Democratizing Innovation

This book from MIT Sloan professor Eric von Hippel promotes the simple idea: ask your potential customers what they want to pay for. It sounds simple, and it mostly is, but there's some lingo in the book which, if you borrow it, makes you sound like an MBA. Worth a read.

We all sometimes get too wrapped up in our own "insanely great" ideas we forget there are two ways to make money:

1. Figure out what you can make for a profit, then figure out how to sell it.

2. Figure out what people will pay for, then figure out how to make it for a profit.

Inspired by Henry Ford and Steve Jobs, we in Sili Valley focus on the former. This text focuses on the latter. I think we overlook the market for faster horses.

Von Hippel's site at MIT has links to other free downloads, all worth perusing, if not reading: https://evhippel.mit.edu/