The Efficient Markets Hypothesis: Web Design Edition
10 July 2007 at 12:53 pm Peter G. Klein 1 comment
| Peter Klein |
A few years back, web designer Matt Jones coined the term lazyweb — the notion that there are so many other smart people out there working on the web alongside you, and that if you wait long enough, someone else will write, build, or design that cool thing you were thinking about, and save you the bother of doing the actual work.
This is from Mike Gunderloy, who obviously does not subscribe to the Kirznerian or Knightian versions of the efficient sidewalk theory. To be fair, he’s not talking about final goods (Why bother to make and sell something when someone else will have already made and sold it?) but intermediate goods (Why make something myself when I can free ride on the efforts of others?). Naturally we fully endorse such free riding.
Entry filed under: - Klein -, Entrepreneurship.
Organizations and Markets 
1.
jonfernquest | 10 July 2007 at 10:08 pm
The open source software world is like a gigantic heap of parts without a manual. It’s hard work sorting them out and putting them to use. I wouldn’t call that “lazyweb” .
Most new software ideas were pretty obvious ages ago, there are just so many barriers to usefulness that have to bridged, some small like how can I quickly bookmark a bunch of useful pages with Del.ici.ous and then get them to pop up well-formatted and user friendly in an Economist or Huffington Post-like front page (repurposing, if you will, and what I am doing this morning), other barriers are gigantic like how can you get the content of a successful paper publication to generate as much revenue in a web publication format. That’s a question that everyone is struggling to figure out and people eventually will, slowly but surely.