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REAL problems = expressions of identity
When discussing companies, the term “real problem” is misleading because even though people who use the term will offer some cliched examples (climate tech, world hunger) the point of the term is to point at the thing being criticized, not the thing being aspired to.
Space exploration may not have less to do with real problems than a yacht with torture chambers. For evil dictators who can party and torture dissidents at the same time.
All "problems" are real. Real problems are actually an expression of identity. Evangelizing “real problems” is a way to do identity politics by indirect means.
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Real Problems -> Customer Identities -> Identity Politics
“Real problems” are actually a generalization of “customer-driven.” A real problem points to a real person who already has that problem — namely a customer.
All identities are in fact customer identities. Identity politics is actually customer politics.
The only reason to have a stable identity is if you want to acquire something through it, whether it is through participation in family, community, the market, or politics.
Race & ideology are customer identities just like preferring vanilla over chocolate ice cream is a customer identity. You buy things through those identities, even if it isn’t with money.
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Creating a new reality
What is the actual logical opposite of a “real problem?”. A “reality transformer.”
Instead of solving a problem within reality as currently defined, in relation to a particular identity-based point of view, you make something that creates a new reality, forcing people to create new identities in relation to it.
ex: Twitter. Nobody asked for it, and even 14 years later it is unclear what problem it solves, and for whom. It was built because it was possible to build, and it ended up transforming reality for everybody. Now people have “real problems” like editing tweets.
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Identity Based Businesses
A business can be:
- customer driven: boring businesses that solve an existing problem for an existing customer, validating the identities of everyone.
- product driven: they create a customer rather than serving an existing market. But the most important customer, the entrepreneur, remains unchanged.
- lifestyle based: they work to validate the identity of the entrepreneur & might distort reality for everybody else except the entrepreneur, via a reality-distortion product.
- demiurgical: they transform reality for everybody, including for the person making it, forcing everybody to forge new identities.
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Demiurgical Business
They transcend the product-driven vs. customer-driven dichotomy. Twitter is an example of this kind of business. It may have under-performed as a business compared to entrepreneur-driven businesses like Apple, Amazon, and Facebook, but it transformed reality more powerfully.
Demiurgical businesses tend to be far more powerful. The limiting factor for customer driven businesses is existing identities in the market that can be served. The limiting factor for product-driven businesses is the existing identity of the entrepreneur that must be affirmed. But a demiurgical business essentially has no limits besides the laws of nature.
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IDEAS CURATED BY
Life-long learner. Passionate about leadership, entrepreneurship, philosophy, Buddhism & SF. Founder @deepstash.
Vladimir Oane's ideas are part of this journey:
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