I am now, have been and will be wrong

Earlier I touched on the concept to create new services, for a new market, to satisfy an identifiable need.

Abstracting is one way I have of understanding, or rationalizing the success and failures of products and services.

First, there are no “products”. Only services.
This concept allows me to avoid the technologist’s trap of tweaking to build a better mousetrap. Do people really want a stronger chain, faster plane, better buggy-whip, etc.? Or do they want something else?

Looking at the service these products provide allows you to understand the full competitive market. Recognize substitute goods, and how they will affect the sales of your “new and exciting” product. Recognizing the service they provide will help you understand where you fit in the world.

Every service satisfies a “need”. You can create your own list of needs. Mine tend to be: communications, sustenance, shelter, peace of mind, entertainment, transportation, self actualization, etc.

These needs have been satisfied for many years, in many different ways. As people have progressed, we have developed new ways of satisfying these primary needs. The method, system, process used to satisfy these needs have changed, but the core needs will always exist.

Communication is a good example. HOW we communicate hasn’t been as important as THAT we communicate. (What we communicate has always been of dubious value). After oral history, we had written words. Letters were, for a long time, the best way to communicate over long distances, or time. Today, we still use them. However, after the invention of the telegraph, we were able to communicate more rapidly than physical transportation, and this changed society and business. From the telegraph, we moved to the phone, I’ll ignore the broadcast communication systems in this example. Phones were a good point to point service of communication. But they were tied to a physical place, if you weren’t in your office, then you couldn’t use your phone. Thus, phones were placed in common areas where people could access them (public phone booths). These were around for a while, but became replaced in the 90’s by cell phones. The NEED for communication was always there. But the method of communication changed over time.

Will cellphones continue to exist? Probably in one form or another. But will there always be a need and a way to communicate? Yes.

These needs are core, and will always be there.