Shipping pressure and throw-away "proof of concept" demonstrations very frequently lead to spectacular failures. My buddy recently re-posted an analysis and link to John Cutler's insightful twitter content associated with "feeling like we are going fast" versus really increasing true value delivery velocity. It's worth a quick 2-min read.
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Note: I think Michael's comment about the origin of the expression "jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne" (there's magic in every beginning) that he credits to Hermann Hesse should be attributed to a mistranslation into English of an 1808 edition of "Faust: eine Tragödie" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
Was heute nicht geschieht, ist morgen nicht getan,
Und keinen Tag soll man verpassen,
Das Mögliche soll der Entschluß
Beherzt sogleich beim Schopfe fassen,
Er will es dann nicht fahren lassen,
Und wirket weiter, weil er muß.
Und keinen Tag soll man verpassen,
Das Mögliche soll der Entschluß
Beherzt sogleich beim Schopfe fassen,
Er will es dann nicht fahren lassen,
Und wirket weiter, weil er muß.
The texture, meter, and rhyme are fun, right? Goethe can be soothing to read.
The common (terrible mistranslation into an) English version is:
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it,
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated, —
Begin it, and the work will be completed!
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated, —
Begin it, and the work will be completed!
It is a common inspirational quote I see floating around the interwebs from time to time.
9 comments:
I trying to figure out for quite some time. That. How to "fake it". Or how to make it "quick&dirty".
What, you'd (not) ask?
Ah, hard to explain. It's like presenting how "man can fly in the sky". Before Brothers Wright made their plane. And on words only.
Well, yeah.
Would it be interesting to make robots which can make other robots?
And that while roaming through rough terrain, with mud and dirt, or under water, or in Space.
While building all kinds of structures and facilities by and from itself.
Such a miraculous technology, but still quite approachable to make.
Really, we have all basics needed for it, as brothers Wright have had wood and fabric, and details from bikes, we have 3D-printing and uiquotus CAD systems. ML even.
But how and who you need to dazzle with such an idea?
But how and who you need to succumb into making it real?
What Inital Product is the best? What market to pursue?
How to show "where is money", so to say?
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lemsfan |
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ukr |
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Have no questions? That would allow me to improve my missive.
I beg me a pardon in advance then. And would try to ptoliferate my idea further.
With list of possible PoC. Proof of concepts.
Well, most advantegious and easiest could be -- smart cover for a smartphone.
One that can react to being in free fall state and errect/inflate protective cover.
I know, I know, that is lame as it is.
But try to imagene further possibilities. Smart cover with tactile sensors. With ability to change form, colour in accordence with functions or artistic desires of a weilder.
Next one -- bio-morphic robots, crawling, swimming in ocaen -- for ecological monitoring, and for military and police usage.
That is possible because of inherent advantage of the tech I talking about -- being inherently water-proof.
Even to bigger extent. Production of robots for use in space. On the Moon and Mars surfaces.
Key advantage -- it'll be possible to make such robot on-spot.
Hardly any other tech would allow something like that... that easily.
Most surely, there'd be much more possible uses and killer products. I myself, as a separate santient being limited with amount of imagination to envision, still.
Exercise scholarship -- discover prior art
>> smart cover for a smartphone. ... react to being in free fall state ... inflate protective cover
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/27/this-clever-case-pops-open-to-protect-your-phone-when-you-drop-it/
>> bio-morphic robots, crawling, swimming in ocaen -- for ecological monitoring, and for military
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYz7g-qLjs
Yes. You are absolutely right. Similar ideas arise with that how our technologies developing -- that what was impossible to imagene or implement, will be possible to make in future. Quite near future even.
But here is the catch -- to explain the difference I would need to dive into technical details. Which would be even more nerdy and uninteresting. And would ruin all mood.
Am I wrong with thinking that way?
My problem is basicly Catch 22 -- to demonstrate that my idea is viable and interesting and profitable -- I need to demonstrate working technology.
But, if I would have that tech already, why I would need to, even?
