About me:
I'm a big fan of inter-disciplinary studies, I take observations made in one field and try to explain phenomena in other fields based on those observations.
Main:
Recently, I have had the honor of speaking to Dr. Jonathan Grudin. For those of you who don't know about him (which is probably you if you're not from The Tech Industry), he is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, a pioneer in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. You can read more about him in the following links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Grudin
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/jgrudin/
Dr. Grudin emphasized how important it is to keep up with technology and went on to give a lot of examples where dominant companies were brought to their knees because they couldn't keep up with disruptive technologies. Now, this sounds like a fairly well-known lesson in the Tech Industry, agreed but do you know what else we talked about? Acting ahead of the curve can be just as dangerous as being left behind. Doesn't it sound strange? As entrepreneurs, aren't we all encouraged to be futuristic? Then what's wrong with it? We don't quite see the catch until we look at a few examples.
1. There was a stage when early researchers in the field of Computer Graphics split into two - factions, one faction began researching on and developing Graphics based on Realism while the other favored work on Graphics based on Interaction. Realism based graphics is very computation intensive and the technology was not quite there yet with respect to the required computational power when the factions were created, as a result the faction which worked on Interaction based graphics made more money and fame and when the technology did arrive, many were quick to incorporate realism into their graphics and so the original team of visionary researchers who first dwell into this specialized field were not the big winners, one could even go on to say that they have been forgotten.
2. Steve Jobs was fired in 1985 because The Macintosh I was a failure(If you're shocked, then you're not from the Tech Industry). Now, the main reason the Mac I was a failure was that it didn't have enough memory to run anything useful on the machine(remember, memory was quite costly at that time). In other words, the Macintosh I was ahead of its time, they committed themselves to a product which required technological advances that weren't there yet. Luckily for Apple they were only off by a bit and with the success of The Macintosh II, they survived and as for Steve, tough luck.
3. Did you know that Bill Gates at Microsoft built the first Tablet PC? Did you know that companies like Lenovo and Fujitsu made Tablet PCs long before Apple? You probably didn't. Another example when being futuristic was of no use and Apple became the market leader in the tablet space.
So what do we learn from this? The key takeaway is that for an innovation to be successful, the timing of the release has to be perfect. Commit too early to the innovation and the result is failure, be too late to recognize and seize the opportunity - failure again, so we are left with a very narrow time frame to make our innovations successful, this is something a lot of entrepreneurs miss, we are taught that early adopters always have the upper hand when the disruption kicks in, but its not always true as we have seen here. So now, I hope I have convinced you that Acting ahead of the curve can be just as dangerous as being left behind.
Now, we come to the topic of discussion, Capitalism vs Socialism and which is better for the world today. Now, lets try to apply what we have just discussed. Think of "Human Nature" as the technology. Capitalism is more self-serving while Socialism is more about cooperation for mutual benefit backed by a strong notion of equality. Capitalism is about maximizing individual profits whereas Socialism is about collective well-being. Now, think of Capitalism and Socialism as two products built with technology "Human Nature". At this stage in our evolution, is The Human Nature is more closer to Capitalism or Socialism? Well, I have to say it is more closer to Capitalism. Think about it, everyday we see people putting themselves before everyone else, they help only as long as it is the best possible or one of the best possible scenarios to be in. At this point if you're thinking "That is not true!!" then I'm sorry to burst your bubble but you're the exception and most people around you are the rule. So Socialism is a product which is ahead of its time, the technology is not quite there yet, that is humanity has ways to go before we all can put a larger entity of which we're a part of ahead of ourselves and until that day Socialism will continue to struggle because simply the world is not ready for it yet. So at least for now, Capitalism is the way to go! If you're a fan of Socialism, the time is near and every big mistake which is a consequence of Capitalism brings the world ever closer to Socialism.
I'm a big fan of inter-disciplinary studies, I take observations made in one field and try to explain phenomena in other fields based on those observations.
Main:
Recently, I have had the honor of speaking to Dr. Jonathan Grudin. For those of you who don't know about him (which is probably you if you're not from The Tech Industry), he is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, a pioneer in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. You can read more about him in the following links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Grudin
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/jgrudin/
1. There was a stage when early researchers in the field of Computer Graphics split into two - factions, one faction began researching on and developing Graphics based on Realism while the other favored work on Graphics based on Interaction. Realism based graphics is very computation intensive and the technology was not quite there yet with respect to the required computational power when the factions were created, as a result the faction which worked on Interaction based graphics made more money and fame and when the technology did arrive, many were quick to incorporate realism into their graphics and so the original team of visionary researchers who first dwell into this specialized field were not the big winners, one could even go on to say that they have been forgotten.
2. Steve Jobs was fired in 1985 because The Macintosh I was a failure(If you're shocked, then you're not from the Tech Industry). Now, the main reason the Mac I was a failure was that it didn't have enough memory to run anything useful on the machine(remember, memory was quite costly at that time). In other words, the Macintosh I was ahead of its time, they committed themselves to a product which required technological advances that weren't there yet. Luckily for Apple they were only off by a bit and with the success of The Macintosh II, they survived and as for Steve, tough luck.
3. Did you know that Bill Gates at Microsoft built the first Tablet PC? Did you know that companies like Lenovo and Fujitsu made Tablet PCs long before Apple? You probably didn't. Another example when being futuristic was of no use and Apple became the market leader in the tablet space.
So what do we learn from this? The key takeaway is that for an innovation to be successful, the timing of the release has to be perfect. Commit too early to the innovation and the result is failure, be too late to recognize and seize the opportunity - failure again, so we are left with a very narrow time frame to make our innovations successful, this is something a lot of entrepreneurs miss, we are taught that early adopters always have the upper hand when the disruption kicks in, but its not always true as we have seen here. So now, I hope I have convinced you that Acting ahead of the curve can be just as dangerous as being left behind.
Now, we come to the topic of discussion, Capitalism vs Socialism and which is better for the world today. Now, lets try to apply what we have just discussed. Think of "Human Nature" as the technology. Capitalism is more self-serving while Socialism is more about cooperation for mutual benefit backed by a strong notion of equality. Capitalism is about maximizing individual profits whereas Socialism is about collective well-being. Now, think of Capitalism and Socialism as two products built with technology "Human Nature". At this stage in our evolution, is The Human Nature is more closer to Capitalism or Socialism? Well, I have to say it is more closer to Capitalism. Think about it, everyday we see people putting themselves before everyone else, they help only as long as it is the best possible or one of the best possible scenarios to be in. At this point if you're thinking "That is not true!!" then I'm sorry to burst your bubble but you're the exception and most people around you are the rule. So Socialism is a product which is ahead of its time, the technology is not quite there yet, that is humanity has ways to go before we all can put a larger entity of which we're a part of ahead of ourselves and until that day Socialism will continue to struggle because simply the world is not ready for it yet. So at least for now, Capitalism is the way to go! If you're a fan of Socialism, the time is near and every big mistake which is a consequence of Capitalism brings the world ever closer to Socialism.
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