What Sony Did

Yesterday, at our conference Clay Christensen was talking about how Sony put little cheap, crappy, transistor radios in the pockets of kids' bluejeans when rock and roll was new and their parents didn't want them listening to rock and roll or even wearing bluejeans. I remember listening to WABC and Cousin Brucie on a little radio like that. He was talking about competition. He was explaining how Sony sussed out the fact that they were competing against non-consumption. That is, they weren't getting these kids to replace a table top radio like their parents owned. They were getting these kids to buy something they really wanted that they'd never bought before and therefore, they were competing against nothing. Imagine the freedom you have when you are the only guy in the game and you've hit on something someone really wants and will pay you whatever price to own.

Then he talked about voice recognition software and the picture of an administrative assistant on the box, looking thrilled to wear a little headset and use this impossibly clumsy software, which instead of simply typing 80 words per minute with 99% accuracy, she could now learn to talk really SLOWLY and have a 60% accuracy rate and spend lots of time making the software work instead of using something that did work for her.

He said one thing that stuck with me. Maybe you should consider making a product that does something people really need to do and helps them do it easily. Maybe you should sell products people actually need.