Rich Karlgaard, Forbes’ publisher, has long written about what he calls the Cheap Revolution since 2006, describing it as “the wholesale shift by corporate customers and techmakers to cheap chips and open-source (often free) software such as Linux. They are embracing simplicity, unlocking prodigious new power and cutting tech costs by up to 90%, threatening the Silicon Valley plutocracy.”

In the current issue, Karlgaard cites “10 Rules of the Cheap Revolution,” and while I think they all make sense, I want to highlight the ones I think are most important for tech companies.

Consumers rule. Consumer technology is now ahead of most industrial technology, which forces businesses to change their operational practices.

Interface rules. The friendliest interface will win. It’s all moving in the direction of entertainment.

Transparency rules. All those 1990s predictions of middleman destruction turn out to be true. Poor bandwidth only temporarily delayed this inevitability.

Self-discipline rules. We are on our own. The most important software of all is our internal operating system.

For the entire article, please check out it here.