There can only be one
Posted by Ian Holsman
I attended a interesting lecture about innovation by Iain Cockburn today where he was talking about standards, and how in any standard war, eventually only one will succeed.
standard examples he used were:
- VHS vs Betamax and
- OS/2 and Windows 95
where in both these cases the technically superior product lost. If this is true (and he seemed to have lots of maths and other economists to back him up) it is interesting when you look at linux vs NT, Blue Ray and HDDVD,.. eventually one of these will win out, thanks to network effects / virtuous circles et al.
In the software world (rails vs java vs django for example) this might be
- more apps written for it
- more books/blogs about it
- more developers using it
- more comitters support the framework
- more features in the framework
- leading to faster development times (leading back to more apps written with it)
Personally I think duopolies can exist one they have a ecosystem of complementors in place, and that some ‘wars’ will last for a long time to come thanks to the Deep pockets of the players in the game, and how all the players know the game well enough to know the rules.
The other interesting thing is that all the things you traditionaly think of being ‘wrong’ about how a company operates (as the end customer) is actually shown as a method of creating a dominating standard.
- Create FUD
- Signal your intent by burning your bridges behind you, forcing you to move forward
- Lie about your features/performance, you can fix it in the next release once your standard has won.
- move as fast as possible to build your market (making sure your profitable, not a dot-bomb)
- trumpet your wins, to create the impression that everyone is using your standard
other less objectionable methods
- create complementors, (killer apps or must-see content)
- low entry prices for the chicken and egg problem
- low switching costs
Going back to rails I don’t think it has created the circle yet, the apps aren’t there yet/mature enough. Once these are in place say in 6-12 months time it might be game over for other frameworks, but until then a ‘killer app’ in another framework will make it a interesting race.
another interesting point.. you don’t have to be using the dominant standard to make money. being on a popular standard means more (and harder) competition. It might just be easier to learn a less popular framework and consult in it as you could charge a higher price as there are less people with your expertise ;-)