I liked this article by Matt Ridley in the WSJ about the innovation of reducing prices. We often think of entrepreneurship as inventing something new; there are also those that find ways to make what exists but with a new twist that brings the price down and brings the item/service to the masses.
Excerpts:
A feature of innovation is that the greatest impact of a new idea comes not when the light bulb goes on over the geek's head, but when the resulting technology eventually becomes cheap enough for many people to use—perhaps decades later. The first plane at Kitty Hawk had zero impact on the world economy, but budget airlines have a huge impact; the first computer was a curiosity, but cheap laptops changed the world.
...
Cornelius Vanderbilt cut the price of rail freight 90%, Andrew Carnegie slashed steel prices 75% and John D. Rockefeller cut oil prices 80% between 1870 and 1900. Malcom McLean, Sam Walton and Michael Dell did roughly the same for container shipping, discount retailing and home computing a century later, and were also unloved for it.
Read the full article here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704436004576299431739673572.html
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WSJ Vanderbilt Matt Ridley Pricing
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