Foreword
If there is one lesson from the dot-com craze and meltdown that will endure (until the next time, anyway), it was this: A great idea is not the same thing as a great innovation.
We saw some truly fabulous ideas come over the transom here at Fast Company: There was, for a few shining months, balls.com, proud 24/7 purveyor of any sports ball you could imagine, and gesundheit.com, offering comprehensive relief for the allergy sufferer. But these late, mostly forgotten sites didn't deliver much in the way of value. People didn't need this stuff—not enough, anyway, to pay the bills. Ordering pet food online and having it delivered to your home was a terrific idea, but—no disrespect to the sock puppet—it just wasn't pragmatic.
Now consider ...
Get The Design of Things to Come: How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Products now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
