I spend nearly all of my time with innovators.  Some are brilliant technologists; some are brilliant strategists; some develop products; some develop new processes.  Many never make a new market.  Sometimes they lack funding.  Sometimes they lack the “whole offer”.  And sometimes they get lucky.  But the ones who have repeat success have figured out one thing:  They work toward the “Accessibility Point”.

In business, we all know the term, “Tipping Point”.  It’s interesting to use this label to mark the point in time when a technology or process reaches an adoption inflection point.  This simply means that it’s an historical marker.  To me, it has no instructive power.  It’s used by people to reflect on the market conditions present at the time a technology or process finally succeeded.  Frankly, it’s interesting but not very helpful.

I like the phrase “Accessibility Point” because the language is infused with some actionable meaning (to me anyway).  It’s instructive.  A new market is made when a technology or process is accessible to a large population of developers, buyers, users etc.  Accessibility is disruptive.  Why did iPhone sales explode?  The development platform was accessible to developers and the interface was easy to use by customers.  So it was accessible to the entire ecosystem required to innovate on it and consume it.  A friend of mine, Dwight Stewart, calls this “reducing friction”.  The iPhone ecosystem sure does.

Innovators make new markets by reducing friction.  This makes their technologies and processes accessible. This is a necessary condition for new markets.