Market penetration near 100%
●Usually invisible to the user
●Electricity, Network, Computing
Utility

47. ●contract to fulfill
●sheer price matters
●no room for innovation
●really large scale
●nobody will see that
●existing users may not be willing to switch unless you’re
significantly cheaper
ocan you be significantly cheaper without deep
experience in the field?
Startup problems

48. Do I have a chance?

49. New electricity provider?
Genesis UtilityCustom Built Product(+rental)
Value
power
computing power
social network

50. “New” search engine?

51. The Evolution Axis
Genesis UtilityCustom Built Product(+rental)

52. ●custom built
●off-the-shelf product/rental
●maturing
Transitional phase
●IBM Watson
●cars
●virtual personal assistants (Google Now, Apple Siri, Amazon Echo)

53. product-to-product startup

54. Canonical vs Red Hat
●a number of years of really unsuccessful fight
●tough competition of free, open sourced products
●huge inertia proportional to the size of adopter
community
●product needs to be 9x better to cause replacement*
●entering still possible, time-proportional market share
product-to-product startup
* heard from one business angel, may be an approximation

55. No. Unless you’ve got
●a really, really good product
●a really, really good sales
●a lot of time
Do I have a chance?

56. Three types of innovation
●genesis
●product-to-product, utility to utility
That said...

57. Three types of innovation
●genesis
●product-to-product, utility-to-utility
●there is one more...
That said...

58. Let’s go back to evolution
Genesis UtilityCustom Built Product(+rental)
Value
wonder

59. Let’s go back to evolution
Genesis UtilityCustom Built Product(+rental)
Value
peaceful competitionwonder

60. Let’s go back to evolution
Genesis UtilityCustom Built Product(+rental)
Value
wall of
inertia
peaceful competitionwonder

61. previous success is the deadliest enemy
Inertia

62. ●to increase the overall effectiveness of sales departments [...];
●to improve the effectiveness of sales to large customers [...];
●[...] more precise monitoring of the level of customer satisfaction[...];
●[...] price policy (promotional offers, packaging of services) [...];
●[...] ATMAN Private Cloud [...];
●[...] sales of services outside Poland [...].
Inertia
http://media.atm.com.pl/en/pr/291131/atm-publishes-its-financial-report-for-the-third-quarter-of-2014

65. Let’s go back to evolution
Genesis UtilityCustom Built Product(+rental)
Value
wall of
inertia
peaceful competitionwonder
companies stop here

66. ●is a deadly threat to corporations
●is the sweet spot for startups
the wall of inertia

67. takes product, makes “cost of doing business” utility
examples:
●Amazon EC2
●Neostrada
product-to-utility startup

68. ●effectiveness - when the price defends you
owhat is the cost of your own datacenter/e-mail server?
oSomething is so cheap, that suddenly everyone can afford it
lFord T
lCommodore 64
lPrinted books
●Jevons effect
Industrialization

69. Do I have a chance?

70. Absolutely!
Do I have a chance?

71. Open Source
Open Source

72. ●IBM PC vs Apple Mac
●Google Android vs Apple iOS
●Sony Betamax vs JVC VHS
Open Approach

73. Ecosystem

74. The Wardley Mapping is really powerful technique:
lHS2
lHM Government
lDutch Government
lTwo very large banks
Why?

75. About the presentation
There is time only for this...

76. I work on a tool designed for mapping.
The tool is open-source (ASL 2.0).
I need you to start using it.
You need to be AWARE!
Reasons

77. certain kind of very interesting innovations
scale matters
different scales requires different approaches
open source helps
beware of inertia
Do I have a chance - summary

78. Questions?

79. Credits
Simon Wardley - the technique creator