Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them. - Peter Thiel
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Amen, innovate and never copy.
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What about the Steve Jobs method and never innovate, just steal and market and claim yourself as a great artist.
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I’m not sure that’s fair; while smartphones existed before the iPhone, smartphones that worked well didn’t. I stuck with the Windows Mobile train way past the end (HTC Touch Pro 2 was my last), and when I first used an actual modern small-device operating system, it was like a revelation, a breath of fresh air. I would call what Apple did innovation.
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Didn’t Bill Gates buy his 1st version of DOS from someone else, who was to stupid to sell it to customers by him self !? :whistle:
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Neither Gates, Page, Brin or Zuckerberg were even close to building the first OS, search engine or social network. They all copied.
it’s execution that counts not really innovation. Find something that exists and is being done badly, do it better and clean up. Then rewrite history so people think you somehow changed the world.
Was Starbucks the first coffee shop. No. Did they fundamentally innovate a new way to drink hot drinks. No.
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@ hagster - You are absolutely right. True innovation often belongs to a person that popular history has forgotten about or has been erased by vast amounts of ‘marketing’ and their success is often little more then the personal reward of a true eureka moment, but that is one of the very rarest and most precious of rewards that most of these so called successful people have never had nor could they ever buy such a moment with all their money.
@ Reinhard Ostermeier - If Bill Gates hadn’t purchased DOS it likely never would have seen the light of day. When I was involved in Security Focus and designed and built products for them, we had some ability to deliver products, but really we could only open small doors at best so our products and company were only worth so much money, but once we sold Security Focus to Symantec they were able to open huge doors and make our products worth so much more money then we ever could done on our own. Bill Gates and Microsoft was that opportunity for Seattle Computer Products and Tim Paterson as Microsoft had that connection to IBM that Seattle Computer Products never would had on their own. That is how business often works and while its great to be an innovator or maker, most successful startup companies are partnerships between a maker and a marketing dude as those two skill rarely ever appear in a single individual and you have to have both to be successful anymore.
Tim Paterson is currently working on IoT type stuff now ie WebCell
Even guys from the past know that IoT is the future
See this is the problem with nerds, they just can’t take something for face value, I was simply quoting Peter to say “Let’s attack the week and do something awesome!” ;D
It wasn’t supposed to be a debate about Bill Gates, Google or Zuckerberg. :wall:
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What this thread tells me:
Bring out a copy of NETMF, sell it as new and make forgotten anything MS, GHI and the other did before.
@ Reinhard Ostermeier - go for it. I’ll buy some.
@ Reinhard Ostermeier - don’t forget NETMF is open source 
Make sure you invest heavily in marketing, and come up with a random new name to impress certain people, like Apple’s “digital crown” for a watch button, or “retina display” for arbitrary resolutions.
Maybe you could rename C# classes to something apple-esque, like: “ThunderCode Bunches” or “Cerebral Concept Clusters”.
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@ mtylerjr - “Cerebral Concept Clusters” sounds like a snack food or breakfast cereal for geeks.
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My copy would have a different name, and look like as it is open as hell.
But in fact all the money would be invested in my cars, houses, yacht, …
Wow… MAKE is in tune with this thread. This Walt Disney video basically re-iterates what we’ve been saying.
“Educate yourself. Do not let me educate you.” “Be yourself.” - Robert Henri
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Walt Disney is one person I wish I knew and worked for as I see him as one of the greatest visionaries and innovators in the history of the US and since unsurpassed.