One underlying assumption behind the article: information technology stands still.
The big boys and behemoths of current and past eras emerged when there was a major change in technology or adoption. The two are also interdependent. New technologies drive new use cases and adoption in new segments, which drive further technological inventions.
Ubiquitous wireless devices, new AI capabilities, and wearable sensors are some areas that provide opportunities for startups today. Many more are still to come in the next few years and decades.
Distributed on-demand manufacturing is something I am following. With different types of what you might consider "No Tooling Change" manufacturing methods getting better and better, we might see the economic viability of manufacturing on demand in local manufacturing centers. These depots could make items asked of them on the spot with no upfront re-tooling costs or bulk orders needed. This could enable small businesses to have novel ideas that can easily scale across these near instantly available manufacturing nodes, avoiding hefty tooling and bulk buy costs, and also avoiding having to ship things across the globe.
Imagine you order SomeDeviceX from coolthings.com, they send the order sheet to the town's local fulfillment center in a standardized format they accept. The fulfillment center sends the files out to it's manufacturing devices, think CNC, 3D printers, laser cutters and PCB laser etchers. Some time later the device is assembled, ready to ship out to the neighbourhood.
What I like about the idea is that some items are valuable to only some people, so could never achieve economies of scale that make them viable to a business, and never be manufactured cheap enough locally to meet the market at the right price point.
The only kind of manufacturing being done in many places is large scale plants for things outside of the community, and everyone relies on products shipped in from around the globe. There is a gap missing, between expensive boutique items and mass produced cheap items, where affordable locally produced items could exist if manufacturing could be cheaper.
The big boys and behemoths of current and past eras emerged when there was a major change in technology or adoption. The two are also interdependent. New technologies drive new use cases and adoption in new segments, which drive further technological inventions.
Ubiquitous wireless devices, new AI capabilities, and wearable sensors are some areas that provide opportunities for startups today. Many more are still to come in the next few years and decades.