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AI’s eigenquestions - by Philip Clark - Futurist fieldnotes

philipjclark.substack.com · 1,846 words · saved by 1 readers

Every paradigm shift in technology raises new eigenquestions – the irreducible set of questions founders must answer to build category-defining companies. Some past examples: Birth of the internet: How do you make digital content easy to create and access? Shift from desktop to mobile: What can people do now that everyone has a computer with them all the time? Migration from on prem to cloud: What new collaborative workflows are possible when you can read / write information to / from any device with an internet connection? Asking the correct eigenquestions is often as important as identifying the best applications. Get the basic shape of a great idea right but the eigenquestions wrong and you’ll still likely have trouble building a breakout product. For example, Seamless’s mobile app helped unlock new demand from people ordering food from their phones. But DoorDash grasped that mobile didn’t just mean new customers, it also created a new supply network of dashers. Whereas Seamless foc

Every paradigm shift in technology raises new eigenquestions – the irreducible set of questions founders must answer to build category-defining companies. Some past examples: Birth of the internet: How do you make digital content easy to create and access? Shift from desktop to mobile: What can people do now that everyone has a computer with them all the time? Migration from on prem to cloud: What new collaborative workflows are possible when you can read / write information to / from any device with an internet connection? Asking the correct eigenquestions is often as important as…

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