Real Innovation, Not False Bravado, Disrupts Markets
Real innovation happens not in product design, but in the verge where people meet technology and when they creatively combine one tech with other technologies to adopt it in ways that nobody predicted. In the 20’s when Muzak first started streaming music to businesses nobody was predicting satellite radio services, and when Severe Tire Damage’s live performance was multicast from Xerox’s PARC in the early ‘90’s nobody was predicting Youtube, Netflix, or twitch.tv.
Several other technology besides just streaming had to be layered in between the start of streaming and the present to achieve a mature implementation and disruptive marketing of real services and lasting products - so don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that disruptive technologies always happen suddenly. It took decades of innovation in devices, networks, and standards to get from there to here.
As streaming video becomes richer in content and easier to use, the market for pay TV is starting to unravel. In the third quarter of 2014, the top pay-TV providers — which account for 95 percent of the market — lost about 150,000 video subscribers, compared with 25,000 in the same quarter last year, according to Leichtman Research Group.
Uber, meanwhile, is getting a good deal of grief for the arrogance of its executives and its allegedly slipshod screening of drivers. But the ride-sharing service and its competitors have upended the market for taxi services. Because fewer people are taking cabs, the average price of an individual New York City taxi medallion fell to $872,000 in October, down 17 percent from a peak reached in spring 2013, according to an analysis of sales data by the New York Times.