# On Pioneers, Settlers, Town Planners and Theft. ![rw-book-cover](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9HJim3dy3a4/VQLuBDEJiuI/AAAAAAAAHF0/IK5Y8ZwR3so/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/Pioneers.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[swardley]] - Full Title: On Pioneers, Settlers, Town Planners and Theft. - Category: #articles - Published: 2015-03-13 - Document Tags: #culture #monumental #startups - Source: reader - Last Highlighted: 2025-03-05 07:29:04.364972+00:00 - URL: https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-town-planners-and.html ## Summary Pioneers create innovative concepts, Settlers transform these into marketable products, and Town Planners industrialize them into commodities, fostering a cycle of innovation where each group builds on the work of the previous one to enhance efficiency and customer focus. ## Highlights - The job of the settlers is to identify common patterns in the ecosystem (whether just internal pioneers or internal & external). This can be done by leveraging consumption data of the underlying components or simply inspecting a range of new activities for common elements or simply taking something an internal pioneer developed. Once a pattern or activity is identified, the job of the settlers is to turn it into some sort of product i.e. they steal from pioneers and productise it (make it manufacturable, documented, profitable, stable etc). You can incentivise settlers by product profitability and by which products make it to utility services. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jnjkag256kheqsdwjy6j2vhg)) - Tags: #👻 ai highlighted - The job of the town planner is to build the core, volume operations based, good enough, ultimately (long term) low margin but highly industrialised services & commodity components. They use the portfolio of the settlers, any consumption data, comparison to outside to determine whether something is suitable. Once identified they build the core service and inform the other groups (e.g. you tell pioneers so they have something to build upon, settlers so they know that this part of the portfolio is being industrialised). You incentivise town planners on volume and breadth of service offerings. You actively encourage them to cannibalise your own business as fast as possible. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jnjkag2f87cjktmxqjzzbs6c)) - Tags: #👻 ai highlighted - You are using an outside ecosystem (supply) to act as your town planners ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jnjk9sms4zgfx27xy2eg16zq))