Technology - prioritizing vision over quick profits led to the crea...

When you watch closely you will realize that in today's world, everyone will tell you to watch what works and copy instead of starting from scratch. What we have in the end are a bunch of copycats seemingly doing well because that's the next big thing.

Technology - prioritizing vision over quick profits led to the creation of iconic innovations.png
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Innovation Over Imitation

It is really obvious in my town. If someone sees a particular person open a convenience store, the next month, another person will open a convenience store right next to this person. I know competition is good for business but what we created is what Peter Thiel the author of Zero to One would say,

Taking the world from 1 to n

We did not create anything new which is the basics of technology. We copied. We saw what worked and we decided to spend the rest of our lives copying that. China is a good example. They copy everything the Americans have and they are really good at this. They create globalization instead of innovations. But Peter Thiel says, the moment a start-up creates something new, fresh, and strange, the result is technology. It becomes the next big wave that everyone wants to copy.

The Copycat Problem

In his words,

Every time we create something new, we go from Zero to One.

A vertical result instead of a horizontal one is what a startup that becomes innovative creates. He explained that the truth is a startup originally is supposed to be a group of people who come together to create something new not copy an existing business model. Technology makes our lives easy and if we keep leaning toward older technology because that's where profit is, then, we stay stuck in the past instead of progressing towards the future.

Technology's Role

If we look back at the world we will see that our ancestors had lived very static lifestyles and they owned wealth by seizing from the next person. One person was only able to live comfortably if they seized enough. But technology came and made life easier for everyone. Creating wealth and having access to a richer lifestyle was only possible with the advent of technology. So the fact that we keep clapping for people who copy other people instead of thinking up new ways of doing things, begs the question, are we trying to stay in the past or build the future?

Building the Future

The bigger question is how do we build the future and skip copying an already existing model? The answer lies in going back to our roots. In the late 1990s, Peter Thiel says,

No loss was too big to be described as an investment in an even bigger, brighter future.

You see, I might not remember the exact name of the movie but I could remember this rich old man marveling at the advent of the internet in the early days. Before he found the internet through his young friend, often, he got investment news by reading the morning papers. He was a good investor and he picked good stocks and ditched lousy companies. When his young friend introduced the internet to him, he realized the future of investment would change. He told the young man that time would change because the investment information he always waited until he had the morning papers was now available with just the click of the button and anyone who wanted to go far and ahead would need to embrace the internet to do so.

He was pleased to see this new wave before he died. And at that time, he mentioned, the internet was giving this information for free. You know with papers you needed to buy advertising space to place your ads and gain customers or possible investors. But the internet as of then wasn't looking for any form of profit. They were mostly spreading information and hoping that a lot of people would adopt this new means of staying abreast with the rest of the world. Although the man did mention, that one day, the internet would find a way to make money off this innovation, he predicted the rise of the Google Adsense that we have today and it was a good movie, to say the least.

Internet's Evolution

Why did I bring that up? It's because once Peter Thiel said a few things about the old days of the internet I couldn't help but remember the film. Peter said,

The conventional wisdom of the "New Economy" accepted page views as more authoritative, forward-looking financial metrics than something as pedestrian as profit.

Did you notice the last part? Profit.

Risk and Reward

Just like he mentioned loss in the 1990s wasn't too obvious when someone was basically investing in a new idea that would transform the lives of humans all over again. Even though some of these ideas collapsed and were referred to as bubbles, something stands out. Those who take the risks of leaving the conventional way of doing things and charting up new courses always build or invest in the next big technology.

Seek Adoption before Profits

The best part and probably the less noticeable thing is that at that early stage, making a profit is not a thing yet. What startups would be looking for are adoptions. Like the internet accepted page view as a metric of growth instead of looking to get money from users in a bit to make profits. And investors accepted investing in the next big technology and leaning towards seeing the rest of the world accept this new thing instead of forcing the CEO to take the path more traveled in order to make money and cash out quickly.

Work to learn not to earn

Everything lies in recognizing that looking for profit first blinds us all from creating the next big thing. At this point, I understand why Robert Kiyosaki encouraged everyone to work to learn instead of earning. I even understand why the scripture asks us to first seek the kingdom of God and everything else will added unto us.

It all began to make sense. If a startup does not have investors strangling their necks for profits they will be able to move at a pace that allows them to build the next big thing. I guess this is why the founder who bootstraps his way to the top seems to always do well in terms of getting his ideas to work. I think there are founders with those kinds of stories. If I am not mistaken, the General Electric or General Motor guy was said to have bought his company back from investors so he could have enough say in how his engines were created instead of trying to hurry the prototypes into the market in a bit to make profits and give investors their share of the bag. I think The iPhone guy, Steve Jobs, did it too. And each of them had been able to create the next big thing when profits weren't the first thing on the agenda.