In “Free” by Chris Anderson you can find dozens of great ideas for a new business to open or running an existing one. You can get a glimpse of what I mean after reading the story below. Citation is from Kevin Kelly’s “New Rules for the New Economy“. In “Free” this story is written very similarly (some argue that this may be even a plagiarism).

“In the early 1960s Robert Noyce and his partner Jerry Sanders—founders of Fairchild Semiconductor—were selling an early transistor, called the 1211, to the military. Each transistor cost Noyce $100 to make. Fairchild wanted to sell the transistor to RCA for use in their UHF tuner. At the time RCA was using fancy vacuum tubes, which cost only $1.05 each. Noyce and Sanders put their faith in the inverted pricing of the learning curve. They knew that as the volume of production increased, the cost of the transistor would go down, even a hundredfold. But to make their first commercial sale they need to get the price down immediately, with zero volume. So they boldly anticipated the cheap by cutting the price of the 1211 to $1.05, right from the start, before they knew how to do it. “We were going to make the chips in a factory we hadn’t built, using a process we hadn’t yet developed, but the bottom line: We were out there the next week quoting $1.05,” Sanders later recalled. “We were selling into the future.” And they succeeded. By anticipating the cheap, they made their goal of $1.05, took 90% of the UHF market share, and then within two years cut the price of the 1211 to 50 cents, and still made a profit.”

Robert Noyce was not only a co-inventor of the Integrated Circuit, visionary business leader, but also an inspiring boss. Short example from wikipedia:

“The relaxed culture that Noyce brought to Intel was a carry-over from his style at Fairchild Semiconductor. He treated employees as family, rewarding and encouraging teamwork. His follow-your-bliss management style set the tone for many Valley success stories. Noyce’s management style could be called a “roll up your sleeves” style. He shunned fancy corporate cars, reserved parking spaces, private jets, offices, and furnishings in favor of a less-structured, relaxed working environment in which everyone contributed and no one benefited from lavish benefits. By declining the usual executive perks he stood as a model for future generations of Intel CEOs.”

Hard to find similar examples in nowadays companies, right?

Have you read “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson? If not then you definitely should. It’s a delightful piece of common sense and fresh view on niche products/services/etc.
“Long tail” was published in 2005, but you’d be amazed how up to date it is even now. To get an idea on the topic take a look on a wiki. Any startup company could benefit taking lessons from this book. In my opinion key points to remember are:

1. Never underestimate variety of people/companies that can reach you via the Web. Just be genuine at what you do and see the result!
2. Remember to expose your projects, ideas. Write a blog, be a active member of some niche forums. Work out something that’s in line with your business.
3. Open your work. This may sound counterintuitive, but believe me – the amount of hard work people can put in your idea is limitless. And the best part is – this costs you nothing.
4. Don’t cheat! This point wasn’t precisely in the book, but I think you could sense it strongly. If you’d like others to help you (see p.3) then be a decent man and respect them!
5. Experiment! Niche market in definition is segmented, maybe even full of contradictions (person A needs product X, but person B needs product that is opposite to X).

I’ve just started reading “Free” by Chris. My preliminary opinion after several pages – nice work! In free time I’ll write few words on this one.

So many times I was disappointed at big manufactures producing cars, household equipment etc. Each piece of hardware coupled together to work just in one configuration – one car model, one date of production. Is there are no alternative to this??? This video was an eye-opener for me:

Idea is great! To build your tools yourself (which can be tricky) and (this is the best part) in open hardware, modular way.