Thoughts on how to think about using new technology
For later-stage R&D
Just some quick thoughts about product development / coming up with cool things to work on / cool startups. I notice these tendencies in myself and people I talk with. Often I learn about a new technology and imagine all the things it can do. (Another problem is to get stuck just building a thing, which requires other little things, which requires other little things…)*
Case I
There is often this trend to think about a cool idea and how to apply it. The way to do that is to tinker and hack in spare time and let others do the same. Then the real core benefits will become apparent, for particular use cases - if there really are any - and it can gain adoption there. That might or might not be an economically relevant use case, but since it’s for tinkering with a group anyway, any outcome could be acceptable.
Case II
Creating a thing that was needed for something else is a great way to ensure that it is really needed. Especially if the org did not want to expend resources on non-core creation, and extensively searched for an off the shelf alternative. Given that did not exist, and they made the thing good enough to be used, then it is a matter of confirming the need exists for others, and robust productizing to make it strong enough for external and more critical use.
People tend to confuse the two. Engineers like to build things, and often take an idea from the first camp and treat it like a product from the second, before confirming it’s actually better than something already in existence in the way that matters to the actual users. Business like to think big, and often imagine a potential business need as being an actual novel business need from the second case and try to get them built without clear requirements or use cases.
Reference
Stuff I’m looking at and trying to figure out how to use
- distributed web, like IPFS -> swarmbase
- space solar power, (lengthy) historical summary, Nasa report on small spacecraft, example of modular satellite
Footnotes:
* “That’s how I wound up with this python project template. Every time I’d try to do something I’d need a repo, and that would need to be setup, and I’d have to look up again how to set up the formatter for VSCode, and which typing library so and so suggested… The upshot is the template is getting pretty good, which means soon it will be simple to install and use something like shell: % cool_module task argument. (instead of python ./user/folder/project-folder/src/package/main.py task argument -> oops need to chmod +x … etc.).”
Errors
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