Good Idea! Now find a better one.

Cities need cars in the middle of 10 million people like a fish needs a bicycle.

That quote contains the words of Dean Kamen from the same Time Magazine interview from our last post. He continues:

The reason I moved to a city is I wanted high density. I don’t want to be spread out from everybody else here by stinking, smelly, noisy vehicles in the middle of a city. I love cars and trucks. I love airplanes too. But you learn that you leave an airplane at the airport. You leave your car at the end of that nice trip on the highway. I don’t taxi my airplane into downtown Manchester if I fly across the United States.

So you get in a car driving 60 miles an hour for 10 miles, and then when you get to the edge of a highly dense pedestrian-friendly environment, let’s stop bring[sic] cars into that last couple of square miles.

What Kamen has presented here is a portion of his philosophy. Now our purpose here is not to debate the merits of his philosophy, but how he chose to advance it through releasing the Segway Human Transporter.

You cannot force someone to adopt your philosophy. There is no way to make someone see the world the way you see it. But what you can do is offer something that people will value, that also just happens to advance your philosophy.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, you can preach and teach but don’t get caught.

Kamen’s angle is that if he gives you a brilliant tool for moving around that “last couple of square miles” in the city, then you’ll start to think, “You know what, we don’t need cars in here…”

Big ideas start in small niches.

The problem with Kamen’s approach is it requires too many people to buy into the philosophy too quickly. It violates the reality that Kamen himself recognizes:

You know, computers were in a niche market for the first few years… cars were a niche when they were first made, airplanes were a niche when they were first made. Every new technology starts out that way.

If you want to advance a philosphy, especially one that requires others to reject assumptions and beliefs that have served them well, you have to start small.

And when you consider how much people are willing to pay to park their cars in downtown Chicago and New York, a no car philosophy for downtown is a really tough sell.

Tags: kamen, big ideas, technology, segway, philosophy