Ideal: the mix of invention & innovation

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At first Aleck tried to sell his invention to Western Union . But they didn't see any profit in it. So Aleck started his own company (Bell Telephone Company), which was then bought by AT&T (now the world's largest telecom company).

Multinational Western Union made a mistake
It often happens that the inventor himself sees a market in it. It is often the multinationals that are satisfied with their current business and do not respond to the changing market. Western Union later explains:

“In only a few years Western Union's president would acknowledge that it was a serious business error, one that nearly led to his company later almost being swallowed up by the newly emerging telecommunications giant that Bell Telephone would shortly evolve into”.


But sometimes it goes differently. For example, the light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison in 1879, and Anton Philips became rich with it in the 20th century. It is often the innovator with the commercial insights. For the inventor, it is often a hobby or an extraordinary interest in science. A mix of invention and innovation is the ideal.

In the past, the introduction and adoption of an innovation was much usa phone data slower than it is today. Consumers are changing their media behavior continuously and at an ever-increasing rate. This causes companies to come (but also go) at a rapid pace. This also means that companies have to move faster to continue to meet consumer expectations.

New media: Friendster & Hyves
If we look at the developments around social media, we see that the first large groups of users were active on the platform Friendster , and in the Netherlands these were the first users of Hyves. Social networks will continue to exist, if they continue to meet the expectations of the user. The social network Friendster was launched in 2002, before MySpace (2003), Facebook (2004) and Hyves (2004) and was the first social network with more than 1 million users.

Friendster had one big problem: the social connections were too weak. The social ecosystem was wrong. An average user only had two friends. As soon as one friend leaves the network, you leave the other friend with only one other friend. The network is therefore too fragile to continue to exist.