A new technology that’s going to take off is usually hiding in plain sight. The “Long Nose” theory of innovation describes the difficulty of figuring out whether a new technology is going to be a Big New Thing or remain a pipe dream of die-hard true believers.
Most huge innovations emerge gradually, not suddenly
They’re the product of gradual tinkering and experimentation
- Things get slowly refined, and the new tech starts being used in real-world circumstances, but mostly in niche areas
- Eventually, some mass-market inventor notices these niche uses and realizes huh, this tech really works now. They build it into a mainstream product – which bursts into truly mass adoption
Really huge ideas have a sort of weird familiarity – a “surprising obviousness”
They make sense precisely because on some level they’re not that new
- This is why truly billion-dollar breakthrough ideas have surprising obviousness
- It’s this combination that lets a new gizmo take off quickly and dominate
To spy the next big thing, go “prospecting”
Look in the world around you and identify technologies that are being stress-tested to the point where they’re ripe to become a mass phenomenon. Look for “surprising obviousness” in the technology.
