Thursday, February 4, 2010

A possible inconvenience

VIDEO: Innovative 'new economy' ideas for marketing machine-vision products may have an unexpected cost--time

Editor's Note: Watch the video version of editor Andy Wilson's "My View" blog, where you'll get Andy's unique take on what's buzzing through the machine-vision marketplace or just what's been buzzing through his mind lately. You can also read Andy's "My View" as seen in the January issue of Vision Systems Design.

Several years ago, I had the pleasure of attending a talk presented by Chris Anderson, the author of The Long Tail (http://www.thelongtail.com/). If you have read this book, you will be aware of its simple but powerful message.

In essence, Anderson points out that the economy is shifting away from a focus on a relative small number of mainstream products and markets at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.