Saving the world
Dave Pollard, who maintains a blog with the modest title "How to Save the World," has some great ideas on, among issues, ways to fostering innovation in business. He's widely read and quite astute, so I'm flattered that he's been reading Oligopoly Watch and adapted some of my ideas into his own areas of interest.
While he's very encouraging to entrepreneurs, he's also well aware of the obstacles, the "grim facts," standing in the way, namely:
- Oligopolies rule. No matter what industry you're in (or trying to enter) it's probably dominated by a small, ruthless oligopoly with very deep pockets, armies of lawyers, and governments in their back pockets.
- It's already patented. Governments (greased by campaign funding) are allowing large corporations to patent not only products, but very broad processes and concepts as well. Established businesses are attempting to preclude any innovation that could disrupt their control of the market. No matter what you try to do, no matter how novel or imaginative, it's probably already patented or copyrighted by a large corporation. With an army of lawyers.
- Big guys buy cheap. Large corporations are able to bully governments to lower standards and taxes and provide them with subsidies, and bully suppliers, usually in third world countries, to sell to them at rock-bottom prices, and lower these prices every year. This gives them a substantial cost advantage over the entrepreneur.
But all is not doom and gloom. On the contrary, Pollard sees, as I do, that the Achilles' heel of oligopolies is their inability to adapt quickly to changing tastes and other disruptions:
The big guys don't want to innovate (they think it's expensive and risky), they don't have to innovate (in today's economy it's easier for them to litigate, pre-emotively patent and buy out innovators than to develop anything radically new themselves), and they're no good at innovating (they're too big, too inflexible, and too risk-averse and cost-conscious). That's your competitive advantage as an entrepreneur.
I strongly agree, and recommend that you check out his blog.
9:17:28 PM 
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