Re: NoteMap -- Greg, it's time for Ver. 3

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 4253

Posted by sub
2005-10-02 23:31:43

Greg,

I can definitely understand the business sense point of view; I can also understand the current market situation you find yourselves in.

Nevertheless, I cannot share some of your generalisations, such as: “isn’t the bottom line pretty much this: Outlining is a way to organize thinking. And the vast vast majority of people are not the least bit interested in thinking or in working hard on their thinking”.

First of all, from a business sense point of view, neither Casesoft or any other professional software house, target the majority of people; the majority of people do not go through the university, or work in knowledge oriented enterprises, or write for their living, or practice law (thankfully :-). The majority of people do not even own a PC, at least in my part of the world.

Notwithstanding, all of the above mentioned “minorities” represent significant market niches, as proved by the major investments of enterprises in a multitude of KM tools, by the bestselling Tony Buzan’s books and their software implementations, even by the widespread use of unsuitable tools, such as Word abd Excel, to organise everything, from contacts and shopping lists to Ph.D. research items.

I think Stephen Diamond’s remark that potential (Notemap et al) clients have turned from “Outlining” to “MindMapping”, is a hint to the right direction, again, from a business sense point of view. I’ve participated in similar discussions with the Brainstorm team who, among others, have received the comment that their software “can’t do anything that Word won’t do”; I think it’s clear that software users need to be visually excited before they even consider new purchases.

Last but not least, it is clear that a huge unexploited market exists in the academic sector, especially in the social sciences, where people are already “working hard on their thinking”, but are not even aware that there are tools out there that can help them do much more than just give a “professional look” to their dissertation.

alx

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