innovations could not go from the wealthy to the non-wealthy but from the soon-to-be wealthy to the already wealthy (and then to the non-wealthy).<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/span><\/span>But if we say that the Varian Rule covers only a subsegment of the segment of early adopters, who are the other people to observe?<\/span><\/span>
Opinion Leadership, Diffusion Networks, Weak Ties & Change Agents<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\u2026<\/p>\n
If we try to summarize all of this and develop our understanding of diffusion of innovation, we shall say that: <\/span>opinion leaders are super effective in bringing behavior change and diffusing innovations<\/strong>. They can be rich. But they not always are. They are the people to observe closely.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
<\/span>\u2026<\/span><\/p>\nCONCLUSION<\/span><\/p>\n\n- Research traditions indicate that the main challenge for a given innovation to become mainstream, is to cross the chasm from the early adopters to the early majority<\/span>. When the chasm is crossed, you reach a critical mass (tipping point).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n- -Research suggests that, overall, innovators and early adopters are wealthy, so it can be a good idea to just observe what the wealthy do to predict future usages<\/span>.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n- -Yet, innovations and early adopters might only become<\/em> wealthy by their use of innovations (increased productivity & economic attraction), which has been the case for many innovations brought to the market \u201cby the street\u201d. So solely focusing on the wealthy would NOT allow to fully predict future usages (it would be only partial)<\/span>.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n- -Observing the wealthy, as suggested by the Varian Rule, is especially a good idea when the products and services can become significantly cheaper through technology, at a fast pace<\/span> (which would explain why VCs focus on scalability and on products and services where marginal costs can be very low).<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n- -To make sure not to miss an innovation, we should observe opinion leaders <\/span>(and many rich people are, so it\u2019s not a pure contradiction of the Varian Rule), the more cosmopolite and mobile they are, the better bridge links they will be<\/span>. These people are often at the crossroad of many social, economic and cultural systems and often a good way to predict the future.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n- If you apply this topic for VCs, two big questions remain:<\/span><\/li>\n
- 1. <\/span>Should VCs only focus on innovations when they already reach the opinion leaders, or should they also fund products and services before they do<\/span> (R&D stage or before launch)? Market practices suggest that institutional investors focus on the former (excepting seed & pre-series A investments), especially because the expected value of these investments are higher (higher probability of success).<\/span><\/li>\n
<\/span><\/li>\n- 2. If VCs focus on the innovations that already reached opinion leaders (and started to have some tractions), the other big question is: <\/span>how to determine which innovations you should bet on?<\/span> If there is a chasm between the early adopters and the early majority, it\u2019s because many innovations talked about by opinions leaders will never work\u2026 But that\u2019s for another post.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by @WillyBraun along and thoughtful post on where to look in search of innovation. Should You Bet on What The Wealthy Do Today? \u2013 chronicles \u2013 Medium If you look at what the wealthy do\u2026 \u201cscale economies and online efficiencies will combine to keep driving prices down within this business model, and entrepreneurs will soon realise that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosillas-empresariales","category-innovacion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-urblIhNrziM\/WiriYYXkwII\/AAAAAAAAC1c\/D23FZ3nA5zMCZ9HtAkaQFSwqB9pm8OxYACK4BGAYYCw\/s640\/0*3SiRjk1rKF38Wp8Q..png\")
<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span>