Thanks for your thoughtful comment. Apparently I hit a nerve with this one. But I am not sure I agree, reasoning that all businesses can eliminate steps that require paper or physical portions of a product with a little forethought. The simplest thing is to eliminate all but the warranty card and “getting started” sheet with most anything requiring instructions. Most of us have done that already. The next wave will be more creative and difficult. Is it the expansion and devolution of sales channels for furniture, as an example? The product doesn’t change, but the supply chain does.

Let’s see if anyone else joins in on this.

-Dave

While the combination of digital technology and online transmission have revolutionized the media you refer to, it isn’t just about bits and bytes, or lack of vision, or poor business strategy.

The businesses you have cited are basically exclusionary – set up to keep people, and innovation, outside the fortress. I have no sympathy for them at all. Having worked personally in all of these businesses, as well as broadcast and cable television, I can say that the problem is not that there is no vision available, it’s more that only the people “in the club” are given the latitude and the resources to make things happen, and more often, to continually fail upward. The individual, the renegade, the entrepreneur – regardless of how much foresight that person might have – faces a huge challenge in getting past gatekeepers who cannot, or do not want to, understand what he or she is trying to do.

The world of technology, on the other hand, has exploded precisely because someone with a vision, plus the programming skill to realize it, can create a product or service on his or her own and demonstrate its validity without having to devote inordinate amounts of time trying to breach the barriers to entry. And fortunately people such as Mr Berkus and his colleagues in the angel and VC world are then open to funding new ideas based primarily on their merit instead of circling the wagons because “we’ve never done it that way before.”