Consider the following quote by Eric Hoffer:

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

I saw this quote on another blog and thought about it for a minute. If true, what does it mean for man’s progress, technology, entrepreneurship.

I think there’s definitely a negative aspect to this. When things are too easy, people are too free to do whatever, they stop innovating. Which is the same thing - when you start just imitating others, you stop innovating. And the more there’s an abundance of time, money, or another resource, the less true innovation there may be.

I say true innovation for a reason. One can claim that with easy credit and money going around like during dot coms, and even until recently, there are all these new companies coming about. But that’s not really innovation, it’s over saturation and the very same imitation. And once the money runs out and the tide fades away, you get to see who was swimming naked. The market cleans up where only the most strong and useful survive another round.

Indeed this just makes the point, with so much money floating around there are all these “me too” companies doing stupid things, most of them which end up not bringing any value or going anywhere.

People innovate when times are harsher, and when people are not totally free to do as they please.  In this environment, there’s suddenly a demand to come up with new solutions, to make things more efficient and so on.

Like another quote said, innovation starts when you remove a zero from the budget. Rough times call for great things, while during the good times not as many people care to learn about new great things.

So keep this in mind as the economy is going south for the moment and another shakeup might be on its way. The good news is that now it’s time to build new things and create new value chains.