Watch out for new technology

Mark Cuban:

3. Know as much as you can about technology

The beautiful thing about technology is that it changes ever day. Look at any tech you can see today or have ever seen. Any tech you have read about. It was invented by someone(s). They know the product better than everyone. On the day that it is released, you are as knowledgeable about that technology as anyone else in the world. From there its just about effort to keep learning.

If you are one of the few people that know the new technologies, you are in a unique position to put yourself in the shoes of your customer(s) and determine if the new technology can be of benefit. New technologies enable change and where there is change there is opportunity. Its up to you to figure out what that opportunity is.

Method: Watch the research divisions at companies
- A lot of the innovations that Apple and Windows made money on were generated at Xerox PARC
- I need to generate a list of research divisions...but the problem is that a lot of them are pretty secretive.
- - Google[x]
- - Xerox PARC (not operational anymore

Method: Watch the research at universities

- MIT's Media Lab
- Watch the research papers that come out in journals

Method: Watch the research people are doing and act quickly to commercialize it before anyone else does.

- Steve Jobs did this with Xerox PARC's research. That's how he got the idea for a windows-based GUI.
- Larry Ellison apparently did this with research being done by people at IBM(?). That's how he got the idea for Oracle.
- Larry Page apparently did this to some extent with the idea for Google, b/c using back-links to rank webpages was being discussed already when he went to Stanford.
- Sam Walton did this by interviewing other store managers on how they operated.