Unpacking this a bit, I think that the reason full-stack startups are becoming popular is because many of the new technologies are disruptive innovations that honestly aren't that useful to existing customers of industries. That's the definition of a disruptive innovation, right?
Take Uber for example. Their core strength is logistics; they connect instantaneous demand for transportation with surplus supply. They could try to sell this as a service to the existing taxicab/limo industry, but their incentives are seriously misaligned. Taxis and limos have an industry structure that remains profitable because they own a supply-restricted monopoly on transportation (through medallions & branding) that lets each driver charge premium prices. Adopting Uber's technology doesn't let them serve more customers (they're limited by driving time), nor does it let them charge more (it would probably drop the price through higher availability), and so there's no incentive for them to buy it. However, if Uber targets a different population of drivers - say, those who are unemployed or underemployed and have free time on their hands - then those folks all have an incentive to adopt the technology so they could get customers where none were before. And because the supply of Uber drivers is greater than the supply of taxicabs, this lowers prices for customers, creating wealth and a fair amount of Teamster opposition.
Or consider Tesla. Their core strength is branding - they appeal to the eco-friendly, style-conscious customer who wants everyone to know they care about the environment. If Tesla just sold batteries and a powertrain to Detroit, it wouldn't fix the public perception of American cars as gas-guzzling clunkers at all. This is why the public is nowhere near as excited about the Chevy Volt as about the Tesla Roadster or S.
I think that companies that pursue these strategies are effectively attacking longstanding structural efficiencies in the way the U.S. economy works, things that have been institutionalized because that's the way it's always been. And we're going to see more of them in the near future, because this reliance on branding, oligopolies, and regulatory barriers to entry has been in place since the 50s, and technology has changed significantly in that time period. There will also likely be a lot of social upheaval as well, as people get used to the emergence of new institutions.
I wager "disruption" is also underpinning resentment towards gentrification in places like San Francisco.
The negative side of changing how industries and businesses work is that a lot of times those left behind has no more place to go.
Like the auto workers in Detroit or the steel workers in Pittsburgh. They committed to traditional hard work, their organization required hundreds of thousand of them for labor, to protect their interest and to maintain a fair and equitable trade of time/labor they established unions.
In turn the orgs provided care for them all their lives.
We don't have that anymore.
Instead the disruptions coming are just that. Disrupting normalcy and how the establishment are living.
Where do they go? Who is going to carry that burden? The government or the private industry that's capable of leveraging more with less, that's literally killing ways of life for many?
How do you maintain your moral compass in all this? Is this just the march of progress? Does it not bother you because that paycheck will make it better?
You can't stop the progress though. The only good outcome I see is that as technology eliminates more and more jobs, the tax burden goes up higher for the disrupters to pay the retirement for the disrupted.
Yup, new technologies not providing value to the existing ecosystem is the primary issue when it comes to adoption. There's another comment below by pshin45 that discusses how hackers have become more business savvy.
I recently read the book The Wide Lens: A New Strategy for Innovation by Ron Adner that I think is the logical synthesis of these two lines of thought. It totally blew me away because it explains a shit-ton of real world technology adoption success and failures, particularly how innovations interact with their wider ecosystems. Further, it actually provides some examples of how to solve roadblocks by redistributing value among the various players in the ecosystem.
Comments
Unpacking this a bit, I think that the reason full-stack startups are becoming popular is because many of the new technologies are disruptive innovations that honestly aren't that useful to existing customers of industries. That's the definition of a disruptive innovation, right?
Take Uber for example. Their core strength is logistics; they connect instantaneous demand for transportation with surplus supply. They could try to sell this as a service to the existing taxicab/limo industry, but their incentives are seriously misaligned. Taxis and limos have an industry structure that remains profitable because they own a supply-restricted monopoly on transportation (through medallions & branding) that lets each driver charge premium prices. Adopting Uber's technology doesn't let them serve more customers (they're limited by driving time), nor does it let them charge more (it would probably drop the price through higher availability), and so there's no incentive for them to buy it. However, if Uber targets a different population of drivers - say, those who are unemployed or underemployed and have free time on their hands - then those folks all have an incentive to adopt the technology so they could get customers where none were before. And because the supply of Uber drivers is greater than the supply of taxicabs, this lowers prices for customers, creating wealth and a fair amount of Teamster opposition.
Or consider Tesla. Their core strength is branding - they appeal to the eco-friendly, style-conscious customer who wants everyone to know they care about the environment. If Tesla just sold batteries and a powertrain to Detroit, it wouldn't fix the public perception of American cars as gas-guzzling clunkers at all. This is why the public is nowhere near as excited about the Chevy Volt as about the Tesla Roadster or S.
I think that companies that pursue these strategies are effectively attacking longstanding structural efficiencies in the way the U.S. economy works, things that have been institutionalized because that's the way it's always been. And we're going to see more of them in the near future, because this reliance on branding, oligopolies, and regulatory barriers to entry has been in place since the 50s, and technology has changed significantly in that time period. There will also likely be a lot of social upheaval as well, as people get used to the emergence of new institutions.
Definition of disruption.
I wager "disruption" is also underpinning resentment towards gentrification in places like San Francisco.
The negative side of changing how industries and businesses work is that a lot of times those left behind has no more place to go.
Like the auto workers in Detroit or the steel workers in Pittsburgh. They committed to traditional hard work, their organization required hundreds of thousand of them for labor, to protect their interest and to maintain a fair and equitable trade of time/labor they established unions.
In turn the orgs provided care for them all their lives.
We don't have that anymore.
Instead the disruptions coming are just that. Disrupting normalcy and how the establishment are living.
Where do they go? Who is going to carry that burden? The government or the private industry that's capable of leveraging more with less, that's literally killing ways of life for many?
How do you maintain your moral compass in all this? Is this just the march of progress? Does it not bother you because that paycheck will make it better?
Oddly your aurgument Sounds like a traditionalist argument for keeping slavery around in the 19th century.
Is "being protected from change" a fundamental human right?
Horses went to pasture after cars. Who are you in the future?
If you don't do it, someone else will.
Especially true in a (relatively) free society. Also see, "Parable of Fisherman" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6602351
You can't stop the progress though. The only good outcome I see is that as technology eliminates more and more jobs, the tax burden goes up higher for the disrupters to pay the retirement for the disrupted.
Yup, new technologies not providing value to the existing ecosystem is the primary issue when it comes to adoption. There's another comment below by pshin45 that discusses how hackers have become more business savvy.
I recently read the book The Wide Lens: A New Strategy for Innovation by Ron Adner that I think is the logical synthesis of these two lines of thought. It totally blew me away because it explains a shit-ton of real world technology adoption success and failures, particularly how innovations interact with their wider ecosystems. Further, it actually provides some examples of how to solve roadblocks by redistributing value among the various players in the ecosystem.
http://amzn.com/B00AKQD5M4