Comments on: The Friction Between Capital and Ideas

By: Chris Miller

Chris Miller — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:36:28 +0000

I’d look at distribution; everything non-digital will always have a lot of friction from idea to delivery.

By: Dwayne Matthews

Dwayne Matthews — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:28:25 +0000

Ben,

I could not agree with you more.

Here in Canada, we are seeing many new clean tech companies waking to the fact that building the next RIM(Blackberry is the tech benchmark in Canada) from scratch may be much more difficult than they first thought. Taking on an incumbent that controls assets needed to deliver value may sometimes mean crossing the valley of death with no bridge. Embracing open innovation can shorten time to market. The larger firms benefit by staying agile and the smaller firms get multiple entry points which leads to higher a probability of success. To VCs that are tapped into these networks it creates a buffet of really good deals that are happening in real time vs funding really cool research projects.

By: bendupont

bendupont — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:58:43 +0000

Roger, Thanks. Taxes and government spending are the worst kind of friction. With any luck, in 24 hours, our government will get seme clear direction from Massachusets voters!….Ben

By: Roger Underwood

Roger Underwood — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:50:16 +0000

Ben, well said, and provocative has hell too! As a kid on the farm we had to keep a focus on greasing the bearings and gears or the dirt and muck would gum up things and the “friction” would cause breakdowns. I am more concerned than ever that the “friction” from governmental intervention could (will) gum up things and cause serious challenges. Let’s hope good old fashion capitalism and good old fashion entreprenurial thinking keep the pipeling of new technology growing!

By: Martin Barrett

Martin Barrett — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:12:32 +0000

Ben, these are very good points. The concept of friction is very real for those who have started business’ from scratch. It also raises a question for me. The reduction of friction in the 90′s was a combination of technology and the existence of extremely cheap capital, too cheap to be sustainable and often merely barrowed vaporware, as in the liquidity produced by the subprime scheme. So what are your thoughts about friction in the next 10 years assuming the cost of capital returns to a rational and sustainable price, not requiring government subsidies and possibly requiring real underlying value?

By: bendupont

bendupont — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:25:53 +0000

Thanks Michael

By: mdf4u

mdf4u — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:14:13 +0000

Hi Ben: Again, a well written post. Like you, I hope that your predictions come true! An additional change that I think will occur over time is a variant on your first prediction above. That is, I believe that individuals who develop technologies will actively be thinking about how to leverage these across multiple markets, even as they create a businesses around a particular application in a specific market. We shall see.

Best regards,

Michael