What the hell happened to the alarm clock industry?
A Story about the Pyramid of Technology.
Remember alarm clocks?
Remember falling asleep with the annoying ticking noise and excruciating bell sound in the morning that would wake up the dead?
Everyone used to own one.
Well, look around now.
It has disappeared from the bedroom of almost anyone owning a mobile phone.
And the question that crossed my mind, was:
What the hell happened to that industry?
Trying to get a healthier sleep, I recently decided to stop keeping and using my phone in my bedroom.
I remembered the good old alarm clocks and I went to the store down the street to get one.
They didn’t sell any alarm clocks….
Went to another one, a large supermarket.
They sold alarm clocks. But not exactly what I had in mind. They sold expensive LED screen alarm clocks with a projector that wakes you up with lights, music or fancy “nature” noise…not really what I had in mind.
This is what I had in mind:

The 2000’s has seen cell phones then smartphones become mainstream.
And, in less than 10 years, an entire industry, the alarm clock industry, has completely been wiped out.
I am trying to picture some of the board meetings of whoever made a living with alarm clocks during that period.
“What should we do?”, they would have asked.
I think none of them believed their industry would become obsolete, so fast. Who would have guessed?
The alarm clock is a simple example. An example of a product that, almost overnight, is made completely irrelevant by an unexpected tech.
All industries should be paranoid about being another alarm clock.
“What technology could potentially make me irrelevant?” This question you should be obsessed with.
I am not talking here about the startup that just raised $10M trying to “disrupt” your industry.
Most of it is not “disruption” anyway. We have to stop throwing this word around.
Cell phone manufacturers didn’t plan on disrupting the alarm clock industry.
I mean who would plan for that?!
What cell phone manufacturers did, is simply add a feature to their product.
There is still an alarm clock market. It’s just smaller.
Old alarm clock manufacturers are trying to rethink the purpose and usage of these devices, and trying to go upmarket. But unfortunately, most of them did not survive or were forced to diversify in other product lines.
Now, this story has led me to discovering the concept of the Pyramid of Technology. A concept developed by Koert van Mensvoort.
It’s an essential concept in understanding what happened to alarm clocks.
Here is what it says:
The Pyramid of Technology describes the seven levels at which technology may function in our life. Technologies may move up and down the pyramid, while lower stages need to be fulfilled before the next stage can be attained. At the bottom of the pyramid we find technologies that are envisioned, meaning that they only exist as an idea or image (such as the time machine). At the top we find technologies that became naturalised, they are part of our human nature (such as clothing and cooking).

As a technology moves up this pyramid, it impacts other technologies.
And a combination or absorption phenomenon can happen:
Multifunctional and complex new technologies render mono-functional and simpler technologies obsolete.
So what the smartphone did to the alarm clock industry, it did the same to agendas, cameras, CD players, land phones, taxis etc…
This alarm clock story is important because we live in times where technologies can go up or down the pyramid faster than ever.
And we don’t seem to realise that.
Think about the technologies you are using everyday or selling and ask yourself:
At what stage of the pyramid are they?
What multifunctional, complex, new technology might absorb what I have today?
Being aware of these trends and using this pyramid concept to map things out, can definitely give you a few years ahead.
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