[sdiy] Ways for innovation

Sat Jan 23 12:43:37 CET 2016

The fact that you mention "getting rich" in relation to economies of scale imho shows that you do not understand.People expect new functionality and great looks in products, to develop these you need resources and tooling, which cost a lot. The only way to make this into a viable business is economies of scale. "Getting rich" has got nothing to do with it. But yeah, you do make something a greater number of people are interested in.You may provide some alternative scenarios yourself, think about it.
Best regards,
Jarno.
------ Origineel bericht------Van: Rutger VlekDatum: za, 23 jan. 2016 12:22Naar: Neil Johnson;CC: synth-diy DIY;Onderwerp:Re: [sdiy] Ways for innovation
Thanks for the amount of contributions. I'd like to respond to Neil's specifically.> >> Why does my 150 dollar phone have a better screen than my 3000 dollar synth?> > Because you don't understand the dynamics and scales involved in> production.  Parts of this post from MW a couple of years ago:> https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1351589&highlight=#1351589First of all, I perfectly understand how that works. You don't have to explain the benefits and mechanisms of mass production. It bothers me that you, and many others, take this mechanism for granted. You simply point out how it works and accept it, even mildly suggesting that I'm confused and uninformed. That's completely beside the point of my first message. What I really want is exploring if there are ways around this mechanisms, making sure that musicians get innovative instruments rather than being forced by the taste of the toy-synth masses.It's an optimization paradox. If you want to get rich fast, you only make what the masses want, thereby committing to their taste and vision of the future. You start competing with other companies to make the same thing cheaper and before you know it, the actual societal value of your product is going down. It's less innovative, it's less well built, it's more similar to what you did before, and because of the mass market mechanisms, people have no other choice than buying your sub-optimal product (the alternative suddenly is seemingly very expensive).The same paradox is presently happening in many other area's, such as health care, education and science. Let's take the science example: people determined that you can measure a scientist by his impact and number of publications, so people with the highest number and impact publications are the best scientists. Everyone starts competing on publications, but the actual value of the scientific content is lost. Big work is sliced into more papers to get "more publications", however the value of the content hasn't changed by that action. You just made yourself appear a better scientist, thanks to our lousy criteria for what a good scientist is.So that's the paradox I want to get out of.Rutger> > On the way home this evening I thought about a different perspective.> Lets assume that so far, since the beginning of time, about 1 million> synthesizers and synthesizer modules have been made.  From the above> page the average rate of mobile phone production is about 110 per> second.  So in three hours more mobile phones have been made than the> total number of synthesizers ever built.  The scale is staggering, and> with scale comes cost reduction.> > For example, lets take your Nucleus VCF in ready-made format.  You> charge 225 Euros for it according to the page on MW.  In high volume> (>100k per week) that would cost about 5 Euros to make, test, put in a> box, on a pallete, ready to ship from the factory in China.  Maybe a> bit more, maybe a bit less.  But only if you buy in those kinds of> quantities.> >> And my last personal pain: why is hardware life span so short on present commercial products? If I have a synth with a great keyboard with aftertouch (which is removed from more and more keyboards as a cost-saving measure) and a lovely set of controllers, why throw the hole thing, while the only part that needs an upgrade is the CPU board + DAC to support the latest audio quality and CPU-hogging new algorithms?> > Because you're asking for the wrong thing.  What about past commercial> products, like an Elka Synthex or an Oberheim Matrix-12 or a monster> Moog Modular.  Can you upgrade those with the latest audio quality and> algorithms?  No.  To be honest anything with "CPU-hogging new> algorithms" will have a life expectancy of a mayfly in a tornado.> Because soon after you've upgraded the CPU it will be too slow to run> the next generation of algorithms.  You seen to be a bit mixed up: you> want products that last a lifetime, yet you also want those products> to be inherently short-lived.  Choose.> >> I like to be realistic about things financially, but this is my musicians heart speaking.> > It's good to dream!> > Cheers,> Neil> --_______________________________________________Synth-diy mailing listSynth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nlhttp://dropmix.xs4all.nl/mailman/listinfo/synth-diy
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