There's a lot of talk about what industry start ups and new technology will disrupt. I usually hear legal and medical, but I haven't seen much head way yet. What do you think the next one will be and why?
I received a 3d printer last week, at work. I ordered it to try and make some oilfield equipment models. My expectations in truth were low, the printer is a cheap hobbyist unit (Makerbot Replicator 2). After using it for 2 weeks, I am very impressed. The mechanical properties of the PLA plastic used are much better than expected, and there are things you can make that would not be possible with any other manufacturing process - eg. objects with an internal 3d honeycomb structure for great strength and lightness.<p>I think the technology can already disrupt such industries as hardware shops, spare parts warehouses, hobby shops and of course industrial model making. In the future I expect 3d printed concrete buildings, and mainstream consumer goods.
Banking. This is already happening. Paypal has already forced banks (at least in the UK) to stop holding onto people's money for 3 days during account-to-account transfers; zopa.com is disintermediating the banks with a peer-to-peer lending model (as is prosper in the US I think?); fundingcircle.com is doing that for commercial loans; currencyfair.com is doing the same thing with FX transactions; kickstarter.com is making it possible for companies to raise money without going to the capital markets. To cap it all, bitcoin is challenging the traditional role of banking in controlling the money supply in the first place! In short, almost every aspect of banking is under attack from startups everywhere. To date I haven't seen much of a response from the incumbents. Maybe the effect is too small at the moment but it is exciting to watch how it unfolds :)
Legal and medical will evolve, but there will not be disruption because:<p>a) They are heavily regulated and moving outside the regulatory framework is subject to vigorous prosecution. AirBnB is in a comparitively lightly regulated industry and its transactions can remain private.<p>b) These industries are already profitable so the most likely perceived result of disruption is a reduction of profits.<p>c) The amount of cash already attracts many players to the market who can focus on sales - lawyers and doctors like a professional sales force and personal attention - rather than innovation. Little egotistical professional service companies are as problematic as big dumb one's. Maybe worse because they are about more than the bottom line.<p>d) These industries have better ways to make money than software services. Insurance companies don't reimburse for medical records on an iPad. Lawyers bill by the hour.
Textbooks. The market is controlled by a half dozen huge companies that charge around 10x too much because they can.<p>I intend to tackle it one day. The biggest hurdle is actually finding instructors willing to write a textbook.
Airline delayed/missing/found baggage items. Once, the SITA database in Atlanta was bigger than google (10 years ago or so). A monopoly that carries extreme costs for airlines. All interaction via archaic terminals, with a few local GUI implementations. I've done one via piggy-backing, however if you're not a handling agent or airline then you're not allowed into the ecosystem. - I'm interested in pursuing this, but it's too large for me alone to handle.
IMHO, Groklaw's activities have laid a good pattern that can be followed for disrupting the legal industry. Some effects of the disruption could be
- interesting cases using crowd sourcing to aid discovery
- finding economical and effective lawyers made simple
- decreasing tolerance for frivolous complaints<p>Similar things could be done in the Health industry as well
I'd guess it will be the one most people are trying to disrupt. I know that sounds trivial, but if you throw enough hackers at an industry, something new will probably come out. There seems to be a lot going on in education, and even though it hasn't been totally disrupted, there appears to be enough effort and focus that it will happen eventually.
Health is definitely a hot startup niche that is getting some traction. For years the health industry has been lurking in the shadows, a rotting archaic industry heavily controlled by lobbyists and pharmaceutical companies. Seems people are trying to change things, if you succeed in the health niche, you're set and others are starting to see this.
Hiring. There's something fundamentally frustrating about knowing that all the data you need to make the perfect decision about where you should work is out there but that getting even a small piece of that data involves a series of nondeterministic, flawed, and sometimes intentionally opqaue human interactions.
I like to be a contrarian with these things. The true genius ideas, to me, are those that no one was betting on. (that said, there's some good ideas here!)