Day 15: A shark on the sofa

Hunting in the hinterland, the past two days have seen beautiful countryside and such exotic little villages as Dingolfing, Arzberg and Falkenberg. The hunt is inspired by my encounter with a shark earlier this week.

In evolutionary terms sharks, crocodiles and limpets are the supreme constants. As their ecological niche has remained unchanged, so has their form and habits. Need for innovation = 0. At Tegernsee I stayed in a family hotel that has been in business for about 120 years. They are still serving the same beer from the same brewery and offer the same view of the same mountains. Yes they do make some concessions in the name of offering home comforts away from home (as they always have), and they do change the sheets.
In stark contrast, a Pharma group were having an offsite at the hotel. The irony of innovation champions seeking a sense of their next step in a place that has not changed, was not lost on the hotel owner.
But this raises an interesting question, is there a fixed innovation rate for an industry or category? Do sharks get disrupted?
The constant debate about Moore’s law notwithstanding, the froth of media and telco industries seems to float on a constant sea where people’s other habits have not really changed that much.

Apps sell like hot cakes, yet we still prefer to spend time with other people (and the apps that help us do that, do better). Matt was kind enough to introduce me to the model that correlates information industry disruption to average bandwidth available at home. When the analogue “good” (newspaper, CD, DVD) becomes easily accessible as a “service” (streaming, on demand) the shark has bitten its tail. We meet the constant factor:

Do you know the average innovation rate for your category? What have you learnt from it? How are you spending against it? The old PEST control won’t save or threaten old crocodiles its seems.