Mismatched Socks

How to Recognize Disruptive Opportunities

And why Twitter is more disruptive than Facebook.

Mark Suster is such a g, getting into the difference between emerging and disruptive technologies, open versus closed, and how companies need to start taking advantage of these tools.

Emerging technologies are new and cool, but only the rich kids on the block get to play with them. Think computers, circa early 1960s. Or 3D printers today, you know, whatever. These technologies become disruptive when they become an order of magnitude cheaper and an order of magnitude lower quality, since at that point they become accessible to orders of magnitude more people. 

The interesting thing about that change, where an emerging technology becomes disruptive, is that the quality of the disruptive technology continues to increase; and once it reaches a certain level, the established titans of the industry who’ve been selling high-quality versions at obscene margins are displaced. It is at this point that the emerging technology which used to be expensive and exclusive transforms into a disruptive technology that is accessible and open. 

Mark Suster takes some time to criticize Apple and Facebook for being closed systems, and I love him for it (even though I fanboy pretty hard for the two). He believes that the future is getting more open, especially on the Internet, and that segues into why Twitter is more disruptive than Facebook — it’s more open.

3D printing is only getting more and more compelling…