“You aren’t going to found the next Snapchat, or Airbnb through Edge based ideation.
However, Google, Microsoft and Apple were born from the founders technical Edges. They were able to build something very few other people were able to build.”
Google, Microsoft and Apple are tech-based innovation, while Snapchat and Airbnb are lifestyle-based innovation.
The lifestyle-based innovation is for delivering nice experience to ordinary people while tech-based innovation is for providing new hardware or software.
Google started from a search engine web service with the unique PageRank algorithm. Google didn’t invent the first search engine, but provided a better quality for users.
Microsoft started from a contract provider of IBM. First, they built operating system software for IBM, then became a giant within the grow of PC.
Apple had double innovations. First, they built Mac for geeks. Now, they build digital toys for everyone.
It’s very hard to say the technical skills and knowledge can lead to a huge success. These examples told us the market opportunity is critical.
I can understand that EF pay attention to founders since EF is a startup accelerator. If EF teach founders can pay attention to master the “startup founder-market opportunity” fit, it would be better.
p.s. This is an old comment. This week I wrote an article titled Platform Innovation as Concept-fit which is related this topic. (Mar 27, 2021)
