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Why some ideas don’t go global

Why is it that some innovations are expanding into every area of the world while others – no matter how great – only work in a certain region?

The answer is the Galápagos syndrome. It refers to a phenomenon in which products have evolved isolated from the rest of the world despite their superior quality and advanced technology, just like endemic Galápagos Islands animals.

The most famous example are japanese cellphones. Japan was already using highly advanced smartphones when the rest of the world was still sceptical of the first generation iphone. Japan has always been ahead of the world: they had camera-phones in 2000, full music downloads in 2002, electronic payments in 2004 and digital TV in 2005. But somehow they couldn’t sell it to the rest oft he world.

We asked our selves: what are other examples for Galápagosization? Our little model lists ideas, products, innovations that are galápagosized vs those who are accepted almost everywhere. The vertical axis shows what we like and what we disklike.

Any suggestions for our Galápagos-Chart?

Tags: Galapagos Syndrom

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Categories "Explaining-the-world", Sociology models

Article in ASIABOOKS

27 Apr

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Tags: ASIABOOKS

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Categories General info

Jumping The Shark

31 Mar

WHEN SOMETHING STARTS TO BE UNCOOL
Most of us spend a lot of time asking ourselves if we are doing the ‘right’ thing: Are we wearing the right glasses? Do we hold the right views? Are we living in the right part of town? Have we given our child the right name? Everyone wants to be ‘cool’. But cool is actually hard to define. Once you do it, it isn’t cool anymore. Because this je ne sais quoi often eludes us, we use status symbols to try and emulate it. And we are not just talking about teenage trends – every age-group, every social class has its own status symbols, the mainstream to the same extent as the avant garde.

In the US there is a way of describing the point at which something becomes passé: it’s jumped the shark. The saying was inspired by the TV series Happy Days, specifically an episode in which Fonzie tries to jump over a shark on waterskis. This ridiculous script idea suggested that the scriptwriters were literally losing the plot: they could no longer sustain the show’s success and were resorting to cheap gimmicks in a desperate attempt to retain viewers. Initially applied to the beginning of the end of a TV series, the saying is now used more generally to describe the moment when something loses its freshness and starts to go downhill.
To sum it up: What fun is it being cool if you can’t wear a (sombrero? Calvin & Hobbes)

Tags: Cool, Jumping the shark