If you want to build a successful startup or company and make a lot
of money with it, especially in the tech sector, you need to come up
with some innovative product or service. Something that will drastically
improve the way things get done, something that will solve an existing
problem in a much better way, something that will allow people to do
things they couldn’t before.
Most people know that.
What most people don’t know is that you can build such a company even if you don’t invent the product/service yourself. Instead of inventing it you can identify someone else’s idea, purchase the rights to it or partner with the inventor, and then bring it to the market.
Not convinced? Here’s a powerful example that backs up my case.
Most of the early database systems used a hierarchical model, where data would be represented under tree-like structures using files in the computer memory. Then in 1970 a guy named Edgar F. Codd published a paper titled “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks”, where he proposed a new model based on relations (tables), where users would be able to declare directly what information they wanted back from the database, and the system would take care of the rest.
Codd was working at IBM during that time, but the upper management didn’t give his idea any attention. Peer reviews of his paper were even more harsh. Here’s a quotation from one of them:
The interesting thing is that in this case the revolutionary idea was just that, a concept. It wasn’t a patent or a proprietary design, so anyone was free to use it, and many did.
Want some more examples?
Apple and Steve Jobs didn’t invent many of the flagship products of the company. The mouse and the graphical user interface, for instance, were invented at Xerox’s PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), and Jobs came across them while visiting the premises. He then made a deal to be able to use them with the Mac, and Apple became the first company to launch bring those innovations to the market. Similarly Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player, but it managed to polish the concept with the iPod, which became the industry leader.
MS-DOS was the product that solidified Microsoft’s dominance as a software vendor, back in 1980. Microsoft didn’t create that product, however. They knew a company called Seattle Computer Products which had a compatible operating system to the x86 microprocessors (the ones used by PCs), and they knew they probably would be able to purchase it for a moderate price. With those cards in hand they approached IBM, and they managed to close a deal to supply the operating system to the next line of PCs. Once the deal was closed they purchased the software from the Seattle company and renamed it MS-DOS.
The bottom line: keep your radar on and always be looking for innovative ideas and products, as identifying one of them can be just as profitable as inventing one yourself.
Most people know that.
What most people don’t know is that you can build such a company even if you don’t invent the product/service yourself. Instead of inventing it you can identify someone else’s idea, purchase the rights to it or partner with the inventor, and then bring it to the market.
Not convinced? Here’s a powerful example that backs up my case.
Most of the early database systems used a hierarchical model, where data would be represented under tree-like structures using files in the computer memory. Then in 1970 a guy named Edgar F. Codd published a paper titled “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks”, where he proposed a new model based on relations (tables), where users would be able to declare directly what information they wanted back from the database, and the system would take care of the rest.
Codd was working at IBM during that time, but the upper management didn’t give his idea any attention. Peer reviews of his paper were even more harsh. Here’s a quotation from one of them:
This paper proposes that all data in a database be represented in the form of relations—sets of tuples—and that all the operations relative to data access be made on this model. Some of the ideas presented in the paper are interesting and may be of some use, but, in general, this very preliminary work fails to make a convincing point as to their implementation, performance, and practical usefulness.There was one guy, however, that thought Codd’s idea was interesting, and he decided to build a company that would develop and sell databases using the relational model. That guy is called Larry Ellison, and the company he co-founded is called Oracle Corporation. The relation model quickly became the de facto standard for databases around the world, and Oracle the largest company developing and selling those systems.
Adding together the lack of any real-world example, performance experiment, and implementation indication or detail, we are left with an obscure exercise using unfamiliar mathematics and of little or no practical consequence. It can be safely rejected.
The interesting thing is that in this case the revolutionary idea was just that, a concept. It wasn’t a patent or a proprietary design, so anyone was free to use it, and many did.
Want some more examples?
Apple and Steve Jobs didn’t invent many of the flagship products of the company. The mouse and the graphical user interface, for instance, were invented at Xerox’s PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), and Jobs came across them while visiting the premises. He then made a deal to be able to use them with the Mac, and Apple became the first company to launch bring those innovations to the market. Similarly Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player, but it managed to polish the concept with the iPod, which became the industry leader.
MS-DOS was the product that solidified Microsoft’s dominance as a software vendor, back in 1980. Microsoft didn’t create that product, however. They knew a company called Seattle Computer Products which had a compatible operating system to the x86 microprocessors (the ones used by PCs), and they knew they probably would be able to purchase it for a moderate price. With those cards in hand they approached IBM, and they managed to close a deal to supply the operating system to the next line of PCs. Once the deal was closed they purchased the software from the Seattle company and renamed it MS-DOS.
The bottom line: keep your radar on and always be looking for innovative ideas and products, as identifying one of them can be just as profitable as inventing one yourself.
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