Peter Knol

I'm here to help making online innovation work.
co-founder @getBksy • co-founder @IndigoStudent (sold) • founder MijnWitteTshirts nl (sold) • builder • research

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@dened21 @levie Great post and great addition!

[denis @dened21]

Disruptive innovation may not be the best theory to describe AI’s impact on the software industry and its incumbents like Google and MS.

Unlike previous disruptions, the incumbents and quasi incumbents (OAI <— MS) are both making the innovation (foundation models) and leading the charge (moving at the speed of startups).

These incumbents produced the most advanced models and gate-keep them as closed-source - and moving fast to make new applications, from NotebookLM to ChatGPT voice.

So disruptive innovation does not really capture what’s happening for the software industry itself. AI looks more like a “sustaining innovation”.

But it may predict the impact of AI on the non-software industries.

Incumbents there face new entrants who aren’t tied to old cost structures and who can re-think from first principles about how to create and sell products and services faster, better and cheaper using AI-native approaches. Or to just simply run companies more efficiently using AI and pass on the savings to customers.

[Aaron Levie @levie]

For anyone in AI, it can be very useful to track AI progress through the lens of disruptive innovation, popularized by Clayton Christensen.

As a reminder, with disruptive innovation, a new technology or product will initially seem inferior for most needs of the market, but at least be cheap and simple enough for the lowest-end use cases of the market.

Initially it is perceived as not good enough for the more advanced use cases, and is rejected or ignored by the most important customers. Then, over time, the technology improves and incrementally solves more and more problems for customers. Eventually, after enough cycles of improvement, in most cases the new innovation exceeds all of the customers needs, often at a lower price point or with improved service. Of course, by then, for incumbents that didn’t respond, it’s far too late.

In the case of AI, it’s useful to look at the rate of improvement in both the underlying models *and* the applications that use these models. Both improve at slightly different rates since there’s almost always a lag from the time of an AI model breakthrough to an applied use-case (e.g. an LLM may be good at generating code, but an AI code editor has to integrate that model and create features to make the model useful).

On the model front, the rate of improvement has clearly been incredible. In just the past few years, we’ve gone from LLMs being only useful for basic text generation with a high rate of made up facts, to advanced reasoning models that are good at math and logic, and can complete entire tasks using agentic workflows. We’ve seen similar rates of improvement in audio, video, and images as well, all with profound changes in the past few years. These models are now performing at or better than most humans on a number of task types, and we’re still seeing major improvements happen regularly.

Thus, we can expect the same type of improvements to eventually happen at the applied AI layer, often just with a bit of lag from the model improvements. Take for instance the early breakthroughs in AI leading to autonomous cars. At first it seemed like an implausible goal, but these cars are now ubiquitous in SF and probably will be everywhere in the next decade. We’re seeing or will see similar curves in the applied AI layer with AI coding software, customer service, legal work, healthcare services, new search products, robotics, and more.

The biggest mistake when watching a disruptive innovation cycle play out is to assume that because something can’t be done with the technology today, it will remain that way in the future. In fact, some of the biggest opportunities will be in areas that specifically *can’t* fully be solved by AI today, giving disruptors a chance to get early inroads in parts of the market whose use-cases are less complex. Then, over time, the provider will just keep improving and follow the rate of model improvements to take over more of the market.

Ultimately, the key is to not mistake what is possible today with what is possible tomorrow, and plan accordingly.

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@MauriceHoog Mooi verhaal met @ejpfauth over Substack!

Ook gisteren: https://t.co/7xLfyuze3f #greatminds ;)

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@paulg Appears to have some similarities with what @amcafee describes in his book 'The Geek Way', where 'ownership' (as opposed to bureaucracy and narrow responsibility) is one of four paths to these kind of organisations.

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@matias_ventura Nice! Ideas:
- delete part of the drawing, or just undo the last step
- if I convert to png, it becomes black/white instead of used colors
- set a background color for the canvas

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@matias_ventura Is Sketch (https://t.co/TacclVRTAZ) still under development? Love it, although it could use some improvements... ;) https://t.co/Ikkp2wyprE #justasking

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@PierreDeWulf I like it, thanks!

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@iamdevloper I'd write a tutorial on how to handle this many requests for just $7 and sell it for $50. Easy value for anyone paying more right now.

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@louispereira @MarkV If you mind, what made you choose Draftbit? I am considering them or Flutterflow right now...

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@alyssaxuu @figmadesign @github Done. https://t.co/m1FN9DaJqh No offense if ignored, though 😉

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@alyssaxuu @figmadesign @github Ok, will try to find a solution myself and might send a pr on github... 🫡

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@INMAorg @g_piechota "Delivering The Times’ journalism to readers and getting paid for it costs almost five times more than the journalism itself (US$113 million)." Blew my mind, therefore looked in the annual report myself. The $113m is the 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑐𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑗𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑚?

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@martijnarets Schitterende plaatjes telkens, Martijn! Geniet van het vervolg!

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@fverhoef Interessant! Hoe ben je aan dit lijstje gekomen?

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@PierreDeWulf @GergelyOrosz No, this article is about another website: https://t.co/n3SI0W5lJJ, not about https://t.co/EWGW2YG4YF.

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

Keep getting back to this clear talk of Russ Ackoff on #systemsthinking from 30 years ago: https://t.co/iAELlKO38M

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

Finally! https://t.co/oXMOA8ImST

[Marc Köhlbrugge @marckohlbrugge]

Great news for indie makers 👌

Web apps on iOS will become a lot more powerful with support for push notifications amongst other things https://t.co/vJI0qkiZCr

[Peter Knol @peterknol]

@naval @MengTo