Sunday, December 6, 2009

Startups are the future...

It's been a while since my last post, but I have a little down time and decided to share a thought.

I was thinking about what the world would be like without startups...and it wasn't pretty. And the reason was that startups are one of the biggest driving forces of progress in our society. Hence, without startups, society loses a lot of momentum.

Why is that? Well basic economics. A startup by its nature has few resources. So to survive, it needs to do 2 things:
1. address a need
2. address the need in a way that is more efficient than how that need is currently being addressed

(1) is pretty obvious. And to serve a need, but with the limited resources that comes with being a startup, (2) must happen.

It's disruptive innovation. And it can happen on a small scale or a large scale. But in the end, startups that survive end up delivering something more efficiently that had been before. And it's their brilliant execution of improved efficiency which is the key to how they survive. No startup can deliver something more inefficiently and survive. The economics just don't work.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I couldn't agree with you more Andrew. I think another aspect of startups is the attention paid to creative thinking and design. Now, I'm not saying startup get it right the first time, but its impressive to see the can-do attitude, the embracing of change and pushing a community of entreprenuers and users to think differently on how to resolve a problem and address a need.


I couldn't help but think of the mirrored question: What would a world without big companies in this era look like?