Re: Creating markets

[Michael Hagerty <mhagerty@FNOC.NAVY.MIL>]

Robert Dewar <dewar@CS.NYU.EDU> wrote:

RD> A particular instance of market creation that is relevant these days
  > is Ada 9X. Early on I know of a couple of vendors who asked their
  > users whether they were planning on using Ada 9X. Since most of them
  > hadn't heard about Ada 9X, they were NOT planning on using it. It is
  > all to easy to conclude from such data "none of our users are
  > interested in Ada 9X".

The reported history of the xerographic process is instructive.  The
inventor had a clear idea (a desktop machine which would make copies
quickly and inexpensively).  All of the nay-sayers pointed to the major
disadvantages of the process (e.g., scale was not preserved, it was
inconvenient, fairly expensive initially, and most importantly, no one
who currently needed copies used the xerographic process, etc.).

Had he listened to these people, the experts and users in the copy
industry, today we would have no xerox machines, no laser printers and
no plain paper fax machines...