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Likely Success of Internet-Related Business Models?

Posted by Cliff on from the as-long-as-you-don't-stake-your-rep-on-it dept.

guess-for-success asks: "In Lester Thurow's latest book, published by HarperBusiness Books (Fall 2003), Fortune Favors the Bold: What We Must Do to Build a New and Lasting Global Prosperity, there is a chapter which discusses the beginning of new industries. During this time, several business models are introduced and only a few will survive. Looking at the PC industry, Commodore was the industry leader in the 1980's, but ultimately failed and went bankrupt in 1994. Successful business models such as Dell were not introduced until years after the industry began. I now ask the Slashdot community: which internet business models they believe are going to succeed? Which companies will rise to the top? Will they be infrastructure related companies such as Cisco and even FedEx, or will they be true dot.com's such as eBay or Amazon?"

"You can find out more about Lester Thurow here. He is a professor of economics and management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been the Dean of the Sloan School of Business at MIT. He has three New York Times best selling books to his credit and consults widely around the globe."

13 of 400 comments (clear)

  1. Blown away, already? We need a local cache!!! by no_such_user · · Score: 5, Insightful

    *Already* this site is /.'ed beyond usability. It's too much. Slashdot needs to provide a local cache of pages it links to, for all non-major league sites. To not do so is irresponsible - and makes the point of posting the links at all pretty much moot.

  2. A faithful rendition of the book. by MagnaMark · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wow, nothing captures the grandeur and rich detail of a 1000+ page epic like 128 colors, 160x200 resolution rendered by a graphics chip running at 1.19 MHz. The screenshots transport me back to 1986 when I first read the book.

    1. Re:A faithful rendition of the book. by wsloand · · Score: 5, Funny

      But, the book itself was monochrome, and its primary interface was text-- not even color text at that.

      Doesn't that mean that it has to be an improvement?

  3. Here are some pseudo mirrors and more info.... by SETY · · Score: 5, Informative

    google cache of /. linked site (old):
    http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:5qsLqbqhikE :w ww.atariage.com/

    Doing a google search I found the game on another site (with a screen shot):

    http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/jo ur ney.html

    and the cache:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:wpuA4XgOLVw :w ww.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/journey.html +%22lord+of+the+rings%22+atari+game&hl=en

  4. Direct Links to the Pictures and Pictures by TheAlchemist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Okay, lesson learned. Stay as far away from Slashdot as possible if you want your poor server to live longer than 30 seconds once an article has been posted to the front page. :) Here are some links to the images on the server that will bypass MySQL, so you can at least see them:

    Screenshot #1
    Screenshot #2
    Screenshot #3
    Screenshot #4
    Screenshot #5
    Screenshot #6
    Screenshot #7

    Prototype Cartridge

    Prototype Box

    Binary Image

    Here's a MySLQ-free writeup we did, although many of the lnks internal to AtariAge won't work right now. :)

    Information about 2600 Lord of the Rings

    Enjoy!

  5. Lord Of The Rings by Man+In+Black · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's what I know about the game:

    This game was programmed by Parker Bros a long time ago, and was pretty much finished (I'm not sure what (if anything) they left out... it looks finished to me). However, there are two parties that apparently own the rights to the LOTR stuff, and there were problems getting the liscensing rights and other legal mumbo jumbo. As a result, the game couldn't be released because the two sides couldn't come to terms on things.

    As for what to do in the game, the other goons at AtariAge and I have figured out this much:

    1. You have to get to Rivendell, the city at the top of the map. To do this, you basically run up and to the left. When you find the path, follow it. It's much faster. If you need to look at your map, duck into the forest (or a town) and press the button.

    2. You can pick up other party members along the way. I'm not sure exactly where they all are, but one is for sure in the city on the left.

    3. The birds don't seem to do anything (we haven't figured that part out yet), and the only way we know of to get the horseman off your back is to dodge into the forest. He won't follow you. As for turning white when you press the button? I have no idea what that does either.

    4. Eventually, if you get far enough along the path, you'll come to a river (It's flashing for some reason). There's a bridge across it if you look for it.

    By the way, AtariAge is back up... sort of. You can view the LOTR article and associated material, and you can get to the forums... but everything else is offline until their MySQL server is put back online.

    --
    -"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
  6. How Parker Bros. Picked Games for Sale by xanthan · · Score: 5, Informative

    I used to work with a fellow who was in Parker Bros. during the Atari heyday and even into the PC gaming arena for a short while. What he says makes a lot of sense and it does lead me to believe it to be true...

    For each new game that came out, four were actually made. The reason for this was that it cost $250,000 to produce a game and about $3-4M to actually market and sell the damn thing. Thus, it was crucial that they picked winners. Looking at the type of games that Parker Bros. was coming out with, you can easily see how these games were not destined to be classics... The loss of developing 3 losers for every winner was covered in the returns made on the one game that was released. While it may still sound like a weird way to do it, the return on investment proved it to be the correct thing to do. They were able to release new games on a regular basis without worrying about a single game bogging down their cycle.

    Note for those who dispute development costs: The ratio of marketing costs to development costs still holds true for a lot of development that happens today for a variety of different products. A dozen cubicals of programmers is a lot cheaper than TV spots, magazine ads, distribution, packaging, art work, product placement in stores, etc...

