When teaching entrepreneurial business models, I have frequently commented on my fascination with what I believe to be the real business model of “American Idol” a popular (although less so now) American television program. Here’s my take on the model:

I’ll bet that you think that you know what UBER is: It’s an example of our new “sharing economy.” By sharing the use of the driver’s car, he offers you a better way to get a cheaper ride as compared to a taxi and it’s way more convenient than public transportation.

You think you're pretty big, eh? Well, things are about to change.

Darwin, in his book "On the Origin of Species" describes the concept of evolution which involves the success of organisms that adapt most effectively to their environment through a process of heredity, random mixing and mutation and natural selection. Fundamental to this concept is the stability of the environment. It is only through that stability that the barrage of experiments done through random errors and mixing in reproduction can happen upon advantages that lead to dominance. Evolution describes a process of information theory where the information is contained within the DNA of the organisms that are defined by it.

When sir Isaac Newton published his Principia in 1687 he defined laws of motion and gravity that described a world that was wonderfully predictable. Every action had a reaction, the motion of every body, regardless of size, could be accurately predicted if one knew its mass, position, velocity (speed and direction) and the forces exerted upon it. But, unfortunately, Max Planck, followed by Einstein, Heisenberg and a host of others ruined the clarity by introducing us to the field of quantum mechanics in which nothing was certain anymore. Everything became related to probabilities.

If you're driving in heavy traffic and you see a red light ahead, you and the drivers in front of you all brake together and come to a stop (unless you're from Boston). But, when the the light turns green each car waits for the car in front of it before moving, so the process of getting everyone moving again takes longer. It seems like the economy works the same way.

There's a lesson to learn from studying Apple and Kodak and then thinking about how to apply it to the Swiss Watch Industry.

My two kids don't wear watches. They use their phones for the functions of timekeeping. It's kind of like a Swiss army knife, it does a lot of things. And, they don't wear all that much jewelry either; maybe they will if they make more money, or maybe not. Demographics are changing for the watch industry and it seems that the Swiss Watch industry isn't worried, should they be? I just saw that they're making a smart watch similar to Apple's.

When I was a kid I thought that it would have been more fun to have lived in the time of Edison. Back then there were lots of uninvented things and plenty of opportunity. But right now, I feel that for good reasons, which I'll describe, you couldn't have picked a better time to be an inventor.