Jim Morris's Thought of the Week (or month, or year, ...)
Friday, March 31, 2006
Serve Software Engineers
Clayton Christiansen suggests exploiting intense competition at points on the value chain by working upstream or downstream from those points of high competition. The downstream play is more obvious – competitive forces should result in lower prices, so one should be a buyer.
The upstream play is what arms merchants do – they sell tools to the guys who are desperate to gain an edge. The global oversupply of software creators suggests there is a market for things that software producers need to gain a competitive edge. Four examples include:
Slashdot is a very successful web service whose motto is “News for nerds, stuff that matters.”
SourceForge is a clearing house for open source software components.
In some quarters, a high rating in the Capability Maturity Model is essential to compete, so teaching it is a good business.
Software production tools that convey a unique advantage might also be a viable business if the tools cannot be displaced by open source versions.
posted by Jim Morris @ 9:08 PM
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