Technology Agnostic Solutions Win Again!

Image by psilver (silverph) via Flickr

My good friend, Dan Dershem, CEO of LeanLogistics, related the following "technology adoption" story to me.  Although his ten-year old daughter had been asking for a cell phone ("like all my friends have, Dad!"), Dan had been resisting her pleas. Perhaps changing tactics due to a friend's advice, she asked for an iTouchfor Christmas, which unsuspecting Dan bought her. Right after Christmas, sitting in a ski resort parking lot, she announced from the back seat that she was communicating through her iTouch with a classmate over a class project they had due in the new year. The WiFi enabled iTouch let her to talk with her friends just as easily as if she had a cell phone.  Another example of the tech user slipping around "enterprise platforms" (Dad's reluctance, in this case) and gaining access to applications they need to run their lives.

The lesson is clear for budding entrepreneurs: the more you can empower your users, make their lives easier and provide continual value and be technology agnostic, you will be a winner.  Trying to tie user to single platform solutions may work for a time (watch out Amazon Kindle and Apple iTunes!), but ultimately the user community wants to be able to access solutions through a variety of technology options.