In Pursuit of Radical Innovation | Hacker News Reader

In Pursuit of Radical Innovation

radicalinnovation.pen.io

29 pointsmhashim5 comments

I'm sorry, but Fabricly isn't "radical innovation". Radical innovation in the sense we understand it right now, as espoused by Peter Thiel and company, means taking the focus off of social shopping and the rest of all the crap that doesn't matter and getting excited about things like synthetic biology and going to Mars.

The subtleties of the comparison between Vente-Privee and Fabricly simple don't matter. Casual gaming may print cash, but no matter how rich you become, you still can't buy your way out of cancer. That's what "radical innovation" means.

Radical innovation is not about making things more efficient, or simpler, or easier, in broad terms. It's about investing in transformative technologies.

If you get rich, then throw some money at the big problem such as aging and death.

Once we start seeing real result, the rest of society will throw money at it too.

If you value life that much, you would throw some money once you have a modest income. It could be 10 dollars a month.

I don't mean immortality just for yourself, but for the people you love, and your friends.

Radical innovation is not about making things more efficient, or simpler, or easier, in broad terms. It's about investing in transformative technologies.

I agree with you that radical innovation doesn't come from just making things more efficient/simpler/easier, and I've argued that such a mindset yields local max solutions. The example of Fabricly was only used to display how an approach that addresses the problem from the root and transforms the way an industry operates is what radical innovation is (not about social shopping). Your definition seems to confine it to cutting edge industries with cutting edge technology; however, radical innovation could be in retail/food/other age old industries as much as it could be in space/biotech. Radical innovation is ultimately about the transformative result and technology is only a means to get there.

I think this is optimistic at best. There are certain industries, healthcare for example, where barriers to entry are so high that Innovative approaches are almost always VERY slow to be adopted. Whereas other markets, like consumer electronics change almost constantly. My point is you can't just apply this to all industries equally. Generalizations are at best only speaking to the median.

Fabricly is just another web-enabled niche market. Calling it radical innovation devalues the phrase.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com