Give the people what they want

No, not the The Kinks

Tom Friedman wrote this today:

Over the years, Detroit bosses kept repeating: “We have to make the cars people want.” That’s why they’re in trouble. Their job is to make the cars people don’t know they want but will buy like crazy when they see them. I would have been happy with my Sony Walkman had Apple not invented the iPod. Now I can’t live without my iPod. I didn’t know I wanted it, but Apple did. Same with my Toyota hybrid.

This theme is talked about in this Malcolm Gladwell talk about the invention of chunky tomato sauce. The key is that nobody would have told you that they wanted chunky tomato sauce, but they did. This is more interesting than Friedman's ipod analogy -- because technological innovation is always happening, and is expected.

Tom Friedman - Energy Technology

I haven't read Friedman's book, Hot, Flat and Crowded. And I was annoyed by Friedman for a long time for his "suck on this" rhetoric in support of the Iraq war, and his consistent insistence that the next 6 months would tell the story in Iraq got old after 36 or 42 months of the same.

But I don't like to hold grudges, and cut off good ideas just because I have had issues with the person speaking them. He also warmed my heart after the Republican Convention by pointing out the absurdity of people chanting "Drill Baby, Drill." He made the analogy to someone in the late eighties chanting "IBM Selectric Typewriters" in the face of the internet revolution.

Friedman has some very good ideas about the United States moving into a Energy Technology revolution. I drove to Cape May yesterday and listened to a podcast of Friedman speaking at the London School of Economics. You can download or listen to the address at the site I linked to, the powerpoint he used is also available. In a way I think Friedman is trying to reform himself -- and knows how poorly he performed in the early 2000's. If this is his path to redemption, I welcome him.