At this week’s PayPal Innovate Conference in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, Tim O’Reilly took the stage as the afternoon keynote to address some of the issues he sees facing the paperless payment economy and how it applies
Says O’Reilly, “If you’re creating more value that you’re capturing, then you’ve created something sustainable.” While he admitted that products like Farmville are seemingly “stupid”, he did wonder why they are so popular and what value they are producing for society that will ultimately make them sustainable. He asks,”If they’re changing the model of consumption to a digital one, then aren’t they actually ensuring that the world sees less physical waste? Maybe that’s where the larger value is.”
My favorite part of O’Reilly’s address was an old quote from futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil.
“I’m an inventor.” He said, “I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.”
In addition to reminding entrepreneurs to strive for improvement over imitation, it also tells us to stay flexible in our development.
Did you ever think mainstream audiences would hesitate at an exe.? Did you think they’d take up location-based services? Did you ever think they’d request more privacy controls alongside targeted advertisements? Did you ever think your mom would join Twitter at Oprah’s behest only to ignore her and assume she was a bot?
It’s interesting to take the trends of today and project an image of the type of user we want to reach in the future. In this way the analysts, bloggers and influencers like Tim O’Reilly who are aggregating and redistributing these trends are also a part of a larger ecosystem/platform. Their ability to earn trust and accurately predict these trends is the sustaining value to their audiences.
