| noname2200 said: I agree with your first paragraph, but I don't fully buy into the second. I understand where you're coming from, mind you: sticking to the cameras for a bit, the professionals actually need all those fancy gizmos and gadgets to do their jobs, so accessibility et. al. won't do them all that much good. The thing is that I see the process as going further. Take a look at the article's conclusion: sure enough, the crappy Flip Ultra's newest model now features more "high-end" things than the initial model did, and they're determined to keep adding more of those as time goes on (and the technology becomes more affordable). It's not impossible...no, actually, I'd say it's inevitable that, in time, these crappy cameras will become about as powerful and versatile as the models they're disrupting, only now these models will also emphasize new values like accessibility. It will take years for this to happen, of course, but I know that it WILL happen. I also strongly disagree with your later reply that "(a) 'good enough' product or tech doesn't necessarily disrupt existing technologies." My understanding of the concept may be flawed, but I believe that disruption essentially requires a "good enough" product, and that unless the disruptor is co-opted, the "good enough" product eventually evolves to be the "better" product for the vast majority, including many of the traditional users. After all, the margins on the "good enough" product are low, the traditional market offers much more money, and the disruptor is hungy for profits. |
My understanding is that "disruption" requires a "good enough" product, but that isn't all there is to it. The point is evolution over time when compared with user needs - with different categories of users. The graphs that are often reported show a raising curve of performance that eventually matches the requirements all the user categories, their needs growing over time but slower than the evolution of the product.
The point is that the needs of certain categories of users might never be reached by proponents of "good enough" products, for several reasons that come to my mind:
1) the value of that new products could be in direct contrast with some of the old values needed by the high-end users. Say smaller/lighter cameras: under a certain size and weight what is a value for a user that needs to put a camera in a pocket or handbag becomes a hidnerance for a professional who has to handle a camera all day long. A lighter, simpler excavator might be "good enough" for some kind of works, and be cheaper to buy and haul around. And yet an excavator that is too light won't scale to be able to move great weights.
2) the value of the new product might not be a value for some high end users. A software that is incredibly user-friendly for beginners and automatically chooses every parameter of a codec to encode a video is doing no favour to someone who wants and needs to optimize those parameters.
3) the new product could be "good enough" now and be succesful for its market, but not be able to keep up with the increase in needs. The tech that makes it "good enough" could be a dead end, or be hindered by some contingent factor.
All in all, you see what I think is the difference: disruption is a process over time. Being "good enough" for a given sub-market is only a point, or a small subset, of the "performance" curve and it isn't guaranteed to lead to disruption of existing products, because it might not be feasable or even economically interesting to replace the incumbents at higher levels.
