embedlets-developer

[Embedlets-dev] [Marketing] Embedlets and the Innovator's Dilemma....

[Andrzej J. T. <an...@ch...>]

Found an interesting piece which proposes that some of Ant's popularity stems from the 
Innovator's Dilemma at work:

   http://www.zanthan.com/itymbi/archives/000037.html

Worth a quick read (as is the Innovator's Dilemma, for those that have not read it).

In our discussions on how to "market" Embedlets, there have been a number of lurking 
assumptions:

1) That it will tackle (and transform) the current embedded sw development market.

I'm not sure this is the case, at least not at first....it is probably more likely that Embedlets 
will spawn new market opportunities that we haven't even forseen (like the integration with 
server side systems in the "real time" enterprise, a market that doesn't really exist yet).  In 
the longer term, it could well impact existing embedded markets, but that is not necessarily 
where the initial opportunities will be found.

2) Embedlets need to provide a "better mousetrap" (eg. more power, features, productivity, 
etc.) than existing technologies (Asm/C).  

Again, this need not be the case.  Typical of "disruptive technologies" (as defined in the 
Innovator's Dilemma), they are usually technologically simpler, and built from pre-existing 
components/technologies (which would seem to be characteristic of embedlets....we're not 
really inventing anything new....just re-packaging known techniques and best practices for 
the embedded space).  It could well be that the "value" of embedlets will be measured by 
some other metrics in initial markets that do not compete with the traditional embedded 
space.  In fact, embedlet technology might even foster the creation of such new application 
markets.  This leads me to believe that a focus on simplicity (in the early stages) will be vital.

3) We need to design the best spec/container humanly possible (out of the gate).

This is probably not a rational goal.  Sure, we should use best practices and do a good job.  
But more than that, we need to focus not so much on getting it perfect the first go round, as 
on making it very flexible and evolvable so that we can "jump on" opportunities/requirements 
(and markets) as we discover them.

4) The corollary of the prior point is that we need to determine the target "market" early on.

Again, it's very possible (if embedlets become a "disruptive technology" in the embedded 
space), that the initial adopters of this technology are not even known to us right now.  So 
the process needs to focus on "learning".  Discovering what the initial market segments 
actually will be (not what we think or hope they will be), once we have some initial 
deliverables to use in the marketing efforts.

Anyway....some thoughts on marketing and the like.



...Andrzej

Chaeron Corporation
http://www.chaeron.com

[Embedlets-dev] Re:[Marketing] Embedlets and the Innovator's Dilemma....

[Ted K. <tk...@ya...>]

Andrzej,

Very interesting article!



> Again, it's very possible (if embedlets become a "disruptive technology" in
> the embedded 
> space), that the initial adopters of this technology are not even known to us
> right now.

This brings to mind an article by Clay Shirky about some of the fundamental
reasons that the Web built out so quickly:

http://www.shirky.com/writings/view_source.html

I especially like his philosophy of focusing on what a technology can 'do', not
what it is 'for':

----

"#3. Good tools tell you what they do, not what they're for.

Good, general-purpose tools specify a series of causes and effects,
nothing more. This is another part of what allowed the Web to grow so
quickly. When a piece of software specifies a series of causes and
effects without specifying semantic values (gravity makes things fall
to the ground, but gravity is not for keeping apples stuck to
the earth's surface, or for anything else for that matter), it
maximises the pace of innovation, because it minimizes the degree to
which an effect has to be planned in advance for it to be useful.

The best example of this was the introduction of tables, first
supported in Netscape 1.1. Tables were originally imagined to be just
that - a tool for presenting tabular data. Their subsequent adoption
by the user community as the basic method for page layout did not have
to be explicit in the design of either HTML or the browser, because
once its use was discovered and embraced, it no longer mattered what
tables were originally for, since they specified causes and effects

that made them perfectly suitable in their new surroundings" [snip]


Ted


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