    So we can see how it was entirely possible for a LOTR game to not be selected because by comparison to the other games coming out at the time, it sucked. How could such a classic suck? As someone mentioned earlier... How exactly are you going to get a 1,000 page book filled with rich imagery into a 4k cart running on a 2600? The people who would buy such a game (LOTR fans) would have held it up to a higher expectation and been disapointed. The rest of the world would have said "Lord of the who?" and ignored it. And *click*... There goes $4M down the drain...

  7. Google has the right idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You do one thing (in their case) and you do it well. Then you use that one thing to make money.

    1. Re:Google has the right idea by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Google doesn't stand still. They keep adding to the service, what they don't do is screw with the core product.

      I find it interesting that Commodore is given as an example of a failure. Commodore had ups and downs throughout the eighties, going into Chapter 11 on at least one occasion. For the most part, it was merely managed badly and once Commodore was able to get the Amiga on track, it did very well.

      Where it went wrong was, ironically, in thinking that it needed to ape Dell. During the late eighties and early nineties, it came out with a series of Commodore-branded PCs, believing that it needed to keep an oar in that market in case the Amiga golden-goose stopped laying its eggs. This was disasterous for a couple of reasons: Amiga development revenues were diverted to PC development which meant the Amiga slowly became less revolutionary compared to what else was in the market, and the PC industry was already a commodity market - you couldn't make money there unless you were very lucky and Commodore was further hampered in that respect by having a name that didn't play well with traditionally conservative PC buyers.

      Had Commodore avoided that kind of diversification, they probably would be around today. The Amiga would probably not be their base product (though, like the Mac, the name may have stayed for products that do not resemble the original in any respect), but the fact that it had a good name, was a "different choice" that would have attracted people who do not want Windows, and would have ensured Commodore had control over their own platform, would have meant the product would have had substantial reason to succeed.

      Never underestimate the power of bad management decisions to kill a good business model.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  8. Re:trusted computing by bhtooefr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Trusted computing gives control of YOUR computer to the company that made the software or hardware. It means that the company can trust the computer. You can't trust a TC computer.

  9. Re:trusted computing - oh please by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Internet-Enabled Remote Bitchslap(patent pending) will be the biggest thing EVAR!

    Oh yeah, and an addition to CallerID called CallerIQ.

  10. Roku is a good example of a "new economy" business by klipsch_gmx · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Roku is the high-end digital media player for HDTV buyers with money to burn. Roku was founded and financed by Anthony Wood, who made out well when he sold ReplayTV to SonicBlue. He's a rich guy selling gizmos to other rich guys, but not all startups have Anthony's resources. Here is a success story from one resource-challenged startup. Wallflower, which is also in the digital photograph display business, managed to get itself off the ground with a strategy I've seen only once before: dumpster diving.

    The company makes (expensive) digital picture frames that compete with Ceiva, Digiframe, and Pacific Digital. Nothing special there. But Wallflower's startup plan was based around building its high-end products with pieces from recycled computers. To get started, Wallflower founders Mitch Kahn and Gordon Clyne bought 150 old but unused laptops from liquidators and via eBay, for $25 to $150 each. They were obsolete as workstations (most had 133MHz CPUs and smallish hard drives) but had the right pieces to make nice picture frames--most importantly, working 12" LCD panels.

    Mitch and Gordon's small team disassembled the machines, mounted the displays in handmade wood frames with the motherboard and hard disk, and added Wi-Fi and their own Linux-based software. Basically, the Wallflower displays are Web servers that appear on a Windows desktop as disk drives--you put one on your network and you can just drag pictures onto it, and call up its internal home page to manage its settings. Now you have a nice big electronic photo frame to show your digital pictures, and changing the display is as easy as typing a URL into your home computer.

    Frankly I can't see spending $500 for one of these things--but what do I know? Shortly after Forbes ran an article about the product, Wallflower sold out of its inventory of Frankensteined picture frames. Left with nice cashflow from its rising order volume, and needing more certainty in its supply chain than Weird Stuff Warehouse could provide, Wallflower recently gave up on the whole recycled kick and started buying components from manufacturers, the way most computer companies do.

    With the new manufacturing strategy, the company is able to offer more features and bigger screens, but it had to raise its prices since these components are more expensive. Although I imagine they save a fortune in assembly costs, since they no longer have to dismantle laptops to get their parts.

    There is a thriving economy in the leftover computer business. Lots of old equipment ready to be used in new and exciting ways.

  11. The internet and business model are no different.. by ducomputergeek · · Score: 5, Informative
    than traditional models. Frankly Amazon.com is nothing more than a large catalog mail order store. Its just that the catalog and much of the ordering process has been automated by computers.

    Ebay has just taken the traditional auction and used the internet to automate much of the process.

    Really, most internet businesses are just innovations, taking a new technology and using it to replace or suppliment an existing medium. The problem with most internet businesses in the dot com era was they didn't understand this and/or fell into the trap of "This is compeltely different" and it wasn't.

    Now the internet has helped reduce cost in industries like mail order because it is possible to reach billons with one site unlike say a traditional catalog that would have to be mailed out which costs a lot of money in print and postage. However, there is no secert method to business models. Its still breaks down to: provide a product or service to fulfill a need. Do it well, keep down costs, and hopefully make a profit.

    --
    "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.