So a couple of things from the last post.
1 – I had a copy of Flip sitting on my bookshelf, and it has a chapter on Good, Fast, Cheap pick three. I must have read the chapter overview when I picked it up a month ago, reading it now and will add some more thoughts later.
2 – Having to do things better, faster and cheaper is not a bad thing. For consumers it’s a great thing. For producers it’s a challenging thing. What it means is that you have to be excellent to excel, because if you’re not consumers will see through you and you’ll drop. Example, I was going to see Bruno at some point until I heard (mostly on twitter) that it was a let down, will now wait for the DVD and maybe rent it, or watch a stream at some point. I saw Hangover in the cinema because a lot of people said it was good, in real time on twitter.
3 – It was pointed out that the examples I used in the last post were, excuse the language, shit. So here are some better examples:
Facebook v Myspace. Facebook started a year later (2004 v 2003), had less employees and I believe spent less money then Myspace (until earlier this year).
Huffington Post v a lot of newspapers – Adriana has a smaller team then most if not all newspapers, has been profitable and has covered a lot of news really well. While older, slower, more expensive newspapers are losing money and trying to figure out how to take their product online in a cost effective manner.
Firefox (Chrome, Safari, etc) versus Internet Explorer
Wikipedia v Encyclopedias
Spotify v Napster, Last FM
Think there are much more and better examples of this as well, I’ll probably add to this list through the comments later.
While it’s true that there may be other factors (acquisitions, product distribution, open v closed development etc) that may have contributed to why some products are better, more effective or more profitable than their rivals, I believe they all are better, faster and cheaper than the competition as well.
