One way to build a successful business is to provide a product, feature or service the market didn’t even know it couldn’t live without. Once the market is exposed to that which it can’t live without, everything that came before it seems lacking and the market is irrevocably disrupted for the better. The urban gondola feature...
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about how the differing usage of the terms public transit, transport and transportation led to very different levels of interest across english-speaking cultures around the world. I had planned to follow-up on that post earlier, but such follow-up admittedly slipped my mind due to the large...
If you’re the owner of a ski resort and you’re looking to buy a new lift/gondola/tram/whatever, you pretty much know who to call. For all intents and purposes, there’s only two companies out there and you’ve likely done business with one or both of them several times before. In other words, the lift companies’ respective...
Disruptive consumer products are naturally geared towards early adopters and spread because this small cohort of early adopting customers allow the products to get a toe-hold in the market. iPods, snowboards and microplane graters all benefitted from the fact that only a small fraction of the population needed to initially purchase them in order for...
Are all three the same thing? Yes and no. Yes in the sense that they all generally describe the same item. No in the sense that different countries throughout the so-called Anglosphere have a clear preference for one term above all the others. Consider this graph: This is from Google Insight and shows the relative...
In 1897, tens of thousands of people stormed the Klondike in search of gold and riches. Most of the prospectors came back empty handed. Those that didn’t and found their fortune did so after staking dozens of claims, most of which never paid off. That’s the thing about prospecting: 99% of the work is for...
When you first drive through Mount Victoria Tunnel in Wellington, New Zealand it’s impossible to miss the fact that a whole lot of people are honking their horns for absolutely no apparent reason. But there is, in fact, a very good reason for this display that’s led to the Mount Vic becoming known locally as...
Sometimes we try to solve a problem because we were the first to spot the problem. Or we try to solve a problem simply because we want to solve the problem, not because it’s a problem that really needs solving. We all do it. But trying to solve a problem no one has is a short...
What would the ideal city for cable transit be? At least right now while the technology’s still in its adolescence? We once talked about what a “silver bullet” cable system might look like. Well what would a silver bullet city look like? As I see it, a silver bullet city for cable . . ....
At some point during any long-haul flight, the cabin crew will shut off all the lights so everyone can try and get a few hours of precious (and desperately uncomfortable) sleep. To help the process, everyone closes their window shields to block out the sunlight. But without fail, there’s always one person who leaves their...