Did you get flooded by gadgets this Christmas? Or did you take the recent shopping time to spend your savings on an iPod accessories, a new phone and a set of games for your PSP? I can tell you, I did :-)
While discussing gadgets over Christmas dinner we found that every succesfull electronic gadget is based a tangible consumer benefit (no real surprise here). However, most of the time this benefit is not the genuine invention. Take 'video' (in the sense of moving images) as an example. The brother "Lumière" may have invented how to reproduce moving images, but TV, VCR, DVD players, TIVO, iPod video or the PSP re-use this invention with a new consumer benefit in the distribution or experience:
- TV: watch moving images in your living room
- VCR/DVD: watch TV on demand (kind of)
- TIVO: real on demand watching, including time-shifting
- iPod/PSP: location shifting (watch basically video anywhere)
So, wanna get rich? Don't try to invent new stuff but take something existing and improve it somehow. Look at Microsoft ...!
