AT&T is too broad and I don't know what you mean specifically, but from a common-sense business perpective, the problem Intel works on is "how to keep making smaller faster better processors" and I think again that's another idea that, technical though it may be, captures the interest of way more than 6 people.
Who was the market for the original telephone/telegraph, who was the market for the original transistor or microprocessor?
Whose interest did those things capture initially outside of a small group of technical people? Were they built and people just lined up outside of Walmart to buy them?
Intel was originally in the business of making memory chips, which had a thriving market in minicomputers. They invented the microprocessor because, well, they could. It was the sort of geekish hack that virtually nobody appreciated at the time. They only got big into microprocessors because the Japanese ate the market for memory chips - it was either concentrate on microprocessors, or die.
What does this have to do with programmers? Aside from the fact that I'm talking about programmers and you're extending this to include "all technically-minded people everywhere", in general you're citing exceptions to my observations.
Example:
> Who was the market for the original telephone/telegraph
Gee ... um ... I don't know. Everybody in the world who thought it would be more convenient to get instant verbal communication over a letter that took weeks or months to deliver/respond to?
Let me put it another way. Pierre Omidyar is a technical guy, and more specifically a programmer. Did he choose to develop something that solved an obscure technical challenge, the goal of which was to be published in some computer science journal with a subscription base of 12 people?
No. He had a rare abililty of having both the technical talent and being able to think from the perspective of the general population.
Hence someone like him would be an exception to what I said I've observed.
But for everyone like him that can be cited, I can introduce you to 20 programmers that are trying to start startups around "challenges" so specialized and irrelevant-in-the-scheme-of-things that I know for sure they did zero market research before starting or even during.
Sure, lots of things that seemed like a waste turned out to be very useful with the benefit of an unexpected consequence coupled with unpredictable developments and the benefit of hindsight.
In general, though, I'd prefer to start with "what's needed" and try to come up with a technical solution as simple as possible rather than "what's the coolest thing I could work on technically" and then spend time on that only to find out that 5 people in the world would actually buy it.
I agree with you that most technical people value triumph over technical challenges more than economic worth. I suffered from an acute case of this disease for many years. Perspective is everything when building a startup product. A user doesn't give a damn about a language or methodology, they just want a need solved.
Exactly. And it doesn't even have to be "economic worth" it could be a time/money saving solution that let's some one devote an extra 1 hour to playing with their kids. That's a worthy cause as any. You won't get published in any journal, but I suspect the feedback would be worth it in its own way. I just think there needs to be more of a balance. Google can afford to bankroll people working on problems for their own sake because they got the "value-added" part down pretty well first, for example. No shame in having your feet on the ground while your head looks upward (IMHO).