So. What is a way for me to proceed from this point? Explain with more details? Or advertise possible profits? Or just shuddup and scram? :-)
Well, let's assume more emotional approach -- why I think this my idea is so important, for me to decide to bother strangers with it.
Thing is. I see great potential in that tech.
It can allow to make good products even in its infant state. Like that smart covers, sea robots and etc.
But I see much wider, much bigger and much more advanced uses.
For example with it we can make outer and inner prostetics, artifical limbs, artifical liver.
Robots that can produce other robots, to make whole cities under sea and in space.
Use it in combination with micro-biological techs.
Also, there is AI development prospects I cannot be other than to be thrilled about.
PS Anyway, that is things that interesting for me, and possibly not interesting for you. So, sorry for bothering you, if something.
>> What is a way for me to proceed from this point?
In the USA, you can file a patent:
https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/applying-online/form-fillable-pdfs-available
There are many resources for inventors, including access to capital to develop a working prototype.
In Deutschland melden Sie hier Dein Patent an: https://www.dpma.de/patente/anmeldung/index.html
Und es gibt viele Quellen für Unterstützung und Kapital.
Let's back to post missive.
"Shipping pressure and throw-away "proof of concept" demonstrations very frequently lead to spectacular failures."
How it works in common.
Some random guy come to some idea about product or service. There is no theory or established practices of doing it.
(But I'll try to propose some framework for that here.
Like, I'd call that level of WHAT -- definition of what you exactly(?) want to make.)
Well, marketing there is, but it do not provide a toolset to connect all dots.
So, that guy then trying to make some prototyping, with duct tape and details taken from a toaster. :-)
Or, he can go find some capable engineer.
Or, that can be an engineer, an inventor. That capable to envision and actually make some new thing... like new mousetrap. But he have big problems with making it viable commercial proposal -- finding market for that moustrap, launching an enterprise.
(That defines level of HOW -- how one can make that new thing, and how to setup or bootstrap it into a product)
WHAT without HOW do not work, and not needed by anybody. That's for granted -- that's why I understand your point about patent proviosioning and etc.
But.
There is one more level. Level of WHY.
Today we are like in a century of development of techs, inventions and progress in general. So, we can do much bigger generalizations than level of WHAT that was endemic to a 19th century. (Well, even Edison was smart enough to understand that instead of waiting for "aha!"-moment, he can organize inventing in the way of new that time practices of industrial production.)
Like, there is such discipline as "systems engineering" which generalise all that to the level of understanding how different techs and organizational structure of an enterprise working. Which allow to make much more advanced products, than just another mousetrap.
I'll refer here to SpaceX. Elon Musk was not starting from proof of concepts. What could work as one anyway? Some amateur rockets? And what it'll prove?
What he, Elon Musk did -- he used all modern ingenuity, of developed engineering practices and modern computer capabilities to speed up SpaceX project (or Tesla too) into HOW stage -- organizing clever people into structure that able to solve much more complex technological problems.
Like it was with SkunkWorks as earlier example.
I see... too many words. And too little of em are about anything which concerns you, am I right?
Seems like my efforts to push my ideas into reality is destined to fall on its face, flatly. :-)
Well, that is nothing of unknown, that is obvious thing for dreamers and "too early" inventors of all times. We know that from history records.
My sole hope was that in modern time of ever increasing (well, is it? it looks more like stagnation lately) rate of development my fantasies would not be that... fantastic? unreasonable? crazy? (your version)
PS Whatever. Thank you for conversation and sorry for intrusion.
Oh, I found a way how to summarise it.
There is ideas that is not about yet another mousetrap.
Like for example Henry Ford -- he was no inventor of an automobile.
But he invented something much more important and wastly more profitable -- conveyor to bild many automobiles at once.
My idea is more like that one -- not about how to make some robot, or smart cover, or whatever, but about how to make many things.
Goody-goody talks do not fire up imagination? And do not give smell of dollars of mere idea?
Well, there is "all time best" too -- as any tech it allows to make a weapon.
Weapon, yes.
And that is of a kind one would like to have BEFORE and BETTER than advercaries. (like China especially)
Because it can make Clean (and stealthy) WMD. Or even better...
Still not interested? :)
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