I recently joined a rather innovative gym. They don’t have many weight machines or bikes or walking contraptions, instead they have four large, relatively empty rooms. For the use of this empty space, I happily pay around $30 a week.

Conveniently located at the end of my street, the Pure Health club lured me in with a simple sign saying Yoga. They offer an all you can eat range of classes, including Pilates, Yoga, Tai Chi and others. Given that they haven’t spent the money on machines I have no intention of using, the weekly fee is more than reasonable.

The concept I noticed was how they simplified the stereotypical gym, accessing a slightly different audience.

This is a process I’ve been paying attention to recently. Ponder Google’s successes: a simpler search, a simpler mail client. The pattern is also being repeated in a number of Web 2.0 companies. Everything from simpler project management to simpler word processors.

By simplifying the offering a different set of values is emphasized, potentially entering a new or larger market. This ends up being close to the central thesis of The Innovator’s Dilemma, a book I’m currently reading. The author makes the case for disruptive changes causing existing companies to fail - new companies access new markets and evolve to take over the original core market. Examples range from disk drives to earth movers.

I’m not sure the gym scenario counts as disruptive, but between the simplification of complex offerings and disruptive changes there exist a realm of possibilities for new companies.

Have you noticed anywhere else undergoing or needing disruptive change?

An interesting read by Tom Coates about an advertising firm (maybe) using comment spam to promote cleaning products.

Linked via Hugh

I’ve been seeing more and more random comment spam on this blog, which Wordpress filters for me, but it still requires moderation. Fortunately, none has gotten through (so far) with vigilance taking up more time. Now even the legitimate looking comments seem to require checking.

Luckily, Cocoa development in Python is a fairly niche audience. I’m sure some of the bigger blogs are having even bigger issues with spam, which will be why comments get disabled on a lot of them.

I’m almost in agreement with Seth Godin that if you want to have the conversation, start your own blog and then link back to the article. Almost.

Update: And now an apology after the fact.